Murder in Miniature (16 page)

Karen, who was the keeper of the library room in
progress, took the books and Maddie’s DVDs home with her—we managed to turn out about thirty books each, for a total of nearly two hundred volumes, big and small, classics and popular fiction, reference books and coffee-table books, for our miniature library.

I’d gotten what I wished for. A morning of tutoring, a relaxing afternoon, and an evening of crafts, albeit one with a grisly thread of conversation. A relatively normal Wednesday.

Unless you count the strange behavior of Gail Musgrave in the library and her reluctance to speculate about the murder of the man who was running a fierce campaign against her brother.

Technically, since the call from Linda came after midnight,
it couldn’t be counted as ruining Wednesday.

“Don’t worry, Gerry, I’m not at a phone booth or anything, and I’m not going to come over.”

Good, I thought. I wasn’t proud of the unfriendly sentiment, but I’d been reading comfortably, about to turn out the light by my bed. “What is it, Linda?”

“I just want you to know I spent the whole evening at the police station. They let me go, but I think they think I did it, Gerry.” Linda’s voice was fractured, as if we had a bad cell connection, except that we were talking on landlines. “They think I killed Dudley.”

That was a lot of “thinks.” I set my Steinbeck anthology aside and breathed deeply. “I’m sorry, Linda,” came out weakly.

I wondered what the police had to back it up, besides the broken desk. I was surprised Skip hadn’t told me. Then again, it wasn’t as if he shared his work with me as a general rule. In fact, he usually drew a hard line between work and family, even with his mother, though Beverly was a volunteer with the LPPD.

His giving me advance warning of Jason’s possible arrest last Saturday had misled me. I was not a fellow police officer; I had no insight that would help him solve the case.

“I’m sure they’ll find out who really did it, Linda.” I hoped I sounded confident.

“I’m not so sure, Gerry. Maybe you could talk to Skip, and offer to help. He knows how smart you are.”

“Linda, I have only one more day with Maddie, and—”

“For me, Gerry. Please. Just say you’ll look into it. I need you to help me prove I’m innocent.”

“Linda—”

“On Friday, after Maddie’s gone.”

I said the only thing that would get me some sleep. “I’ll talk to Skip.”

Over a breakfast of Maddie’s favorite waffles and
strawberries, we drew up an agenda on how to spend her last day in northern California—we’d work on the Bronx apartment in the morning; ride our bikes downtown for lunch and last-minute souvenir shopping for her parents and her best friend, Devyn (our previous attempt had turned up nothing, due to Maddie’s short attention span for shopping); play board games in the afternoon; and, of course, have a special dinner with Beverly and Skip in the evening.

I hoped a good, fun day would erase the memory of two murders and her awful night cruising toward a rendezvous in a creepy neighborhood.

Maddie had saved a few of the DVDs she made to put into the living room of the miniature Bronx apartment, but I told her there were no such things when her grandfather and I lived there. “We had records,” I said. “In this scale, about as big as a quarter.”

She screwed up her densely freckled nose. “Was there an oven?”

I hoped she was teasing, and tickled her just in case.

We settled on making a couch for the living room, and a small item for each of the other rooms, so Maddie could say she worked on the whole apartment.

“Can we put a hockey stick in the hallway? Grandpa used to watch hockey on TV with me sometimes.”

Not what I would have chosen, but I owed her a lot for the striking conversion that got her doing miniatures with me in the first place. I couldn’t very well deny her a hockey stick, especially one that reminded her of her grandfather. “I think we can do that.” I extracted a thin pine strip, about six inches long and three inches wide, from my wood stock. “Can you draw a stick on this piece of wood? Then we’ll cut it out and paint it whatever color you want.”

“Okay. I better do the one with the long hook since this apartment is supposed to be historic”—I didn’t correct her usage—“and they use shorter hooks now.”

I wasn’t thrilled that she knew the history of hockey sticks, but again…

The salad for the eventual kitchen counter was superb—green clay leaves (lettuce), red clay balls (tomatoes), and three tiny black beads (olives). We added a towel for the bathroom and pictures in frames for the bedroom.

At eleven o’clock we went to our respective rooms to change into what Maddie called capris and I called pedal pushers, for the bike-riding and shopping trip.

So far, so good. The few times I thought of Linda and her plight I was able to pull a Scarlett O’Hara on myself and assign it to tomorrow’s agenda.

Lincoln Point was a bicycle-friendly town, with metal
bike racks all along Springfield Boulevard. We chose a rack in front of the toy store, chained our bikes (both were presents from Richard and Mary Lou), and went in. The Toy Box was among the few shops still in existence along our main street—the fast-food and drinking establishments had fared better than the retail stores, as more and more people flocked to the large, upscale Stanford Shopping Center.

