7 Madness in Miniature (11 page)

I extricated copies of the flyers that listed upcoming SuperKrafts workshops. In my frenzied state on hearing Bebe’s confession, I’d forgotten to give her a copy of the announcement. I realized this pointed to another flaw in her story. She’d said she was angry about Craig Palmer’s cutting her out of the schedule, but here was proof that he hadn’t. I couldn’t believe she didn’t know about the arrangement. I supposed the workshops could have been cancelled after the flyers were printed, but I doubted it.

A tiny light went on. The flyers could be my way into Leo Murray. For all he knew, I’d been commissioned by the leaders to confirm the schedule with him, and by the way, where was he during the earthquake?

I was nearly finished with my purse reorganization task. I pulled out the fabric lining to shake out various crumbs (I hated to think from what or when) and pieces of lint. And, it turned out, a lovely multifaceted blue-green bead, which rolled to the end of my small area rug and across the atrium floor, settling in a line of grout near the entryway. I retrieved the bead, which I’d picked up in SuperKrafts earlier today, and placed it in a bowl on the table. It sat there, all glittery, next to a dull set of keys, a roll of mints, an old watch headed for repair, and a miniature (one half inch) Bundt cake that didn’t make it to the dollhouse I’d taken to the store for the raffle.

I turned off all the lights, feeling as though I was shutting Skip off from cookies. It served him right for badgering me about my statement. Still, I felt like a bad aunt as I headed for bed. I checked the clock in the hallway. For a change, it was before midnight on the same day I’d gotten up.

Maddie was more cheerful
on Monday morning. “I don’t need any breakfast,” she said. “Uncle Skip called me this morning. He called direct to my cell phone.”

“That’s pretty special,” I said, returning one bowl to the cabinet and pouring cold cereal for myself.

“You know, cops get free tickets all the time, and yesterday he got coupons for Willie’s and he wants to take me there for breakfast. Sometimes he gets them for Video Jeff’s and Sadie’s.”

Free tickets for food and games. That was enough reason in itself for a little girl to aspire to be a cop. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“Did you put him up to it?” she asked.

“What? Why would I do that?”

“To get rid of me, because you have something to do for the case.”

I let out a relieved breath. So far, Maddie hadn’t caught on to Skip’s agenda for today. When the chips were down, I wondered if Skip would really broach the boy talk.

“I’m not sneaking around you,” I said, eating my cereal while Maddie drank from a small glass of juice.

She’d changed her mind and made herself a piece of toast also. I watched her remove the bread from the package, toast it, butter it, add blackberry jelly, place the nicely prepared breakfast on a plate. All with great dexterity. Did her ability to move around the kitchen like a grown-up, manage her own meals and often mine, qualify her as old enough for a boyfriend? Abso-totally-lutely not. She was still a little girl.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked.

“I’m going to work on the data for your alibi chart. When I see you this afternoon, I should have the input ready for you.”

Maddie laughed. “Data and charts and inputs. It sounds so funny when you say it.”

I needed to improve my math image with the preteen set.

* * *

Skip
came to pick up Maddie at about nine-thirty. She was wide-eyed with excitement. Not so Skip, who seemed to be straining under the assignment I’d given him. A lot had changed over the years. Usually this would be the moment when Skip would grab her and swing her around in the air while she pretended to want him to put her down. But lately with Maddie’s meteoric rise in height, he’d been settling for a big hug, as he did today.

Before they left, Skip gave me a droopy, helpless look that told me it was touch-and-go whether this brunch date would yield any information on the source of Maddie’s angst. I was hopeful, and also grateful to have my precocious granddaughter out from under me so I could use my next hours in a productive way before my police interview.

I needed an excuse to talk to the SuperKrafts principals. Catherine, Megan, and especially Leo, for whom I didn’t have an alibi I could record on my data list. Or whatever it was called. The idea of confirming the workshop schedule seemed lame once I gave it some thought—I could confirm by phone or email. I resented the fact that I couldn’t simply call a meeting, as any one of them could. Neither could I call them up and start interrogating them as if I had an LPPD badge. I was stuck.

With the last gulp of coffee, when I’d almost given up, came an idea. On Wednesday, we’d have what the SuperKrafts team members were calling a “soft opening”—no fireworks, simply operational cash registers so townsfolk could shop. I figured there’d be a lot to do to prepare—only two days away—even without the balloons and party hats.

I picked up my phone and called the number I had for Maddie’s former, and occasionally current, babysitter.

“Hey, Mrs. Porter, what’s up?” Jeanine asked. “I’m in my car on my way to work so I shouldn’t talk too long. I’m still saving up for a Bluetooth.”

