Monster in Miniature (8 page)

“Is it okay if I play with Taylor today, Grandma?” Maddie
asked at breakfast.

Taylor was Maddie’s new best friend forever, “BFF” in text-messaging language, and Henry Baker, her grandfather, was my (here I always paused) friend, I’d decided. If it were up to Maddie and Taylor, in their preteen wisdom, Henry and I would become BFFs and, along with Taylor’s and Maddie’s parents, we’d all live together happily ever after.

Though I wasn’t ready for a major change in lifestyle, the more temporary arrangement of placing Maddie in Henry and Taylor’s care was appealing. It would give me time to organize my thoughts and create a plan for putting Oliver Halbert’s apartment key to use. It seemed a long shot, but I hoped the key would unlock the mystery of Ken Porter’s place among Oliver’s “potential” investigations.

“Did you call Taylor to see if she’s available today?” I asked.

“She TM’d me already.”

“Of course she did.”

“She says they’re both free all day. And Mr. Baker has a new project to show you. I think it’s a gigantic dollhouse. I think Mr. Baker likes you, Grandma.” Maddie spooned cereal into her mouth, not easy since her grin made it hard to eat.

I took a sip of coffee and cleared my throat, preparing for battle. “I have some things to do around town. But I can drive you over there whenever you’re ready.”

“You’re not free?” Maddie put down her spoon and looked at me, waiting for my excuse.

I waited her out, busying myself with adding another glob of cranberry and pear jelly to the last of my toast.

A light seemed to dawn. “I get it. I almost forgot. It’s The Case, right?”

I heard capital letters in her voice. Maddie had taken to giving simple names to difficult or important things, the better to handle them. Earlier in the year, her family had relocated from Los Angeles to Palo Alto, only ten miles from Lincoln Point, so her father could take a coveted position at Stanford Medical Center. It was a boon for me to have my family so close, but the transition was tough for Maddie. Until she met Taylor, she had a hard time adjusting and missed her L.A. friends terribly. She referred to that trauma as The Move. When she tensed up before a school quiz, she talked about The Test, each time putting equal and unmistakable emphasis on “the.”

In my experience, a coping skill was a coping skill was a coping skill, no matter how much sense it made to others.

“What case, sweetheart?” I asked, enjoying a new burst of fruit flavor in my mouth.

“You’re going to work on Mr. Halbert’s case with Uncle Skip.” Maddie could conjure up a scolding tone equal to that of the best ALHS teachers I’d worked with.

I could honestly shake my head. I had no plans to see Skip. At least not until I’d done some looking around myself. “No, I’m not. I have some errands.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. She didn’t need to say it: too many times she’d been parked somewhere while I did “errands” she’d have loved to have been included in.

“I’m going to spend some time with Mrs. Giles,” I said. I winced at my shading of the truth, leaving out that my errands were for Susan, not with Susan. “She’s not feeling very well right now and she needs some company.”

Maddie tapped her spoon on the rim of her cereal bowl. When she was little, she’d slap it much harder, smack on the surface of the cereal, and delight in the mess she made. Now she drummed lightly, as if she were doing some heavy thinking.

“Maybe I’ll go with you to help cheer her up. She likes me.”

“Everybody likes you, but that doesn’t mean you’re coming with me.” My voice was firm, my steps confident as I took my dishes to the sink, walking away from the subject.

I heard a sigh of defeat.

 

 

My house phone rang moments after I’d slung my large
cloth purse on my shoulder, car remote at the ready. I checked the caller ID display. My best friend and sister-in-law, Beverly Gowen, Skip’s mother, was on the line. Usually, I’d drop everything to talk to Beverly, but usually I didn’t have any reason to keep something from her—like the fact that her brother’s name ended up in questionable company. I knew she’d pick up any strain in my voice, even across town over a telephone line. I’d be better prepared to talk to her once I did my so-called errands, I reasoned, while my fingers clenched around my keys.

I let the phone ring.

“Who is it, Grandma?”

“It can wait,” I said, moving Maddie toward the door and out of sight of the telephone number displayed on the small screen.

I hoped this was the only time I’d have to turn my back on Beverly.

 

 

At about nine thirty on a bright Saturday morning, we
pulled up in front of Taylor’s home, a few blocks north of mine. Technically, Henry was the owner of the house; his daughter and her family had moved in when his wife died, not long after I lost Ken. Since Taylor’s parents were partners in their own law firm, they worked long hours and benefited greatly from a live-in, retired grandfather. I knew everyone was delighted with the arrangement.

As we’d gotten to know each other, Henry and I had discovered how similar the last years of our marriages had been—each caring for a terminally ill spouse whom we’d loved dearly, trying to hold the family together as well as live up to our responsibilities to our students. Henry was on the faculty of ALHS’s vocational program, teaching shop and other trades, while I ran on in my classroom about the prophetic witches in
Macbeth
and poor Yorick’s skull in
Hamlet
.

Seeing Henry this morning, in his working uniform—khakis, a heavy denim apron, and a logo-free cap over his thinning brown hair—I was almost ready to give up my quest for justice and spend my day in his workshop. I knew he could help me with a tricky dollhouse problem: constructing a swinging door between a kitchen and dining room in half-scale (one foot translated to one-half inch).

“How about I make you a mini-size bar stool like the life-size one in my den,” he’d offered once. “I have some leftover oak pieces lying around and it would be the perfect use for them. If you noticed, on the real one I shaped it so the tops of the legs form through tenons that are cut flush with the surface of the seat.”

“I’ve done that dozens of times,” I’d said, catching him believing me for an instant.

Now, as he came down the walkway to my car, I was tempted to stay and do what retired grandmothers are supposed to do.

