Monster in Miniature (28 page)

I’d decided to honor Maddie’s plea (more like a whine) for pizza—“I haven’t had it all weekend, and it’s a holiday”—and placed a phone order for home delivery. It was the least reward I could give her for her excellent detective work. If it weren’t for my granddaughter, the police would not be decoding the flash drive—and clearing my husband’s name, I dared think—as we spoke.

“You must have been pretty busy back there,” I said, as Maddie, Henry, and I set the table and listened for the pizza delivery. “How many vampire bats did you make?”

“I wasn’t making decorations,” Maddie said.

I’d thought, optimistically, that she’d been in the crafts room, happily making miniatures. I wanted her to learn that spending time alone with a hobby could be entertaining and rewarding. Until now, Maddie would work on dollhouses or miniature scenes only with me or with others. I wanted her to experience the pleasure of going into a different world, by herself, and feeling exhilarated by the creative process, and calm at the same time.

Some other day, I hoped.

“Last-minute homework?” Henry asked.

“Nuh-uh.”

“TMing Taylor?” I suggested.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Devyn?” I asked, continuing the game. I knew she still kept in touch with her best Los Angeles friend. The stock for postcard-rate stamps had surely gone up since they’d been separated. As I saw Maddie write out the greetings, I’d been glad to see that e-mailing and TMing hadn’t completely ruled out the joy of receiving a colorful, physical card.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Taking a nap?” Henry offered, followed by laughter from all of us.

Finally, she threw up her hands at the useless guesses from the old folks. “I’m still trying to crack the password for the flash drive.”

“It’s gone,” I said. “What do you mean?” Had she slipped her uncle a different drive? Had Skip, in collusion with Maddie, left it with her on purpose?

“I cloned it.”

“You what?” I asked, in utter confusion. Did Maddie have a biology lab under her bed? A sheep?

“I cloned the flash drive. You know, copied it and put it on my hard drive before I gave it to Uncle Skip.”

I wondered if I should be grateful that there was one hobby Maddie worked on by herself and seemed to derive pleasure from.

What was foremost in my mind, however, was that I hadn’t gotten rid of the crucial flash drive after all.

I couldn’t bring myself to scold Maddie for holding on to
the flash drive, by whatever means she could. I should have known it would take more than confiscation of property by the police for her to give up a challenge. That spirit was what got her father through medical school and beyond and her mother a place in a major San Francisco art gallery, not the easiest field to turn into a career.

Our talk while eating a delicious pizza—one side with cheese only, for Maddie, the other side with mushrooms and olives for Henry and me—was free of conflict, ours or anyone else’s. We talked more about three-dimensional animation, which Maddie was expecting to learn at her next session of technology camp; we discussed which store had the best Halloween candy for the best price; I promised to get a supply of Maddie’s ghosts and witches to the Ferguson factory party; and we made plans for another dinner with Taylor and her parents.

I enjoyed our version of a normal family dinner, with only a few ghosts and goblins flitting around my mind.

It was seven o’clock before we finished bowls of ice cream. I could tell that Henry wasn’t eager to leave, but Maddie and I had a project to complete. And not on the cloned flash drive.

We needed to get to work on the haunted dollhouse.

I walked Henry to the door.

“Do you want me to pursue contacting Sunaqua Estates?” he asked me.

I thought about it. Maybe all the interruptions were telling me something. Let the past be, it might be saying. “I’m not sure,” I said. “But thanks for the offer. And thanks for coming. You can see where I’d be if I’d had to wait for Skip to rescue me from the Ferguson brothers.”

“My pleasure. Skip hasn’t called all evening. Are you concerned about him?”

“No more than usual. It’s always hard to picture him out there with scary people.”

“I hear you. But he looks like a man who can take care of himself.”

“That he is.”

Henry started down the path toward his car. I had the door half closed when he turned back. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked, catching me off guard.

“I’ll be driving to Palo Alto, taking Maddie back to school in the morning.”

“Want some company?”

I found I did. “Can you be here by seven?”

Henry gave me a salute, which I took as a yes.

 

 

What had I been thinking, agreeing to have Henry ac
company me on the drive to Palo Alto? I didn’t know how I was going to break the news to Maddie.

Ever since her family moved to northern California from Los Angeles, and we set up a schedule for regular visits, our commute time had always been special. I learned as many things about my granddaughter while we were buckled into my car, looking straight ahead, as when we sat face-to-face. My red Saturn Ion served as a therapy office as we talked out everything from how to deal with losing a soccer game to the homesickness Maddie felt when her family moved here from Los Angeles to whether there really was a heaven.

I couldn’t define it, but there was something about the extra generation that separated grandparents and grandchildren that fostered a unique bond.

Would Maddie see Henry as an intruder on our time together? I knew she liked him a lot, but would this be too much togetherness? More important—had I always been such a worrywart, stressing even over who would sit in the front seat?

I decided to put off telling Maddie the arrangement until her bedtime, when there was a chance she’d be more mellow.

For now, I had to try to extricate her from her computer and plunk her down in front of the dollhouse.

“I have to crack this password,” she said.

“I know you do, sweetheart, but sometimes it’s better to leave this kind of challenge for a while, let it stew in your brain. Then when you go back to it, something will snap into place. It happens to me all the time.”

“Like when?”

