Mourning In Miniature (12 page)

“Imagine a name like Taylor,” Henry said. “It’s an occupation. And her parents are my daughter, Kay, and my son-in-law, Bill.”

“And Madison is an avenue in Manhattan,” I said. “Her parents are my son, Richard, and my daughter-in-law, Mary Lou.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Maddie said. Taylor gave her an obliging smile and a thumbs-up.

Maddie had a new inventory of computer jokes, thanks to her e-mail correspondence with Doug. We limited her to one per twenty minutes, which she deemed unfair.

I almost hated to leave such pleasant company, but I had a couple more things to accomplish on what was probably my last night at the Duns Scotus. Unless the San Francisco Police Department, on the recommendation of the Lincoln Point Police Department, called me back for my expert advice.

As we broke up, Maddie gave us one more laugh. “What did the computer say as it was leaving the party?” she asked.

We shook our heads. “I’ll bite,” Henry, the good sport, said.

“Thanks for the memory,” she answered.

We rolled our eyes and said good night.

 

 

As I’d anticipated, Maddie got to use what should have
been Rosie’s bed. On the writing desk was an unopened box of candy. I’d first noticed it this morning and assumed it was sent on Friday evening to Rosie by David or whoever might be pretending to be David. Like my Wednesday-night crafters, I’d had my doubts about the origin of the presents. After last night’s episode, I no longer had doubts, but simply a question about who had sent the gifts.

Other than the candy, there was no sign that Rosie had been my roommate. On a whim, I picked up the box and turned it over. The sticker on the bottom identified it as sold at the hotel gift shop. I stuffed the box in my tote for further consideration.

I felt I’d let Rosie down. She’d counted on me to support her in her reunion with David. I wasn’t sure what I could have done to make the weekend turn out differently, but I had that feeling nonetheless. I’d also been enjoying myself with Henry and the girls and former students who flattered me, while Rosie was probably depressed and frightened out of her mind somewhere. I wished I knew where.

I needed to get serious about this investigation and do better for my friend.

Friends, in fact, were the last thing Maddie talked about tonight.

Maddie always referred to Devyn, her classmate at her old school in Los Angeles, as her BFF, her “best friend forever.”

“I think Taylor could be my BFF, too,” she told me, her voice sleepy. “Do you think Henry could be yours?”

The light in the room was too dim for me to be able to tell from her expression whether she was serious, teasing, neutral, or talking in her sleep.

I thought back to Maddie’s shorthand lesson and pulled out an appropriate response.

“GGN,” I said.

 

 

What a terrific grandmother I was. I waited until
Maddie was asleep, then slipped out of the room. I wished I had something like the pink-and-white baby monitor I used when she was little. Once again I tugged on the door handle three times to be sure the door was locked, hoping that would count as “good grandmother.”

I took the elevator to the lobby floor and walked through an elaborate junglelike area with a small tile footbridge across a stream that was generated by a waterfall. I hoped the system worked with recycled water in our drought-threatened state. On either side of the tile bridge were oversize houseplants and atrium-friendly trees. Large, leafy ficus and ferns lined the ends of the walkway and arched over the short stairway at the point nearest the front desk.

The registration desk had more clerks than customers at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. I saw no sign that the hotel was any different for the loss of its chief engineer. In fact, many of the staff were gathered at the concierge’s desk enjoying a laugh. In the group were several uniformed men whom we used to call bellboys and two or three others in the gray uniform I’d seen on Ben last night at the cocktail party.

It never seemed the right time and place to call Skip, but I needed to know what if any of the facts of David Bridges’s death were known to the public. I moved to an alcove off the lobby, one that formerly held a bank of pay phones, and a place I had every right to occupy, so there’d be no hint of guilt in my voice. I leaned against the counter, took out my cell phone, and speed dialed Skip. It was late, but I reasoned that cops were always on the job, protecting and serving.

“Aunt Gerry,” said my nephew with caller ID. (At least that told me he chose to speak to me.)

“I hope I didn’t wake you, dear.” I used my “remember all the times I baked you cookies” voice.

“No, no, dear. I was just going to call you and give you an update on all my cases, as I do for my other fellow sworn police officers.”

“No need to be sarcastic.”

“Where are you?” Skip asked.

My dime, as we used to say. My questions. “I need to know what you’ve released about David Bridges’s death.”

“Are you still at the hotel?”

None of the old rules seemed to work anymore. “Yes, I’m still at the Duns Scotus with the reunion class and it’s very awkward not knowing how much information is public.”

“Aren’t all the festivities over?”

Good point. “There’s breakfast tomorrow.”

“Ha.”

After years of teaching adolescents, and raising one, I had a large inventory of tones of voice. I now brought up the rhythm that was the equivalent of stamping my foot. “I need to know, Skip.”

“Okay. I was going to call you first thing in the morning anyway. We’ve been holding off on releasing cause of death. I gave you that heads-up only because I thought Rosie Norman was with you at the groundbreaking.”

“So everyone now knows that David was murdered?” I’d lowered my voice so much that I had to repeat the question to Skip.

“They will by morning. It’ll be in all the papers, I’m assuming.”

“And it’s your case?”

“Mostly. We’re now certain the crime scene was here in Lincoln Point, but Bridges worked in San Francisco and spent his last night there, and he lived in South San Francisco, which is a whole other police department from SFPD. But yes, it’s our case.”

It sounded like a complicated problem of jurisdiction. I wasn’t sure why it mattered, except that if Lincoln Point had no responsibility to investigate, it would be harder to obtain information I needed to help clear Rosie. Skip was right; when a good friend was suspected of murder, I did have a twisted notion that I was part of the LPPD, with the associated right to enter a taped-off area, for example.

