7 Madness in Miniature (3 page)

“Is there something else?” I asked.

Catherine rubbed her arms as if a chill wind had blown through the room. As far as I noticed, the temperature in the shop hadn’t changed. In fact, I could have done with a little more A/C.

“I’ve been getting notes telling me to leave town,” she said. “Not signed, of course.”

I sat back. No wonder Catherine was chilly. “Do you think they’re from Bebe?”

“She was the first one who came to mind, but after giving it some thought, I doubt it,” Catherine said. “It’s not her style, for one thing. Bebe’s all in-your-face.”

I nodded agreement. “And besides she knows SuperKrafts is not going to suddenly pull out and rebuild her shop, no matter what you do.”

“Uh-huh. So what would be the point of telling me to leave, other than just another hassle?”

“You’re right. Bebe’s already told you to leave, in so many words.”

Catherine gave me a weak smile. “No kidding.” She frowned, getting serious again. “These notes are slipped under the door at my room in the inn. The old couple who are on the desk most of the time have no idea where they’re coming from.” I refrained from mentioning that the “old couple” who ran the inn were my longtime friends Loretta and Mike Olson, who were about three years older than I was. “Whoever it is goes right up the elevator or stairs to my room and leaves the envelope, avoiding the few working cameras in the place. It’s happened twice on this trip already, and twice on the last one.”

“Are they threatening you in some way?” I stopped lest I go in a direction worse than she’d already considered.

“Yes, I’d call them threatening. I’ve gotten my share of nasty letters in New York; it goes with my job. Someone is unhappy with a decision the company makes and my office is blamed. I represent SuperKrafts at business meetings back home and I might get dumped on if a competing retailer doesn’t like a promotion we’re running or thinks a contract violates fair practice. That’s normal.”

Normal? I was glad all my teaching career had brought me were complaints about pop quizzes and the occasional unhappy parent who tried to negotiate a daughter’s or son’s grade. If there were any threats against me as a teacher, they were made in the lunchroom or whispered in the hallway, teen to teen. I chose to assume they were few and far between.

“What’s different about these latest notes?” I asked. “More personal?”

“It feels that way. First, coming right into my bedroom, essentially. And they’re not specific to a business decision I made or had to implement. I remember one that was sent to my office in New York last year that was detailed to the dollar. It said something like, ‘unless you lower your rate by fifty-five hundred dollars, you’ll be sorry.’ That kind of thing. You always know it’s some lackey trying to make his mark.”

“Do you have the latest notes with you by any chance?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t asked for them right away. Too much ice cream and thoughts of ice cream.

Catherine nodded, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out the offending notes. My first reaction, from being the aunt of Lincoln Point’s finest homicide detective, Eino (Skip) Gowen, was disappointment that Catherine had placed the notes in plastic bags, as if they were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cookies for Maddie’s lunch box. Didn’t everyone know that evidence should be handled with gloves, and small items should be put in paper bags? Skip had long ago informed me that only TV cops used plastic, for dramatic effect, so viewers could see the smoking gun or the bloodstained cloth. I’d forgotten the details, but he’d explained how plastic interacts with most substances and could contaminate the evidence.

“Paper breathes,” he’d told me. And that was the extent of my knowledge of forensic chemistry.

“I didn’t touch them except at the edges, once I knew what these little white envelopes contained,” Catherine said now. I allowed her to be proud of herself for that. She’d spread the four bags on the table, but I pushed them together, one on top of the other. We’d already drawn enough attention from the teens around us with the flipping soda straw, without luring them with a mystery.

I read the top note through the plastic. The handwriting had great flourishes, probably written by a left-hander, or someone who wanted us to think he was a left-hander. The initial capital letters were much larger, proportionately, than the lowercase letters. Again, that could have been a deliberate attempt to be misleading as to who was the author.

YOUR NOT WANTED HERE. YOU BETTER LEAVE SOON.

A shiver went through me, and not only because of the poor grammar and usage. The fact that Catherine could be mistaken—the notes might have been general messages to her company—did nothing to relieve my mind.

I slipped the note under the pile and moved on to the other three, all similar in tone, message, and handwriting, with only small differences in the level of threat:

IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU.

YOU SHOULDN’T HANG AROUND.

PACK UP AND LEAVE TOWN NOW.

I tried hard to study the phrases dispassionately, considering that the writer had possibly faked the errors as well as the handwriting, to further obscure his or her identity.

