Murder in Miniature (10 page)

As soon as we left Crane’s, the venue of who-knew-what
kind of business dealings between Dudley and Just Eddie, Maddie lost interest in shopping. Was this child really my biological granddaughter, or had Richard and Mary Lou adopted her?

“My feet hurt,” she told me. She pointed across the street at the enticing
SADIE’S HOMEMADE ICE CREAM
sign. “Can we just have ice cream and go home?”

I looked down at her skinny body, her bony knees. How can feet and ankles get tired holding up so little weight? I wondered. Would she be as tired standing in right field (or whatever position she played) for two hours?

But what kind of grandmother wouldn’t grant a worn- out ten-year-old’s wishes?

“We’ll have more time to work on the dollhouse,” Maddie said.

We both laughed at that pitiful attempt to bribe me.

One hot-fudge sundae (Maddie) and one mocha shake
(me) later, we were in the “project room” next to the bedroom Maddie was using.

Ken had painted the whole apartment dollhouse before he got sick. The inside was off-white throughout, the outside red brick. He hadn’t gotten to outlining the bricks or painting the window frames, but the brick color was perfect, almost weather-beaten, like its real-life prototype.

“I found something we can use in the bathroom,” Maddie said.

Then my heart flipped as I saw that she’d already found the perfect material for a shower curtain: a plastic bowl cover from my food-storage drawer.

The moment when you look at an everyday object and envision it on a different scale, as something else entirely, is thrilling, and I could tell by Maddie’s face that she’d experienced that. Selfish as it was, I wanted her to have a hobby that we could share, and also one that would give her the kind of pleasure miniatures had given me through the years.

Maddie trimmed the elastic edge from the bowl cover and smoothed out the plastic. She laid a ruler on it, then whisked it off the table. “Uh-oh. I guess we’d better iron this first,” she said.

We were on our way.

I was strangely comfortable working on the project I’d
avoided for two years. Because it was Maddie’s idea? Or was I finally ready to move into another phase, honoring my husband by not using him as an excuse to be self-pitying? Probably a little of both.

With her tiny fingers, Maddie worked well with Fimo dough. I showed her how to roll a small piece of the dough on a hard surface, first one way and then the other, to create a rounded bar of “soap.”

As much as I was enjoying the afternoon, the project didn’t have 100 percent of my attention. I was waiting for a call from Linda or Skip.

I sat with Maddie as she watched a parent-approved
video (she’d brought slightly fewer videos than books) in the living room. My interest in animated movies went only so far. I’d started leafing through back issues of
Miniatures
magazine and hobby builders’ catalogs as soon as the popcorn ran out. Also, believing family sources that both Maddie and I could use a few extra pounds, I’d put a batch of chocolate-chip cookies in the oven.

The call came during a stampede where a seemingly innocent lion was killed. I wondered how this had cleared Richard and Mary Lou’s suitable-movie criteria.

I was glad to hear Skip’s voice.

“Hey, Aunt Gerry. I have a status report for you. If you want one, that is.” I caught the tease in Skip’s voice and wished I could tease back by sending the smell of melting chocolate (his second-favorite cookie, after ginger) over the wires. I’d answered the ring on the kitchen phone, tucking the receiver between my neck and shoulder so I could check the cookies while Skip talked.

“Linda’s story is that a guy dumped her at that location after a date gone bad.”

“Linda on a date? That’s as likely as
my
having a date.”

Skip laughed. “Not because you couldn’t have one, Aunt Gerry. I told you about Nick, this guy at the station, just about to retire and—”

My fault for starting us on that track. “Back to Linda, please.”

“In fact, Mom has worked with Nick on this seat-belt project.”

“Then maybe she wants to date him. Now, Linda?”

“Yeah, well, Linda’s date was a stranger she picked up at a bar, and she doesn’t know where he can be found to corroborate her story, and she doesn’t remember the name of the bar where she met him, and so on. He ‘got fresh in the backseat’—her term. Isn’t that from the fifties?” I didn’t respond. “Anyway, she ‘refused his advances’—isn’t that fifties, too? So he pulled over and left her out there.”

“That’s quite a story. It doesn’t make sense, Skip. Linda leaves the fair, goes to a bar—”

Skip picked up the rhythm. “Someone hits on Linda. Like that’s going to happen.” Again, no response from me. My nephew didn’t need the encouragement of a laugh. “Guess I shouldn’t say that. Sorry.”

