Murder in Miniature (9 page)

Beverly gave her son a peck on the cheek. “I’m surprised to see you, dear,” she said.

“Gotta go,” Skip said, letting Maddie down gently and leaving the rest up to me. With any luck I wouldn’t have to share the fact that this was actually a professional house call by Skip.

“We brought dinner,” Maddie said, pointing to the sagging plastic bag in Beverly’s hand.

“It’s just deli, but I thought you might be too tired to cook,” Beverly said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Is everything okay with you, Grandma?” Maddie
asked, sweet-smelling after a long bath in green bubbles.

Uh-oh
. That was the trouble with smart kids. They’re all-over smart, not just in arithmetic and spelling. I wondered if Maddie had put it all together. She was, after all, a coconspirator in picking Linda up. I hadn’t had a chance to learn if Beverly had talked to Maddie about the murder. Dinner conversation had revolved around potbellied pigs, tortoises, lemurs, and whether we still had time this summer to arrange an overnight stay with the zoo’s special camping program (only if I didn’t have to chaperone).

“I’m just tired, sweetheart,” I told her now, and noticed her eyes already at half-mast. Thank you, Beverly, I said to myself, for wearing her out.

“Let’s skip reading tonight, then, and you can go to bed,” Maddie said.

“Maybe I will, if you’re sure you don’t mind missing a chapter in the book.”

Maddie put her arms around my neck. “I’m pretty tired myself,” she admitted.

She was out before I got to the door.

I had a couple more things to do before I called it a day.

I pushed Beverly’s number on speed dial.

“I’ve been waiting for your call,” she said. “I just read the paper. That place where the body was found, isn’t it where you and Maddie went to pick up Linda?”

This was the first I heard that Maddie had told Beverly about our adventure, too. Wouldn’t you know—in spite of all the day trips, movies, museums, and kids’ programs I’d squeezed into my granddaughter’s visit, the late-night trip to a dilapidated phone booth was emerging as the highlight.

With all the fair activities, plus taking care of Maddie, the usual daily chats between Beverly and me had been curtailed. Now, tired as I was, I gave her the whole story, starting with the call from the pay phone and ending with her son’s visit to my house.

“We were right on the X,” I told Beverly.

A low whistle, then “Wow,” was her response.

“Yes, wow. I guess you could say we turned Linda in. She’s not going to be happy,” I said.

“Is she ever?”

“Thanks for pointing that out.” I blinked my eyes, trying to stay awake. Even in this stupor, I thought of another of Ken’s favorite Lincoln quotes: “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Beverly continued. “Just to let you know, Maddie hasn’t heard anything specific about the murder. Needless to say, it was not the hot topic in Oakland. She may have forgotten about it.”

“You’re probably right. She was more interested in the jewelry-store theft that night that Skip got the call.”

“Kids have their own coping mechanisms, don’t they? They have ways of not focusing on something as horrible as murder. So I wouldn’t worry, as long as it’s not someone we know.”

“And as long as someone we know didn’t do it,” I said.

“Wow.”

Well said.

I debated about making the next call, but in the end,
punched in Linda’s number. I didn’t know what to hope for. The cowardly thing, I supposed—that there would be no answer and I’d get credit for a caring call, but wouldn’t have to speak to her.

I got my wish. I spoke to Linda’s answering machine.

“Hi, Linda. This is Gerry, just checking in to see how you are.”

That sounded dumb. But there was no way to edit, so I said a weak, “See you soon. ’Bye,” and hung up.

I slipped into Maddie’s room and unplugged the telephone extension, just in case. Then I made my way, half-asleep, to the end of the hall and to my own full-size bed.

On Monday morning, I slept until almost ten o’clock,
close to a record for me. Maddie had made her own breakfast, increasing my guilt over not paying enough attention to her for the past few days. In fact, she was ready to serve
me
breakfast and jumped off the chair when she saw me trundle into the kitchen.

She poured orange juice, propped the box with my favorite crunchy cereal against a bowl, and pushed the button on the emergency coffeemaker. I kept a standard all-purpose coffeemaker for mornings like this when I was hung over (from chocolate or overwork, that is) and it would have been dangerous for me to operate the electric coffee grinder. Sliced banana on my cereal, and toast with butter and strawberry jelly rounded out the meal. More than I usually ate, but I didn’t leave a crumb of food or a drop of liquid.

As soon as I was fueled and awake, the events of the weekend flooded back to me and I wondered how soon (if ever) I’d hear from Linda. I decided to give it until afternoon and then follow up with Skip.

To my relief, Beverly was taking a recovery day. She’d announced the plan at dinner on Sunday night.

“I’ll be at an all-day party tomorrow,” she’d said during cookies and ice cream, so please don’t disturb me.” If Maddie hadn’t been present, Beverly would have used “orgy” or “date with a hottie.”

