7 Madness in Miniature (16 page)

In many ways I’d embraced the electronic age, but I decided to call Jeanine by old-fashioned landline and ask to meet with her. I sat in my atrium rocker and punched in her cell phone number.

“Hey, Mrs. Porter,” she said. Uh-oh, I’d been hoping to leave a message. I wasn’t ready with a reasonable script. “Mrs. Porter?”

“Hi, Jeanine.” Fortunately, I caught myself before saying, “This is Mrs. Porter,” and pulled myself together. “I was wondering if I could see you today, just briefly. There’s something I need to discuss with you.” I heard traffic noise in the background but no answer from Jeanine, so I rattled on. “I can stop by the store if that’s easier for you.” A heavy sigh came over the line, along with the honk of a horn. I hoped I wasn’t the cause of a rare bottleneck in downtown Lincoln Point. “Or I can wait until you’re off work.”

Finally, Jeanine’s voice: “No, I can do it now. Are you home? I’m in my car on my way to do some errands but I can just go to your house.” Doubt filled my mind as I realized how unlikely it was that Jeanine was the author of the get-out-of-town notes slipped under the door of Catherine’s hotel room. I nearly withdrew my request to the young woman who’d been nothing but respectful and an enormous help to me the last few years—until I heard her final comment. “Let’s get it over with,” Jeanine said.

My feelings exactly, except, sadly, now I thought I knew the outcome.

* * *

Just
how patient and forbearing was my sister-in-law? I put the question to the test by calling Bev with yet another postponement.

“Anyone would think you hated shopping for life-sized things, Gerry,” she said.

I explained that I wouldn’t be asking for a rain check unless the meeting was truly important. I told her I really was looking forward to spending time with her, which was true even if it did involve going in and out of stores.

“This is about the case, isn’t it?” Bev asked.

“Are you channeling Maddie?” I asked, and we both chuckled.

“I can’t imagine you’re sitting around while the specter of murder lingers and a former student and now coworker stands accused.”

“When you put it that way… Any breakthroughs you can share, by the way? Or even any breakdowns?”

“Nothing major, except they found some threatening notes in Catherine’s stuff and they’re trying to figure out who sent them.” I drew in my breath, but Bev didn’t seem to notice. “Hasn’t Skip talked to you yet? He was going to get in touch this morning, but then I saw him head for an interview room with that big guy from SuperKrafts.”

Notes? Big guy? Too much all at once. “You mean the manager, Leo Murray, was there for an interview?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You can’t miss him. He reeks of New York. Who wears suits in the summer around here? Not even the car salesmen. And believe me that was no car-salesman suit.”

My curiosity was flaring. What did the police think of the notes? Why was Skip reinterviewing Leo? Unless it wasn’t Leo. There were a lot of tall guys in town. But not many who wore designer suits on ninety-degree days.

“Do you know why he brought Leo in?”

“No, but I do know that as soon as Catherine’s lawyer gets wind of it, he’s going to be clamoring to get her released. That is, unless Skip thinks this guy has some kind of evidence against her.”

“And the notes? Any word on those?”

“They’re back from analysis but I don’t know what the results are. Tell you what, Gerry, why don’t I pick up some lunch and bring it over and we can chat some more.”

“What about your shoes?”

“We can go later. We’ll see how it goes. Will you be free in about an hour?”

“Perfect. Thanks. I don’t deserve you.”

“What I always said.”

Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.

My doorbell. “That’s my…” I began. What to call Jeanine? I looked at the clock. Almost noon. “My twelve o’clock is here,” I told Bev.

I figured either Jeanine would be on her way out by one o’clock, with my profound apologies, or I’d be visiting her in jail later. Either way, I’d need a lunch.

I led a very nervous
Jeanine Larkin into my atrium. She wore a short, bolero-type sweater over a white tank top, with the outer garment pulled tight across her chest. She looked about ten years old. I hated to leave her, but I needed to check on Maddie, realizing she might not be able to wait until one o’clock for lunch. Besides that, my granddaughter had been silent and nonintrusive all through my phone call with Bev and even through the doorbell. Something was amiss.

