Monster in Miniature (19 page)

“I think I get it. June is still in Chicago,” I’d said, making a grocery list with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. Tenderloin strips. Mushrooms. Sour cream. Egg noodles. The makings of beef stroganoff.

“Yeah, you know what Lincoln’s favorite dinner was?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Are we inviting him?”

“Rare steak. And he loved sweets. Bottom line: I’m in good company, and what my vegetarian girlfriend doesn’t know won’t hurt me.”

Thus, at about four o’clock I found myself carrying a red plastic basket down the aisle of the supermarket, Henry at my side, swinging a basket for his own items. The girls were at the front of the store where there was Wi-Fi and a large bowl of free Halloween candy. I was beginning to worry that by the time Halloween night came around, Lincoln Point would be completely out of sweets.

“What a coincidence,” Henry had said when I told him of my errand. “I need to pick up a few things, too.”

Henry’s car was parked closer to Sadie’s, so the four of us rode in it to the supermarket.

The whole scene was a little too domestic for me: a gray-haired couple and their grandchildren climbing down from an SUV, shopping together, commenting on the price of cherry tomatoes and asparagus and the advantages of paper over plastic.

Ken and I went on this kind of outing often, except we’d have divided up our list. We’d go our separate ways through the aisles and then meet at the checkout stand, as if we’d been on a scavenger hunt. He’d have been responsible for the heavy goods, like five-pound bags of flour or rice, and items that came in large cans and glass bottles. I’d have picked up the fruit and vegetables, dairy, and condiments.

“You don’t trust me to choose bananas,” he might say. “That’s why you always get the produce.” He was right. He ate bananas when they were greener than the felt carpeting in my dollhouse attic; I liked them soft, just this side of banana bread.

The supermarket was no place for tearing up, but I seemed to be worse than ever at dealing with my memories. I knew the great unknown that had reared itself through the cartons in the garage was partly responsible for this resurgence of melancholy and self-pity.

I hadn’t told anyone about the photographs or the little girl’s clothing I’d found in Ken’s Bronx box. I’d all but promised Beverly I’d tell her what was “wrong.” I knew Henry and Skip were standing by, ready to listen and to help. Henry had done me a great service, lending his back to the task of getting the boxes down from the shelves, with no expectations of satisfying his curiosity. I couldn’t ask for better family and friends. Even the one begging me to solve her brother’s murder.

No matter what, I was going to tear open the rest of the boxes as soon as possible, and then get to the bottom of the Bronx issue and anything else that surprised me. That was one thing I could take control of, even if I couldn’t solve a murder single-handedly.

For now, I focused on selecting the freshest mushrooms in the bin and checking the expiration date on the tub of sour cream. There was nothing wrong with a little homey companionship around the little (if not miniature) things in life.

“Why don’t you and Taylor join us for dinner?” I asked Henry. “Kay and Bill, too, if they’re not busy.”

Henry’s smile was endearing, his eyes as wide as Maddie’s when a new flavor of ice cream appeared in Sadie’s freezer case. He whipped out his cell phone.

“Kay?” he said after a few seconds. “I’ve got some good news.”

I took that as a “yes.”

 

 

We picked up the girls at the front of the store. They were
busy with their laptops, the area around them full of wrappers from chocolate candy rolls. In my day we were lucky if the store had a gumball machine or a stationary rocking horse for entertainment while our parents shopped. Free candy was out of the question and Wi-Fi hadn’t been conceived.

“A party for dinner,” Maddie said, as we left the store. She’d reverted to her old habit of waving her arms when she was excited. If she’d been seated, she’d have been kicking her legs, also.

From the backseat of Henry’s SUV, Maddie called her parents and left a message that she missed them, but she was having the best day ever. She called Beverly and invited her, too. “We’re having beef,” she’d said, as if that were important to her. I knew what was important to my granddaughter was that our house would be filled with people she loved and that maybe her grandmother would return to her normal, cheery mood.

Maddie and Taylor were engaged in animated conversation over a movie that featured a futuristic cat. Henry was animated also, swinging by a couple of side streets (skipping Sangamon River Road) on the way back to Sadie’s to collect my car, to see what was new by way of Halloween decorations.

Maddie cheered at an enormous fake snow globe containing a large, stiff ghost with a silly smile on its face. I suspected batteries were involved as white flakes fell from the top of the globe and then back up again in a never-ending snowstorm. Taylor counted the number of black cats she saw and announced the total every few minutes. Henry joined in when he spied one, and Maddie clapped every time.

I wondered at the extent of my crabbiness lately, if a simple dinner invitation could evoke this celebratory mood.

We turned down Gettysburg Boulevard, a wide street with tracts of homes on either side. The first house gave Taylor what she was waiting for.

“There’s the fiftieth black cat,” Taylor said, as her grandfather slowed down for a good look. Then she shrieked, “Gross!” and covered her eyes.

We followed her pointing finger to an olive green house that looked like many of the other houses on the street, except for the body hanging from it.

For a minute I thought the woman might be real. A life-size mannequin dressed in a black evening gown hung from the tip of the A-frame roof. Her arms dangled; her dark hair fell to her shoulders. She swung freely, her fancy jeweled slippers catching the light from the setting sun. From the expression on her face she might have been happily waiting for her next dance partner. She seemed oblivious to the six or seven bats hanging around her shoulders.

I felt dizzy and glad I was seated as the image of the real, murdered Oliver Halbert came to my mind. Since our citizens were oblivious to good taste, I thought of asking the Lincoln Point city council to issue a directive to homeowners to remove all such so-called decorations from their lawns in deference to the recent murder. I didn’t mind a jack-o’lantern or two, but I found simulated murder scenes particularly offensive this year. My own newly generated party mood was now dissipating at a rapid pace.

