Murder in Miniature (13 page)

“What a miserable thing for someone to do, Gerry.”
Linda was quite upset by the “sick joke,” as she termed it. “But what are you thinking?” she asked. “That I would know something about it?”

“Not that you knew ahead of time, of course, just that you might be able to connect it to something else you know and haven’t told me.” I was flailing around. I wanted to take the sentence back and edit it.

“I honestly have no idea, Gerry.”

Her voice on the phone was convincing. I wished I could see her face, always a giveaway as to her level of sincerity.

“I found the sapphire, by the way. What were
you
thinking?”

I heard a loud sigh. “I know you never unpack right away, so I figured it would buy me some time until I talk to Jason.” A pause, then, “What are you going to do with it?”

Surprisingly, I hadn’t given it much thought. For one thing, I hadn’t fully recovered from the trauma of the call from the hospital. And I was still processing the news Linda had given me before the call—the kidnapping story, the logistics of which had become fuzzier and fuzzier in my mind over the past couple of hours.

I knew what I should do—forget about having things clear in my mind, and go to the police. Let them sort it out. I walked around my house, portable phone in hand. My thinking mode. I stopped at the patio door in time to watch two chestnut-backed chickadees land on my birdbath, splash together (they always seemed to travel in pairs) for a second or two, then take flight. Now, that was the way to spend a hot July day in California. Not obstructing justice for no other reason than to rescue an ungrateful friend, over and over.

The phone line was silent. I thought Linda might have hung up.

She hadn’t. “That gemstone is worth a lot of money, Gerry.”

“So? What are you saying? We take it to a pawnshop and buy ourselves a new outfit?” I was beyond caring if I sounded harsh.

“More like a couple of years of college for Maddie. I told you. It’s about fifty thousand dollars. But I’m not a crook, Gerry.” I bit my lip to keep from reminding her that her son most likely was. “It’s not about the money. Can’t you see? It’s about Jason. If you give that stone to the cops, it will all come out. Jason could end up in prison.”

Linda’s voice cracked. I felt myself caving, though I firmly believed that crooks should be in prison. I paced the house, seeking the coolest spot. The air conditioner was no match for temperatures near one hundred degrees. I leaned on the ironing board in the laundry room off the kitchen, on the east side of the property. I seemed to have gained twenty pounds this day, all of it pushing down on my shoulders.

I fingered a small, frayed towel that would soon be cut up, its pieces to be draped around the bathroom in my miniature Bronx apartment. “What do you suggest we do, Linda?”

“How about giving me a little time? Let me talk to Jason. Find out exactly what he…what happened.”

Nice switch to passive, Linda
. In Linda’s mind, things
happened
to Jason. He wasn’t the active agent, responsible for choices. Poor Jason, I thought, but not the way Linda would mean it.

“Did you say you haven’t talked to Jason yet?”

“Not since we came back from the police station. You know, it’s not that simple for me, Gerry. It’s not like you and Maddie. Jason is a difficult child.”

“But this is not just childish behavior, like playing with his food, or—”

Linda cut me off. “I don’t want to assume anything. It might turn out that Just Eddie planted the gem on Jason.”

“Then Jason planted it on you and you planted it on me?” Even Linda couldn’t resist a chuckle at that. “Why on earth would Just Eddie plant a fifty-thousand-dollar gem on Jason? If he wanted to frame him, he could have planted a fifty-dollar pendant, or a bracelet, or—”

“Well, we already know Just Eddie is not the—”

“Not the brightest gem in the case, I know. But still—”

“Twenty-four hours, okay, Gerry? What if it were Maddie in trouble?”

My eyes landed on a photo on the mantel (even Ken had a hard time forgiving Joseph Eichler for including fireplaces in California houses, though it was a common practice in the Bay Area). A silver frame, matching the silvery marble of the hearth, surrounded a photo of Skip in a Santa hat, holding Maddie in front of a long-ago Christmas tree. They were about nineteen and one, respectively. Maybe it was the good-old-days syndrome, but I couldn’t remember much stress in my life at that time.