“Well, I might be trying to think of a new way to make a mini table or decoration, or maybe I need just one more word to finish a crossword puzzle. If I concentrate too hard for too long, my brain gets overloaded and I have to step back. Then, when I’m cooking or watering my plants, not thinking about it at all”—I snapped my fingers—“it comes to me.”

“Okay.”

Really? That had been easier than I thought. I’d been ready with more examples, like trying to remember the name of a song or a movie and having it come to me hours or days later when I’d forgotten about it and didn’t care anymore. Maybe it was only my brain that worked that way, but the pep talk got Maddie away from the computer, and that’s what I wanted.

We headed for the crafts room discussing how to attach a miniature ghost to the haunted dollhouse so it would look as though it were flying out of an upstairs window. I hoped immersion in miniatures would take both our minds off the elusive contents of the flash drive.

 

 

“It didn’t work, Grandma.” Maddie held up a set of com
pleted ghosts. “I worked on something different, but I didn’t get any answers yet.”

“Sometimes it takes longer than a couple of hours.”

“How long?”

I checked for evidence that she was teasing. I was happy to see a barely contained grin.

Maddie was in bed and we were having our last chat of the day. There was no more stalling. I had to tell her the plans for Tuesday.

“It’s back to school tomorrow,” I said.

She frowned. “I’d rather stay and work on you-know-what.”

The cryptic naming of the flash drive was Maddie’s way of following my advice not to think about it. I had to work on being more clear about the process.

“You know that once you’re in the classroom with Mr. Ramsey and all your friends, you’ll be very happy to be back.”

“I know.”

“We’ll leave about seven as usual, but there’s one change.”

“Mr. Baker’s coming.” Maddie’s tone was casual, I was glad to hear, as if he accompanied us every week and I’d simply forgotten.

“How did you know that?”

“I just figured.”

“Do you mind having someone else join us on our trip?” I asked, tucking her father’s baseball afghan, which she now considered hers, around her shoulders.

She rolled her head on her pillow. “Nuh-uh. I like Mr. Baker. Are you going steady with him?”

I cleared my throat. Twice. And took a breath.

What did “going steady” mean to an eleven-year-old? Maddie had told me how her classmates chose “partners” of the opposite sex in school, sometimes without ever talking to them alone or going off together at lunchtime (that was a relief). They would simply designate a boy or a girl in their class and spread the word that they liked that person. Friends would be dispatched through a chain of questions to determine if the feeling was mutual. If it was, they’d be declared boyfriend and girlfriend. Then, at some point, they’d “break up” and another pairing would be announced.

Was I going steady? Not in the fifth-grade sense. Henry and I had certainly spent a lot of time together lately. I liked being with him in a way that I never thought I would with anyone again. We took for granted that we’d check in with each other on a regular basis. Not every day, but not more than two or three days passed without a word, either.

Henry Baker was certainly what I needed at the moment, someone steady and trustworthy. What was he getting from me? Surely going steady meant reciprocal support.

I wished I could answer Maddie’s question.

“You don’t have to tell me, Grandma,” Maddie said.

“I’ll tell you when I know,” I said, grateful to see her eyes close.

I put the light out in Maddie’s room, left the door open three inches, as required, and wondered if I had a boyfriend.

 

 

 

The caller ID on my cell phone showed Beverly’s number. It wasn’t unusual for one of us to call the other this late, not until recently anyway. When had I ever dreaded talking to or reconnecting with my sister-in-law? I felt as though we’d been estranged; the last few days seemed like months, as if we’d had a falling out, and it was all my doing.

Beverly had been making valiant efforts to be patient with me while I sorted out my feelings and my fears, though she most likely didn’t have the slightest idea that’s what I was doing. Pretty soon I’d have to have a heart-to-heart with her.

“Gerry” was all she said when I picked up, and I knew this wasn’t a “Let’s chat” call. Something was wrong.

I thought my heart was beating in my throat. “What is it?”

“I’m at the hospital.”

That was enough to cause me to drop the phone. It banged on the counter next to the stove, where I’d been brewing late-night tea.

Beverly had heart disease from rheumatic fever, which had struck her when she was a child. Now, for the most part, she could be as active as the next person, but sometimes had to withdraw for long periods of rest. She was so good at hiding the distress her condition caused her that even those close to her sometimes forgot about it. Her weak heart had sent her to the hospital more than a few times since I’d known her.

It came to me while I fumbled to get my phone to my ear that Beverly was not seriously ill herself or she wouldn’t be on the other end of this call. That was the good news.

“Skip?” I asked, my hand struggling to keep steady.

“He’s okay, but what a scare, Gerry.”

“What happened?”

“He was attacked not long after leaving your house. He’d gone to the convenience store on Springfield Boulevard. I mean, he was within shouting distance of his office. Who mugs a cop?”

“How is he? Is anything broken, or . . . ?” I couldn’t articulate “irreversible damage.” I thought I’d need my tea more than ever and did a one-handed pour from the teapot to a cup.

“Right now they think the worst of it is a couple of broken ribs. The doctor said he never lost consciousness.” I allowed myself to feel hopeful. “TJ, the clerk at the store, knows all the cops and he called it in right away. It’s a good thing Skip is fit and has had all that training, since it was two guys who ganged up on him.”

I thought immediately of the most recent pairs of men I’d had contact with—Lynch and Crowley, and the Ferguson twins. I couldn’t see Skip being victim to either pair. But who knew how many other hoodlums they had in their employ? I had no trouble picturing money changing hands with a photo of Skip as part of the package.