Monster in Miniature (31 page)

“Yes,” I said. “It’s about the endowment from Kenneth Porter.”

“Thank you so much for calling, Ms. Porter. We’ve been trying to reach him, but his firm seems to have gone out of business, at least at the location we have for him.”

“He . . . passed away.”

She drew in her breath. “I’m so sorry. He couldn’t have been very old.”

“You knew him?”

“Oh, yes. It was so sad, when his little girl died. Those of us who were here at the time remember the case so well. He loved her very much. And the fact that he’s been so generous in her name all these years—it was 1970, I remember, the year my own daughter was born—well, it’s such a tribute to little Angela. She really was an angel.” A pause. “May I ask, will you be renewing the—”

I hung up.

My breath caught; I felt light-headed and dizzy. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’d have crashed to the floor.

I’d hung up in the middle of the woman’s sentence. Would she have my phone number from caller ID and try to reach me? Why had I given her my real name? I had a lot to learn about detective work. Why had I called in the first place?

Why has any of this happened?

I addressed the last comment to Kenneth Porter.

I wasn’t one for heading to bed during daylight hours. I
might fall asleep in my chair now and then, or in a darkened theater watching a kid’s movie with Richard or Maddie, but it wasn’t my practice to fall on my bed and try to sleep, or to shut out the world.

When I got off the phone with Sunaqua Estates, I needed to escape and the only place I’d been able to think of was my own bedroom.

I buried my head in my pillow, at first facedown, until I could hardly breathe. Then on my left side, where I stared at my dresser and mentally traced the outline of the knobs on the drawers. Then flat on my back, staring up at the fan and the swirls in the ceiling. Then on my right side where I could have seen my outdoor plants through my patio door if I hadn’t drawn the drapes closed. Then . . . it was useless to think of resting.

My phone rang several times while I tossed and turned, fully clothed. I knew Henry would be trying to reach me, but I couldn’t bear to talk to anyone right now, especially one who’d be expecting a report on my attempt to get in touch with Ken’s past.

How could my husband have kept something like this from me? It wasn’t something, I realized. It was someone. Angela.

Did this erase more than thirty years of a wonderful, loving marriage? A question I wasn’t prepared to answer and probably wouldn’t be for a while.

There was one thread I could hold on to—according to the woman at the home, someone with no reason to lie to me, the child had been born in 1970. Two years before Ken and I met. Surely that mattered. It wasn’t as if Ken had cheated on me in any way. He’d simply had a life before we met and had chosen not to share it with me. Wasn’t that allowed?

I wished I knew.

 

 

When I left my bedroom, I was surprised to see that only
an hour had passed. It seemed an eternity since I’d been talking long distance, both literally and figuratively. I walked by my answering machine, which was blinking madly, to the front door, curious to see if the LPPD still considered me at risk.

I shuffled down to Maddie’s room, breathed in the smell of her strawberry-scented bedding, and looked out the window. There wasn’t a police car, but there was a beige pickup. In it was Henry, reading a newspaper.

It felt good to smile.

Straightening my clothes as I walked, I went to the front door and opened it.

Henry folded his paper and got out of his truck. Seeing him brought the tears I hadn’t been able to summon during my bedroom retreat.

As he put his arms around me, I let go of my pain.

“Her name is Angela,” I said.

 

 

I insisted on helping Henry pile the boxes onto the bed
of his truck. I needed to do something physical, otherwise all my energy would be directed toward keeping my jaw clenched. I’d resealed the cartons, though loosely, just enough to keep the streets of Lincoln Point clear of reams of old paperwork.

As Henry pulled away from the curb with the first load of boxes, the LPPD arrived, but only in the form of my nephew. The two men waved at each other.

“What are you doing up and about?” I asked Skip. “Did the doctors clear you?”

“Close enough,” Skip said. “I’ve got things to do, people to see”

“Does your mother know?”

“What am I? Twelve?”

“Sometimes you act it.”

I took comfort in our usual banter, always lighthearted (though I really did think he should have been in bed), always motivated by a great affection.

“I left you a message,” Skip said.

“I’ve been busy,” I said, leading him into the atrium.

He gave me a curious look—I read: how busy were you that you didn’t have time to press “play” on your answering machine?—but he didn’t pursue the issue.

We sat at the table in the atrium. I was glad to feel the sun pouring in through the skylight. I’d been chilly all morning, outside and inside.

Skip plunked a folder of papers down in front of him.

“This looks serious,” I said.

“It’s all good news.”

“I could use some.”

“Bottom line—Uncle Ken was as clean as we knew he was.”

Not exactly. “I’m glad to hear it.” I fingered the edges of the folder. “And the proof is in here?”

“Yeah. We got through the password on the flash drive. Well, I didn’t, but Gene did.”

“That was faster than I expected.”

“We’re not finished reading everything, but breaking the password went pretty well. There’s this software called COGGWARE that sniffs the network and uncovers weaknesses in password protocols.”

“Oh.”

Skip laughed. “Don’t I sound like I know what I’m talking about? I’ve been practicing, in case I ever need a new pickup line.”

I laughed. It was hard to stay gloomy very long with Skip joking around, even though he was the one most recently in the hospital. “If that line works, times have really changed.”

“I couldn’t wait to show you this, Aunt Gerry. It’ll be a while before we go through every project Oliver had been investigating, but I whizzed through the names to find Uncle Ken.”

