Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

“That’s harsh, Mrs. Porter.”

“So are your practices.” I had a brainstorm. “Was it you who stole my purse?”

Barry’s head couldn’t go any lower. “I never, never would have hurt you, Mrs. Porter. Walter told me he saw you sneaking into David’s room after the murder. He figured you were with C and S and found something damaging.”

I was probably more shocked than I should have been, given the events of the weekend. “You knocked me over and stole my purse, Barry.”

“Can I get some tea?”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I hurried the tea preparation because I didn’t want to lose Barry. We’d been sitting in a spot past the middle of the atrium, toward the front door, just out of range of sight from the kitchen. I hoped his attack of conscience or whatever had sent him to me wasn’t waning.

I carried in a tray of tea and cookies (since Barry had been so cooperative thus far) and asked as I was walking, “What happened with David, Barry? Did he start to get nervous about breaking the law, so someone in your company had to get him out of the way?” The someone I had in mind was Walter Mellace, the hallway hulk, who had accosted me. My theory was taking shape-Walter thought I was from Callahan and Savage, looking for the evidence David had claimed to have to expose Mellace Construction. Why else would anyone be breaking into David’s suite?

Barry shot down that theory almost before I’d mounted it. “No way. David was on board. There’s a big remodel of the Duns Scotus coming up. He was totally ready to do whatever it took to give us that huge contract.”

Barry said this with pride in his voice. It was a depressing thought, that two boyhood friends who had probably shared innocent games were now proud partners in a fraudulent business scheme. Maybe that first not-so-innocent game they played with Rosie’s and Mathis’s self-confidence was the beginning of their partnership in crime.

I shared none of that musing with Barry.

I thought of Ben Dobson, my recent passenger. “Could someone else have had proof of the fraud and tried to get a cut of the money? Or, possibly blackmail David?”

“I thought of that, but then why kill the person who might be cutting you in or paying you big bucks to keep quiet?”

“Good point.”

The way Barry gobbled up my ginger cookies, he would have given Skip a run for his money in a cookie-eating contest. “These are awesome, Mrs. Porter,” he said.

In spite of the flattery, I intended to pursue one more avenue. “Tell me about Cheryl Mellace, Barry.”

“There’s a piece of work, huh? I don’t know. I guess it was never really over between those two.”

“Do you think David was calling it off and she retaliated? Or she wanted to end the relationship and they struggled, and-”

He shook his head. “I’ve talked to her. We had breakfast this morning.” I thought of scolding Barry for his bad taste in restaurants, but I’d impressed him enough with my extrasensory abilities. “She’s devastated over this. And you probably didn’t see the side of her this weekend that everyone sees all year. Cheryl’s the one behind all the charity giving the Mellaces do.”

“That’s not an unusual division of labor for a wealthy couple.” I wasn’t ready to give Cheryl the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, all I know is that Cheryl loved David. I think she was planning to leave Walter in fact. But that’s one thing David and I didn’t share-our love lives.”

I had to be sure Barry wasn’t holding out on me. “I thought men friends shared that kind of thing.”

Barry swallowed hard. Tears escaped and ran down his cheeks. “That’s the kind of guy David was. We made a kind of game of hinting at what was going on with women in both our lives, as if my life were as full as his. But really David knew I didn’t have much along those lines, and he did, and he didn’t want to lord it over me.”

Another dead end. According to Barry, David and Cheryl were both candidates for sainthood.

“I think I’m out of questions,” I said.

“I’m not.” Barry’s frown and abrupt turnaround unnerved me. “What are you going to do with what I told you, Mrs. Porter? About the business.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Barry. The police are already working on David’s financial records, and if everything we’ve discussed has crossed my mind before tonight, it has probably crossed theirs.”

“Believe me, David knew how to cover his tracks.” He said this again as a matter of pride in his deceased friend.

“It’s only a matter of time, Barry. Your best bet is to go to the police and tell them what you told me. Make it easy for them so they’ll be more inclined to go easy on you.”

Not that he deserved it.

Barry stood and walked with me to the door. “You may be right, but I’m not ready now, if ever, to go to the police. And anything we’ve said tonight… well, if anyone asks me, we just chatted about old times at ALHS.”

I opened the door, and at the same moment the doors opened on a sedan parked outside my house. Three men got out. The street was quiet at this time of night, all residents’ cars safely tucked into garages. There could be only one reason for the unmarked car and its occupants.

“You may not have to go to the police, Barry. I think they’ve come to you.”

I was grateful that the LPPD didn’t pull out all the stops with sirens and spinning red-and-blue lights.

Something told me that my nephew would be stopping by soon, to explain the quiet drama in front of my house, so instead of retiring my tired mind and body to my bedroom, I refilled the cookie plate and put more water on for tea.

I sat in my chair and tried to put the new information in order. There wasn’t much that I hadn’t guessed before Barry’s visit, but I felt that I could cross Barry off my mental list of murder suspects. His affection for his lifelong friend was obvious, and he seemed as confused as I was about who might have killed David.

Barry would be paying dearly enough for his other crimes. He hadn’t directly accused Walter Mellace of orchestrating the broadly applied scheme, but it might be another story once he was under police lights. I wondered if Walter Mellace had made contingency plans in case something like this happened.

I thought of Larry Esterman and his stealing the records that had been left on my car seat, most likely by Ben. What could that mean? I narrowed it down to two possibilities: First that he was going to undertake his own investigation to clear his daughter, and second, that there was something on the sheet that incriminated him.

Barry had confirmed what Rosie had told me earlier-that Larry had been perhaps more angry than Rosie about the so-called incident in Joshua Speed Woods. Could Larry have killed David after all these years? Why wait? It was possible that David’s compounding of the insult to his daughter by essentially stealing from Larry’s company might have put Larry over the edge.

Fine, I thought, Barry is off the list and Larry is on.

Not what you’d call progress.

As predicted, the next face I saw through my peephole was Skip’s. I opened the door and enjoyed his smile when he heard the kettle whistling. “I hope there’s food to go with that,” he said.

“Of course. But not before you tell me what that was all about.” I pointed in the direction of the sidewalk where LPPD plainclothesmen had been waiting for Barry Cannon.

Skip waved one hand at me while the other took up a cookie. “Nothing new. And, I’m guessing, nothing you don’t already know. We had our guys look into the construction award records as far as they could without a warrant.” He laughed. “Sort of a Maddie approach.”