Monster in Miniature (21 page)

I ruffled the pages of one or two packages, barely paying attention to the contents, until my crude searching came up with a grammatical error. The phrase “an arrangement which benefits many” caught my eye.

This needs a comma, I mused, or else it should read “. . . arrangement that . . .” The memo couldn’t have been written or reviewed by Esther, who was more of a stickler for grammar and punctuation than I was.

It didn’t surprise me that I noticed a small infraction while looking for something of great import. I was one who took comfort in rules. I liked to focus on the compactness of a tidy sentence, the perfect posture of capital letters used correctly, and the elegance of a well-placed exclamation point.

I slipped the memo from the stack to see what the context was.

The first bad news was in the “From” line. Patrick Lynch.

The memo was brief and somewhat vague:

At the bottom was written:
Enc.: Draft Contract
.

My head dropped to my chest, and not because of the misuse of “which.” I supposed it was too much to hope that Ken was signing up to be “on board” for a cruise. Or to build a ship. And that the many who would benefit were the ordinary homeowners of Lincoln Point. And that the misspelled reference to elves meant that this was all about a holiday party. I had a tangential thought that I should write a book on the uses of “that” and which.”

I plowed through at least a dozen more memos looking for similar language. Maybe “arrangement” was a word commonly used in memos between architects and builders. Before this weekend, I’d never have suspected anything nefarious about the term “arrangement” in a business deal. What made me think this was anything but a normal, above-board deal?

The goons-with-guns scenario, for one thing.

It didn’t help that all of the other memos I sampled were of an entirely different, more specific character, with names, addresses, contract deadlines, and dollar amounts.

The prospects of finding the draft contract that had been enclosed with the memo were dim. There were entire boxes labeled
Contracts
. Having the date, without a year at that, would be of only minimal help.

I pulled my jacket closer around my body. When I finally stepped into my kitchen, I had no idea how long I’d sat in the cold garage.

Still in my nightgown and robe, I went out to my atrium
early on Monday morning. I needed to sit for a while with a mug of coffee before Maddie woke and confused me with her innocent, happy outlook.

I looked up through my skylight at the bright morning light, as if answers to my burning questions might stream down from outer space.

But nothing came easily; I was on my own.

It was time I constructed a concrete plan to solve the nagging issues that were keeping me from enjoying my granddaughter and all that was good in my life.

Oliver Halbert, whom I’d never met, had turned my world upside down. I was convinced that if it weren’t for his “potentials” list, I never would have opened the cartons that had been gathering dust high on my garage shelves. One day, Richard or Maddie or Maddie’s child would have had to deal with them, and I’d have gone to my rest oblivious of their contents.

Whether or not the list might have come to light eventually, Oliver’s murder had precipitated my investigation. If he were alive and moving from potential to actual, I’d have had the chance to confront him and ask him just what complaint he had against Ken Porter.

Now I was left not only trying to humor his sister by pretending to work closely with the police but also dealing with the question of my husband’s complicity in misconduct and—I could hardly think it—a “personal” secret he hadn’t shared with me.

I tried to step back and take an objective look at how to confront the three ghosts that were haunting me more effectively than the scariest Halloween campfire story.

I breathed in the fresh air provided by my favorite plants and began to talk it out with myself.

First on my mind were the photographs and the accompanying child’s clothing I’d found—had it been only two days ago? I seemed to have been worrying over the discovery for years. But this wasn’t a worry session; it was an action session.

Actions: Call the people who took over Ken’s firm and try to track down his partner, Artie Dodd. Check with Skip on whether he’s been able to identify the institution in the background of the photos.

It was a mystery to me why I continued to leave Beverly out of the equation, though I’d shared (almost) everything with Skip. Beverly and I had been close since the day Ken i ntroduced us; she was the one I’d turn to at a time like this. Admittedly, we’d seen less of each other since her relationship with Nick had begun in earnest, but I still considered my sister-in-law to be my confidante—up to now, when my strongest desire was to spare her needless pain. Especially if—when—it turned out that her older brother was completely innocent of business fraud and that the child in the photo was the son or daughter of a client.

I imagined a conversation with Artie where he laughs and tells me that Esther had mistakenly put the photos in a box with a present meant for a baby shower she’d been invited to.

Wouldn’t that be nice? (So what if the layette was meant for a three-to-six-month old?)

I took a few sips of coffee, enjoying the warm liquid in the chilly atrium. I was glad I’d pulled on thick socks before coming out here. I couldn’t imagine a less flattering outfit, but no one was around to criticize.

Back to work. The second, separate issue was Ken’s dealings with Patrick Lynch, and/or Max Crowley, and/or Oliver Halbert. Whatever Lynch and Max Crowley were looking for in Oliver’s apartment—I wanted to see it, too.

Action: make another visit to Oliver’s apartment. Corollary action: have a better exit strategy in case the next visit was also interrupted by uninvited (by me) guests. Ideas for backup: take Skip? Take Susan? Take gun? (There was nothing wrong with a little outlandish humor on my to-do list.)

Third, who killed Oliver Halbert? Since I became aware of his “potentials” list, solving his murder took on more importance for me than just supporting my friend, Susan. I needed to know more about a man who considered my husband dishonest and subject to legal action.

