Monster in Miniature (4 page)

“The victim is no one we know,” I told Maddie’s mother, Mary Lou. “And Maddie was nowhere near him.”

“These things happen, and I know she’s in good hands when it comes to the explanations and support you give her,” Mary Lou said. “I’m not at all worried.”

I was glad I didn’t have to speak to my son, the conservative parent who would keep his daughter locked in her room until she was thirty if he could get away with it. I attributed the peculiarities in Richard’s and Mary Lou’s parenting style to their chosen careers: Richard was an orthopedic surgeon; Mary Lou a professional artist holding to the ideals of her student days at Berkeley.

I thought Maddie was lucky to have both outlooks in her life.

 

 

“I wish I could go back,” Maddie said, once we were
comfortably seated on the couch. I’d put a mac and cheese casserole in the oven, on the off chance that we could have a normal dinner.

“Back to what, sweetheart?” I asked, though I had a good guess.

“Back to when we were in front of Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson’s house and I was sort of a little bit scared. Now Uncle Skip probably thinks I’m afraid and I don’t want to help him find out who shot the man.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Dreams die hard.

“There’s a whole police department in town to take care of that, sweetheart.” I tousled her curls. “Your job is to help me get dinner ready.”

Maddie rubbed her stomach and made a grimace, as if she’d been told to eat a helping of Swiss chard. “I’m not that hungry. I was hungry, but now I’m not.”

This was a first. I could see and feel my granddaughter’s struggle. Her desire to be grown-up and a partner in adult circumstances had come up against the fact that she was still a vulnerable eleven-year-old, greatly upset by matters of life and death.

“Would you like me to cancel the crafts meeting tonight? Everyone would understand. We could sit here and chat or watch one of your favorite movies. Whatever you like. I know it was rough this afternoon.”

Apparently my proposals were too boring under any circumstances and Maddie snapped to. “Nuh-uh. I’m not that scared.”

“Okay, then. We’ll go ahead as planned.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I hate it when people die like that man did, when it’s not because they’re sick or something.” She paused. “I don’t like them to get sick and die, either, like Grandpa did. But I guess it’s worse if someone hurts you?”

I wished she hadn’t made it a question.

My best response was to hold her and kiss her head. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that some things about life would never be comprehensible, no matter how old we got. Death, whether by suicide, murder, or what were called natural causes, was one of those things.

 

 

“Do you think Uncle Skip will need any computer help?”
she asked after putting away only a slightly smaller portion than usual of mac and cheese. “I already learned a lot more than I knew before school started.” I was glad to know the expensive after-school lessons her parents supported were paying off. “I heard Uncle Skip and the other officers say the man’s name. Oliver Halbert. I can Google him.”

We’d moved to the crafts room where a considerable amount of straightening up was needed before my friends arrived for a twice-weekly work session.

“If you’re so energetic, you can help clear this table so everyone will have enough room for her project.” I thought of offering a second ice cream serving of the day as an incentive, but I knew there was an excellent dessert coming with crafter Susan Giles.

“Well, someone has to figure out what happened to the man, right?” Maddie said. She held her palms open, as if to allow the burdens of the world to fall into them.

I sent a loud sigh in her direction. “Would you rather make the witches or the ghosts tonight?” I asked her.

“Okay, Grandma, I get it. Let’s not talk about the case right now.”

“And there’s really no need to bring anything up when the group gets here.”

“Bring what up? There’s nothing to bring up,” she said, singsong fashion, her winning grin filling her face. “If there was anything to bring up, I forgot it.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

I was comfortable with the decision that we should keep
to our Friday night routine as much as possible, in spite of the decidedly nonroutine afternoon. The arrival of my crafter friends, and the promise of a scrumptious dessert—an old Giles family recipe from the heart of the South—was sure to give both Maddie and me a welcome distraction.

Karen Striker, who looked ready to go into labor any minute, had chauffeured Mabel, aka the Bead Queen, our oldest member. Mabel Quinlan never met a miniature scene that didn’t profit from adding a few beads. As much as we teased her about it, her tray of beads, in all sizes and shapes, came in handy when one of us needed a long (about three-quarters of an inch) bead for a vase or a pile of tiny (less than one-sixteenth of an inch) beads for a bracelet to adorn a miniature dresser.

Karen had already made a beautiful shoebox nursery and was now working on her unborn daughter’s first two dollhouses. One was a plain, boxy, unshingled structure with chunky wood furniture, the other a classic Victorian with seven rooms on three floors, two large hallways, and an elegant foyer. The stairways alone had required the use of every tool and bottle of varnish Karen owned.

“This house she can really knock around and play with,” Karen explained, showing us a photo from a catalog of the finished house number one. “The Victorian is for a little later when she can appreciate the finer things.”

“She’ll be sewing mini draperies and bedspreads in no time,” Gail Musgrave said. A city councilwoman and a real estate broker, Gail wasn’t as regular at our meetings as any of us would have liked. We teased that she’d shown up tonight just for Susan Giles’s special cake.

“Whatever you do, Karen, don’t teach your daughter about kits,” said Linda Reed, the Martha Stewart of miniaturists, who made everything from scratch. Linda gave Maddie and me looks that said it was already too late for the two of us. Maddie was indeed following in my footsteps, preferring the fun of creating scenes with found objects to the discipline it took to craft upholstered furniture by hand, to use one example from Linda’s impressive résumé.

Karen had brought the pieces of the wraparound porch of her Victorian dollhouse to work on. Lovely as it was, in the last stages of delicate pink trimming, this evening the miniature porch brought to my mind only unpleasant images of a gunshot victim on the life-size porch belonging to the Fergusons.