I wished I could drop the phone, sit outside, relax with a cup of chamomile, and listen for the lovely songs—chicka-dee-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee—of the black-bibbed birds that visited me almost daily.

“Gerry?”

I turned my back on the photo, shutting out the voices of my conscience.

“Okay.”

I hoped Maddie would never put me in this position. If I’d keep possession of a stolen gem (grand larceny?) for twenty-four hours, to give Jason Reed the benefit of the doubt, what would I be willing to compromise for my granddaughter?

It felt like a stampede through my atrium, but it was
only Maddie and Beverly coming home from the pool. They’d let the large cooler drop to the floor, rattling my chair. If that hadn’t awakened me, Maddie’s wet beach towel tied around my arms, or her loud laughter would have done it. Remarkable that I’d fallen asleep, considering the tangle of thoughts in my head and the shards of guilt stabbing at my conscience.

“I’m supposed to be the one who needs naps,” Beverly said. “But I know you’ve had a tough day.”

“You could say that.”

Enough said. At least while Maddie was around.

I’d rewrapped the sapphire and put the stone back in the tote where I’d discovered it. I didn’t know what my rationale was, other than I could always claim that I hadn’t found it.

Maddie was in rare form, even cheerier than her usual good mood. And why not, with another pizza dinner on the horizon?

“It’s too hot to cook, Grandma,” she said.

“Tomorrow night—”

Maddie interrupted, shaking a finger at me, her face wrinkled in mock sternness. “We’re having tofu and broccoli.”

Every time I glanced at her, I had to remind myself that she’d had a wonderful day splashing around the pool at the high school, being with kids her own age, and having lunch with her favorite almost-grandmother. There had been no accident; she had not been at Lincoln Point Hospital. The trauma was all mine.

The doorbell rang while we were putting out silverware and napkins on a side table in the atrium. Maddie and Beverly had had enough of the outdoors for one hot day. An atrium dinner was a nice compromise, a natural environment with man-made cooling.

Maddie ran to the door (I expected any year now she would stop running short distances), yelling, “Pizza, pizza!” Followed quickly by, “Uncle Skip!”

My heart lurched. Not because I was disappointed in Giovanni’s slow delivery, but because I couldn’t face my beloved nephew. I inadvertently looked in the direction of the pile of totes in the corner of the family room.
In a cartoon or comic strip
, I thought,
the bottom of the large bag would throb and glow a cornflower blue
.

I felt my guilt turn to anger, at Linda for putting me through this, at myself for letting her. I heard Ken’s voice, gently scolding, reminding me what a pushover I was. Then, teasing, “Lucky me,” he’d say. “I’m the one who got you; you’re my very own pushover for life.”

Too short a life. Tears welled up. I faked a cough so I could disappear into the bathroom for a tissue. For a moment to myself.

I had to get my priorities straight. Loyalty to Linda and Jason should not take precedence over other obligations. Skip deserved to be working with the entire truth, as I knew it, and—although there was only a remote possibility of personal danger—Maddie needed to be protected from whatever criminal element was running amok among our friends and neighbors. What if the call from the phony doctor was a warning? Not quite a horse’s head at the foot of my bed, but a sign that “they” could get to me if they wanted to.

I might be overreacting, but enough was enough. I’d make a date to talk to Skip first thing in the morning, Ceylon blue sapphire in hand.

I heard Beverly. “Hi, Skip. I’ll bet you tapped the phones and knew that Giovanni was on his way.”

Skip started to respond, then looked at Maddie and appeared to change his mind.
Uh-oh.
“Right,” he said, with what I knew to be false cheeriness. “You’re absolutely right.”

“It’s not here yet, Uncle Skip. We thought you were it.”

“Well, maybe we should just go and pick it up.”