I couldn’t help thinking that this was one of the problems the late Dudley Crane wanted to rectify. He went on record as wanting to make Lincoln Point a more business-friendly town, proposing an easier process for obtaining licenses and permits, and cutting back on some of the regulations that made it difficult for small businesses to survive.

The response from anti-growth candidate, Jack Wilson: “There’s a reason for requiring landscaping whenever a new store moves into a strip mall. It’s for the environment, for the beautification of our town, and for the edification of its citizens.”

As usual, both sides claimed they wanted what was best for the citizens of Lincoln Point, but only one candidate would win in November. The closed sign on Crane’s Jewelers reminded me that now one political party in the debate was handicapped by the death—the murder—of its leader. Tempting, but too simplistic, I knew, to blame the obvious benefactors.

The Toy Box was a favorite of Maddie’s, as was the card shop in the middle of the block. We lingered a while, first in one, then the other, then back to the first. Unwilling to accept a supplement to the spending money her parents provided, Maddie chose her purchases wisely. A foot-tall stuffed giraffe from the toy shop for Devyn (“for when I tell her all about the Oakland Zoo”), and a box of art notepaper from the card shop, for Mary Lou. Nothing yet for Richard.

A lesson for life: boys were harder to buy gifts for than girls, at all ages.

“Maybe we should have lunch first?” I suggested.

We clicked knuckles. “Deal.”

We considered the menu possibilities. I ruled out heavy-duty junk food; Maddie voted against the “really healthy” sandwiches and salads offered in the back of Sheridan’s, our do-it-yourself ceramics shop. We walked past their window and looked at the array of unpainted vases, plates, bowls, baby shoes, and spoon rests. It was as crowded and varied as a miniatures store.

“Too bad we didn’t think of this sooner. You could have painted something here for your dad,” I said. “There’s a mug with the kind of handle that he likes.”

“I did that for him when I was a kid,” Maddie said.

I checked out her expression to see if she was joking. (Partly.)

“Oh, look at the menu. They have a hummus-and-avocado combo salad,” I said.

“No way.” The reaction I expected. Maddie pointed across the street. The bagel shop. “How’s that for a compromise?”

“Excellent idea.”

Ten minutes later we were biting into hearty sandwiches (plain cream cheese on a plain bagel for Maddie, sun-dried tomato spread on a sesame bagel for me). Bagels by Willie was named after one of Lincoln’s sons, who died at age eleven. Some biographies suggested he died of scarlet fever. I was thankful that Beverly’s bout with it came a hundred years later.

Although Willie’s chunky cookies were tempting, we decided to save dessert for later, at Sadie’s, the ice cream shop two doors down.

It was good to relax and sit on a full-size seat after a long, hot bike ride and some serious retail shopping. I rotated my neck, horizontally and vertically, the way I learned in my on-again, off-again attendance at a senior workout class.

On the upward motion of the neck routine, I scanned the framed posters, all landmarks of New York City. I gazed at a team photo of the Yankees (even a non–sports fan like me recognized that uniform), the Empire State Building at night, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the Brooklyn Bridge.

A mixed metaphor, I thought—a bagel place named after Abraham Lincoln’s son, with New York–style bagels and décor. Why weren’t the photos of Illinois or Kentucky (though the town certainly had enough of those)? Or, why wasn’t it called “East Coast Bagels”?

Stop editing everything
, I told myself. Then the Brooklyn Bridge, in black, gray, and white splendor, caught my eye again. A little tickling in the back of my mind said I needed to pay attention to this.

Finally, I knew what had been bothering me.

I had to see Skip.

After what seemed like hours, Maddie ate the last potato
chip and squashed the bag for the trash. I gave her a big smile and offered her another drink. She wasn’t going to like what was coming.

“Sweetheart, I need to run an errand. I’m going to leave you across the street in the bookstore with Mrs. Norman. You remember her. She was my student—”

Maddie held up her hand. Her palm sparkled with potato chip residue. “Where are you going?”

She’d vetoed the idea the last time I wanted to leave her with Rosie Norman and go alone to the police station. I don’t know what made me think I could get away with it this time.

“There’s something I have to deal with—”

“With Uncle Skip?”

“It’s not anything that would interest you, Maddie. And Mrs. Norman loves having you in her store, because you’re so smart and you’ve read so many books—”

“I get it.” Maddie frowned and jutted her lower lip out. The way her father did when he thought he’d be missing a fun time in the adult world.

“It’ll take only a few minutes.”