It was clear to me that Linda was lying. Not because she was guilty of a crime, but for some other Linda-reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Still, I thought I’d get an expert opinion, with no jokes. “Seriously, Skip. Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

“Frankly, no. But that’s all she’ll say right now, and I can’t prove her story isn’t true, so we let her go. Besides, although I think she’s hiding something, I really doubt she killed this woman.”

Here I felt a comforting wave flow through my body. “Do you know who the murdered woman is yet?”

“We’ve identified her as a Tippi Wyatt. She has a long sheet in Brooklyn, so her prints are in the system. She moved to the Midwest somewhere and then picked up another sheet there. She doesn’t seem to have any ties to Linda or anyone else in town for that matter. She’s been staying the last few nights at that fleabag Motel Some- Number-or-Other a few miles outside of town.”

“So it was all just random?”

“Well, if you believe that some random killer happened to kill the random person passing through town, and the body happened to be found where Linda’s random so-called date dumped her.”

“Well, when you put it like that. But it certainly could have happened that way. Coincidences happen all the time, and—”

“Take it easy, Aunt Gerry.” I could almost see Skip’s hand go up to stop my runaway speech. “We’re still just in the check-everything-out phase.”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. How’s Linda?”

“On the warpath.”

Ouch.
Not that I was surprised, but I’d hoped for that miniature-size chance that Linda would understand why I’d had to talk to Skip. As I was ready to move on and ask Skip for a report on Jason and Crane’s burglary, Maddie came into the kitchen, spots of white liquid glue and paint all over her T-shirt. She’d changed from her LA Dodgers sweatshirt to a San Francisco Giants T. (I remembered when they were the New York Giants. I sensed a pattern.) Maddie’s face, hands, and legs also showed signs of serious crafts work.

“What about the other matter?” I asked Skip. I handed Maddie two pot holders she’d made for me in an arts-and-crafts class and turned away from the oven.

“Huh?”

“The…uh, never mind.” No need to bring up Jason now, in Maddie’s presence. “Thanks for the warning about Linda.”

“Sure thing. Talk later.”

“What happened to Mrs. Reed?” Maddie asked. Her words were muffled as she tried to juggle the bite of hot cookie in her mouth. “Is this about the other night?”

Sooner or later, my brighter-than-average granddaughter would put it all together. She might as well hear it from me. “Let’s talk over a drink,” I said, pulling a carton of whole milk from the fridge.

Maddie seemed to take in the information about Linda’s
plight calmly enough. I had to use all my vocabulary skills to explain that someone had murdered a woman right where we had picked Linda up. I used some innocuous philosophical tidbits, like “sometimes people do bad things,” and a euphemistic “a lady lost her life.” Maddie nodded a lot; I suspected she had a better grasp of things than I gave her credit for and was trying to make it easy on me.

I was relieved Skip didn’t think Linda was a killer any more than I did. I hoped that was the view held by the entire Lincoln Point PD. I tapped the side of my glass of milk with my fingers. If only I could do some investigating on my own. I wished there were some way to track Linda’s movements the way television cops did, sifting through phone records and credit-card receipts. Had Linda stopped for coffee or gas? (Of course not, she was apparently on foot, without her purse. Her SUV was in the same spot in the school parking lot as when we arrived midafternoon.)

“I remember that place really well,” Maddie said. “I told Uncle Skip and Aunt Beverly about it.”

I jerked out of my mental detective work. “I know you told them, but I thought you were asleep for most of the trip.”

“Not the whole time. I remember the phone booth, all broken-down. Really dirty glass, too. It was pretty scary.”

“It certainly was.” Did I really want Maddie to relive the fears of that night? “More milk, sweetheart?”

“And the big sign with the spelling mistake.”

“What sign?”

“It was tall and it said ‘Bird’s Storage—Cheep Rates’” She rolled her eyes, as only a ten-year-old can, with intensity and full-face participation. “I got it—like, birds go
cheep cheep
, with two
e
’s, but really the right
cheap
has an
a
. Don’t you hate when they do that? Like, they have Kid’s Korner in the bookstore near us. They spell
corner
with a
k
.” Maddie clicked her tongue:
tsk-tsk
.

I felt another shiver, of the good kind. My granddaughter loved to read, had found joy in miniatures, and even cared about spelling. So what if she was also a tomboy? The future was secured.

I pictured Route 101, the road we traveled on the way to Linda. I’d been concentrating on the exit signs—to the 237, the 85, and minor streets—and on staying connected to Linda by phone.

