Murder in Miniature (20 page)

Jason’s eyes widened, his face scrunched in confusion. “No, I swear. Just the one.”

Unfortunately, I believed him. I was glad Linda was so wrapped up in her own problems that she didn’t think to ask me about the second note.

I hoped I’d have as easy a time forgetting about it.

“Thanks for not lecturing me, Gerry,” Linda said, as she
left my house. Jason was ahead of her, already in her car. “I’ve learned a lot this past couple of weeks. I know what Jason and I have to do…about the robbery, and we’re ready to do it. I was just hoping you might smooth the way a little? With Skip? Jason is only a kid, and Just Eddie dragged him into it, making stealing things look glamorous, you know.”

I was happy that I didn’t know, that my son hadn’t been seduced by adventures outside the law. “I’ll do my best.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Linda how low my stock was with my nephew at this time.

Seven thirty in the evening, and I was exhausted. Did I
really want to leave my comfortable home and drive across town for a boring meeting at city hall? I’d forgotten why I wanted to go in the first place.

I felt so bad for Linda, having to go to the police with her only son and listen to him confess to committing a crime. I toyed with the idea of calling Skip, but in the end opted to keep out of it. What would I say to him? “Go easy on them, they’re our friends?” Skip knew that already. I ran the risk of insulting him and, worse, hurting Jason’s chances for leniency.

I wanted to ask Skip if he’d done anything about my idea that Just Eddie was Jason’s father. The fact that Just Eddie had been courting Jason gave a modicum of credibility to my theory. (Isn’t it every father’s dream that his son will be his partner in crime?) I hadn’t had the heart to bring the matter up with Linda and Jason. They had enough to think about.

There was also the matter of insurance fraud. I considered calling in an anonymous tip about Jack Wilson’s sapphire. I tried to see it from the point of view of the LPPD. In May, Wilson reported that his sapphire had been stolen. Last week it turned up in my tote bag, thanks to Jason and Linda Reed. It would seem to the police that Jason stole the gem from Wilson a couple of months ago.

I could only hope that Jason would tell the whole story, not only about Just Eddie’s involvement in the robbery, but that the gem had been in Crane’s vault. The police would have to wonder how the gem ended up there. Surely they wouldn’t think that Dudley had stolen the gem. They could figure out the fraud, the conspiracy between Dudley Crane and Jack Wilson, themselves.

I took the Crane’s Jewelers notepad from my purse and studied the intricate pencil drawings. Dudley had been quite an artist. The pieces came to life under his hand. He’d used different pencil strokes to depict the tips and the facets and added some “rays” to show how the gem would reflect light. The ring setting looked worthy of a gift to Elizabeth Taylor; the bracelet version included smaller stones on either side. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t the one being asked to make a selection for my jewelry collection.

The question was whether to turn the pad over to the police. I saw the “
J—PICK ONE
!” notation as sufficiently incriminating. Dudley Crane asking Jack Wilson to choose a setting for the piece to be fenced.

I could hear my nephew now. After a grueling interview about how I came to have the pad in my possession in the first place, he’d give me five other explanations for its existence. The half-used Crane pad had been thrown in the trash, and any one of Lincoln Point’s citizens had picked it up and used it for doodling. Crane was drawing a few options for some other stone. For some other customer. At some other time, perhaps years ago. It could have been a homework assignment in jeweler’s school. And so on.

What was it doing in Jack Wilson’s jacket pocket? He picked it up as litter and was planning to toss it in the trash but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Or someone else put it there. It could have been Gail, or Karen, or Louie at the dry cleaners. It could have been Skip’s nosy, detective-wannabe Aunt Gerry, wanting to make trouble.

Besides the pad, all I had was my gut feeling, which, I had to admit, wouldn’t add much to the case for sending a man to prison.

The ramifications of Jack Wilson’s being arrested for fraud finally came to me. Later than they should have, and I could only blame the constant twists and turns my mind had to take over the past few days. Even if Wilson was eventually cleared of a crime, the fact of his indictment would most likely ruin his political career.

More was at stake than this year’s seat on the city council.

Too much to keep straight. It was almost more than I could handle.