Her family and friends understood this pattern: after a particularly long day or a couple of busy days in a row, Beverly would retreat to her bed. She’d spend the day on her back, with eyeshades and soft music. I’d tried to convince her to let me find someone else to take care of Maddie this weekend, but she’d insisted she had everything under control, loved the Oakland Zoo, and adored Maddie (I knew this at least was true). I’d learned to trust her judgment.

The valves of Beverly’s heart were forever scarred from her early scarlet fever, forcing it to work harder to pump blood. She’d been receiving special antibiotic treatment on and off since she was about thirteen years old, at times on a monthly basis.

Beverly had an especially bad episode when she was in her late teens, shortly after Ken and I were married. We’d all been present when the doctor showed us a clunky plastic model of the human heart, demonstrating what happens when its valves are unable to open and close easily. I remembered surreptitiously placing my hand over my own heart at the time, grateful for my smooth-running valves and amazed at the quiet mechanism that kept me alive.

None of us at the time would have guessed that the Porter who would meet an early death would be her brother, my husband, Ken.

Having Maddie, alive and healthy in front of me, was a good reminder to avoid that path of memory.

“What shall we do today?” I asked Maddie. My only commitments for the rest of the week were a tutoring session with Angela, an older woman studying for a high-school equivalency exam, at the Lincoln Point Library, and balancing the accounts from the fair. I knew the treasurer of Abraham Lincoln High School PTA would want his check as soon as possible, but we could all wait a day or two.

Maddie had apparently already given today’s schedule some thought. “I haven’t used any of my spending money yet. Everybody keeps treating me to things. Mr. Puppeteer even bought me and Jason snacks. So maybe we can go shopping today?”

My heart skipped, or maybe the wrong valve jerked open. “You were with Jason?”
Just a friendly question from Grandma.

“Only for a couple of minutes when Dr. Balandin brought him to the fair.”

I remembered Peter Balandin’s “handing Jason off” errand.

“On Saturday?” I asked.
Still casual
.

“Uh-huh.”

Maddie had retrieved her neon orange wallet from her pocket and was laying out her money on the table. There was no earthly reason for me to be concerned that Maddie had been in Jason’s company, I assured myself. Just because he
might have been
involved in a robbery. And his mother
might be
…I stopped the runaway train. Maddie and Jason had spent time together when both were younger and had a little more in common. It was natural that they would have talked if they ran into each other.

“Did you have a nice chat with Jason?” I asked her.
Very calm
.

Maddie nodded, carefully neatening her pile of bills. “Jason said he’d buy me an ice cream from the truck across the street, but Mr. Puppeteer said not to go that far. Then Mr. Puppeteer bought us both potato chips right in the hall, even though Jason didn’t do any work for him.”

“Well, you would never have left the school hall without telling me anyway, right?”

Maddie rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Of course not.” She fingered her bills and lined them up in her wallet, then swept the coins into the pocket of her LA Dodgers (I remembered when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers) sweatshirt. She’d brought all of her team clothing with her, equally balanced, I noticed, between her mother’s favorite teams and her father’s.

“So, can we go shopping?”

“Sure.” I was thankful that Maddie didn’t seem to notice my overreaction at the mention of Jason. I relaxed my breathing. “What kind of shopping would you like to do?” I hoped she wouldn’t ask for anything having to do with sticks or balls unless they were crafts-store size.

“I need some souvenirs. For my mom and dad and Devyn.” I’d been hearing about Devyn, Maddie’s longest- running friend, for a couple of years. Devyn, with a y, was a girl in Maddie’s class. (I suspected her parents were named Sue and Bob.) “Then we can come back and work on the dollhouse, and then cook spaghetti together.”

“A great plan. Let’s get dressed and put it into action.”

We high-fived with palms and fists (Maddie had taught me the rhythm on her last visit) and headed for our respective rooms to dress for the day. I slipped a phone call in between donning layers of clothing—I was too much a coward to call Linda, but left a message for Skip. I was sure he wasn’t going to make detective grade by giving his aunt special treatment with personal calls and visits, but I couldn’t keep my curiosity and concern in check.

I hadn’t planned on a visit to yet another crime scene,
but Maddie wanted to stop at Crane’s Jewelers.

“Maybe I can get some earrings for my mom,” she said.

“They’d be kind of expensive here,” I warned her. Crane’s was one of the larger stores on Lincoln Point’s main shopping street, short as it was. Crane’s was known even in the county’s larger cities as
the
place to buy an engagement ring. Or a twentieth-anniversary emerald, or thirtieth- anniversary pearls, both of which Ken had given me.

“You won’t be able to afford this store until you’re a heart surgeon,” I told Maddie. I believed in conditioning the young. It had worked with Richard. Not a heart surgeon, but close enough, in orthopedics. Or maybe he’d gone to med school
in spite of
my carefully planned brainwashing.