An idea crept forward in my head. I couldn’t recall the sign Maddie mentioned, but if there was a storage facility, they’d most likely have video surveillance. While I was thinking this through, Maddie had gone to the computer in her bedroom. She called me in.

“Here it is, Grandma,” Maddie said, showing me the computer screen. “It took a while with dial-up, but I finally got through.” She grinned and wiped her forehead, pretending to be stressed by the effort in this low-tech house. She’d researched the address of Bird’s Storage, then gone to a map site and, sure enough, there was the graphic stick- pin identifying the location of the storage facility. The map was nearly identical to the one in the newspaper. I thought of the
Lincolnite’
s X—not a happy association.

A path was opening up. The police would certainly have confiscated any video the storage facility had, so Skip would have access to it. If I could view the video, I might be able to see something the police missed. Not that my nephew and the LPPD crew were incompetent, but they didn’t know Linda as well as I did and might not know what to look for.

I checked my watch. Nine thirty. Which mattered only because it was past Maddie’s bedtime.

“Very nice work, Maddie”—she blushed, as most redheads do, in a charming way—“but we need to watch the clock more carefully so you can get your beauty sleep.”

As soon as I could leave Maddie, I punched in Skip’s
number. When he picked up, I launched immediately into my idea.

“I don’t know, Aunt Gerry,” he said. “You’ve already given your statement. Maybe you should just let us take it from here. Anyway, the tape is pretty useless. I saw it all and there’s nothing of value on it.”

“But I was
there
, Skip. Something might jog my memory.”

He gave in more easily than I expected. “You’ll have to view it here at the station, and then amend your statement.”

“Great. I can be there in about fifteen minutes.” In my excitement, I’d forgotten about leaving Maddie, but it turned out not to matter.

“Aunt Gerry, don’t you ever sleep? Or take a day off?”

“Well, you’re working tonight, too.”

“Nuh-uh. You called my cell. I wasn’t working until you called.”

“Oh, no. Are you in the middle of a date?”

“More like the beginning. Unlike you and Linda—”

No wonder he hadn’t spent a lot of time arguing with me. “Never mind me and Linda. Just go back to your date. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Will your date be over by nine thirty? That’s about twelve hours from now.”

I heard a sigh, then a dial tone.

Not wanting to bother Beverly for at least one more day,
I’d planned to drop Maddie off at a bookstore near the Lincoln Point Police Station. The owner, Rosie Norman, had been a student of mine. (It occurred to me that the percentage of Lincoln Point’s population who were my former students was very high; perhaps I hadn’t retired soon enough?) I remembered Rosie’s class as the year I’d built a model of John Steinbeck’s stately Victorian boyhood home in Salinas, California. As a result (I could only hope), Rosie was a huge fan of Steinbeck,
Grapes of Wrath
and
Cannery Row
being her favorites. I knew I could safely leave Maddie in her care.

Not surprising, Maddie didn’t like the plan. “Please, please, please,” Maddie chanted. “I’m the one who saw the sign.”

I made a quick call and got assurance from Skip that there was nothing grisly on the tape, like a live murder, for example.

“I wish,” he said. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing on it. An occasional blurry image of a vehicle, plus some parked cars, but that’s it. The body was not in camera range.”

“Got it,” I said. “It will be boring. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

By nine forty-five on Tuesday morning, Maddie and I
were in a small A/V room at the police station. Skip had paperwork to catch up on and would check in with us later.

The police station was the oldest building in town. As you would guess, a quote from the man we thought of as our town’s founder, Abraham Lincoln, was carved in bas- relief at the entrance: “I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

The department was currently in competition with the library for grant money from the city council. I had mixed loyalties since I tutored at the library and used it extensively, but, through Skip, realized the need for a more modern police facility. At present, no one was receiving funds. The money was being held hostage until the development proposal went through, and that in turn was hostage until the coming election. I was very glad I wasn’t involved in politics any more than as a reasonably well- informed voter.

Skip had mentioned that a second trucker had come forward and reported that the lot had been empty when he stopped there a few minutes before midnight. (Evidently the spot was a popular “rest” stop for truckers, thus accounting for one component of the odors I’d picked up on my rescue mission: Linda’s phone booth was downwind.) This helped determine at least the earliest poor Tippi Wyatt could have been killed—the time of death had been narrowed down to sometime between midnight on Friday night (the time of Trucker Number 1, with no body) and three in the morning on Saturday (when Trucker Number 2 found Tippi). Long after Linda’s 2:00
AM
call to me. That still left the possibility that Tippi Wyatt’s body was only a few yards from…I gulped and sat down next to Maddie.