After I read them all, I neatened the stack, as I would any set of documents or letters, except that these made me jumpy enough to look over my shoulder and out the window at passersby. Was there a gun in the innocuous-looking shopping bag from Abe’s Hardware carried by a man in cargo pants? A knife in the oversized purse slung over the shoulder of the young woman in jeans? Evil in the eyes of the kid in the wrap-around sunglasses and New York Yankees baseball cap, so far from home?

“Have you thought who else besides Bebe and Maisie were put out of business by—”

“They weren’t exactly put out of business,” Catherine said.

“I’m sure you have another term for it, but you know what I mean,” I said, revealing only part of my annoyance.

“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I’m just nervous, Mrs. Porter.”

Uh-oh
. I’d upset my former student, who seemed to have taken my slight reprimand as a blight on her GPA. I had a flashback to the young Catherine Duncan, with waist-length hair in many shades of brown and blond, and no lack of high school boys eager to carry her books. Now she’d graduated to a stylish shoulder-length cut and a complex social life, but I was still Mrs. Porter, one of the people responsible for her early education.

It wasn’t Catherine’s fault that she was confused by my reaction. I’d been on SuperKrafts’ side for all practical purposes during the long months of meetings, and never expressed my ambivalence outright. Yes, I approved of the boost to our economy, but no, I didn’t want to spoil the look of our lovely downtown. Yes, I wanted the enormous stock of crafts supplies at my fingertips, but no, I didn’t want to put old friends out of business. It was time I stopped trying to have it both ways.

I returned to Catherine’s immediate problem. “Have you thought of taking the notes to your boss or to the police?” I asked. Conciliatory, if too obvious a suggestion.

“I’d rather not go public or make a big deal out of them right now.”

I interpreted the reasoning as a reluctance to bring her bosses in on the situation. I knew little of corporate politics, but I figured the negative publicity, whether aimed at her personally or professionally might not reflect well on a performance evaluation. I assumed there were in-house policies in place for this kind of communication.

“Actually, I was hoping you could ask your nephew to look into it,” she continued. “Would you take them, Gerry?” She gave the pile a little nudge in my direction.

Like anyone who had more than casual dealings with me, Catherine knew about my nephew, Skip, the shining star (my term, and his mother’s) of the Lincoln Point Police Department, though as far as I knew, she’d never met him. And it wasn’t the first time I’d been approached, not for my great wisdom or reputation for good advice, but for my close connection to the police department. Not only through Skip, but also through his mother, my sister-in-law and best friend, Beverly Gowen, a civilian volunteer with the LPPD who was about to marry a retired LPPD detective. Quite a family affair, now that I thought about it. I wanted to remind Catherine that one didn’t need to be related to our police force to receive serious attention and the benefits of their excellent work, but she was already in distress, from the notes and from my impatience with her euphemisms.

“It would be better if you took the notes to Skip yourself.” I nudged them back toward her. “You can provide the context, and he’d have to deal with you eventually anyway.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice weak, her resolve doubtful.

“Now back to my question. Who else was adversely affected by your doing business in town?” I hoped that was euphemistic enough for her.

Catherine closed her eyes, as if reading a list in front of her face. Hard as it was to suspect my fellow Lincolnites of evildoing, I did the same.

“The alley between Bebe’s and Maisie’s shops was eliminated, to accommodate our large structure,” Catherine began. “So the easy access to Miller’s Mortuary and Ed Carville’s convenience store is unavailable.”

More PR-speak. I had to admire Catherine’s ability to let it flow. Most of us would have said that access was cut off permanently to make room for the giant store’s takeover.

“I heard people in the crowd mention that,” I said.

“But construction is on the books for a new road to pass right in front of them, and there will be increased parking at the back instead of just the gravel that’s there now. Mr. Miller and Eddie have both signed off and seem satisfied.”

“How about the other stores on the boulevard?”

“Well, there’s Video Jeff’s, of course”—either Catherine’s face reddened or my imagination projected a blush—“and this place”—she spread her arms to indicate Sadie’s customers and well-stocked ice cream chest—“which I don’t believe have suffered, except for some inconvenience during construction. The hardware store might even have done better, as our workmen often needed a quick stop for tools and supplies. There’s the flower shop, bookstore, fast foods—none of them made a fuss once they accepted the stipend we offered as a gesture for inconveniencing them.”

That about covered the main shopping on Springfield Boulevard. At the southern end of the road was Civic Center, comprising the library, the police building, and city hall. I couldn’t imagine that anyone in those facilities would be driven to protest the new store or its most visible representative, especially at this late date. The other end of the boulevard, to the north, led past Rutledge Center, a community hall, and then on to the residential district where I lived.

