Monster in Miniature (9 page)

I knew that eventually someone would have to pay.

The plastic bag of ginger cookies that Henry rescued from Maddie’s backpack would be enough to keep her happy for now.

 

 

Thanks to the arrival of Taylor’s parents, who had
assumed day-care duties, I found myself at Bagels by Willie (named after Abe’s young son, of course) for an early lunch with Henry.

“You two go and have grown-up food and talk and we’ll fix something for us and the girls,” Henry’s daughter, Kay, had said.

When I hesitated, her husband, Bill, had added, “Really, we hardly ever get to do lunch with our daughter, and it will be fun to have Maddie with us.”

I dared not look at the fun girl, Maddie, left behind as I walked to Henry’s car.

Thinking of Kay and Bill, it occurred to me that now there might be two more people rooting for Henry and me to become BFFs.

Willie’s was always among the first to promote the spirit of the season with bowls of Halloween candy on the table. I helped myself to a miniature (loosely speaking) candy bar and bit into layers of chocolate, marshmallow, and caramel. Things could be worse.

“You were about to tell me what’s different about this case,” Henry said, pretending to look around—for Maddie, I knew.

Then I remembered that things actually were worse.

“It’s about my husband.”

 

 

After the fact, I realized I’d gone on far too long about
how Ken’s name had appeared on Halbert’s “most wanted” list and how Ken would never, ever have been involved in anything the slightest bit questionable.

Henry had managed to finish off two cinnamon bagels and several pieces of orange- and black-wrapped taffy and still listen attentively.

“Since it seems Halbert’s death will probably be ruled a suicide, do you think the police will even bother to look into any of those people on his hit list, so to speak?”

I shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Which means that they might not be looking into Ken’s records or files, or wherever Halbert got his name. The whole project might just go away.”

“True, but that doesn’t matter.” The little I’d eaten of my own cinnamon bagel was not sitting well in my stomach. “Either way, I have to know.”

Henry looked at the paper napkin I’d shredded to bits. He pulled another napkin from the metal holder on the table and handed it to me. He pushed my glass of water closer to me, the gesture a suggestion that I take a sip. His gaze wandered to the ceiling and I suspected he was visiting another time, as I often did myself.

“Of course you have to know,” he said to one of the fans, unmoving above us. He gave me a serious look. “Let me tell you, if anyone had even hinted that Virginia was less than perfect, let alone had committed a crime, you’d be visiting me in jail after I punched out whoever it was.”

Once again, as when Henry had asked me my presumed age limit for murder suspects, I had a hard time picturing this gentle woodworker, who made the most beautiful rockers, cradles, and bookcases, lifting a finger to hurt anyone.

“Thanks” was all I could say. I hoped he knew my gratitude encompassed the new napkin, the water, and the understanding.

“So you have two reasons to investigate,” he said. “Where are you going to start?

“I have no idea.”

Henry spread his arms wide. “I’m here to help.”

Big ears and a big heart.

“You forget that I’ve seen your workshop. I know you have so many projects already,” I said.

“I don’t think of you as a project.”

Had Johnny, Willie’s manager, turned up the heat? Or was I blushing? Why weren’t those ceiling fans working to cool me down?

I cleared my throat, a recovery tactic. “I meant—you’re building the dollhouse for Taylor’s school, and the toy box for the women’s shelter, and the rocking horse for the Christmas drive.” I ticked off the items I knew about. He waved his hands as if to indicate that there was not that much on his plate. “And all those boxes on shelves in your workshop. I’ll bet each one is a project of some kind.”

“Nope. Those are just old files. Records from years and years ago that I’ll probably never look at. It’s the hazard of living in the same house for decades—there’s no incentive to clean things out.”

Records? From years ago, never looked at? Incentive to clean things out?

I spread cream cheese on my bagel and took a bite. Suddenly I had renewed energy.

“I think I know where to start.”

 

 

I made a quick call to Kay and Bill to be sure they were
still okay with the girls. I could only imagine Maddie’s mood when she’d hear that I’d be away longer than the allotted lunch hour. I hoped her parents and I had trained her well enough that she’d behave herself with strangers. It was a lot to ask of a precocious eleven-year-old with a Nancy Drew complex.

I also had a lot to ask of Henry. I wanted him to help me get dozens of boxes down from the rafters of my garage and then go away. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else’s seeing the contents of cartons that contained Ken’s property. Not even Henry, my new confidant. If, on the very slim chance that there were something untoward between the dusty covers, I wanted to be alone when I found it.

“I’ll need you to leave once the boxes are off the shelves,” I said. Could I have been more blunt? I smiled to take away some of the sting. “Can you drive home and keep Maddie away from here?”

“No problem. Shall I maintain custody of Maddie and your car at my house indefinitely or do you want either of them back sometime?”

It felt good to laugh so hard. “I think an hour will do. And I guess we have some logistics to work out.”

 

 

About twenty minutes later, Ken’s ladder was back in its
place along the garage wall, and about two dozen boxes were at my feet or on my small worktable.

“Thanks a lot, Henry,” I said. “I’m sorry about all the dust.”

“I’ve had worse Saturdays,” he said, brushing off his khakis. He waved his arm toward the stacks of boxes. “I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you need anything. I’m a phone call away.”

I watched him drive off, feeling lucky that I’d met him. The timing could not have been better.