The video had been cued up to midnight on Friday night. I pushed play and Maddie and I started our watch. Inch after inch of tape went by as we shifted around in uncomfortable chairs, in front of an inferior video display, with no popcorn. Maybe Maddie would take this low-class environment as a point against a career in law enforcement. I took it as reason to join the pro-growth people and have a chance at a new police station.

Not that I had any expertise in security, but the surveillance system at Bird’s Storage seemed quite primitive. A single camera offered a distorted view of the area, covering some of the garagelike openings in the building, a large section of the parking lot, and part of the gas station. Only the very edge of the phone booth was visible at the top left of the image, looking past the roof of the station and the gas pumps. There was no way to tell if the booth was occupied or not.

I knew only enough geometry to lay out templates for wallpaper and carpeting in my dollhouses, but I had some sense of how a lens worked from shopping, at Skip’s insistence, for the fish-eye peephole in my front door. I drew a rough sketch on a little notepad I kept in my purse. I figured the camera was located on a wall or fence on the side of the property, looking north, with a ninety-degree sweep. Much too high, it seemed, but probably to keep the camera from being vandalized in that undesirable neighborhood.

It was clear also that there must have been storage spaces not on video at all, in the triangles on my drawing just under the camera.

After more than thirty minutes of watching nothing but what amounted to a still frame of Bird’s Storage’s metal doors and two sedans that never moved, Maddie stood up and stretched.

“I’m bored and hot,” she said, fanning herself with her loose T-shirt.

“Me, too. Do you want to quit?”

“No way.”

I knew she wouldn’t.
That’s my girl.

If the murder had taken place in Bird’s lot, it was by someone who had scoped out the security system. Or who was very lucky. As Skip said, the person managed to stay out of camera range. Not that it would be that difficult, however. The owner (of the “cheep” facility) had most likely installed the minimum equipment to meet some regulation or to avoid a lawsuit by the renters.

It would be hard to say who fidgeted more on the stiff chairs, but we stuck it out for almost another hour, aided by corn chips and soda from the vending machine, delivered by Skip in a thirty-second visit. I tried to open a window (not that the air outside was terrific, but at least it wasn’t stagnant) and found the two small windows had been nailed shut. I wondered if we were in a holding cell.

When the video read 1:24
AM
, a van drove across the frame. Maddie and I leaned forward simultaneously, but there was nothing revealing about its appearance or its trip into and then out of camera range. We settled back on our metal chairs.

At the 1:33
AM
mark, a light (everything was in shades of gray) pickup drove into the lot. Maddie jerked up. I thought it might be because it was at least another sign of life in the session, but she’d reacted to something more specific.

“It’s Just Eddie’s truck,” she said. “See the big carton in the back?”

I peered at the screen, adjusting my trifocals. Maddie could be right. I couldn’t tell either way. The image on the television screen was too blurry. Maddie’s judgment was either better because of her excellent eyesight, or worse because of her eagerness to find something.

All I remembered about Just Eddie’s truck were its rust spots and not wanting to park next to it in the school lot. Nothing as subtle as rust spots would show up on this video.

“Are you sure?” I asked Maddie, rewinding and pausing on the blurry vehicle.

Maddie was right at the screen now, a half inch from touching it. “I’m sure. I’m sure, Grandma. See this big box? I think it’s from a refrigerator. I saw it in Just Eddie’s truck.”

It finally clicked. The battered carton marked
REFRIGERATOR
in Just Eddie’s truck bed. How could I have forgotten that eyesore on top of eyesore in the school parking lot? Because I was too worried that he’d scrape my car and I’d need a new paint job, I decided.

We scanned through the last twenty minutes of the tape. Seeing nothing else, we wound back and studied what could have been Just Eddie’s truck. The flatbed vehicle entered from the right, moved relatively slowly down the side of the parking lot in front of the lockers, then out of view, into either the southwest or the southeast corner of the lot, out of camera range. Skip and his buddies wouldn’t have been alerted since the vehicle made no suspicious moves and there were no special markings visible. Even if they wanted to trace the vehicle, they wouldn’t have had anything to go by. Until now.

Maddie was no longer bored. Her legs swung up and down so furiously I was sure they’d be bruised from the metal chair rungs.