“Nuts,” she said.

I bought a cookie for her—a grandma trick that at least drew a smile—and two for Skip.

As I hoped, Skip was at the station. The officer at the
front desk (a balding Paul Hammerfield, who’d been my student) sent me back to the cubicles, where I caught my nephew with his feet up on the desk. He had a sandwich in one hand, a soft drink in the other, a file folder open on his lap. A fan on a shelf above him ruffled his wavy red hair.

I smelled pastrami, which went with the half-eaten pickle in a Styrofoam box. “Tough life,” I said.

Skip jerked down from his position, slamming his lunch onto the desk. He pulled an empty chair in place with his foot, and motioned for me to sit. “Hey, Aunt Gerry.”

I sat on the rickety metal chair with a poor excuse for a cushion. “I brought dessert.” I said this softly, since I hadn’t thought to bring enough for the other five or six officers whose heads cruised by above the cubicle partitions.

Skip looked at the small brown bag. “From Willie’s. None better. Except for your ginger cookies.” He accepted the bag from me and bit into the first of Willie’s four-inch-diameter chocolate-chip cookies. “But I’ll bet you didn’t come just to bring me treats.”

“How did you know?”

“The adorable little redheaded squirt isn’t with you.”

“I guess there’s a reason you’re the detective.”

“Almost detective.”

I got right to it. “Tell me more about Tippi Wyatt. Exactly where was she from?”

“Brooklyn, remember? That’s why no one around here cares that much, to be brutally frank. We’ve had no tips on Tippi, if you know what I mean. Whereas, tips come in all the time for the Crane case. Cooney did it because Crane robbed his mother’s estate. Wilson did it to win the election. Just Eddie did it because he’s, Just Bad. Reed did it…that would be any one of three Reeds.” He put his cookie down long enough to tick them off on his fingers. “Chuck, Linda, or Jason. Take your pick, with assorted motives.”

“So is Jason Reed.”

Skip gave me a funny look. “Huh?”

“Jason Reed is also from Brooklyn.”

“So? Big deal. Aren’t there, like, a million people from Brooklyn?”

Closer to two and a half million, but I didn’t want to get off on demographics. “Where else did Tippi live? You said she moved to the Midwest.”

“Yeah, some small town. I guess she was clean and sober in between, but the habit caught up with her and she was convicted on a minor drug charge.”

“Where?”

Skip took a long breath, stuffed the remaining quarter of a cookie in his mouth, and turned to his computer. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what this is all about?”

“I will if I’m right.”

While Skip worked the keyboard, I studied the patterns made by the peeling paint and water stains on the walls of the large, divided room. It seemed easy to make a case for a new building, or at least an overhaul, for Lincoln Point’s finest. I hoped it would be a logical decision on the part of the city council, and not just another excuse for a partisan battle.

“Tippi, Tippi, Tippi,” Skip chanted as he hunted and pecked his way to a useful screen. “Here it is. Winona, Minnesota.”

A small gasp escaped, not unnoticed by the almost-detective.

“What?” Skip asked.

“One more thing. Does that say whether Tippi had a child?”

A few more clicks, while my jaw became tighter and tighter.

“She had a kid in 1992. A boy, Edward Louis. Nothing recent on him.”

The name didn’t matter. The math was easy, even for me. Linda brought Jason to Lincoln Point from Winona in 1995; he was between three and four at the time.

“The boy’s father?”

“None listed.”

“The boy is now Jason Reed, Skip.”

He took a deep breath and folded his hands across his chest. Not exactly open to my theory. “Let’s have it.”

“We have two individuals, Tippi and Jason, who traveled from Brooklyn, New York, to Winona, Minnesota, to Lincoln Point, California. Tippi Wyatt came here to look for her son, Skip. And that son is Jason.”

Skip scratched his head. “That’s a pretty big leap.”

“Think about it. He’s exactly the right age.”

Skip fiddled with a couple of pens, rolling one over the other, as if they were ideas he was trying to smooth out. “If this is true, it’s the connection we’ve been looking for.” A low whistle came out. “Wow.”

“Is that a good ‘wow’ or a bad ‘wow’?” I asked.

“Good for us. Maybe bad for Linda and Chuck.”

This was probably not what Linda meant when she’d asked me to talk to Skip. I had the odd feeling that I’d unintentionally sold out my friend. It occurred to me that Linda would have been better off this week if I hadn’t kept trying to help her.

In spite of my brilliant sleuthing, Skip was adamant
about keeping me out of the loop on all other matters. He wouldn’t tell me what his next steps would be, nor what disposition had been made of the sapphire.