Mourning In Miniature (11 page)

I hoped dressing Maddie and myself for a banquet would
take my mind off the near mugging (albeit by a designer-clad attacker) on the eleventh floor. The image of the man’s threatening eyes stayed with me, however, as did the specter of his no-neck strength.

There was one thing I could do that might put the matter to rest.

When Maddie went into the bathroom, I pulled her laptop toward me. I was a Luddite in many ways, but I knew how to Google.

It took me a while to cut through Maddie’s technology camp software and get to a clean, white Google page. I entered “Callahan and Savage” and pushed Google Search.

The first link on the list was for Callahan & Savage wholesale refrigeration equipment. After that, there were links that had Callahan and/or Savage in the description but not together, such as “Mary Callahan wrote a savage attack on the latest novel by . . .” I didn’t bother with those links. I’d learned a lot from Maddie.

I sat back.
Refrigeration equipment
. Why would a refrigeration company send me on a mission? Did I look like I needed more than one fridge? We’d considered buying an upright freezer for the garage in the days when Richard and his friends could put away several pounds of meat and a few loaves of bread in one sitting. But that was the extent of my involvement with refrigeration, other than keeping the freezer compartment cold enough for ice cream.

I felt a little better since my mission had nothing to do with wholesale or retail cooling and freezing. I was sure the hulk in fine clothing would find the Callahan and Savage representative he was so concerned about—somewhere else.

On the other hand, it nagged at me that he’d known I’d been in David’s room. If David had recent (and contentious) business with the hulk or with Callahan and Savage, or both, maybe the police should know. If a company representative hoped to find something in David’s room, after it was public knowledge that David was dead, maybe whatever he was looking for had something to do with that death.

On the other (third) hand, if one of them were the killer, why wouldn’t he have just taken the item at the same time? Aha, I answered, because he killed David in Lincoln Point and the item was still in the Duns Scotus suite.

Too many possibilities. I made a mental note to seek Skip’s input on the matter, in such a way that my trespassing wouldn’t be part of the exchange.

I’d tried Rosie’s cell and her shop phone off and on throughout the day and left messages but had no response. I looked over at her twin bed, still made up. The maid had folded Maddie’s roll-away cot and pushed it against the wall. I had a feeling we wouldn’t be needing it tonight.

We had a few minutes before our scheduled meeting
with Henry and Taylor in the lobby. Maddie decided to check her e-mail once more, in case a boy named Doug had answered a question she had about something called “flash animation.” She’d mentioned Doug a lot in the last weeks. He was her camp lab partner, she’d explained.

“You seem to like Doug,” I said.

“Yeah, I like him because he gets my jokes, but I don’t
like
like him,” she said.

Strangely, I knew what she meant. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for the day when “like” became “like like” and the chance of hurt and disappointment hung inevitably in the air.

I’d taken the opportunity during Maddie’s shower for another look at the spiral-bound “yearbook” Rosie had produced for her reunion class. I hoped to be able to greet as many of my former students as possible by name, without looking at their badges.

Rosie had done an impressive job on the book, using fancy fonts and color graphics throughout. For each classmate, she’d juxtaposed a senior photo with a current one and added an updated biography, plus a space to “please share your funniest experience since high school.”

I flipped through the pages, stopping to read about students who no longer lived in Lincoln Point, which was a considerable percentage. Many entries brought a smile of recognition. The unfortunately named Mathis Berg, “Math Bird” to the C students, had survived the nerdy label and now taught math at a college in San Diego. Billy Anderson, who was the shortest guy in the class and suffered accordingly, now operated a chain of health clubs. Fran Collins, voted Girl Most Likely to Succeed, ran a travel agency, her funniest experience being the European cruise she organized for single people and their pets.

I paused at David Bridges’s page. Rosie had already told us most of what it contained, especially his management successes. David used his anecdote section to describe his first day on the job as hotel manager-on-duty. He’d had to deal with hundreds of geeks (his term) in alien costumes, at a science fiction convention. One night the geeks descended upon the hotel pool, all of them nude, and David had to round them up and send them home.

“Funniest thing I’ll ever see in my life,” David wrote. My eyes teared up at how true that was. He’d never see anything again.

Cheryl Carroll Mellace’s page was lacking in much text, but included a half-page photo of her in an ALHS maroon-and-gold cheerleading outfit. She had married young, into the family of the locally famous Mellace Construction Company. The Mellaces lived on a villa-like estate on the outskirts of town. This wasn’t Rosie’s description of their residence, but my own interpretation of their home, which Ken and I had visited on a benefit tour. I’d never had the occasion to see the couple around town, and I imagined they did their shopping elsewhere.

I learned that the Mellaces had three children and that Cheryl had never worked outside the home but devoted a lot of time to charity. Besides the open houses for children’s causes, they were active in all manner of good works, from organizing blood drives to paying for a bookmobile for shut-ins. There was something good to be found in everyone, I guessed.

It was hard to reconcile the two Cheryls, the one who shared her wealth so generously and the one who displayed low-class rudeness on the other. I looked at her photo again, arms waving pom-poms in exhilaration. I couldn’t help turning her lovely smile of thirty years ago, one I’d seen often when she sat in my class, into the twisted face that ousted Rosie from David’s doorstep last night.

Rosie’s own page made no mention of her brief union with Ray Normano, a transient worker in the fields outside Lincoln Point whose principal method of communication was violence. The marriage was annulled, but she kept a shortened version of his name as her own. “I just want to keep some memory of him,” she’d said at the time.