After a couple of minutes of window-shopping, Maddie tugged me in the direction of Crane’s front door. “Let’s just look inside.”

The shop was empty except for Dudley Crane himself, who was wiping the display cases with glass cleaner and paper towels. Without his Western dress and no hat to cover his bald spot, he looked older than his forty-something years. The shop had been in the Crane family for several decades, and Dudley seemed to have grown into the name and reputation.

One of the new aspects of his business was handling estate sales that involved a significant amount of high-end jewelry. I thought of Gail Musgrave and her dissatisfaction with his management of her mother’s estate, and the same complaint from Postmaster Cooney. Dudley must have a difficult job, I thought, making deals in the emotionally charged world of family legacies. Not that I had been handed one. My parents died with only modest savings, barely enough to cover their funeral expenses.

“Morning, folks,” Dudley said, with a smile in our general vicinity. “Anything I can help you with today?”

Maddie ignored the many cases with diamond earrings, pendants, and watches laid out on dark blue velvet. She didn’t seem to notice the array of wedding sets in satin- lined boxes or the tennis bracelets hanging from Lucite holders.

Instead, she pointed to a vaultlike area behind the counter, with a floor-to-ceiling metal door. “Is that where the jewelry and money were locked up? The stuff that was robbed?”

I was mortified. First, at her grammatical error (we’d deal later with robbed vs. stolen), and second, at the precociousness of her question.

“Madison! Is this why you wanted to come in here?”

“Maybe just a little,” she said, not the least bit intimidated.

I could blame Mary Lou, her mother, for reading Nancy Drew mysteries to Maddie even when she was a baby, but I had to claim some responsibility for passing on the curiosity gene. Maddie was now two for two as far as recent Lincoln Point crime-scene visits.

“It’s not a problem, Mrs. Porter.” Dudley looked down from his six-feet-plus height and addressed Maddie in a fatherly tone. “Some very bad people came in here and took what wasn’t theirs.”

“Do you think they’ll catch them? My Uncle Skip is a cop. I’ll bet he gets the guys.”

“I certainly hope so, young lady. Now, can I offer you a lollipop?”

Maddie chose a yellow sucker from a sterling-silver container by the cash register. Also near the checkout point was a pile of flyers for a meeting tomorrow afternoon. It was the same flyer Dudley had distributed at the fair (to the consternation of some)—calling everyone to a town meeting on the new growth plan for Lincoln Point. Dudley was at the forefront of the development effort. I confessed to feeling ambivalent. I loved the old joke, edited to apply to our town. Q: What’s the difference between a developer and a no-growth person? A: A developer wants a home in Lincoln Point; a no-growth person already has a home in Lincoln Point.

I wandered along the rows of Crane’s Jewelers display cases, feeling I should show some interest in the inventory, having barged in with Maddie, like a miniature SWAT team.

I ran through my birthday calendar in my head. Mary Lou would be thirty-five at the end of the summer. I found the case with miscellaneous items—pillboxes (my daughter-in-law didn’t need one yet), a carousel-shaped ceramic jewelry box, ID bracelets and other gifts that could be personalized. Nothing struck me as particularly Mary Lou’s taste.

I turned to collect Maddie from a case in the corner with sterling-silver sports charms, and say my thanks and farewell to Dudley. At that moment, the door chimes rang, and I turned to see who else might be shopping for jewelry on a Monday morning, or who else might have come to query the shop owner about the recent burglary.

Not the first person I would have predicted. Very nearly the last: Just Eddie. He was wearing his gray cotton work clothes; that at least was predictable.

The open door obscured a view of the corner case where Maddie and I stood. Just Eddie stormed up to Dudley. “Where did you put it, Crane? Where is that—”

Dudley’s eyes popped, his chin jutted out, and his palm shot up.
Halt.
His splayed fingers might as well have been knives, they were so effective in cutting Just Eddie off.

Just Eddie turned in the direction of Dudley’s gaze.

“Good morning,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could.

Eddie’s face, already flushed, seemed to get redder in front of me. He didn’t say a word, but walked between two cases to a curtained-off area behind the cash register. Dudley’s office, I assumed. I caught a whiff of the awful half-cigarette, half-cigar sticks he smoked.

Dudley wrung his hands, then passed one hand over his bald spot. At times it was nice to be tall, I thought, to be able to see the whole picture, as it were. “Eddie moonlights here…cleans up a couple of times a week, and he doesn’t want it known all over town. It’s possible that there’s an income-tax issue.” Dudley’s voice reached a whisper at
income tax
. I looked through the large windows and checked the curb outside. As far as I could tell, there was nothing like a paneled van with an IRS agent and a listening device.

“I understand,” I told him.

Maddie, who I thought hadn’t heard any of this, made a zipper motion across her lips.

We exited the store, a more interesting stop than I’d envisioned.