Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

Allison didn’t stay long, since, as she explained, her cousin from Reno was driving in early tomorrow to attend a birthday party for a friend. More pop-quiz material.

I couldn’t wait to look more closely at the back of the photos I’d stuffed in the envelope. A quick glance while Allison and I were at the dining room table confirmed what she had implied, that the glue was an inexpensive generic mucilage, not the kind sold in the better crafts stores.

And not the kind a miniaturist would use for anything, not for gluing tiny pieces in place, and not for gluing together the lips of a murder victim.

I didn’t think it would work, but I made an attempt to bypass my guest crafters and inspect the photographs under my large magnifier lamp in the corner of the crafts room. I had all of fifteen seconds before everyone crowded around me.

“What’s that you’re doing?” Karen asked.

I placed the photograph, upside down, directly under the light.

“Give me a minute,” I said. “Then I’d like you all to take a look at this.”

I looked through the magnifier at the top of the light and prodded the glue with toothpicks. The glue had congealed into hard brownish clumps. I pictured the source, with an orange rubber tip on the bottle and a slit for the syrupy glue to come out. I hadn’t seen the brand in years but I remembered it as a staple in the crafts rooms of my childhood.

One by one, I had my crafter friends check out the glue, with and without the magnifying lens, with toothpicks, fingers, and noses all brought to bear.

“Is that a glue Rosie would use?” I asked.

“Not hardly,” said Mabel.

“Nuh-uh, y’all,” said Susan.

“No way, Jose,” said Karen.

“Why does it matter?” Maddie asked.

“I think I know,” Linda said.

I worked out the scenario in my head, over and over, after the group had left and Maddie was fast asleep.

Skip had as much as admitted that the test for matching the glue on David’s dead lips to the glue on Rosie’s locker room box had been hurried and inconclusive. It had been done by a rookie, he’d said. Preliminary, he’d said.

I was convinced that with this sample from Cheryl’s glue and a credible test, we’d have incontrovertible evidence that Cheryl had murdered David and then done everything she could to direct the police to Rosie. She’d even glued his lips together to indicate that a crafter had been at work. Her desire to humiliate Rosie, and even destroy her life, seemed to have no bounds.

It had been a long day, starting with my meeting with Lourdes and ending with Allison (truthfully, ending with sweet potato pie), with a lot of stress at the LPPD in between.

Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’d take the sample photographs to Skip. Then maybe I’d see about arranging a date to finish the witch joke with Henry and Taylor. I’d probably have to promise Henry that I’d never bother him again afterward.

For now, I needed to sleep.

My head couldn’t have been on the pillow more than a minute before a loud thumping noise startled me. It came from the direction of the atrium. June Chinn, next door, had been having problems with raccoons on her roof on a regular basis. Most of the Eichlers in our neighborhood were flat-roofed and easy for an animal to reach. Had the raccoons finally found my roof?

I couldn’t remember whether I’d fully closed the skylight before coming to bed. What a nightmare it would be if an animal had climbed up and then jumped onto my atrium floor and was now trapped inside.

A quick contingency plan formed in my mind, to call animal control if there was a raccoon or other creature in my home. The atrium was closed in, mostly by glass doors that led to the other parts of the house, which surrounded it. To let anyone into my house, I’d have to either enter the atrium and cross it, to the front door, or exit by the patio door from my bedroom and walk all around the side and use my key to let in an animal handler.

I got up and trudged across my bedroom to the small hallway between the living room and the atrium. As soon as I rounded the corner I could tell that I’d left the roof open. The skylight cover was not transparent, but cast diffuse light into the area, with colorful patterns, due, I supposed, to the texture of the acrylic material. Tonight I could tell my house was open to the stars. And to other elements of nature.

I looked through the heavy glass doors to the atrium, scanning carefully for unwelcome signs of life. All seemed quiet. I’d been lucky, but I needed to go out there and close the roof. No sense in tempting nature.

I unlocked and pushed open the glass door. I tiptoed down one step onto the atrium floor. Maddie hadn’t been awakened by the original noise; I didn’t want to disturb her now.

I headed for the button to slide the roof into the closed position.

Wham!

I was knocked to the floor, facedown. I felt my nose crack and I knew I’d broken it. The idea that I’d tripped on a loose piece of slate was short-lived.

“You couldn’t let it go, could you, Gerry?”

The feel of a heavy boot in the small of my back conflicted with the sound of a woman’s voice.

Cheryl Mellace had jumped into my house.

In spite of the pain as my face ground into the floor, I had to gather my wits.

“The police know you killed David, Cheryl. It won’t do any good to hurt me.” I could barely understand my own words, coming as they were from lips scrunched together and twisted to the side, and a bloody nose that was throbbing painfully.

“I was ready to give up my life for him.” Cheryl’s breath came in short spurts.

I knew I was taller and heavier than Cheryl, but I had no idea whether she had a gun. I didn’t dare move. All I could do was look at my beautiful ferns, bamboo, and blooming begonias from a different angle than usual.

I felt I could easily throw off Cheryl’s foot and tackle her, but what if she had a weapon? On the one hand-why would such a petite woman enter my home without one if her plan was to do me harm? On the other-she’d done a good job on David using only a weapon of convenience.

“Cheryl-”

“You’re not in front of the class, Gerry. This is my story. You’re like David. You think you’re the only one who calls the shots.”

At this moment I didn’t want to be thought of as “like David.” I wondered what kind of magnetism he possessed that was lost on me-two women, at least one of them quite intelligent, were willing to throw themselves at him, one humiliating herself in the process, the other killing him.

I shifted under Cheryl’s boot and tried to make out from her weak shadow whether she was holding anything. She pressed down harder on my back. My nose, already beating pulses of pain, took another hit.

“Stay down,” she said. I smelled alcohol on her breath. I couldn’t decide whether that was good news or bad for me. Could she be more easily thrown off balance? I hoped so. I needed something to make up for the age difference between my attacker and me.

Her voice was loud and my greatest fear was that Maddie would wake up. I tried to recall whether Cheryl had ever met Maddie, whether she knew Maddie was in the house. Cheryl might have seen Maddie at the groundbreaking ceremony or at the reunion banquet on Saturday night, but she’d have no way of knowing that she was staying with me. Maddie had been asleep when Cheryl came by last night. I could only hope that my granddaughter’s presence in the house tonight would never enter Cheryl’s mind.

“Let me explain-”

Another slam of her boot. If only I could get a word in, I’d let Cheryl know that my whole crafter’s group had seen the kind of glue she’d used on the posters, and Linda knew more-thanks to her EMT friend, Linda knew about the glue that sealed David’s lips.