Henry leaned into the window of my red Saturn. “You’re off? I’d hoped we could hang out, as the kids say.”

I thought of Susan’s distress, and my own need to learn more about the possible charges against my husband. What I needed was to make up a quick excuse and drive away, and spend a few hours on my own with my confusion and doubts. “I have some errands,” I said.

“Anything you need my help with?”

Something in Henry’s manner told me his offer wasn’t just formulaic. He seemed to sense that my chores didn’t involve simply picking up dry cleaning and baguettes and stopping at the post office.

I tapped on my steering wheel. “It’s a very long story,” I said.

Henry brushed the sides of his head, nearly popping off his cap. “What else are these big ears good for?” He opened my car door and held out his hand.

A helping hand. Just what I needed. I turned off my ignition and stepped out of my car and into Henry’s kind offer.

With Beverly off-limits in a way, and no one else with
whom I was eager to share information—“unpleasant rumors” was a more accurate term in my mind—about my husband, I was grateful to have Henry’s big ears and welcoming manner at my disposal. It was no trouble to dispatch the girls to Taylor’s bedroom where they would work on a dollhouse destined for a raffle at Taylor’s Lincoln Point elementary school. Taylor’s mother had taught her how to sew, and now Taylor was teaching Maddie a skill she’d shunned when I’d offered her the same lessons a year or so ago. There was no accounting for timing, or for the source of the suggestion. Their goal for the day was to make bedding, pillows, and rugs for every room that needed them.

Henry and I went out back to his workshop.

“You don’t mind if I work while you talk?” he asked me.

I sensed the question was rhetorical and that Henry was aware how I preferred it that way. I nodded, then sat on an old chair near his bench while he all but rocked back and forth running a plane over a long piece of wood. The motion itself was enough to relax me. Henry had a calmness about him that I knew I could trust, as surely as he trusted the plane to give him the smoothness he wanted.

“I’m not sure where to start,” I said.

“What did you used to tell your students?”

I smiled at the memory and the wisdom. “Once upon a time,” I began.

 

 

I laid the story out for Henry, shaping it in my mind at
the same time. Oliver Halbert had been investigating many people in Lincoln Point who might be called white-collar criminals, including the developer, Patrick Lynch, and the former city inspector, Max Crowley. That fact, plus personal reasons, led Susan to believe her brother had not committed suicide but was murdered.

“So, Lynch and Crowley are the most high-profile suspects,” Henry said.

“I’m assuming they would be, if Oliver’s death is ruled a murder, but so far that’s not the case. The jury’s still out. Or, rather, the ME’s official ruling is still out, though it’s beyond me why anyone would believe a man would walk to a neighbor’s porch, arrange himself like a straw man, and shoot himself.”

“I see your point. Are there any other likely suspects?”

The question jolted me out of a mental box. I hadn’t had the time—nor, truthfully, the foresight—to think about other possible suspects. I tried now to expand my horizons.

“I suppose another possibility would be the family of the janitor who died in the fire at the Ferguson twins’ factory. It’s admittedly a stretch as far as motive.” What about the twins?

“Oliver’s body was found at their parents’ home, correct?”

“Correct. But Sam and Lillian are close to eighty years old, if not older. Not likely suspects,” I said.

Henry took a break from his planing (if that was a verb) and stood straight. He laughed. “Is there an age limit on suspects now? Let me know when I reach it, okay? I have some unsettled debts.”

I tried to conjure a picture of Henry swinging into any violent action that wasn’t meant to split wood or hammer a nail. None surfaced.

“I know you’re trying to cover all bases,” I said. “And you’re right. We should consider everyone who benefits from Oliver’s death.”

“Everyone we know of,” Henry said.

Henry’s simple, obvious comment brought me back to reality—there was no way a civilian could know the extent of the suspect pool in a murder case or for any other crime. The police alone had the resources to delve into a victim’s life and search far and wide for the connection that mattered.

“What do I think I’m doing?” I asked Henry and myself.

Henry gave me a warm smile. “Did you agree to help Susan?”

I felt the large key in my purse. “Apparently I did.”

“What’s holding you back?”

I averted his gaze at first, then met his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem that tough. You’ve done this before.” I was beginning to like his grin, now spreading across his face as he walked the fingers of one hand across the palm of the other. “Gone snooping.”

“I guess I have.”

“So, what’s different about this case?”

A loud noise came from the side door to Henry’s workshop. The answer to Henry’s question would have to wait. A good thing, since I wasn’t ready to share it.

“I knew it. I knew it,” Maddie said, stepping over the backpack she’d just dropped (thrown). “You’re talking about The Case.” She put her hands on her skinny hips, and Taylor followed suit. I wondered if Taylor knew why the gesture was important: Maddie staking her claim to a place on the investigative team.

“Did you show Mrs. Porter the new dollhouse, Grandpa?” Taylor asked.

“I forgot,” Henry said.

“I thought you were busy sewing,” I said, taking the coward’s way out and focusing on Taylor.

“We were, but then we needed some snacks from Maddie’s backpack and the zipper got stuck, so we came for help,” Taylor said.

“Let’s see that zipper,” Henry said.

“How come you’re letting Mr. Baker help with The Case, but not me?” Maddie asked.

Henry worked on the zipper, head down, leaving me to answer. I’d wait until bedtime to suggest that Maddie be a little less petulant now that she was old enough to sit in the front seat of a car. “Mr. Baker and I were having a conversation, sweetheart,” I said.

“It’s not polite to eavesdrop, especially on adults,” Taylor said.

Maddie shot her a look. I thought I noticed a tinge of defeat in her eyes. That was twice in one day that my granddaughter suffered a loss, and this time at the hands of a little girl with a blond pixie cut, four months younger than she was.