Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

To think I’d taught those students who made up the jeering crowd, probably the same day and the days before and after. I might even have given a couple of them As. Would I have graded them differently if I’d known what shallow lives they led? That was a moral discussion for another time.

I took a cue from Abraham Lincoln: “A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.” Rosie and Mathis should have waltzed out of the woods and gone to the Valentine’s Day dance together and had the best time of anyone there.

But that was hindsight, and an adult response, not a high schooler’s.

“How cruel, Rosie. You must have felt awful,” I said. I moved to a seat next to her on the couch and put my arm around her.

“I wanted to die right there.”

“Did you talk to Mathis about it?”

“Never, never. Looking back, I guess he was in his own private agony. I learned that Sheila Philips, who was voted the prettiest girl in the class-do they even do that anymore? I hope not-was the one who invited Mathis to the clearing. It’s so dumb, Gerry, what seems important when you’re seventeen.”

“And you never talked to David about it?”

She shook her head. “Never. But he was nice to me after that. He didn’t ask me out or anything, but he would smile and once he picked up something I dropped in class. That made me think the whole setup in the clearing wasn’t his idea, that his boorish friends put him up to it. And then this summer, when I started getting presents from him-I thought it was him-I figured he was finally going to make it up to me.”

“I’d have been so angry with him.”

“My father was the one who was ready to kill him.” Rosie stopped and put her hand to her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“It’s just an expression, Rosie. We don’t realize what a terrible thing it is to say, until something like this really happens.”

“My father wanted to have it out with him in the school-yard. Imagine that. He’d have been arrested immediately.” Rosie laughed. “Me, I had this fantasy of pouring tacky glue all over David’s lying lips.”

I withdrew my arm from the back of the couch and sat up. “What did you say?”

“I was into miniatures then, too, remember? So, naturally, that’s what I thought of.”

“Naturally.”

I left Rosie’s to go to Linda’s where Maddie was hanging out. I was ready for grief as only an eleven-year-old can give it. On the way to her house, I called Linda, using my headset. I wondered if Bluetooth was now a verb-I Blue-toothed Linda. I’d read that the technology was invented in Denmark and named after one of their peacemaking tenth-century kings, Harald Bluetooth. At first hearing, the story seemed like something made up in an eighth-grade creative writing class, but I’d read it enough times from trusted sources to believe it.

I needed to ask Linda a question out of range of Maddie’s ears.

“Linda, did you tell Rosie about how David Bridges’s lips were… how his lips were when they found him?”

“Glued together? Nuh-uh, I thought it was too gross.”

I knew that the police hadn’t released that detail. Did Rosie know because she did it, or was it one huge coincidence that the killer had used glue, just as Rosie imagined she would thirty years ago. Rosie had told her story with such guilelessness, I couldn’t believe she knew the implications.

“Thanks, Linda,” I said, though I didn’t feel grateful.

My attention switched to Rosie’s father. A man who hadn’t been in my consciousness for many years now loomed at the front of my mind. He took shape as a former refrigeration specialist who now worked for Callahan and Savage, who stole a bank record from me, and who was angry enough to want to kill David Bridges thirty years ago. Had it all finally come together for him? It was altogether possible that Larry Esterman knew of his daughter’s fantasy and carried it out for her. Except that the deed pointed to Rosie and he wouldn’t have wanted that.

Every hour today seemed to have created more problems and questions for me. I’d heard many stories, but I was no closer to the truth than I was at noon on Saturday when I heard of David’s murder.

I hung up and called Maddie’s cell. She loved getting calls on it directly, although lately she told me she much preferred text messages. I had no trouble manipulating two sets of tweezers at the same time, to place a delicate bead on a piece of fabric, but I didn’t think my fingers could work the tiny buttons on the phone pad to send a TM.

“Hi, Grandma. I’m helping Mrs. Reed make some ferns like the ones in the Duns Scotus hotel lobby. Remember that bridge and how those trees made it look like you were in a jungle?”

Yes, and how the bushes and rocks could hide a mugger and purse thief. I hoped one day I could look at a garden like that and not think of crime. “I remember, sweetheart.”

“Look at this,” Maddie said, showing me, in person, a miniature version of a large leaf, like the kind you’d see in a real jungle, or in a hotel lobby atrium. “Guess what it’s really made of, Grandma.”

Linda stood behind her, her look daring me to spoil my granddaughter’s fun.

I took the leaf from her and scanned it. “I have no idea.”

“It’s sticky paper!” Maddie was delighted to have fooled me. Or she thought she’d fooled me. (She’d left telltale scraps of paper backing on the table behind her.) “See how the sides of the leaf stick to each other, and all you have to do is shape it with scissors and snip off little pieces to look like separate leaves.”

“Nice work. I’m glad you two had a good time.”

“Uh-huh. We had two kinds of Popsicles,” Maddie announced.

“The fruit-flavored ones,” Linda added, as if to gain health points.

I knew that Linda was addicted to sugary sweet Popsicles, the kind with a long list of artificial ingredients on the box. I liked to believe Sadie’s homemade ice cream was better for Maddie, but if sugar kept her from nagging me about where I’d been, it was okay with me.

After Linda and I made a plan to “talk later,” Maddie and I headed home. I waited but never got a question from Maddie about what I’d done during my several hours away this afternoon. Had she learned reverse psychology? Did she think that if she didn’t ask me, I’d voluntarily give her an update on the David Bridges case? I wouldn’t fall into that trap.

“I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up today,” I said, turning right on Gettysburg Boulevard toward home.

“No problem.”

No problem? No leg-kicking? No bargaining to tag along wherever I was going next? Maddie knew about David’s death from the announcement at the groundbreaking ceremony at the high school and she knew of my Internet search for Callahan and Savage. She must have known I’d gone to Skip’s office a couple of times since then, and therefore that there was an investigation going on. Where was the whining? Where were the incessant pleas to help?

“You were okay with Mrs. Reed?”

“I told you, we made ferns and ate Popsicles.”

“A perfect day.”

Why wasn’t I happier that Maddie had enjoyed herself, out of harm’s way, while I continued to dig around, entertaining strange men in my car near Joshua Speed Woods?

I had to admit I missed Nancy Drew.

Maddie hadn’t always loved dollhouses and miniatures. It had taken the Bronx apartment dollhouse to win her over. I’d abandoned the project after Ken died and Maddie started working with me to help me get back to it. It was completely furnished now but there was always something to add, like the cracker crumbs we’d whipped up last night.

As a hobby, miniatures had a lot going for it. Unlike say, golf or skiing, you didn’t need to leave home to do it. And you could make progress on a project in as little as ten minutes. Often while heating dinner in the microwave, I’d pop over to one of my crafts areas and apply a quick coat of varnish to a tiny table or bookcase, or I’d test a gluing job I’d done in the morning.