“We have to think outside the box. Sorry to use jargon,” Catherine said.

Rather than tell her the expression was familiar even to a layperson like me, I smiled. I picked up the top note again, in case I could glean something from it with a second look.

In a swift movement, Catherine reached over, grabbed the pile of notes, and swept them all into her briefcase, scratching my hand in the process.

“What…?”

“Sorry,” Catherine whispered, tilting her head toward the window.

A tall man with hair about an inch longer than Skip’s bona fide buzz cut, wearing a dark suit despite the ninety-plus-degree weather, strode toward us. He traversed Springfield Boulevard on a diagonal course from the end of the block to Sadie’s, without regard for the pedestrian walkways.

Behind him trailed a young woman, so much shorter that she was almost jogging to keep up. Halfway across the street, the man said a few words to her and held his hand out, looking like a crossing guard. The young woman dipped into a folder, pulled out a sheet of paper, reached up and placed it in the man’s hand.

Craig Palmer III, I presumed. And I was lucky enough to be in a position to meet him.

On second thought,
as the SuperKrafts regional manager approached Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop, my initial desire to meet him receded with each step. Hadn’t I already spent enough time and energy on SuperKrafts issues? I thought about Maddie, and how wrong she was about who was having all the fun. I wished I were the one setting up the furniture in our new dollhouse, perhaps adding an accessory or two from the new store’s stock, enjoying all the other dollhouse entries. It was time I joined my granddaughter. I had enough to do these days, like helping Bev pick out her wedding shoes and starting a new crafts project with my group. I didn’t need to become enmeshed in Catherine’s complex relationship with the guy at the top. Catherine’s boss, aka former lover, probably didn’t want to meet me either.

I stood to leave. And was held back once more, with Catherine pressing on my hand. A signal:
Wait, Gerry. Not so fast.

Craig Palmer pushed through the entrance to Sadie’s the way movie cowboys of yore swaggered into saloons, leaving the half doors swinging behind them and stopping all conversation cold.

I was surprised he didn’t say, “Howdy,” but rather, “Catherine, I’ve been trying to call you. Your phone is off.”

“Oh, I muted it,” Catherine said, adding a nervous apology.

“And someone left the door to the street open.”

“I’ll take care of it right away,” Catherine said.

“I locked it myself. You know we had to send the cameras back to the alarm company, so it’s even more important to keep all the doors locked.” He lowered his voice once he realized that the hoods of Lincoln Point might be listening and ready to take advantage of an unmonitored store.

I found myself channeling Bebe, thinking,
Maybe if you’d used a local alarm company instead of signing a contract with New York
… I was glad Craig was paying no attention to me.

Catherine, looking deflated, with good reason, stood and tried to make a comeback. She cleared her throat and announced, “Craig, this is Geraldine Porter. I’ve told you about her invaluable assistance with this project.”

At times like this, I was grateful for my height. My taller-than-average build came in handy when there was potential for intimidation. Palmer and I were almost at eye level. I could tell he was much younger than I was, about the same age as Catherine, but I noticed that the patches of gray in his brown hair were a close match to mine. Aging quickly, I thought. If I were disposed to wear heels higher than two inches, I’d have passed him up.

Palmer gave me a distracted smile and offered his hand. “Yes, Catherine tells me you’ve been a big help with the locals,” he said, looking over my shoulder. Was he choosing an ice cream flavor from the chest? I doubted it. Thinking up more perks for the locals? I doubted that, too. More like reviewing whatever agenda he had with Catherine.

I shook his hand, then quickly withdrew mine and offered it to the young woman in his wake. “I’m Gerry Porter,” I said. “Did you just come in from New York also?”

The small woman seemed surprised to have been noticed but recovered in time to nod and say that her name was Megan Sutley. “Mr. Palmer’s administrative assistant,” she said. As if I couldn’t tell.

“This isn’t exactly the place for a business meeting,” Palmer said, looking around at Sadie’s latest attempt at a lighthearted ambience.

I wholeheartedly disagreed, but I had to admit that Sadie had gone overboard, using her extra money for over-the-top redecorating. She’d never intended her ice cream parlor to be used for serious boardroom talk. The most extreme new attraction was a large booth at the back of the shop. Formerly bright pink vinyl, the booth was now the color and design of a waffle cone, adorned with a giant molded plastic replica of the top of a sundae, including fudge sauce dripping over vanilla ice cream topped with whipped cream, multicolored sprinkles, and a huge cherry. I decided it should be called a maxi-sundae, the opposite of miniature, and thought of the latest room box project Maddie and I had started: a miniature ice cream parlor, of the black-and-white-tile floor variety, with posters of mouthwatering treats on the walls.