“Please have a seat, Jeanine,” I said. “I just have to check on Maddie. I’ll be right back.”

Jeanine’s “Okay” was weak.

I’d placed the paper with the poetry titles on the table and left it there for Jeanine to mull over. I steeled myself against her anguish and walked the few steps back to Maddie’s bedroom at the front of the house. I wasn’t prepared for what I found—I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Maddie crying. Not teary eyes or a sad face, but lie-on-the-bed, full-out sobbing. I went to her immediately, sat on the bed, and rolled her into my arms.

“I’m here, sweetheart. What is it?” I fought back my own tears.

“There’s nothing from Taylor. Or anybody else.”

“The mail isn’t here yet.”

“There’s no email and no phone calls.”

“Is there someone else you’re waiting to hear from?”

“Erica and Samantha, my friends in Palo Alto. They’re supposed to let me know about the bus we’re taking on the scouts’ museum trip.”

“When is that trip?”

“August tenth.”

“That’s a long time from now, sweetheart.”

Jeanine appeared in the doorway. “Is everything okay?” She knew my house very well from years of baby-sitting and could probably hear us from her seat in the atrium. She seemed to have shed her own anxiety in favor of concern over Maddie’s. A point in her favor, if I was keeping score.

“We’re fine, thank you,” I said, shaking my head “no” as to whether she should come into Maddie’s bedroom. Jeanine nodded and turned away.

Maddie buried her head on my shoulder. “You can go, Grandma,” she said, magnanimous.

“Jeanine is here about the case,” I said. “Would you like to join us?” Was I really coaxing my granddaughter out of her depression with the promise of participation in a murder investigation?

“No, that’s okay.” No? Now I was really worried. “I’m going to stay here in case I get an email,” she said.

I took another minute to tell Maddie the good news about lunch being delivered by her Aunt Bev.

She sat up. “I’m good now, Grandma. I just got, I don’t know, sad or something.”

I thought of calling June and asking for more of her insights into preteen relationships, but in fact, even if my own social traumas were in the distant past, I’d been witness to enough similar experiences with my high school students—a girl misses a phone call from a guy she thought was her boyfriend; a guy isn’t invited to the coolest party of the term; a girl is left out when there’s a drastic regrouping at lunch. I knew Maddie would eventually forget the reason she cried today, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t suffering right now, and I considered it my job to help her out of it.

It didn’t take much. Already, Maddie was drying her eyes and sitting up. “I’m fine, really, Grandma. I don’t know why I got this way.”

“Maybe you didn’t take enough cookies. And did you notice the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer?” I figured I wasn’t the only grandmother who saw food as a cure for emotional distress.

“You mean I can have one before lunch?” she asked, grinning now.

“Absolutely.”

She was out of my arms in a Lincoln Point minute.

I wanted more than anything to call Henry to hear what was going on at his house. I’d had notification of a voice mail message from him on my way to my car from the inn, and wished I’d taken the time to return the call. Had Taylor been crying also? Or was she swimming again with the new girl that June had postulated? No time now, with Jeanine waiting. I left Maddie to her own devices at the freezer while I tended to a more serious problem in my atrium.

* * *

Jeanine
was wandering around the entryway, pausing to look at the objects on my table and to fiddle with the leaves of my ficus. The slip of paper with titles of her boyfriend’s books of poetry was on the atrium table. When she saw me, she took a seat in front of the telltale note.

“I’m sorry I didn’t even offer you a drink, Jeanine,” I said. “But you know where they are, right?”

She nodded. “I’m good, Mrs. Porter.” She moved the paper toward me. “I’ll bet you don’t want to talk about Ethan’s poetry.”

“I’ve seen this handwriting before, Jeanine. In a very unlikely place.”

“I should have known better. I thought it was a strange thing to do, but she said it was just a prank.”

“Who said what was a prank?”

Jeanine’s breathing was labored, each word seeming to weigh on her, dragging her down. The sunlight coming through my atrium skylight, filtering through the ficus, did nothing to lighten her mood or soothe her, as she continued to hold her sweater closed tight around her.

