Mourning In Miniature (8 page)

Maddie took up the slack for me, making up for my drifting attention. Except for frequent cell phone text messages, she kept the conversation going. First we had to deal with e-mailing, then ubiquitous cell phoning, and now text messages. One more high-tech way to stay connected had invaded the environment.

During one moment of halfhearted listening, I thought I heard Maddie say she’d like to buy one of Henry’s rockers for her dollhouse at home in Palo Alto. I had the feeling I should step in and monitor my granddaughter’s interactions, but I didn’t see any harm. I trusted Henry not to take advantage of her in these dealings. In fact, in any negotiation with Maddie, I always worried about the other party.

Maddie and Taylor, who had proclaimed themselves BF, best friends, left to get ice cream for all of us. Lucky for Lincoln Point residents, Sadie at the ice cream shop two doors down and Johnny, who ran the bagel shop, were good friends who allowed each other’s customers to supplement different parts of the meal.

“I’ll have my usual chocolate malt,” I’d told Maddie.

Henry had said, “Surprise me.”

“They seem to get along so well,” I said, for lack of a good transition to adult conversation.

“Did you notice that they were TMing each other while we were talking?”

“And they probably didn’t miss a thing,” I said.

I was proud that I recognized the abbreviation for text messaging, but not pleased that most of the interaction at the table had gone right by me. I was glad it was Henry who opened the topic that had captured my attention.

“David Bridges. I can’t believe it,” he said, scratching his head, full of brown hair that was barely starting to thin. “I wonder how it happened. A heart attack, do you think? We saw him just last night and he looked great. He couldn’t have been more than . . . what? . . . forty-seven or -eight?”

I couldn’t meet his gaze. I pushed a bagel crust around with my cream cheese knife. “Not more than that,” I said.

The news would soon be the talk of the town, but I wondered how soon citizens without relatives in the Lincoln Point Police Department would know that David’s was not a natural death, that he’d been bludgeoned with his own trophy. The crowd at Willie’s included many people from the abbreviated groundbreaking ceremony, but with so little information released, there wasn’t much to talk about. Most of the snippets of conversation I heard had more to do with the one-hundred-degree temperature than with the death of David Bridges.

I didn’t feel I could share what I knew, little as it was, with Henry, but I needed someone to talk to. My head ached from the stress.

There was only one sure way to ease the tension.

I knew what I was about to do was sneaky. Maddie would never forgive me. Not until I took her to Ghirardelli’s this afternoon, anyway.

I looked around at the crowd and leaned over the table. You never knew where there was a mole. “Henry, I have a big favor to ask.”

“Hit me with it,” he said.

Bad choice of words. I swallowed hard.

“I have an important errand to run that I can’t take Maddie to. Would you mind taking her home with you and I’ll pick her up later?”

Henry’s eyebrows went up a tad, surprised, but he recovered nicely. “Can I have your chocolate malt?”

I liked his style.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I reminded
myself, so I was on my way to get more. There was no use having a nephew, one whose hand you’d held crossing the street not that long ago, on the police force if you couldn’t take advantage of it.

I walked the few blocks down Springfield Boulevard, past the high school and the now-deserted groundbreaking site, to the police department, part of the civic center complex along with the city hall and the library. On my way down the street and up to Skip’s second-floor cubicle, I rehearsed.

“You got me involved,” I’d say, reminding him of his phone call alerting me to David’s murder and requesting my help in locating Rosie. Maybe that was too junior high, reminiscent of many such “he started it” exchanges between Skip and my son, Richard.

“I’d like to help” wouldn’t work, since Skip consistently reminded me that the Lincoln Point Police Department had enough sworn officers to take care of business.

“Excuse me?” he’d say. “Do you have a badge?”

“I’m your only aunt and you owe me” might do the trick, but I’d used it before.

I realized I needed some new material.

 

 

I always preferred dealing with female LPPD officers,
not because of any sexist or feminist leanings, but because usually they were hot for (Maddie’s term; I still preferred the old-fashioned “sweet on”) Skip. This meant that they’d be especially accommodating and nice to me. It didn’t seem to matter that Skip and June, my next-door neighbor, were practically engaged. Maybe even one step closer this weekend since Skip had taken June to Seattle to meet his mother’s boyfriend’s family. Never mind that the weekend was cut off at the pass. His intentions spoke of commitment.

Was every extended family this complicated to talk about?

I was in luck. Lavana Rollins, an attractive member of the almost-thirty crowd, like Skip, was on duty at the front desk. After the hot-weather talk, I got to my point.

“Too bad Skip had to cut his trip to Seattle short,” I said to Lavana.

“Yeah, we got this big case, and so many people are on vacation in faraway places. Poor Skip was close enough to be called back.”

“I just heard the announcement. It’s such a shame about David Bridges,” I said.

“Too true. I didn’t know him, but I guess he was very popular around here during the football heyday at the high school.”

The days Lincoln Point expected to get back with a new stadium. “I had David as a student a long time ago. I hope you’re making progress finding his killer.”

“Ha. They don’t tell me anything. I’m just a uniform,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I get to carry the evidence.” Lavana’s laugh was hearty, befitting her substantial frame. “The strangest thing came in this morning, though. You’d have found it very interesting.”

I didn’t have to fake my intense curiosity. “Oh?”

“Hey, Rollins.” I heard a deep voice from behind the wide front counter where Lavana stood. “How about those files?”

“Gotta go,” Lavana told me. “Skip should be here any minute. You can go on back and wait.”