I couldn’t help wondering about Sam and Lillian. What had they thought when they arrived home to a crime scene? Had they known Oliver Halbert? Did they have a clue why his body was found in the midst of their extravagant Halloween contest entry? I hoped Skip would share what he knew.

I looked over at Maddie; I was happy she seemed preoccupied with pieces of glow-in-the-dark green felt that would soon be witches’ faces.

“Where’s Susan?” Gail asked.

“You mean, where’s our pecan praline cake?” Mabel said.

We all nodded.

“She didn’t call, so I assume she’ll be here. It’s only eight twenty,” I said.

“This could be a tragedy,” Karen said. She rubbed her belly. “Baby Girl Striker is hungry for sweets.”

Apparently, even after consulting a shelf full of baby-name books, Karen and her husband hadn’t made their choice. Or they simply weren’t telling.

Gail pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll give her a call.”

“If all else fails, I have a new batch of ginger cookies,” I said.

“Of course you do,” Karen said with a hungry smile, walking over to the cookie jar. She helped herself to a handful of my locally famous staple and brought the container to the table. “You saved my life.”

My friends all dug into the jar before I could assemble a civilized presentation on a platter. Crafters will not be kept waiting for dessert.

My kind of group, for more reasons than that.

 

 

When Maddie had come upon a materials list for
making tiny witches, she’d sweet-talked Colleen, who worked at Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop, into giving her a few of their small plastic tasting spoons. True to our respective approaches to making miniatures, while Linda painstakingly fashioned tiny rose petals from polymer clay, Maddie and I prepared to turn plastic spoons into witches. Over the years, Linda had learned to keep her tsk-tsking to a minimum. This evening she gave us a condescending smile instead. I gave her one back. It was all good-natured, however, and never affected our long-standing friendship.

Maddie spread six mini spoons on the table in front of her. The bowls of the spoons would serve as the bases for the witches’ faces; scraps of black and monster-green felt would be cut into shapes to make the hats and skirts; tooth-picks and bits of straw would be fashioned into brooms.

“I want a witch in every room, and one coming out the window like the ghost on Hanks Road,” Maddie said.

“Then we’d better get to work,” I said.

I didn’t know what I’d do without my two (most of the time) crafts evenings a week. On Wednesdays, we worked on a common project, which we eventually displayed at a miniatures show or donated to a charity raffle. The next show was in February, so (need I say) we were building a log cabin. Not just any log cabin would do, however—ours would be one Abe Lincoln could have called home, furnished with what were reputed to be his favorite books (the Bible and stories by Edgar Allan Poe) and foods (chicken fricassee and scalloped oysters). We’d divided up the tasks as usual, giving Linda the ones that took the most time and patience. Chunky as they were, Linda’s fingers could fashion the tiniest bow, the most delicate leaf, or a plate of scalloped oysters.

On Fridays, we each focused on a project of our own. Both formats provided the opportunity for unbeatable camaraderie as well as mutual technical help and consultations.

This Friday evening, my crafts room was a comforting, homey scene: Mabel, who was always a holiday ahead, glued multicolored beads onto a two-inch wooden turkey form to make its plume. Gail chatted about her daughter’s engagement while she cross-stitched a miniature pillow for a bridal shower room box. Linda abandoned her tiny roses and searched for an appropriate bead-cum-vase in Mabel’s tray. Karen, a bemused look on her face, held a paintbrush in one hand and a ginger cookie in the other.

We missed Susan, a marketing analyst for a cell phone company, and not just for her pecan praline pound cake. She was excellent company, now working on two miniature dorm rooms for her two nieces. She often indulged us by answering our cell phone questions without ever calling them dumb. Gail had left a message for her, but we’d had no response yet.

My crafter friends loved having Maddie participate. On rare occasions, someone might ask her to dish out dessert while we took a minute to bring up a more adult topic, but our conversation was usually kid-friendly, focusing on the intricacies of gluing one piece of material onto another or the latest in containers for organizing our out-of-control supply shelves.

No wonder everyone was surprised when it was Maddie who introduced an adult topic tonight.

“Did you know someone was shot on Sangamon River Road today?” she asked.

The gasps said no one had heard the news. I gave my granddaughter a look—“I thought we had a deal”—but she avoided eye contact with me. We’d have to settle this later.

“Someone was shot? On purpose?” Mabel asked.

“We’re not sure,” she said, as if she were the spokeschild of the LPPD. “His name was Oliver Halbert.” Maddie, now in her element, kept the women’s attention with the few details she knew. “He might have shot himself,” said the new expert on crime scenes. “We won’t know until Uncle Skip figures it all out.”

“Did you say Halbert?” Linda asked, reaching through her beehive hairdo to scratch her scalp. “The name is familiar. It’s not coming to me right now, but I know that name.”

“You know everyone’s names,” Karen said. It wasn’t too much of an exaggeration, since Linda had worked in every medical facility in Lincoln Point at one time or another, and now worked as a nurse in the sprawling, upscale Mary Todd nursing home.

“Everyone’s name, and their brother’s,” Gail said with a smile.

“Sick or healthy,” Karen chimed in.

“Wait,” Linda said, increasing the depth of the concentration lines on her forehead. “You said everyone and their brother.”

“You’re no slouch, Gail,” Mabel said, bypassing Linda’s remark. “You know everyone who’s ever bought a house.”

“Wait,” Linda repeated. “It’s coming to me.” She seemed to wave her hands over an imaginary crystal ball.

“Or everyone who ever had to deal with the city government,” Karen said, referring to Gail’s other persona on the Lincoln Point council.