I had a feeling that Eliot and/or Emory Ferguson and their factory were at the heart of the Halbert murder. For one thing, I had the statements of a barista who had no reason to tell a lie, other than its contribution to the flirty atmosphere at Seward’s Folly yesterday morning. According to Kayla, the twins and Oliver were friends, and one of them had lunch with him the day he was murdered. Both assertions were in direct contradiction to what Lillian Ferguson had told me.

Another Ferguson link was that their prefire factory remodel was one of the last projects Ken ever worked on. There was a good chance that was the reason for Ken’s name being on Oliver’s list. Just a formality, where he included everyone who ever worked with Lynch during Crowley’s tenure as city building inspector.

Another nice outcome.

I thought of the janitor who died in the factory fire. As far as I remembered from Skip’s rundown of the case, the cause of the blaze was undetermined. A stairway next to the compressor had caught fire for one of three reasons: Eliot or Emory Ferguson forgot to turn off the compressor, leading to its overheating; or the developer decided to use inferior material for the electrical conduit near the stairway; or the architect’s specifications were substandard, not requiring a conduit at all, to save everyone money and time. And, by the way, to get a piece of the money saved.

I shook my head at the thought of the last possibility. Of course, it was negligence in the way the specifications were carried out—that was the culprit, I told myself over and over, not the specs themselves. Ken would never have agreed to anything that was in violation of a safety code, no matter what the cost. No matter what the temptation.

I sounded insensitive even to myself, focusing on proving that Ken wasn’t responsible for the fire. Either way, the poor janitor was dead and I felt terrible about that.

I put “who was responsible for the fire?” on the list, out of deference to the Patterson family, and hoped the experts would give them closure soon.

Why was every sorrow and every joy so complicated once we passed Maddie’s age? A question for another time. I was sure there was an answer in Shakespeare, if I could only get back to him.

Since Oliver’s body had been found at the Ferguson home, I was sure the police had questioned the whole family. I needed to find out what they’d learned. It was hard to believe that a random killer, who had nothing to do with any of the family members, had decided to deposit a fresh corpse on a random Halloween porch on Sangamon River Road. Skip had slipped in a few more facts during our pre-dinner confab, and one of them was that Sam and Lillian’s otherwise festive porch had been the murder scene as well as the crime scene.

Back to my determination to include action items in this ad hoc organization session, I added: visit the Fergusons’ factory tomorrow once Maddie was safely at her school in Palo Alto.

Summary statement of important question to work on: was the fire in the Ferguson factory connected to Oliver Halbert’s death? Summary of suspects: Patrick Lynch, Max Crowley, and all the Fergusons (why not?).

I had to laugh at myself and at my list, so compact and exclusive, ignoring countless other motives for murder and countless other suspects. With the luxury of someone not in law enforcement, I’d dismissed an ex-wife, for example, usually at the top of a suspect list. So what if she was in Europe? That’s what hired guns were for.

Moreover, I knew nothing of Oliver’s habits. He might have been a gambler, with a creditor hot on his tail, or he might have been trying to break off an adulterous affair.

I’d visited Skip’s LPPD cubicle often and had seen the piles of paper connected to an investigation. He’d shown me a stack about four inches high that pertained to just one case. His homework that night had been to go through arrest reports, witness statements, warrants, police reports, property reports, medical records, transcripts, and faxes.

What made me think I could get anywhere working from the sidelines with a short to-do list?

Nothing. But since I’d generated the list, I might as well get started on it.

 

 

To-do lists, even when only mental, always gave me a
false sense of accomplishment. It was my habit to congratulate myself on a job well done and treat myself to a break, as if I’d already started to carry out the action items.

That tendency was alive and well today. I gave myself a virtual pat on the back for straightening out all the threads of the past few days. Then I went to the kitchen, hoping Maddie was up and ready to distract me.

 

 

Maddie had started breakfast oatmeal for both of us. It
didn’t seem that long ago that I’d put her in her high chair and blow on her cereal to cool it before putting the bowl in front of her. She’d had a sweet tooth then and showed it now as she set out the brown sugar and raisins to make the oatmeal slightly less healthy.

Like her mother, Maddie woke up bright, chipper, and ready to go, with not much transition between waking and sleeping. Richard was more like me in that he found it hard to let go of worries about the past and the future, making it difficult to fall asleep in the present.

“What’s the plan for today?” Maddie asked, collecting bowls from a shelf she couldn’t reach just a couple of months ago.

“What would you like to do?”

“I get to pick?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Really?” she asked, eyes wide, looking at me sideways as if she suspected a trick.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t you think of anything?”

“Sure. But aren’t you going to try to get rid of me?”

I was relieved to see the makings of a grin as she scooped oatmeal from the pan into two bowls.

“Sweetheart, how can you say such a thing?”

She set the pan down and hugged me as we both shook with laughter.

Sadly, it had crossed my mind that leaving Maddie for an hour or so would give me a window to visit the factory today. But her delight and surprise at not being pawned off, albeit to very friendly people who loved her, caused me to scratch that idea. What I needed more than anything was the delightful company of my granddaughter.

 

 

I’d told Maddie about the damage to Susan’s room box,
though I’d kept the circumstances of the accident to myself.

After breakfast, therefore, Maddie’s choice was to head for the crafts room to work on the mini construction scene.