I turned back to the piles of boxes. Cartons that had once held printer paper or books now presumably held financial records, log books, building plans, and whatever else Artie, Ken’s partner, and Esther, their secretary, had found when they cleaned out Ken’s office. They’d both driven to my house with the boxes once it was clear that Ken would never recover and return to work. If I closed my eyes, I thought, I’d be able to feel Esther’s tears on my cheeks when she hugged me that day.

Though I couldn’t throw the material away even after Ken died, I’d never taken the covers off the boxes. Skip had helped me put them at the highest points of the garage, and there they had been until now.

I took a deep breath and cut through the first strip of sealing tape. My shoulders ached as I lifted the top of the box nearest me. I felt as exhausted as if the simple piece of cardboard weighed more than all my dollhouses combined.

My body relaxed as I saw that the first box was filled with nothing I should worry about. I pawed through dozens of books of the same size—long, narrow telephone message books, like the kind used in the ALHS office and probably a large majority of offices around the world. All that were left in the books were stubs with dates, times, and callers’ names.

I thought of Ken, the busy, russet-haired architect, showing up at work in the morning, picking up the right-hand sections of the message slips, making all these calls throughout the day, and still finding time to say hello to me on my breaks from class.

The tears came and stayed for a while. It wasn’t a very good start. If I couldn’t handle a box of old telephone message stubs without breaking down, how was I going to get through the rest of the material that surrounded me?

I needed a cup of tea. At this rate, it would be well past Halloween before I got through everything, but I needed to indulge myself nevertheless.

I stepped into my kitchen through the door between the house and the garage. From its spot on the counter, the answering machine showed a blinking light. I immediately remembered Beverly’s call as Maddie and I were leaving this morning. Henry and I had entered the garage directly from the driveway and had had no reason to go into the house. I decided to let the message wait until I’d at least had my tea.

Besides the blinking light, something else attracted my attention as I made my way to the pantry. A white envelope was leaning against a wastebasket I kept near a small desk in the family room. It looked as though someone had aimed to throw the envelope away but missed by a bit. I couldn’t remember doing any such thing. I picked up the envelope. It was empty, unmarked, from a box of stationery I recognized as one of my own.

I stepped back from the desk and looked it over. The top drawer wasn’t fully closed. I pulled it open all the way and found the box of stationery the envelope belonged to, in the place where it always was. I wasn’t the neatest person in Lincoln Point, but I never left my desk drawers partly open. I checked the slots on the desktop where I placed correspondence that needed attention and extracted a stack of letters and flyers. Nothing was missing as far as I could tell, but still the arrangement was curious. I usually left tidier edges on the stack.

I thought briefly of Maddie, but she never used the desk.

“Nuh-uh,” she’d said when I’d told her she was welcome to do her homework there. “My dad told me not to touch that desk or I’d get yelled at if something got messed up.”

Had I really made my son’s life that miserable? I did remember warning Richard that the desk was mainly for his parents’ use, since he had a perfectly good setup in his own room, and that if he did use the desk, he had to leave everything in it and on it the way he’d found it. No wonder he’d never touched it and passed a warning on to his daughter.

On the other hand, I’d invited Maddie to use the desk, with no restrictions. In fact, I hoped she would since she would then be nearby for chatting while I cooked or ironed. The desk issue was not the only one where I knew I was much more lenient with my granddaughter than I had been with my son.

I dropped the envelope into the wastebasket, though it wasn’t damaged in any way, and felt a sudden chill. What if a stranger had been in my home? I stood stock-still and listened for a noise, but heard nothing other than the ticking of my living room clock and the humming noise from my refrigerator.

I jumped. What a time for ice cubes to drop into the container on the freezer door.

I took out my cell phone and held it like a gun. I walked from room to room.

Nothing seemed disturbed in the crafts room, but how would I be able to tell? My crafts supplies and projects were organized in their own way, but I would never remember if I’d left a particular strand of polka-dot ribbon hanging from its slot in the multitiered ribbon holder. At any given time, I might lift the lids of several supply boxes, browsing among picture frames, mirrors, and baskets of different sizes, looking for an extra touch to a room box. More often than not, I’d leave the lids open so I’d know which of the identical blue plastic containers I’d already gone through.

It was hopeless to track whether anyone had been in my crafts room other than the wonderful women who treated it as their own. My crafters group had been here last night. Could one of them have needed a piece of paper and helped herself to my desk drawer? I doubted it.

I moved on to my bedroom, which seemed to be as I’d left it, as was the room Maddie used when she visited.

Was I imagining things? Had the envelope floated from the top of the desk when a breeze lifted it? I often left windows open. Had I written a quick note at my desk this morning and forgotten? I did leave in a hurry, and things had been slightly less than normal around here for the last couple of days.

Should I call Skip? And tell him what? That I’d found an envelope on the floor by the wastebasket and a drawer that wasn’t closed tightly?

Put that way, it sounded silly.

I made myself the cup of tea I’d come in for in the first place and sat in my living room, facing away from the desk.

 

 

Half asleep on my soft living room chair, I decided I’d
been thinking too much of
Macbeth
and his witches, and perhaps now the ghost of Banquo had also invaded my mind and my home. A worse suggestion came and went in a flash—that Ken was sending me a message: don’t mess with my stuff.

I woke up to loud footsteps entering my house from the
garage. Before I was fully conscious, I grabbed the cell phone from the table next to me and tried to remember the emergency number. I was sure the steps belonged to the same intruder who’d gone through my desk. Then I remembered—I had no evidence that there had been an intruder.