“And Rosie?”

“You tell me.”

“I have no idea, Skip. Honestly.”

“I believe you, for some reason. I guess she’s in the wind.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Let’s just say the less cooperative she is, the more guilty she looks.”

“I have things to share with you,” I said, mentally trying to decide how much.

“Me, too.”

“Really? Are you going to be in your office tomorrow?” I asked.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. In fact, it’s almost tomorrow now.”

“I’ll find you,” I said.

I hung up, wishing I were there now to hear what it was Skip had to share. I was frustrated about my own lack of progress. I’d hoped to learn something I could take to Skip that would exonerate Rosie. I thought of the tiny, gold-rimmed mirror, which I’d hidden under my nightgown in the drawer upstairs. So far, all I had for my trouble was a piece of evidence that made it seem likely that Rosie had gone back to David’s room later last night.

Not a good thing, but the night was young.

 

 

There was only one other person I knew would be up and
ready to chat at this hour. I speed dialed my friend Linda Reed, who would be answering from the on-call nurse’s nook at the Mary Todd Home, a high-end assisted-living facility.

“Gerry, it’s been ages since I saw you. I had to miss crafts night last Wednesday because they called me in to substitute for someone here, and it’s extra money, which you know I can’t turn down since Jason has so many activities coming up his sophomore year.”

I knew better than to interrupt Linda’s flow too soon. She was by far the best crafter in the group, eschewing kits of any kind. She had the patience I didn’t have. I’d been known to ruin a piece because I didn’t wait long enough for glue or paint or a coat of varnish to dry. Linda, on the other hand, adopted the strategy of Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Over the din of my own mind, I heard Linda still offering details of Jason’s classes that I didn’t need. Time to cut in. My mission was to find out how far and wide the news had spread in Lincoln Point, if there was talk of suspects, if she’d seen Rosie, or any other juicy bit Linda might know. With her years of experience at every medical facility in Lincoln Point, and her current position at the Mary Todd senior residence, Linda was an indispensable source of information and a font of gossip that nearly always proved to be true.

“I’m glad Jason is doing so well this summer, Linda,” I said. “I’m still here in San Francisco at the ALHS reunion, by the way. You probably heard about the great tragedy, David Bridges’s death. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

Linda gasped. I pictured her eyes widening. “How did you know?” she asked.

“How did I know what?”

“Never mind,” she said, but the pause was too long and her voice too high-pitched.

“Linda.”

Linda was even more vulnerable than Skip was when it came to responding to my stern teacher voice. Only a few years younger than I was, she still afforded me a certain respect. I pictured her adjusting her beehive hairdo and nervously smoothing her uniform over her wide hips.

“That . . . that . . .”

“That what, Linda?”

I heard a deep exhale, then a whisper. “That Rosie Norman is here.”

Sometimes, when investigating, you get more than you bargained for. If it weren’t for Maddie sleeping peacefully upstairs, I’d have gone straight to the Duns Scotus garage and driven back to Lincoln Point.

“Rosie Norman is at the Mary Todd?” I needed to hear it
again to believe it.

Linda was a first-class resource, having intimate knowledge of everyone in Lincoln Point who needed medical care or had a relative who needed it. She was one of the least adventurous people I knew, however, and I never dreamed she’d harbor a fugitive.

“She’s technically not hiding from the law,” Linda said, as if I’d spoken out loud.

I felt I was hearing one of my own oft-given excuses to Skip, bending the truth, rationalizing, mentally reserving certain facts. Was I responsible for this personality change in Linda? Had I taught her the many uses of the word “technically”?

“The police need to talk to Rosie,” I said, lowering my voice as two young men in cargo pants entered the alcove and headed for the restroom.

“I didn’t know that. When she first came in, I had no idea why she was asking about our guest rooms. Her grandmother used to live here in the assisted living wing and we do offer that accommodation when relatives visit from a distance. Remember that time old Mr. Mooney’s niece from Kentucky came to see him?”

“Kentucky is almost across the country, Linda. Rosie lives on Joshua Speed Lane in Lincoln Point. It’s less than ten minutes to the Mary Todd. And her grandmother died two years ago.”

“Rosie was desperate, Gerry. She told me she had to get away for a while because things went bad with David at the reunion. I knew how much she was looking forward to seeing him again.” I heard a heavy sigh and pictured Linda’s plus-size body being taxed with the effort. “Then I heard David was murdered, and I didn’t know what to do. Technically—”

“Never mind technically. What else do you know about David’s death? I haven’t seen a South Bay paper or heard any news.”

“He was hit on the head with his own football trophy.” Though this wasn’t news to me, Linda’s words sent a shiver through my body. The nurse part of Linda took the facts further. “That external trauma would likely have caused his brain to strike his skull and ultimately rupture blood vessels. The intracranial pressure would block the flow of oxygen—”

“Okay, Linda. I’m not sure I need that much detail. I heard he was found in Joshua Speed Woods?”

“Yeah, one of the EMTs I know was in the crew that went to the scene. He said not to spread it around, but David’s lips—”

“Never mind, Linda. Will you please tell Rosie to call me on my cell?”

“I don’t know. She said not to tell anyone she was here. She won’t even call her father, and you know how close they are, like Frick and Frack.”

Linda was right about their being close, though I wasn’t clear on the reference to the comic ice skaters. Larry Esterman had raised Rosie, his only child, after her mother died.