“Yeah. Let’s go,” Maddie said, tossing knives and forks on the table, producing an uproar of clanging metal. Her domestication went just so far.

“You know, I was hoping you and my mom would stay here and make that special lemonade that I love. Grandma does not—and I mean, does not—know how to make it the way you do, with that extra flavor.”

Busted, and not about my inferior lemonade, either.

“I put in a little strawberry flavoring,” Maddie said, in a slight whisper. In case a nonfamily member was listening, I guessed.

“Mmm. That must be it. So, is it a deal? Grandma and I will pick up the pizza, and you’ll have that lemonade ready when we get back?”

Maddie acquiesced, though she was clearly not too happy about the arrangement.

Neither was I. Except, in a way, relieved.

I picked up my purse and started out the door with Skip.

“I need to get one more thing,” I told him. I turned back into the room and headed for my glowing tote.

Giovanni’s minivan was rounding the corner of Rutledge
, my street, as we pulled away from the curb in Skip’s unmarked sedan. Not his personal car. This was clearly police business. Skip drove right past our pizza dinner and parked on a side street a couple of blocks away. He reached back to the floor behind him and came up with a small brown paper bag.

His demeanor was so somber, I expected him to read me my rights. Maybe he felt it unnecessary, in that I hadn’t said a word since we left the house.

“Does this look familiar to you?” he asked. He opened the top of the bag wide enough for me to look inside without removing the object.

I peered into the bag and saw pieces of wood. I recognized tiny drawers, a slider, and ornate table legs—all broken apart, their ends in splinters. The largest intact piece had a double scroll design, like the top of a slant-top desk. A Governor Winthrop desk.

“It could be”—I paused—“Linda’s desk for her Colonial.”

“I thought it might be. The bottom piece has the initials LR on it.”

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“When did you see it last?” Skip used a button on the driver’s side to roll down both our windows. I felt he was controlling more than my window.

No question who was in charge, in or out of an interrogation room. I thought back to the first evening of the fair, in the school’s multipurpose room: Linda’s putting finishing touches on the desk, placing it on a piece of newspaper to dry. When I went back to our tables after my greeting duties, both Linda and the desk were gone.

“At the fair, on Friday evening, before the doors were open to the public,” I told Skip.

“Was it in Linda’s possession?”

“Yes. How did you get it, Skip?”

“Was it in one piece at that time?”

“Yes. Skip, please—”
I’m not one of your perps
(did they use that term outside of television dramas?), I wanted to say.

“The desk was in Dudley Crane’s hand. His dead hand.”

I gasped. “Dudley Crane is dead?”

“Murdered.”

“Murdered?” I was barely aware that I’d lost the power of intelligent speech.

I needed time to process the facts. Two murders in less than a week. It was one thing when the victim was a stranger, an unknown woman with no connection to Lincoln Point. A drug dealer from New York City, if I remembered correctly. Or the Midwest. That was still a tragedy, to be sure. But Dudley Crane? A longtime citizen of the town. A respected merchant and a candidate for public office. That was another story. The breeze blowing across the front seat seemed to stop short of the edge of my window. The car was stifling.

“He was found this morning, in the parking lot behind his store. He’d been shot. His safe was open and empty, so it could have been another robbery, that this time he walked in on.” Skip pointed to the bag. “This is all we have.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

Skip looked at me and shook his head. “Not again, Aunt Geraldine. You know, I had a feeling you might know something more than you’ve been telling me, but I hoped not.”

Full name, relatively speaking. And no smile. Not good signs. Skip was very much in cop mode. A wonder he didn’t call me Mrs. Porter.

I pulled the sapphire out of my tote, and placed it, on its bed of tissue, on the armrest between us. Skip had parked facing east; the sun streamed in over our shoulders, hitting the stone for maximum brightness. The armrest might have been the velvet background in a fine jewelry store. Like Crane’s. I swallowed and cleared my throat. “This might be a long story,” I said. “Do you want it now? Before pizza?”