If this mood lasted beyond the next traffic light, I’d call Councilwoman Gail Musgrave. As a member of our crafts group, Gail was subject to our requests now and then. We tried to limit our solicitations to matters of importance. In my present state, I though my complaint was justified.

Henry caught my expression and put his hand on my shoulder in a calming gesture.

It was a good feeling.

I wondered what Skip would think when he saw that our
meeting and the dinner I’d promised him had turned into a party. When we spoke on the phone and set up his visit for this evening, the implication was that we’d share information on Oliver Halbert’s murder case.

By now he’d probably interviewed Kayla, but I hadn’t told him about my visit with Lillian Ferguson or the goon incident at Oliver’s apartment. I thought I might leave out the part with the gun. It hadn’t been used, or even shown, after all; I’d tripped and gone unconscious all on my own.

Fortunately, I was pretty good at scheming and figured out a way to have the best of both worlds—a meeting with Skip plus the party everyone seemed to be dying for.

I had a plan.

Once we were home, I made a call to Skip from inside the walk-in closet in my bedroom, where not even Maddie would trespass.

“You want to meet where?” he asked, in a “have you lost it?” tone.

“See you in ten,” I said.

 

 

In the supermarket, Henry had insisted on adding an
other package of beef tips and putting them in his own basket. Now he offered to help prepare the main dish, as I knew he would. Henry loved to cook and, in fact, I had a feeling the stroganoff would be much better in his hands.

I handed him an apron and made sure he was engrossed in browning the strips of beef. The girls had already trotted off to Maddie’s room.

“I forgot something and have to run out for a minute. Will you be okay here for a short time?” I asked Henry.

“Sure,” he said. “What are we missing?”

I paused. “Milk,” I said, a beat too late.

Henry leaned over and whispered to me. “I’ll toss out whatever that white stuff is in the fridge.”

“Thanks.” I patted him on the back. Our second physical gesture of the afternoon. (Just as well that I had no time to dwell on why that deserved to be noted.)

I could hear Taylor’s squealing laughter through Maddie’s slightly open window as I backed out of my garage and drove off down the street to not buy milk.

 

 

The unmarked LPPD sedan was parked in the front row
of cars at the convenience store on Springfield Boulevard, just across from the high school. Skip exited his car as I pulled up and parked next to him. If either of us popped a trunk, the moment would have been perfect for the crucial drug-bust scene in a DEA movie.

Skip joined me in the Saturn. He sat on the passenger seat of my car rolling a Styrofoam cup half filled with coffee slowly between his hands.

“This is a far cry from what Seward’s Folly serves,” he said.

“We have a lot of business to take care of, and a crowd is about to descend on my house,” I said. I gave him a quick rundown of how the party got started and who would be there.

“Okay, you first,” he said.

I began with the contradiction between Lillian’s alibi for her twins and Kayla’s statements this morning.

“You interviewed Mrs. Ferguson?” Skip asked.

I twisted my wrist in a “so-so” fashion. “I wouldn’t call it an interview. More like a visit to check on her after the awful scene on her porch.”

Skip shook his head. “Such a good neighbor.”

“Did you talk to Kayla?” I asked.

Another shake of his russet head. “She split for the day shortly after her shift ended at noon. We’re trying to locate her. No one else in the shop seems to remember the two men together.”

“That’s disappointing. Maybe Kayla is just bored with her job and was trying to impress her customers,” I said. I’d already described the EMTs and what I thought was a singles party in the making.

“It happens. We’ll catch up with her on Tuesday when she’s back to work, if not before.”

“I was in Oliver’s apartment,” I said. Funny how quickly I could get to a point with simple, declarative sentences when severely pressed for time.

“Okay,” Skip said, drawing out the first syllable.

“Susan gave me a key,” I added. “She wanted me to go in and look around.”

“In case the dumb cops didn’t do their job.”

“No, no.” I paused and smiled. “Well, yes. But she also wanted me to take back a room box she’d made for him, before the landlord went in and packed everything up.”

“We’re finished there. Why doesn’t Susan pack it up?”

“Hard to explain,” I said, thinking of how difficult it had been for me to clear our home of Ken’s things. There was still a lot of Ken in our Eichler—I wore his pajamas and shirts on occasion and used many of his special desk accessories.

After a little teasing—“Did you find the crucial piece of evidence we missed?” Skip had asked—I told Skip about the other visitors to Oliver’s bachelor pad, mentally cringing at what his response would be.

“I’m fairly sure one of them was Patrick Lynch.”

Skip’s grunt-like breath was louder than I expected. “Do you like putting yourself in danger, Aunt Gerry? Is there—?”

“Skip, we don’t have time for this right now. Do you have an idea who the men were from my descriptions?”

He nodded. “Lynch, most likely. And the other one was probably Crowley. They’re like Mutt and Jeff. One tall and one short, right?”

I wasn’t completely convinced. “The shorter one behaved in a subservient manner. From what you’ve told me, I’d expect Lynch to treat Max Crowley as a peer.”

“First, Lynch doesn’t have any peers. He thinks he’s above everyone and untouchable. And by taking Crowley on after the scandal, he’s making him beholden.”

“But they were both involved in the scandal.”

“Private businessmen can get away with more than city officials can.”

I thought of asking, “How come?” but there was only the slimmest of chances that I’d ever understand.

“They were looking for something. Seriously,” I said, thinking about the butt of the gun protruding from Max Crowley’s belt.