Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

I wondered if Larry Esterman had been caught with a bank record clutched in his fist.

I left quick messages to say “yes” to Linda and “thanks” to Susan and asked Susan to pick up Mabel, in case I was busy till the last minute. Instead of calling Rosie, I grabbed my keys and rushed to my car.

I had no choice. I had to go to the LPPD, Maddie or no Maddie.

This time Rosie was in the waiting area, and her father was inside the confines of the LPPD.

Rosie sat in an uncomfortable police department chair, her hands in her lap, her eyes staring straight ahead. Anyone who didn’t know better would think she was relaxed. But it seemed a long time since I’d seen Rosie at ease or in good humor-behind the counter of her shop, bent over a new box of books, or scanning a bookshelf for a title. Now she was as tight as the bolts that held her bookcases to the wall for earthquake safety.

I looked around the large room. Drew Blackstone was on duty. Did the man never get a day off, or did he show up just to accommodate me? I resolved to bring him a tin of cookies soon. For the first time in a while, I hoped I wouldn’t run into Skip.

Rosie stood up when she saw me. “Gerry, where have you been?”

When this was all over I was going to have to sit Rosie and Linda down and explain that I wasn’t required to be on call twenty-four/seven. They should have known that most of the time when they couldn’t get hold of me this past week, I was investigating a murder case, trying to clear Rosie, and that I had a life. Maybe not that last one.

“Do you know what this is all about?” I asked Rosie.

“As I told you in my message, the police are holding him for assault.”

“On Barry Cannon? Barry must be thirty years younger. What was your dad thinking?”

“He, uh, took a weapon with him.”

I was stunned. Mild-mannered Larry Esterman with what? A gun? A knife? Another trophy?

“A gun,” Rosie said, before I asked. “I didn’t even know he had one, but I guess he got it when his business was robbed a couple of times years ago. Some kids broke into his warehouse and took a lot of inventory. I’m sure he’d never use it. He just wanted to scare him.”

I couldn’t tell whether Rosie was talking about the kids of long ago or the kid Barry Cannon, of the present. Probably both.

As Rosie and I took seats, Drew and I exchanged waves and smiles across the wide room. I figured he was wondering when I was going to saunter over and ask for a favor.

“Have you heard anything about what’s going on in there?” I asked Rosie, pointing past Drew to the innards of the police station.

Rosie shook her head and sniffed. “No one’s come out to talk to me.”

“Where did they pick him up?”

“At my house. He didn’t do anything to Barry except wave the gun and yell at him. Then he came to my house. Barry must have called the police after he left. My dad’s gun is registered, Gerry.”

“I’m sure they’ll take that into account.”

Why was I saying something I didn’t believe in? Did we want everyone in town with a registered gun waving it in our faces when they wanted to settle a feud or make a point?

The bigger question was, why hadn’t I been a better friend to Rosie? If I’d been stronger and not so afraid of alienating her, I might have helped her to be more realistic about the reunion in the first place. Then David wouldn’t have had the chance to rebuff her and Larry wouldn’t have been forced to relive a thirty-year-old humiliation. For all I knew, David would still be alive, though that connection wasn’t as clear to me.

“Just before they took him away…” Rosie broke down, reacting as if she’d never see her father again. She pulled a wrinkled, folded piece of paper from her purse. “He handed this to me. He said you gave it to him?”

I could tell immediately that it was the bank record he’d taken from my folder. I started to clarify for Rosie the manner by which Larry Esterman had acquired the page, but she didn’t need any more grief. (There it was again, that fear of bringing displeasure to anyone I cared about.)

I unfolded the sheet. Larry had written all over it, in bold, possibly angry strokes. He’d circled a row of numbers on the top right of the page and written off-shore ; he’d drawn a box around an alphanumeric code on the top left and written Cannon. A yellow highlighter marked large dollar amounts in the middle column.

Apparently, Larry had done some research and had determined that not only David but Barry Cannon was also profiting from the fraudulent scheme.

He could have just asked me, instead of stealing my property. Then he might not be in police custody.

It must have galled Larry that the ringleaders of the terrible stunt his daughter had suffered from were raking in money, profiting from an illegal scheme that also caused his own employer to lose contracts. If David Bridges had been shot instead of bludgeoned to death, Larry would probably have been arrested instead of simply brought in for questioning.

Rosie had been watching me as I perused the sheet of paper and speculated on its meaning.

“Does it mean anything to you?” she asked me.

“Not really,” I said.

I’d given some thought in the past couple of days to the folder that had landed on the seat of my car. I was convinced that Ben Dobson, the ambitious Duns Scotus supervisor who worked for the late David Bridges, had put it there. I figured that even though his boss was dead by then, Ben had wanted to bring down everyone connected to the scheme, without having to get involved directly. I wondered who his Maddie-like hacker was. I wished I could contact him to tell him his work was likely the last straw of evidence needed to bring the perpetrators to justice.

And to ask him what he was doing in the Joshua Speed Woods after David’s memorial service. Maybe he was looking for more evidence of the fraud. Or maybe he hadn’t lied to me after all, about answering nature’s call.

My cell phone rang, showing Skip’s caller ID. I didn’t think Rosie needed to hear even my side of the conversation, so I stepped outside to answer.

A majestic set of steps led from the sidewalk to the plaza level of the police department building. From this vantage point, I could see the entire main shopping district of our town, and as far as Rutledge Center where I could picture Maddie working furiously on her project and looking forward to being where I was now.

Fortunately, according to the oversize digital display in front of the civic center buildings, the temperature had dropped to a mere eighty-two degrees and I wasn’t too uncomfortable.

“How come you’re being patient there in the waiting area and not beating down my door?” Skip asked.

“How come you know where I am?” Or at least, where I’d been when he rang.

“Duh,” he said, echoing Maddie. I needed to break down and adopt that handy syllable (I couldn’t call it a word) myself.

“What can you tell me about Larry Esterman?” I asked.

“He’s on his way downstairs now, but he’s wearing an ankle bracelet while we figure it all out.”

“You think he’s a flight risk? I doubt the man has been out of town for decades.”

“He did attempt to assault a man.”

“Uh-huh. And with a deadly weapon, right?”

“Not if it wasn’t loaded.”

“What?”

“Esterman claims the gun wasn’t loaded, that he doesn’t even own any bullets. In fact, we searched both his and Rosie’s houses and found no ammunition, or even a record that he’d ever bought any.”

“He owned a gun but never loaded it?”

“It appears that way. As I said, we’re sorting things out.”