“Just a quick question, Jeanine. I was wondering if you needed any help getting the dollhouse display ready for the raffle. I could come down and work on that if you have other things to do.”

“OMG, Mrs. Porter, that would be awesome. Would you do that? Two of the girls called to say they didn’t feel well, so I’ll be by myself. I’d even split my check with you.”

I laughed. “Not at all necessary, Jeanine. I’d love to do it. Most of the houses are from the women in my crafts group and…well, never mind, you’d better get off the phone. I’ll see you shortly.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Porter. That would be a huge favor.”

“The pleasure will be mine,” I said, with more truth than Jeanine could have imagined.

* * *

A half
hour later, in a déjà vu moment, I pulled up behind SuperKrafts and parked in the same row as Catherine’s silver Taurus, Megan’s red Camry, and Leo’s Ford, an odd shade of blue. I figured the beat-up maroon Dodge, with a California license plate that began with a two, marking it as many years old, was a hand-me-down that belonged to a recent high school graduate—Jeanine Larkin.

I rang the bell. “Hi. Really, Mrs. Porter, this is so nice of you,” Jeanine said, opening the back door for me. “You can’t imagine how crazy it is here, with Mr. Palmer’s…dying and all. Can you believe it? I mean, we hardly met him. Well, I hardly met him.”

“It is hard to grasp, I know. I suppose the police talked to you?”

“Well, yeah, but like I told you, I didn’t know him at all.” She shook her head as if to remove the event from her consciousness, I imagined. “What about Mrs. Mellon? I heard the police have her in custody?”

“Not technically. I hope she’ll be home soon.”

Jeanine looked confused, and who could blame her. “Anyway, I’ve been neglecting the dollhouse setups and feeling really bad about it,” she said.

“Just tell me what to do,” said I, the magnanimous volunteer.

Jeanine led me past the meeting room. Through the window in the wooden door, I could see the three managers, sitting at the long table, sans community representation. I guessed there were no more issues requiring input from reps of the concerned citizens of Lincoln Point.

“What do you think they’re meeting about?” I asked, wondering if a young associate would know.

“I heard them discussing a moment of silence or something on Saturday, to remember Mr. Palmer. I wish they’d stop fighting. It seems like every day there’s another thing they don’t agree on. If you ask me, they all need time-outs.”

From the mouths of babes
. We’d arrived at an area near the front of the store. Here and there, through the tinted windows and the flyers and giant neon-green SALE signs that covered them, I caught glimpses of faces and arms and legs. Passersby, but no one I recognized from body parts only. I stepped to the locked front door and peered across the street into Willie’s windows, too far away for me to see through, but I imagined Skip and Maddie eating bagels—an “everything” for Skip and a blueberry for Maddie. In my thoughts Maddie was confiding in Skip, explaining that her issues with Taylor involved a disagreement over whether to watch the next spy girl movie on DVD or on their computers. It had nothing to do with the young males of the species, and wouldn’t for a very long time. A grandmother could dream.

“There they are,” Jeanine said. She tucked a strand of hair that had escaped her long ponytail behind her ear and waved at the miniature skyline of dollhouses. “I haven’t even prepared the basket for people to put their tickets in and the furniture is a mess in some of them, all tipped over.”

“As if there’d been an earthquake,” I said.

Jeanine laughed. “Exactly.”

“Where were you when it hit?” I asked, before I realized that Jeanine wasn’t on my list of suspects. This was practice, I told myself, and for the sake of completion on Maddie’s chart.

“I went to meet some friends for coffee at Seward’s after work and we were, like, in the middle of a conversation when there was this noise, and then this box of coffee filters fell onto our table and knocked my friend Bonnie’s mug over. We laughed. We didn’t have time to drop, cover, and hold like we learned, though. It was over in a sec.”

I dutifully recited the facts to myself in the format of the alibi data I’d already gathered:

Jeanine/Seward’s Folly/package of filters fell from shelf

“Well, I came here to be of use,” I said. “Why don’t I start by fixing the furniture arrangements in the houses and then I’ll work on getting the raffle basket ready.”

“Awesome, Mrs. Porter. I’ll be back in Floral if you need me.”

It didn’t take long for me to get caught up in restoring order to the rooms in the dollhouses. I couldn’t resist a little remodeling while I was at it. I knew that my friends and crafts group members wouldn’t mind my fiddling with their creations. Gail would understand if I moved the television set in the living room of her split-level ranch to a less central spot and used her spectacular fireplace as a centerpiece instead. Karen’s Cape Cod kitchen had lost its refrigerator, but I found it on the floor below the houses and placed it by a window covered in gingham. While I was at it, I adjusted the bedding and tacked down a mat in the bathroom. (Every crafter I knew carried a handy kit with a selection of sewing notions, glues and fasteners, and assorted small tools.) I made similar adjustments to Susan’s Victorian half-scale and Betty’s grand Tudor.