That was my hoped-for scenario: that I’d have a few minutes alone at Skip’s desk to reflect. Or to snoop, depending on what you wanted to call it. I did wonder about the evidence Lavana mentioned, but it would have been unseemly to act nosy.

“Thanks, Lavana.” I gave her a grateful smile. “I know the way.”

“You didn’t happen to bring any of those ginger cookies?” she whispered. Apparently if I did, she wasn’t planning on sharing.

As a matter of fact, I had pulled a bag out of the cooler in my car, as an offering to Skip, but I was willing to use them to barter wherever necessary. I opened a small plastic container within the bag and invited her to help herself. It was a small price to pay for a few minutes alone in Skip’s cubicle.

Food as sycophantism. Another time-honored Porter tradition.

 

 

I sat in Skip’s office, in the visitors’ chair, facing the
cubicle opening and his bulletin board. I had a paperback of
To Kill a Mockingbird
open on my lap, for effect. I really had wanted to reread the classic, but today it served double duty as a cover.

The beige corkboard was cluttered with business and personal items, including a wonderful photo of a very young Maddie, her father, and me. I remembered the long-ago trip to Pier 39, one of San Francisco’s many fun places for kids. If Skip gave me any grief today, I’d remind him of his loving family.

Maddie looked happy in the photo, next to a life-size yellow cartoon animal of no particular delineation. Unlike now, I mused, when she was probably fuming as much as an eleven-year-old could fume. Maddie was in a prolonged Nancy Drew phase and hated to be left out of any investigative tasks. She was at least in an environment she might like, this time, with someone her own age and a wonderful (I guessed) workshop to browse in.

I saw nothing useful on Skip’s bulletin board. I’d been hoping for a to-do list.
Clear Rosie Norman
could have been an item. Then,
Arrest John Doe
. I started a mental list of who John Doe could be. No one had asked my opinion, but I thought the police should be looking into David’s ex-wife, his estranged son, and especially the Duns Scotus employee we all saw him arguing with last night.

I moved my chair slightly, to have a better angle on the desk. Lavana had said Skip would be back “any minute” and I didn’t want to be caught out-and-out snooping. I scanned the clutter for a file labeled
Aunt Gerry’s Friend, Rosie
. Or, simply,
Norman
.

Nothing.

Nothing big, that is. But there was something small. Under a few loose sheets of paper, I saw the edge of a hotel key card.

Still keeping an eye on the cubicle opening, I flung my left arm out, felt around for the card, and pulled it out. A Duns Scotus key, like the one in my purse. This one had a slightly different likeness of the Franciscan metaphysician, but it was the Subtle Doctor himself, in his brown habit.

The key cards to the hotel were imprinted with different reproductions of paintings of Duns Scotus; even keys to the same room had different images. I found the same policy at the last hotel I’d been in, in Monterey, where the cards bore a variety of pictures of the ocean. I didn’t see the point, except in terms of exposure to art. The bottom line was that there was no way to tell which key went with which room these days. No more large numerals etched on circles or flat metal keys. All for better security, which was on everyone’s mind.

I didn’t know yet where David had been murdered, but wherever it was, all the sophisticated, increased security in the world hadn’t helped him.

Whose key card was I holding? David’s? Rosie’s, therefore mine?

It wasn’t a good sign if the Lincoln Point police went to all the trouble to go to San Francisco and enter our room. Skip had said they didn’t know where the murder had taken place. If David had been killed at the hotel, then the San Francisco police would handle it. Pangs of guilt accompanied my desire to have LPPD in charge of the case so I could keep track of it.

I was betting on the key’s being for David’s room, probably found on his person. I wondered if it had been reprogrammed or if it would still work. Should I take it? It would certainly help if I needed to do some investigating myself. If Skip needed to get into a hotel room, I reasoned, he could just flash his badge.

What would I do with it? I had a pretty good idea. Was it evidence? No, if it were evidence it would be in a marked bag. It was now LPPD property, however—hard to get around that. Unless it was Rosie’s key card, in which case, it was also mine.

Before I could decide the level of misdemeanor I was willing to risk, I heard Skip. His tenor voice came closer and closer as he greeted his colleagues with a “Hey,” or a “Dude,” or a “What’s up?”

I had no time to place the key card in the exact location I’d taken it from. It made sense, therefore, to slip it into my pocket. With the jumble of papers, folders, and notes on his desk, he wouldn’t miss it. Not right away at least. I could always sneak it back later.

“Hey, Aunt Gerry, you’re late,” Skip said when he entered his cubicle. He looked at his watch. “I expected you over an hour ago, right after we hung up.”

Very funny. “I had to take Maddie to lunch,” I said.

“And you brought me . . . ?”

I handed over the rest of the ginger cookies. I could have sworn he stared at the spot on his desk where the key card had been. I had to concentrate, swallowing hard, distracting myself from looking there myself. I remembered a thriller I’d seen where the suspect revealed his guilt merely by looking at a spot on the wall where the bullet had penetrated, something he couldn’t have known unless he’d put it there. I held fast, but I was sure I saw out of the corner of my eye a red glow where once the key belonging to the LPPD had been.

“I thought you might want to share more with me. About why you were looking for Rosie Norman?”

He chewed slowly on a ginger cookie. “Mmm,” came out of his mouth instead of information. “Still the best, Aunt Gerry.” He picked up my paperback, which had fallen to the floor. “This is your snooping cover, right? I don’t see a bookmark.”

My nephew was so annoying when he was right. “Skip? You called me, remember? I just want to know what in the world makes you think Rosie murdered David Bridges?”

“Did I say that?” he asked.

“Not in so many words. Do you deny that you think she might be involved?”