I was glad Skip had told me the bottom line—Ken was “clean.” I didn’t need more suspense today. He took a few pieces of paper from the folder. On top was a familiar memo, the one from Patrick Lynch to Ken.

“I’ve seen that,” I said. “I didn’t like the implication. ‘On board’ and ‘arrangement’ and so on.”

“Right, but look at this.” Skip removed a paper clip and showed me the second page of the set. Another memo. “Read this. Oh, by the way, that EELFS name? It’s just a cute form of Eliot and Emory and Lillian Ferguson with S for Sam tacked on at the end. Get it?”

I got it. I pulled the memo closer and read the correspondence from Ken Porter to Patrick Lynch.

Clear enough, and clean enough to suit me. I gave Ken one point on the plus side. I was surprised I didn’t feel more satisfaction. After all, I’d just heard that my husband had not acted in consort with what might have been widespread corruption in Lincoln Point’s business community, that he had, in fact, explicitly refused to do business with the ring-leader.

Yesterday I would have cheered, I knew. Today it was just one more fact of Ken’s life that I hadn’t been part of, albeit an honorable one.

It was a good thing I’d spared Beverly any whiff of my fears in this regard. She need never know about the EELFS, and certainly she didn’t need to hear about Angela.

I was aware that Skip expected more of a reaction from me. I tried to sound upbeat and grateful. “This is a huge relief, Skip,” I said.

“Then why doesn’t it seem that way?” he asked.

“I’m a little tired,” I said, “but I really am very relieved and thankful to you.”

“I hope you’re not upset that I brought it up in the first place. I guess eventually I’d have seen both these memos together and you’d never have had that anxiety.”

I leaned forward and took Skip’s hands. “Don’t worry about it, dear.” I couldn’t explain how his alerting me about Oliver’s list was what had spurred me to dig into Ken’s boxes and ultimately brought me to Angela. “If you hadn’t told me, I would never have cleaned out the garage,” I said.

“That reminds me. Did you get anywhere with Sunaqua Falls?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I might just drop the whole project.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to dig a little more?”

“Positive.”

“Well, moving right along. The stuff on the flash drive gives us, like, a gazillion more motives and suspects. Lynch and Crowley are at the top of the list still, since they had a half a gazillion suspect projects themselves.”

“Did you arrest them?”

“Warrants are being prepared. It’ll be on the news soon. I just couldn’t wait to tell you.” He sat back, the smile of victory on his face. “When they realize their attempt to ambush the info on the flash drive has failed, they are going to be so pi-p-put out.”

“Don’t let me cramp your language style.”

Skip usually watched his tongue in front of Maddie. I didn’t need to be protected from a vulgar word or two, but I loved him for being so considerate.

I checked my cell phone. “It’s Henry,” I said.

“Ah.”

I tried not to interpret Skip’s smile.

I clicked the phone on.

“Okay to come back?” Henry asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Okay, then.”

A man of few words. No long discourse on how I might want more time alone or whether I was discussing something family-only with Skip. Just, “Okay.”

I added that to the list of things I liked about Henry Baker.

 

 

While I was between gentlemen callers, my landline
rang.

“Geraldine, this is Artie Dodd.”

Too late, I thought. “Hello, Artie. It’s been a long time.”

“I hear you’re trying to reach me.”

I took the phone to the chair in my living room that faced my patio doors and my garden beyond. If I were going to stay in the relatively good mood brought on by Skip and Henry, I’d need something cheery to look at. “That’s right. How did you find out?”

“I still have a friend in our old building, and after you left that message, the new people asked around and it got back to me. I was surprised the old number I have for you works. You’re still in the Eichler in Lincoln Point?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” I said, half teasing.

“We couldn’t get away from all that Bay Area hustle and bustle fast enough. We’re way up here in Sea Ranch. Came up where we get our mail a week after everyone else. Ruth and I love it.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Sorry I haven’t been in touch. It’s the old story about being busier in retirement, you know, golf on all the days that end in a ‘y’.” He laughed.

I’d been to Sea Ranch a couple of times with Ken on drives along the Sonoma-Mendocino coast. Ken loved the award-winning architecture in that area: timber-frame structures that were meant to blend in with the natural environment. We’d both agreed that we’d never want to live there, however.

“It’s too far from the Bronx,” Ken would say, and I’d know he meant not just in miles but on many levels.

“Artie, I had a specific reason for calling you.”

“I figured.”

I let my gaze fall on my beautiful orange zinnias and reminded myself to breathe. “I was going through the boxes of material from Ken’s old office and I came upon some things I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I wondered when you’d get around to it. I did my best to get to Esther before she boxed everything up. I was hoping eventually you’d just toss everything without looking at it.”

“I almost did. Anyway, I found out what I need to know, so I’m all set.”

That was one way to put it.

Artie took a few seconds to respond. “He felt awful keeping it from you, Geraldine. I found out only by accident when I opened a bank statement that came to the office. I know he wanted to tell you, but a promise was a promise, and you know Ken.”

I thought I did. “Yes, well . . .”

“Did the Estates contact you?”

“No.” I tried not to sound rude, but I wasn’t eager to share any more with Artie.

“Good. I sent a note to them shortly after Ken died, saying that the last payment would be on such-and-such a month, so that should have been it.”