I was so wrapped up in the delightful task, I nearly forgot my reason for reporting to work this morning. Initially, I’d thought the meeting participants would come out for a break, but they were apparently still deep in discussion, or maybe fisticuffs.

I needed a pretext to go back to the room. I could claim extreme hunger and crawl, clutching my stomach, to the vending machines. Or dire thirst and fall, panting, on the sink and hold my head under the faucet. I hadn’t taught Shakespearean drama for nothing. To aid in finding an alternative to melodrama, I visualized the room, the vending machines, the kitchen counter, and the general storage area for cleaning supplies while the janitorial closet was being painted. And lockers.

Lockers! That would do. We reps had been given keys to the same locker, to share its use on a temporary basis. Bebe always stashed her purse in there when she went for a power walk after a meeting; Maisie put packages in the locker if she’d gone shopping on the boulevard before a meeting. Other reps, including me, stored odds and ends if we were doing errands around the meeting time. There was nothing of mine in the locker at the moment, but there was bound to be something in it, anything from a pair of shoes to a lunchbox or a shirt from the dry cleaners.

Hadn’t I left my other pair of glasses in the locker yesterday afternoon? It wasn’t out of the question. That was my story and I was sticking to it. I headed back. On the way, I came upon Jeanine, tangled in oversized paper flowers with long stems.

“I hate these things,” she said. “They’re really cheesy. You can tell they’re not real a mile away.” Jeanine drew in her breath. “Oh, sorry, Mrs. Porter. I hope they’re not, like, your favorite thing?”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry, Jeanine. I don’t like them either and I never use them.”

I didn’t lie about the fake flowers, though I did love the beautiful sculpted specimens I saw at miniatures shows, by talented artisans—tiny petals and leaves that looked so botanically correct one would swear they were real.

“How’s it going up front, Mrs. Porter?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m ready to prepare the raffle basket, except I think I left my glasses in our locker.” I pointed toward the meeting room. “Do you think they’ll mind if I just slip in and check?”

She waved her hand in a “no big deal” way. “I’m always barging in for something.”

With permission from a nineteen-year-old, I strode confidently toward the future employee’s lounge. A few feet away, I smoothed my dress and hair, as if I were about to make an important entrance. I still hadn’t figured a way to isolate Leo of the Missing Alibi, but first things first. I approached the door, ready to tap on the window. Without warning, like an alarm or a siren, the main door to the parking lot flew open behind me and three men pushed in. I was left with my arm in midair as the men, one in a light summer suit, the others in LPPD uniforms, closed the gap between us. Were cops privy to a universal key code for such barriers as alarmed doors?

I thought they’d come for me. My delinquency in providing a statement weighed on me, the worry increasing when the man in the suit addressed me.

“Geraldine,” said Fred Bates. An interesting choice of name for me. What did it mean that Detective Bates had abandoned the “Mrs. Porter” of our parent-teacher conference days when his son, Aaron, was my student? I searched the faces of the two younger men behind him, the ones equipped with radios, handcuffs, and guns, for signs of recognition, but I didn’t know them. “Imagine seeing you here,” Bates added.

I backed away from the meeting room door. I mumbled something about working on the dollhouse display and alluded to a phone call I was about to make to his office just before he walked in. The SuperKrafts managers responded to the new racket by exiting their meeting room, Leo in the lead.

“What’s up?” Leo asked. I could have sworn his look lingered on me, as if I were the one who’d called in the cavalry.

Jeanine came up behind me. “OMG, I propped the door open for my Dumpster runs,” she whispered. “Did I forget to close it?”

“Catherine Duncan?” Fred asked, in lieu of answering Leo directly.

Megan’s face took on a relieved look, as did mine, as Catherine stepped forward, her eyes questioning, her body seeming to quiver as if the earth had shaken under her feet. “I’m her…she,” she said, in case I was still grading her grammar. “What…what can I do for you?” she added.

Then it seemed as if someone had turned on a television set and a crime drama was being piped in. We were at the point in the show where the cop says, “(
Name here
), I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of (
name here
). You have the right to remain…”

Surely it couldn’t be happening in front of me, in real life. In the next minute, the two uniformed officers were leading Catherine out the back door. Following the script in my mind, I had the urge to shout, “Don’t say anything until you speak to your lawyer.”

When I came out of my confusion, I heard Catherine’s real voice calling out, “This is a mistake,” or something close to that, as she was hurried away by the officers.