“Mrs. Mellon,” she said.

“Bebe Mellon told you these notes were a prank?”

Jeanine ran her fingers through her loose, long hair, tucked it behind her ears, then crossed her arms around her body again. “She told me she and Ms. Duncan were playing this game, sort of, like they were going back and forth with little pranks on each other. And she had this idea to write these notes and they were supposed to be part of the joke. But, she said Ms. Duncan would know her handwriting, so she asked me to write them and deliver them.”

I sat back, trying to take in Jeanine’s story. Was she telling me the truth? If not, it was a tale worthy of a creative writing major. Why would a smart young woman engage in such a game, or joke, or prank or whatever it was? For that matter, why would a smart middle-aged woman talk her into it?

“She offered me a lot of money,” Jeanine said, answering my unspoken question. “And all I had to do was this simple thing. Mrs. Mellon had the words all written out for me, and she wanted me to make the grammar mistakes just the way she wrote them.”

“And you also delivered them?”

Jeanine shook her head. “No, I was afraid to try to sneak into the inn the way Mrs. Mellon wanted me to. But I know Dana real well. We were cheerleaders together.” She looped a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. “I know, cheerleaders. Pretty silly, huh? But it was a big thing for us.” I was still trying to figure out who Dana was when Jeanine clarified. “Dana works at the KenTucky Inn, so she could just slide a note under any door at any time.”

Sweet-looking Dana, who’d taken over Loretta’s desk duty today. Dana was in on the note game? One just never knew who was serving tea and pie.

“I split the money with her,” Jeanine said, as if that made everything all right. “One hundred dollars each, for just that little bit of work. I wrote all four of the notes out at once and gave them to Dana, and she put them under Ms. Duncan’s door at the times Mrs. Mellon gave me. Oh, Mrs. Mellon doesn’t know that I got Dana to do the delivery. Are you going to tell her?”

“Is that what matters to you?”

“Well, she paid me to do both jobs. Do you know how many hours I’d have to work at SuperKrafts or baby-sitting to make that kind of money? Or how many hours Dana would have to put in at the inn?” Jeanine wiped her brow, as if to indicate the hard labor that would have been required to legally earn one hundred dollars.

“It didn’t seem too easy to you? Two hundred dollars for a practical joke, when you must have known that Mrs. Mellon and Ms. Duncan didn’t get along? You didn’t wonder if maybe something was off?”

“Well, sort of. But Mrs. Mellon seemed to be having fun, you know, not like her usual cranky mood. So, I thought, what the heck? But then Mrs. Mellon was arrested.” Brought in for questioning, I thought, but figured the fine point was not worth bringing up. “And we were going to go to the police, but she was released.”

“How convenient.” I was beyond caring if I hurt Jeanine’s feelings. I felt myself getting angry as I did sometimes when a particularly good student did something to sabotage her grades. Or her future.

“I know it sounds crazy, Mrs. Porter, but honest, we didn’t mean any harm. Me and Dana talked about reporting it, but we didn’t know anything for sure, like whether the notes had anything to do with why Mr. Palmer was killed. Then when Ms. Duncan was arrested, I figured I should tell someone and I almost told you when we were working together, but I didn’t want to get Mrs. Mellon in trouble.”

“Or yourself,” I suggested.

Jeanine’s eyes filled up. Her face went back to sad, after the relatively confident expression while she was defending her choices. “I know what you must be thinking. That I’m a really bad person.” I didn’t think that, but I also didn’t think it was the time to console her. Not until I was sure she was going to do the right thing now. “The whole thing is making me dizzy, first one suspect, then another,” she continued. And possibly another, I mused, as I thought of Leo, now in the hot seat at the LPPD.

“Are you planning to go to the police now?” I asked.

“Do you think I should?”

I breathed out a long, frustrated sigh. I’d have thought that would have been obvious, but I humored Jeanine. “Yes, you should never withhold information that might have relevance to a murder investigation.” Or run with scissors, I thought, feeling like her nanny.

“I guess you’re right, but…one question?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think we’d have to give back the money?”