I didn’t understand the logic of that decision, but now I saw it as a pattern of Rosie’s—to hold on to men who weren’t good to her. I hoped no licensed therapist ever heard me offer my diagnoses of my family and friends.

“Hey,” Maddie said, looking smashing in her new bright green pants and top. “What’s Callahan and Savage? Are you Googling without me?”

I’d forgotten that what you did on a computer, stayed on the computer.

“Nothing important, sweetheart. Just satisfying my curiosity about something.”

“And you didn’t ask me to do it?”

She made it sound adulterous.

 

 

The mood was subdued in the banquet hall. The only
light touch was the favor at each place: a hard rubber Abraham Lincoln pencil topper, about one and a half inches long. I turned the likeness over and over in my hands. Lincoln’s signature black top hat sat on a bearded face, the whole affair cut off at the neck.

“You’re trying to figure out where you can use this in a room box, aren’t you?” Henry said.

He knew me well, already.

We’d started the evening with a moment of silence for David, during which the small band played a cheerless version of the class song. There was no word yet on the exact time and place for the memorial service, except that it would be in a few days, in Lincoln Point, where his parents still lived. President Barry Cannon had led the program and closed now with the hope that we’d all try to attend the service.

Once the banquet got under way our table was busy as Henry and I were flooded with compliments from our former students who stopped to visit. The ones who hadn’t liked us stayed away, we decided.

“My mom still has that end table you helped me make,” from Mark Forbes to Henry.

“I saved all my Steinbeck texts for my daughter who’s an English major at UC Berkeley,” from Catherine Jackson to me.

“I used to do my shop sketches in English class and read my crib notes for English in shop,” from John Rawlings to both of us.

“That makes it all worthwhile,” Henry said. I wondered if John caught the sarcasm, delivered so smoothly.

I looked in vain for Rosie. In case she changed her mind and came to the banquet, I didn’t want her to be without company. Other than that, plus planning a call to Skip with a heads-up on Callahan and Savage, worrying about how to return the key card I’d confiscated, wondering what to do with the miniature oval mirror, and questioning the motives of the hulk who accosted me in the hallway, I enjoyed the meal.

And deep down, I was grateful for the company of Henry and the girls.

“The only way to tolerate ‘You Light Up My Life’ is to dance to it,” Henry said, offering his hand.

He was right. It had been a while since I’d danced with anyone other than the men in my family and Maddie. I pushed away any comparisons and went with the music.

On the dance floor I spotted Cheryl Mellace, in cream-colored chiffon that set off her chestnut hair, dancing with Barry Cannon. As they came close I noticed Cheryl was still wearing an eye patch, this one also seeming to blend in with her outfit. I’d heard of women who had dozens of pairs of shoes, but a wardrobe of matching eye patches seemed excessive. Where would one even shop for them?

We were back at the table in time for dessert, cheesecake with blueberries. I enjoyed the taste of the scrumptious, creamy wedge. Until a shadow crossed my plate.

I looked up to see the hallway hulk.

My throat went dry as he hovered over the table. Was he part of the reunion class? He looked vaguely familiar, but I was certain he hadn’t been my student. He wasn’t wearing a name tag—maybe he’d crashed the party to find me. His thin smile did nothing to encourage me that I was safe. I surveyed the banquet room, about twelve tables with eight to ten people at each. Plus, there was a crew of waitpersons carrying heavy trays and coffee carafes, in case I needed a weapon.

The hulk had timed things perfectly, coming up to my chair while Henry was talking to the girls. “I’m sorry I strong-armed you that way in the hallway. Mrs. Porter, isn’t it? Barry pointed you out. I’d had a little too much pre-banquet refreshment, if you know what I mean, and I thought you were someone else.”

“Someone who found something in David Bridges’s room?” I asked. A poorly phrased question, asked in a near whisper, but I was in a state of high anxiety.

He laughed, his expression changing from relatively sweet to bordering on sour. “It’s not your problem, Mrs. Porter.” He reverted to sweet again. “I don’t even remember what I was babbling about in the hallway, but I’m definitely going to have to lay off the three-martini business meetings in the afternoon.”

I should have felt relieved. My mugger was just a poor soul who had a bad habit and failing eyesight when he drank too much. I could put the whole incident to rest now. No harm done.

I wished I believed it more firmly.

Henry, who must have heard part of the conversation (or else had a sixth sense for questionable characters), stretched his arm across the table. “Henry Baker, retired ALHS shop teacher,” he said, shaking hallway hulk’s hand. “And you are?”

Good move, Henry. Why hadn’t I thought of getting his name? I might need it for a police report.

“Walter Mellace,” he said.

“Mellace Construction?” Henry asked.

“Cheryl Mellace’s husband?” I asked.

“Guilty of both,” he said.

And what else? I wondered.

I couldn’t wait to get back to Google.

 

 

I did my best to pay attention for the rest of the evening
at our table, my mind wandering off now and again to Cheryl’s eye patch and wondering what she was doing in David’s room if she was still married to Walter, who would always be the threatening hallway hulk to me. Had Walter found out where his wife spent the evening and used force to win her back?

No wonder the hulk had looked familiar. I’d never met him in person but he looked enough like the grainy newspaper photos I’d seen of him. I knew his interests extended far beyond our town and he wasn’t one to be strolling around Lincoln Point eating Willie’s bagels, or even greeting its citizens when he offered his home for a charity tour.

I hoped my immediate table partners weren’t aware that my thoughts were elsewhere. I did pick up on an enjoyable thread that included the girls and their hobbies, plus teasing about their names.