One thing keeping me from throwing up my hands and abandoning my pseudoinvestigation was the note on my windshield. Its message had the opposite effect from the words. I couldn’t back off until I found out who put the note there. What was my alternative? Put an ad in the
Lincolnite
that “GP has officially backed off”?

My musings energized me. I splashed water on my face, changed out of my shorts into a long sleeveless dress, and headed out the door.

I was curious to see how Jack Wilson handled himself. I realized I’d ruled out Wilson as Crane’s killer once I figured out they were coconspirators, but that was not a good reason. It wouldn’t be the first falling-out among thieves that resulted in murder. One or the other of them could have gotten greedy. Maybe one of their fights, their last one, wasn’t just for show.

Lincoln Point’s government was based on a city manager/council
system. Seven council members were elected for staggered four-year terms. Each year in January, the council elected one of its members mayor and another city manager. It was never clear to me what the difference was, except that it was the mayor, currently Larry Roberts, older than me by a decade, who was the public face of the city.

Meanwhile, the public building of the city, city hall, was in no better shape than the police department facility or the library. The meeting was held in a large, non-air-conditioned assembly room, with a stage at one end, and battered folding chairs in long rows throughout the hall. Tall, narrow windows, open only at the top, provided minimal ventilation. At the back of the room, by the entrance, were uncovered picnic tables with coffee, tea, and cookies-by-the-tub. I wondered where those homemade goodies were that Karen talked about. Going directly to Wilson campaign headquarters, I assumed.

Three spots on the council were open this year, but only one seat had been contested. The two incumbents were shoo-ins. Now, with Dudley Crane dead, unless another candidate stepped forward at this late date, Jack Wilson was also a shoo-in.

I skipped the refreshment tables and walked toward the center of the hall, overflowing with people. No wonder I’d had to park two blocks down from the civic center. Who knew that council meetings drew this many citizens? It seemed everyone—or at least as many adults as I’d ever seen at a Fourth of July parade—had gathered in this old building on a hot summer night.

If Jack and Gail had intended to keep the meeting attendance down by discouraging people as they’d tried to dissuade me, they failed.

When I finally tuned in to the conversations around me, I learned that it wasn’t the discussion of the city-council seat that was the main attraction for the assembled masses. The talk was of murder, and how to make Lincoln Point safe again.

As I passed Mabel and Jim Quinlan, I overheard snippets of Jim’s story. He was recounting the tale we’d heard at the crafts fair, of his and Mabel’s being in the vicinity of Tippi Wyatt’s body the very night she was murdered. That made three of us who seemed to care about Tippi, the stranger who was the first murder victim in the city in more than a year. I couldn’t help be sad that, if I understood correctly, Tippi Wyatt’s search for her child had led to her death.

“Thinking of running for council, Geraldine?” Because it was Postmaster Brian Cooney, creeping up behind me, who asked this question, the tone was not light and friendly, but belligerent, as if the speaker was presenting a dare or a threat.

“Oh, are you, too?” I asked him. Why not let him think I had a position on Lincoln Point development that he might care about? He gave me a pouty frown and moved on. This was the man who called himself Mr. Puppeteer at our fairs and holiday parties. I made a mental note to check out his show sometime to be sure it was suitable for children and not a reenacted horror story.

I looked around for a seat, greeting friends as I walked through the crowd. There was Susan Giles in a white off-the-shoulder blouse. I waved to Gene and Judy, who ran the dry-cleaning establishment; Sadie, who’d been scooping ice cream on Springfield Boulevard since I was a child; Carol and George from the coffee shop; Debbie Sheridan (Chuck Reed’s new girlfriend, apparently) from the ceramics shop and restaurant.

Jack Wilson, his sister, and best friend, Karen (maybe now an official assistant?), sat in the first row in front of the stage, surrounded by a phalanx of adoring young people who looked like they’d torn off their
I LOVE JACK WILSON
buttons just before they entered the hall, in order to seem nonpartisan.

If anyone asked, it would be easier to list the people who were not here. Beverly was home resting, I hoped. Maddie’s visit had put an extra strain on her, as much as they loved being together. Linda was understandably among the missing, as were her two ex-husbands, probably for different reasons.