At last, I was speechless.

* * *

Once
Jeanine showed her mettle, seeming to care more about the money than the ramifications of her actions, I called an end to our meeting. I ushered her out the door, getting no promises from her about taking her story to the police, and giving none myself about keeping her secret. For now, I had a worthy granddaughter to take care of.

Maddie was at her computer playing a math game, a decidedly Porter choice, with no genetic input from me. I saw not one, but two, empty ice-cream sandwich wrappers on her desk. She gave me a grin. “They’re smaller than they used to be,” she said, echoing her Uncle Skip’s declaration about my latest batch of ginger cookies. “So don’t worry, I’m still hungry for lunch.”

Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.

Maddie jumped up to answer the door while I stayed behind and stripped her bed. I didn’t want sheets with leftover tears to disturb her sleep tonight.

I expected to hear Bev’s voice with a call to lunch, but Maddie came back to her room alone. “It’s the tall man from SuperKrafts,” she said.

Leo Murray? At my house? “Did you let him in?

“Uh-uh. I checked the peephole like you always say to do and I didn’t know if I should let him in. He looks kind of scrungy.”

That description didn’t fit Leo, but maybe a couple of hours in a police interview room could scrunge up even a Madison Avenue New Yorker. “Good choice,” I said.

I walked around to the entryway, with Maddie trailing, and looked out the window. There was Leo Murray’s rental car, its unmistakable shade of blue sending rays of sun in all directions. What would he be doing in this neighborhood? Obviously the police cleared him and sent him on his way, but why was he here? To find out, I’d probably have to let him in. I couldn’t figure out why I was reluctant to do so, other than that I was rattled by the events of the past days. Bebe Mellon’s confession about her confession, Catherine Duncan’s arrest, my interrogation at the mercy of Fred Bates, concern for Maddie and Taylor, ditto for Skip and June, and most recently, Jeanine Larkin’s fall from grace.

I had no basis for being afraid of Leo, however, and as long as he didn’t hit me with a love interest problem or a cruel joke he’d played, we should be okay. I prepared myself for another counseling session and opened the door. One of these days, I really should remove the shrink shingle from my house.

“Leo, what a surprise to see you here.”

“I hope you don’t mind.” He pointed toward the interior of my home. “Would it be okay if I came in? I’m roasting in this weather.”

Leo had never looked worse, slumped over, his face sunken, his suit rumpled, and his forehead deeply furrowed. It was as if some cloud of transformation had settled over SuperKrafts, changing Megan from the wimp I first met at Craig Palmer’s heels in Sadie’s to an unflappable force ready to take her career into her own hands, and changing Leo from the storming exec who presided over meetings to someone who looked like he couldn’t manage his own dry cleaning.

“Of course,” I said, stepping aside to let him in. Leo walked by me, into the atrium. Maddie stayed close to me, but in plain sight.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Leo said.

“Apparently, there isn’t anywhere else,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Leo took a seat and Maddie, likely judging the situation to be less interesting than the resources in her bedroom, took off. “I just came from a grilling by your nephew,” Leo said.

“He’s good at that.”

I wasn’t proud of myself, that I was enjoying having this upper hand over Leo, after all the meetings where he was king. But when I noticed his jacket and shirt sleeves were soiled, probably from the less-than-sterile interview room furniture, I felt a stab of pity.

“It’s the craziest thing. The cops think I wrote some threatening notes to Catherine,” he began.

How to get my attention, Leo! Confusion set in quickly as I considered whether I’d dreamt the recent visit with the confessed writer of the notes. Did Skip have different notes from the ones I’d seen in Jeanine’s handwriting? Maybe Bebe paid several people to write notes, backup in case one didn’t have the nerve to follow through. Was there another set of notes, written and sent by Leo? A set Catherine hadn’t bothered to tell me about?

“Did you write notes to Catherine?” I asked.

Leo straightened his shoulders and looked at me, a glimmer of his old, in-charge self coming through. “No, I didn’t write them. The cops think I did. They found notes in her room, telling her to get out of town, or else. Why would I do that?”