The tape segment ended shortly after 3:00
AM
, about fifteen minutes after I picked up Linda. Given the angle of the camera and the quality of the video, there was no way Linda or my car would have been discernible. I rewound the tape and clicked off the television set.

“Let’s go tell Uncle Skip,” Maddie said, with new energy.

My head was dizzy with new possibilities. I took a deep breath. “Maddie,” I said.
Uh-oh. What was I about to do?
Be a very bad role model and ask my granddaughter to join me in obstructing justice?

Apparently, that’s exactly what I was about to do.

Maddie dumped our soda cans and corn chip bags into a beat-up wastebasket (how special that it matched the chairs) in the corner of the room. I made a note to tell Richard and, mostly, Mary Lou about their excellent training. Unlike the training I was providing.

“Not yet,” I told Maddie. “Let’s not get Uncle Skip all worried until we’re sure.”

Maddie’s eyes widened. “I’m sure.”

Not making it easy. I checked my watch. A little after noon. With any luck, Skip would be out to lunch, if cops were ever that regular. “Let’s return the tape to the front desk and see,” I said.

See what, I didn’t know, but Skip had indeed stepped out. Maybe finishing last night’s date.

“I’ll make sure he gets the tape,” the young, rotund desk officer said. “Unless you want to wait?”

“No, no, just tell him I’ll talk to him later.”

“Grandma…” Maddie started, then stopped.

We hurried out the door of the police station and down the steps to the street. I had my keys ready and beeped the car doors open. Maddie followed silently. She didn’t ask any questions.

I was glad I didn’t have to share my feeling: that some twist of good fortune had worked in my favor and kept me from having to talk immediately to Skip.

My next thought was: maybe Linda did have a date. With Just Eddie.

My mind worked hard on the way home to justify my
skipping out (so to speak). Not that I was technically withholding anything. After all, Skip wasn’t around when we finished viewing the tape.

Maddie got out her iPod and put on her headphones. She drummed her fingers to something I couldn’t hear. I drummed the steering wheel, concocting scenarios that would put both Linda and Just Eddie at or near the X.

Once or twice I nearly laughed out loud (LOL, in e-mail and text-messaging language, Maddie had taught me) at the image of Linda and Just Eddie on a date. Easy to understand why it might go bad. If they were seeing each other, however, there was no reason for either of them to carry on in secret; both were unattached. If Friday night’s episode was simply too embarrassing for Linda, I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable by telling the cops on her. Hurting Just Eddie’s feelings or protecting him in any way didn’t make my list of reasons to keep it all confidential for now.

I planned to call Linda as soon as I was home. And away from Maddie, who looked at me as if she were my conscience. I hoped she was simply disappointed at not being able to tell her uncle she’d cracked the case, and not because she thought her grandmother was breaking the law.

It should have been an easy commute home from the
police station, usually a ten-or fifteen-minute trip. Except that today a huge traffic jam had Maddie and me stopped behind a long line of cars on Springfield Boulevard. We strained to look out the side windows to see what the problem was. Large posters on sticks gave us the clue: today was the scheduled rally for Proposition 22, drafted by Dudley Crane and his followers, the special referendum on growth for Lincoln Point. Protesters and supporters of the growth proposition had lined the street in front of city hall, in the same civic-center complex as the police station. Too late to turn around and take the back streets that ran behind the complex. This tie-up went a long way toward a vote to reject anything that would bring more of the same, I thought.

I caught glimpses of the slogans, taking one position or the other. I read that 22
IS BAD FOR YOU
, that 22
MEANS JOBS FOR YOU,
that
GROWTH EQUALS GRIEF
, and one I couldn’t quite place on the political spectrum:
TIME MARCHES ON
. I recognized some stragglers at my end of the traffic line and tried to match the person with her or his view on the issue.

Jack Wilson (the brother of sister craftswoman, Gail “split-level” Musgrave), who was running against Dudley Crane for a seat on the city council, led an unsurprising contingent of
KEEP LP GREEN
marchers. Postmaster Cooney shuffled by and, though I couldn’t read his sign (he held it over his shoulder, as if he were marching with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), I knew he was also
con
Prop22. The Lincoln Point teachers’ organization held signs cut in the shape of books, with
TEACHERS DO CATCH
22. I assumed that was
pro
, since school upgrades were part of the proposition, but wished I could have a word with the grammarian in the group.

The voting was nearly four months away. I could only imagine what it was going to be like closer to Election Day.