No wonder the hulk had looked familiar. I’d never met him in person but he looked enough like the grainy newspaper photos I’d seen of him. I knew his interests extended far beyond our town and he wasn’t one to be strolling around Lincoln Point eating Willie’s bagels, or even greeting its citizens when he offered his home for a charity tour.
I hoped my immediate table partners weren’t aware that my thoughts were elsewhere. I did pick up on an enjoyable thread that included the girls and their hobbies, plus teasing about their names.
“Imagine a name like Taylor,” Henry said. “It’s an occupation. And her parents are my daughter, Kay, and my son-in-law, Bill.”
“And Madison is an avenue in Manhattan,” I said. “Her parents are my son, Richard, and my daughter-in-law, Mary Lou.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Maddie said. Taylor gave her an obliging smile and a thumbs-up.
Maddie had a new inventory of computer jokes, thanks to her e-mail correspondence with Doug. We limited her to one per twenty minutes, which she deemed unfair.
I almost hated to leave such pleasant company, but I had a couple more things to accomplish on what was probably my last night at the Duns Scotus. Unless the San Francisco Police Department, on the recommendation of the Lincoln Point Police Department, called me back for my expert advice.
As we broke up, Maddie gave us one more laugh. “What did the computer say as it was leaving the party?” she asked.
We shook our heads. “I’ll bite,” Henry, the good sport, said.
“Thanks for the memory,” she answered.
We rolled our eyes and said good night.
As I’d anticipated, Maddie got to use what should have been Rosie’s bed. On the writing desk was an unopened box of candy. I’d first noticed it this morning and assumed it was sent on Friday evening to Rosie by David or whoever might be pretending to be David. Like my Wednesday-night crafters, I’d had my doubts about the origin of the presents. After last night’s episode, I no longer had doubts, but simply a question about who had sent the gifts.
Other than the candy, there was no sign that Rosie had been my roommate. On a whim, I picked up the box and turned it over. The sticker on the bottom identified it as sold at the hotel gift shop. I stuffed the box in my tote for further consideration.
I felt I’d let Rosie down. She’d counted on me to support her in her reunion with David. I wasn’t sure what I could have done to make the weekend turn out differently, but I had that feeling nonetheless. I’d also been enjoying myself with Henry and the girls and former students who flattered me, while Rosie was probably depressed and frightened out of her mind somewhere. I wished I knew where.
I needed to get serious about this investigation and do better for my friend.
Friends, in fact, were the last thing Maddie talked about tonight.
Maddie always referred to Devyn, her classmate at her old school in Los Angeles, as her BFF, her “best friend forever.”
“I think Taylor could be my BFF, too,” she told me, her voice sleepy. “Do you think Henry could be yours?”
The light in the room was too dim for me to be able to tell from her expression whether she was serious, teasing, neutral, or talking in her sleep.
I thought back to Maddie’s shorthand lesson and pulled out an appropriate response.
“GGN,” I said.
What a terrific grandmother I was. I waited until Maddie was asleep, then slipped out of the room. I wished I had something like the pink-and-white baby monitor I used when she was little. Once again I tugged on the door handle three times to be sure the door was locked, hoping that would count as “good grandmother.”
I took the elevator to the lobby floor and walked through an elaborate junglelike area with a small tile footbridge across a stream that was generated by a waterfall. I hoped the system worked with recycled water in our drought-threatened state. On either side of the tile bridge were oversize houseplants and atrium-friendly trees. Large, leafy ficus and ferns lined the ends of the walkway and arched over the short stairway at the point nearest the front desk.
The registration desk had more clerks than customers at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. I saw no sign that the hotel was any different for the loss of its chief engineer. In fact, many of the staff were gathered at the concierge’s desk enjoying a laugh. In the group were several uniformed men whom we used to call bellboys and two or three others in the gray uniform I’d seen on Ben last night at the cocktail party.
It never seemed the right time and place to call Skip, but I needed to know what if any of the facts of David Bridges’s death were known to the public. I moved to an alcove off the lobby, one that formerly held a bank of pay phones, and a place I had every right to occupy, so there’d be no hint of guilt in my voice. I leaned against the counter, took out my cell phone, and speed dialed Skip. It was late, but I reasoned that cops were always on the job, protecting and serving.
“Aunt Gerry,” said my nephew with caller ID. (At least that told me he chose to speak to me.)
“I hope I didn’t wake you, dear.” I used my “remember all the times I baked you cookies” voice.
“No, no, dear. I was just going to call you and give you an update on all my cases, as I do for my other fellow sworn police officers.”
“No need to be sarcastic.”
“Where are you?” Skip asked.
My dime, as we used to say. My questions. “I need to know what you’ve released about David Bridges’s death.”
“Are you still at the hotel?”
None of the old rules seemed to work anymore. “Yes, I’m still at the Duns Scotus with the reunion class and it’s very awkward not knowing how much information is public.”
“Aren’t all the festivities over?”
Good point. “There’s breakfast tomorrow.”
“Ha.”
After years of teaching adolescents, and raising one, I had a large inventory of tones of voice. I now brought up the rhythm that was the equivalent of stamping my foot. “I need to know, Skip.”
“Okay. I was going to call you first thing in the morning anyway. We’ve been holding off on releasing cause of death. I gave you that heads-up only because I thought Rosie Norman was with you at the groundbreaking.”
“So everyone now knows that David was murdered?” I’d lowered my voice so much that I had to repeat the question to Skip.
“They will by morning. It’ll be in all the papers, I’m assuming.”
“And it’s your case?”
“Mostly. We’re now certain the crime scene was here in Lincoln Point, but Bridges worked in San Francisco and spent his last night there, and he lived in South San Francisco, which is a whole other police department from SFPD. But yes, it’s our case.”
It sounded like a complicated problem of jurisdiction. I wasn’t sure why it mattered, except that if Lincoln Point had no responsibility to investigate, it would be harder to obtain information I needed to help clear Rosie. Skip was right; when a good friend was suspected of murder, I did have a twisted notion that I was part of the LPPD, with the associated right to enter a taped-off area, for example.
“And Rosie?”
“You tell me.”
“I have no idea, Skip. Honestly.”
“I believe you, for some reason. I guess she’s in the wind.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Let’s just say the less cooperative she is, the more guilty she looks.”
“I have things to share with you,” I said, mentally trying to decide how much.
“Me, too.”
“Really? Are you going to be in your office tomorrow?” I asked.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. In fact, it’s almost tomorrow now.”
“I’ll find you,” I said.
I hung up, wishing I were there now to hear what it was Skip had to share. I was frustrated about my own lack of progress. I’d hoped to learn something I could take to Skip that would exonerate Rosie. I thought of the tiny, gold-rimmed mirror, which I’d hidden under my nightgown in the drawer upstairs. So far, all I had for my trouble was a piece of evidence that made it seem likely that Rosie had gone back to David’s room later last night.