While I was mentally shaping tiny scoops of ice cream from polymer clay, Palmer had decided to take the meeting back to SuperKrafts. I wondered why the big man had bothered to cross the street in the first place, instead of sending his admin to fetch Catherine. Unless it was to embarrass her. I cut off my speculation—who was I to try to understand the corporate world?

I said good-bye and placed an order to go—a small cup of summer berry for me and a brownie sundae with extra nuts and no cherry for Maddie. I added a chocolate shake for her baby-sitter-turned-clerk, the ever-patient Jeanine, assuming shakes were on everyone’s list of acceptable snacks, and called Maddie on her cell while I waited.

“How’s it going over there, sweetheart?” I asked. “Are the houses all set up?”

“Yeah, I had to glue on a few shingles that fell off and Jeanine wanted me to add some grass to the outside. While you were having ice cream.”

“I’ll be over in a minute with yours. We can take it home and watch whatever video you like.”

“And order Sal’s pizza for dinner?”

“Only if you eat something green, too.” Who said I spoiled my granddaughter?

* * *

While
Maddie watched, for the fourth time this year that I knew of, a movie that featured a thirteen-year-old girl who was a spy, I snuck out of the room and called Henry.

Henry Baker had run the woodworking shop at ALHS, where he developed and taught in trade and vocational programs while I was teaching English. Between us we probably knew every student who passed through the halls of the high school for a span of three decades. We’d been on the same faculty for all those years, but we’d seen each other rarely, in the lounge or at the occasional full faculty meeting. Then our paths intersected in a big way when we met at a reunion of our students, thirty-year alums, in San Francisco. We’d both been through long ordeals as our spouses passed away, and we both had brilliant, adorable granddaughters the same age—that is, not counting the four-month difference that mattered only to preteens. The rest was recent history.

“I’m giving in to pizza tonight, if you’re interested,” I told Henry.

“I almost beat you to it, but Taylor vetoed the idea,” he said. “Says she has too much homework. I’m still reeling.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said, and told Henry of Maddie’s funk when I mentioned Taylor.

“Trouble in preteen city,” Henry said.

“Do you have any clue what it might be about?”

“Nope. I’ll see what I can find out. But I don’t expect a great outpouring of information.”

“Too bad. I ordered an extra-large,” I said.

“I could still come over. Kay’s here.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Taylor’s mother, Kay, was a lawyer. Maybe with some time alone with her daughter, she could cross-examine Taylor and let us know what was going on.

I hung up to find Maddie at my heels. “Is Mr. Baker coming by himself?” she asked.

Mr. Baker.
Bad sign. Not long ago—yesterday—he was Uncle Henry. “Taylor has a lot of homework,” I said. “Funny, don’t you think, since it’s summer vacation?”

Maddie shrugged. “Nyah.”

We settled into our dinner routine, setting placemats, napkins, water glasses, knives and forks. I made a salad for two, plus an extra leaf for Maddie.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, sweetheart?” I asked.

“Is Mr. Baker going to be invited to Aunt Beverly’s wedding?” she asked.

“I’m sure he is. Is that your real question? You know, you can’t keep on—”

Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.

Either Maddie was lucky or I needed to pay attention to signs from the universe telling me to mind my own business. I felt a little better when I heard Maddie’s, “Hi, Uncle Henry,” and not “Nyah.” “How come you have the pizza?” she asked him.

“I pulled up at the same time as Sal’s delivery boy. I wrestled him to the ground and stole all the pizza in his car.” He swung the wide flat box up over his head, causing panic and giggles to erupt. “Ta da!”

We were off to a good start. I was pleased that Maddie voluntarily piled two pieces of lettuce and a curl of carrot onto her plate. We chatted about Maddie’s girl spy movie, our summer projects, and upcoming short trips with great ease, and then Henry tested the waters.

“Taylor can’t wait to go to Tahoe in August. How about you, Maddie?” he asked.

Maddie’s face tightened. She sucked in her cheeks and drew in a long breath. “I just wish we had a swimming pool,” she said.

At least it wasn’t another “Nyah.” But where had that come from? Maddie was much more of a land-based girl, preferring to ride her bike or click away on her mobile devices than splash around in water. I tried to recall discussion of a swimming pool by her parents, but no such talk came to mind.

