Margaret Grace: Murder In Miniature

Above the woman’s head was a large painting of John Duns Scotus himself, in his Franciscan robes. I wondered what the symbolism was. Did he or any other Catholic theologian care about the sleeping arrangements of tourists from the suburbs?

I all but pointed to the little girl beside me, and Maddie obliged by looking forlorn and temporarily homeless. Never mind that she had a new cell phone, an iPod Touch, and a state-of-the-art computer in her designer backpack.

“Can you add a cot to the room Rose Norman and I already have?”

“We’re not supposed to…” She looked down to see Maddie struggling with her suitcase. She smiled at Maddie and took a deep breath. “Well, let’s see…” Click, click, click . “It will be a little tight, but…” Click, click, click . “There, I moved you to a slightly bigger room with space enough for a cot. I think you’ll be comfortable enough and I don’t think anyone will mind.”

I hoped her boss was among those who wouldn’t mind her giving us special consideration.

“Thank you very much,” Maddie said, in a sweet voice that she didn’t use for normal conversation or for computer jokes.

I made a note to get her a special treat. As if I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Rosie had so much luggage, I doubted there would have been room for me in her car if we’d gone with the original carpooling arrangement.

“I brought a few wardrobe choices,” she said, out of breath from unpacking her suitcases on the bed nearer to the door. “I need your help with what to wear, Gerry.” She looked at Maddie, busy hooking her computer equipment together. (Since her birthday she’d acquired many more items that began with i.) “And yours, too, Maddie.”

“You’d do better sticking with Maddie’s advice,” I told her, though it was no secret that my own palette ran from white to creams to beiges to the occasional pale blue. I’d brought one of my fancier beige outfits for the cocktail party, which meant that the slacks and tunic were silk, nicely complemented with long pearls from Ken. It was my standard outfit for weddings and anniversary parties.

“You’re lucky you’re so tall and thin, Gerry. You can wear anything.”

I heard the same thing often from other friends, all of whom seemed to have a hidden agenda-to brighten my wardrobe. Occasionally I broke loose and bought a flowery jacket or a blouse in bright green or glittery blue. My shopping bags with donations to charity were full of these purchases.

I was surprised to see that Rosie had brought her unfinished locker room box with her. She set it on a corner of the long dresser that held the television set and took up most of one wall.

“This is my favorite project in the group,” Maddie said, running her finger along the slatted vents in one closed locker door. She turned to me. “I love yours, too, Grandma.”

I gave her a forgiving smile. “It’s okay. I know a cottage Christmas scene is no match for this.” It was neither the time nor the place to share my own dismay that apparently I had no Alasita-type goals for the year other than a Merry Christmas. “Do you think you’ll have time this weekend to work on the scene?” I asked Rosie.

She shook her head. “I… I thought David might like to see it.”

“I like the little toothbrush on the top shelf of the locker on the end,” Maddie said, saving me from having to make an optimistic comment.

It took an hour before Rosie considered herself ready to meet David at the cocktail party. “I’m sure we’ll bump into him before the private party in his suite,” she said, justifying the fuss.

From six to seven o’clock, she tried on several combinations of dresses, shoes, and jewelry, asking for our votes each time. In the end she went with a simple black dress with a low V neckline and a ruffled hem. She carried the smallest of the three black evening purses she’d brought, this one with a large silver buckle that took up most of one side of the purse, and a silver chain strap.

“Are you sure I look okay?” she asked, moving her hammered silver pendant to the exact center of her cleavage.

“You look cool,” Maddie said, then returned to scouting out the amenities in the room.

“You look wonderful,” I told Rosie, meaning it.

Maddie called out from the bathroom, ticking off the contents of the counter. “We’ve got shampoo and conditioner, a shoe shine cloth, mouthwash, a shower cap, and body lotion,” she announced. Back in the room, she came upon a book in the table between the twin beds. “This is a funny Bible,” she said.

I took a look and was surprised to find the collected works of Duns Scotus. “It’s not a Bible,” I said. “These are writings by the monk this hotel is named after.”

“That’s weird, naming a hotel after a monk.”

I scanned the chronology at the front of the book, to get my dates straight. “He was a Franciscan who lived in the thirteenth century,” I said, as if that made everything clear.

“Oh, I get it. San Francisco. Franciscan.”

Apparently, clear enough.

A few minutes later, I sent Maddie off with a group who came to the door. I felt sure she’d enjoy the special kids’ program, which started with an evening of swimming in the hotel pool, more than a cocktail party with middle-aged men and women and their teachers.

“Here it is,” Rosie said, still concentrating on her outfit. “The final touch.”

She’d added the pièce de résistance-the sparkling (allegedly) emerald and diamond bracelet that (also allegedly) David had sent. Why was I being such a skeptic? I wondered, and chided myself at my lack of romantic spirit. I needed to bolster my friend.

“You look lovely, Rosie,” I said, reinforcing my earlier compliment. “And the bracelet is gorgeous.”

That wasn’t so hard.

One last tug on her dress, a puff up of her chestnut bob, and Rosie and I left the room. I felt as nervous as she did, hoping the evening wouldn’t end in disaster for my friend.

We might have been in an elegant San Francisco hotel, but the decorations at the cocktail party were 100 percent Lincoln Point. We could have been entering the Abraham Lincoln High School gym-the official maroon-and-gold school banner was draped above the portable bar of the converted meeting room; small gold napkins with a maroon silhouette of Honest Abe lay on the high tables.

We picked up our name badges, entered the room, and walked along the edges, where several large easels held poster-size collages of photos of the reunion class. The snapshots were interspersed with ALHS pennants, ticket stubs, and graduation tassels. Here and there on narrow pedestals were large sports trophies that on every other day resided in cases in the halls of ALHS.

Rosie quickly found the one with David Bridges’s name on it. I could barely distinguish the football statuettes from those with hockey or bowling stances, let alone determine which position the figures represented, but Rosie knew exactly what was depicted in bronze on David’s trophy.

“It’s a well-known quarterback pose,” she said.

I knew for a fact that Rosie hadn’t been to or watched a football game of any kind since she cheered for David on the ALHS field.

As a miniaturist and former teacher, I suffered from two occupational hazards: giving close scrutiny to even the most casual crafts project, and forgetting that I was no longer responsible for giving grades. This evening, though no one asked, I assigned no more than a C-plus to the decorations. The posters especially were crudely done, with evidence of a bad glue job congealed around the sides of the objects, which in their turn were affixed to the cheapest cardboard sold at a crafts store.

My judgmental attitude came to a halt when I found myself in front of a memorial board with yearbook photographs of the nine class members who had died in the intervening years. I looked at each face and saw a lively teenager cut short in life’s journey. Just as parents didn’t expect to outlive their children, teachers assumed their students would carry what they learned long into the future.