In a far corner by the stage, I saw Just Eddie, leaning against the wall. I wondered if he’d been hired to work tonight. I also wondered how soon he’d be in jail.

“Gerry, Gerry, over here.” Betty Fine beckoned me to an empty seat next to her and her granddaughter, Lucy (now in her thirties, and not the best student I’d encountered in my career at Abraham Lincoln High).

“Do you usually come to these meetings?” I asked Betty, settling beside her.

Betty had availed herself of the free coffee, which attacked my nostrils. I was sorry I’d offered to hold it for her while she struggled to get a tissue from her purse.

“Oh, no, and I doubt this is typical. This is my first, and I see lots of my neighbors who’ve never been, either. We’re all worried about our safety.”

The council members, six men and one woman, sat in a row on the stage behind a podium.
They had a lot to deal with tonight
, I thought,
including the discomfort of their obligatory suits and ties
.

At a few minutes past eight, Mayor Roberts (in an older gentleman’s formal Western wear) strode to the podium, adjusted the mike, and called the meeting to order with the sound of wood on wood, the bang of a gavel.

“My, my,” he said, stroking his bolo tie. “How nice to see so many people at this special meeting. I hope you’ll all consider coming back to our regular meetings, which are held every second and fourth Tuesdays.”

I detected a ring of insincerity. I would have bet that the council would never get any work done with this many people present on a regular basis, and preferred to work uninterrupted. Minutes of meetings were available in the library and archived on the city’s website. In the last couple of years, meetings were broadcast on our local cable channel. I doubted many citizens even knew what number that channel was (I knew only because I’d watched my own appearance last spring, for a feature about the library’s literacy program).

Sad to say, unless something affected us or our pocketbooks directly, most of us paid no attention to the work involved in the day-to-day operations for even a small city like Lincoln Point. Not many became passionate about library policy, public art, bicycle and pedestrian lane markings, transportation issues, or the upkeep of our parks. Something told me the politicians preferred it this way.

Roberts addressed the crowd in a somber voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I’d like to call for a moment of silence for one of our fine citizens, a well-known and respected Lincoln Point businessman, and a worthy candidate for public office, Dudley Crane. Let us pray that he may rest in peace.”

The hall fell silent. I used part of my time to pray for peace for Tippi Wyatt also.

“Thank you, everyone. We extend our sympathies to the Crane family. They tell me that that they will let us know as soon as possible when memorial services will be held.” (When the police released his body, I guessed.) Roberts had resumed his official tone, and the moment was over.

“Crane was a cheat,” I heard behind me. Not so loud as to be disruptive, but rather timed to coincide with the rustle of clothing and throat clearing that immediately followed the period of silence. Cooney, again. I remembered hearing that he was unhappy with how Crane dealt with his mother’s estate. Cooney claimed Dudley skimmed off the top a good deal more than the percentage due him under their contract. I hoped none of Dudley’s relatives (only a daughter who lived in Seattle with her family), if they were present, were within earshot.

Roberts banged his gavel. “As you know, this is a special meeting to discuss the single, previously contested seat on the city council. We’re not in regular session, so we can dispense with the formality of time limits, and so on. And you won’t need to fill out the little blue cards before you can speak.” Here, Roberts, the six council members behind him, and a smattering of the audience laughed. An in-joke for the more civic-minded among us, who’d attended meetings before and knew the protocol.

“I wonder what that means,” Betty whispered to me. I shrugged my shoulders, not wanting to distract anyone who would mind missing a word of Roberts’s speech.

“This is a critical time for our fair city”—I couldn’t believe a twenty-first-century politician still used that phrase—“a turning point as far as our growth and development as a community.”

We all knew at least that much. The city council appointed the planning commission, who formulated and recommended plans for the city, especially its physical development. They also selected a downtown committee, which oversaw outreach to the business community. The council had great power, through its appointees, to regulate growth and economic opportunities in Lincoln Point.

Among Crane’s supporters, there was no clear second-in-command who might step up. If Jack Wilson ran unopposed, Crane’s proposals would never see the light of day.