“I thought you didn’t care much for swimming,” I ventured.

“Nobody likes me,” she said.

Now I was really worried. Where was my self-confident granddaughter, the one who aced all her classes and lit up even a room full of strangers? “Maddie,” I began, at about the same time that Henry, bless him, said, “I like you.”

“I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t—”

Rumble, rumble. Rumble, rumble.

An all-too-familiar thundering noise cut me off. At the same time, the chandelier above us began an ominous swing on its gilded chain; the coffee in Henry’s mug splashed to the brim and over; a hardback book with a slippery cover on a small table slid ever so slightly in the direction of the dining room window.

Rumble, rumble. Rattle, rattle. Rumble, rumble. Rattle, rattle.

An earthquake. The only question was: Is this the Big One?

Maddie gasped and pushed her chair back. “Drop, cover, and hold on!” she yelled, and fell to the floor. A few seconds later, the three of us were crouched under the long dining room table, holding on to its legs. We heard thuds and breaking glass, but no large crashing. Maddie repeated the long form of the mantra she’d been taught. “Drop to the floor, duck under a table or a desk, and hold on even if it moves. Do not run. Do not go outside,” she said, on autopilot. “Keep away from bookcases, windows, or anything that can fall on you,” she mumbled, then announced, “We’re in an earthquake.”

Maddie had been drilled well, as all California schoolchildren were. But she hadn’t yet experienced enough quakes to take this one in stride. Her eyes were wide, her knuckles white as she held onto her table leg. Henry released his hold on his post and moved over to Maddie’s, adding his body to the protection the tabletop offered.

“I think we’re clear,” I said. “But it’s so cozy under here, shall we stay for a while?” A better suggestion than reminding Maddie of the possibility of immediate aftershocks.

Maddie’s laugh sounded like a great release of tension. I could tell she was okay when she began to instruct us in what she’d learned from a significant study unit on earthquakes last year. “They used to use pendulums, like the chandelier, only really big, to measure how the ground shaked”—she waved the word away. It seemed Maddie herself had been rattled—“…I mean
shook
. And the San Andreas Fault has made the ground move by two inches every year and in fifteen million years, Los Angeles and San Francisco will be next to each other.” She took a long breath, as if she were gasping for air. “I used to live in Los Angeles, Uncle Henry.”

“I know that,” Henry said. “I’m sure glad you live here now.”

“Me, too,” I said, from my perch one table leg over.

“Are we ready to guess what magnitude it was?” Henry asked. “When I was in school, we’d all take a guess and the one who came closest would get a prize.”

“What kind of prize?” Maddie asked.

“Well, back then a new ruler or a protractor was a big deal.”

“Or a composition book,” I offered, remembering how I loved the look and feel of a new, blank notebook.

“I think it was a five-point-seven,” Maddie said, apparently forgetting that anything that big in magnitude would have caused considerably more disruption. Depending on where the epicenter was, we’d have experienced windows breaking, plaster falling, and even heavy furniture moving. But it made sense that anything that sent us under the table would impress Maddie and be accompanied by a large number.

“I’ll say two-point-three,” Henry said.

“My turn?” I asked. “You know me and numbers. I have to think. I hate the Richter scale.”

“I taught it to you last year,” Maddie said.

She was right, but it was hard for a math-challenged person like me to comprehend that a magnitude of five was ten times greater than a magnitude of four, a six was ten times greater than a five, and so on for each step up. But each step also represented more than thirty times as much energy. Huh? It went against all the math I learned in grade school. Maybe I’d have caught on more quickly if I’d grown up in California instead of on the East Coast, where hurricanes were the threat. Whoever was in charge for that first hurricane did it right: call them by first names. I remembered Beulah, Camille, Anita. No math involved.

I screwed up my courage. “Three-point-one,” I said.

“Okay, everyone remember what their number is,” Maddie said. “I wonder what broke?” she asked, but made no move to find out. Neither did she race to her computer to find out the reported magnitude, as she did whenever any kind of question came up, even in casual conversation, from how many games were played in last year’s World Series to how long it took to cook a twenty-two-pound turkey. It occurred to me that she was nervous about making the trip from the north end of the house where we were gathered in the dining room, clear down to the southeast corner where her computer was stationed.

No sooner were we on our feet—a little wobbly in my case after all that squatting—than:

Rumble, rattle. Rumble, rattle.

Brief gasps all around although the little aftershock was much shorter and less intense than the main event.