“I take the cart every day to the basement and we sort out the laundry and replace the little bottles and the other things for the bathroom, and throw away the rubbish.”

I didn’t think I could take another dead end. “That’s it?”

Marina nodded. “Yes, every day. But on Saturday a woman came by while I was outside that room on the fifth floor and she sees the little dollhouse.”

“What did she look like?”

“Very small, with dark hair. And she had a patch over one eye.” Marina covered her own right eye with her hand to illustrate.

A petite brunette with a patch on her eye. How many of those do you see in a day?

“What did the lady want?” I asked, nearly choking from holding my breath.

“She wanted to take the dollhouse. She said it was hers and she threw it away by mistake.” Marina appeared to have a moment of realization. She gasped. “Oh, I’m sorry, missus, I let her take it. Was that a wrong thing to do? Was it yours?”

“Yes, but don’t worry about it.”

Marina seemed unduly upset. “You think I took the money, but I didn’t take it, the money, I swear.”

“She offered you money?”

“Yes, she had money for me, but I said no, it was hers in the first place. Now I see it wasn’t hers. You won’t tell my boss?”

“Of course not, Marina. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve been a huge help to me. Can you answer just one more question?”

“Yes, I try.”

“Do you remember what time it was on Saturday that the woman with the patch on her eye came by?”

Marina smiled and nodded. This one was going to be easy. “I come on for my shift at seven o’clock in the morning and I have my first break at quarter to ten. The lady came just before my break.”

Maddie was taking no chances on my remembering the times. I watched her write them down on the edge of one of the San Francisco tour leaflets. I saw Sally Baxter, Girl Reporter, added to her résumé.

“Thank you so much, Marina.” I reached into my tote. “I have another cable car. Maybe you have a child or a friend who might like it?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Marina not to leave town since she might be called to testify in a murder trial.

We stayed on the couch for a while after Marina left. I called upon my usual hand-waving techniques to explain to Maddie what we’d just learned-that a woman in Rosie’s high school class took the broken locker scene from the hotel room and put it where the man was who had passed away, so it would look like Rosie was guilty.

“A woman with an eye patch framed Mrs. Norman?”

“That’s another way to say it, yes.”

I reminded myself that I couldn’t infer much more-that most likely it was Cheryl who planted the scene and then pointed the police in its direction to frame Rosie. It didn’t mean it was she who had killed David. She was probably outside room five sixty-eight in the first place in order to plant something that would further incriminate Rosie. Seeing the locker room in Marina’s cart must have been serendipity.

Her motivation didn’t have to be to cover up her own guilt, but simply to carry out her vendetta against her competition. Why the beautiful, rich Cheryl Mellace would consider Rosie Norman a threat was beyond me.

I’d quickly worked out the time line in my head. The window for David’s death was between four in the morning and seven thirty when his body was discovered. Cheryl could have done the deed on the early side and still had plenty of time to come back to the Duns Scotus to retrieve the locker room scene.

Now that I thought of it, I’d seen Cheryl coming into the Duns Scotus garage around eight that morning as Maddie and I were leaving. Why else would she have been reentering the hotel? In my mind, I heard her defense attorney ticking off the possible reasons.

Still, all in all, the whole exercise allowed me to keep Cheryl on my list of suspects.

Chapter 21

Neither of us wanted to leave San Francisco. On our way from downtown to the bay and back we’d seen a wide variety of architectural choices-Victorian houses, art deco office buildings, and a few modern structures. The international flavor was apparent in the different ethnic groups staying at the hotel, and the many languages we heard at Ghirardelli Square, rivaling what we might have heard on a world cruise.

Most of the time, I loved living in our small, Abraham Lincoln-obsessed town (every day-care child started out learning that he was the tallest president in history, and it took off from there), but once in a while I needed a break and our trips to San Francisco had served the purpose. It wasn’t the city’s fault that the reunion weekend had been marred by tragedy.

So, it was with some reluctance that Maddie and I decided to go home where we could spread out the printouts and talk in private. Using words like “fraud,” “murder,” and “payola” in a public place seemed unnecessarily awkward.

Maddie followed her recently established “hot day in Lincoln Point” routine: as soon as we got in the door, she pushed the button to retract the atrium skylight. She was so enamored of the technology, I feared I’d have to rein her in from opening my house to the cold and rain come the winter (such as it was in this part of the state).

Once we were both in lighter clothing, Maddie nibbled on one of the brownies we’d taken from Ghirardelli’s, while I arranged the printouts on the dining room table.

“I can’t believe you’re hungry,” I said.

“I didn’t eat all my sundae.”

“You mean you didn’t lick the bowl?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sheets of paper filled with charts and numbers were my least favorite thing to read, let alone study. My need to procrastinate was so great that I ate a snack of crackers and cheese myself.

Finally, we settled ourselves side by side at the table, Maddie perched on a stool so she could see the whole area. It had been a while since I’d had a glance at Skip’s copy of the material. He’d highlighted areas of interest, which made it easier to focus. We were starting from scratch.

I started with the headings on the columns. At the top of each sheet was the designation RFP Summary, followed by the name of the project.

At the bottom of each page was a boilerplate statement:

Reference numbers are to documents on file, specifying timeline for job completion. Proposals will be evaluated based on previous experience with similar projects, quality of previous work, time to completion, and cost. Scores will be assigned accordingly and the bidder with the highest score will be the awardee.

I also noted, in fine print, a statement advising vendors that they could appeal a decision within fifteen days of notification of rejection. I wondered if anyone had ever taken advantage of that right, especially Callahan and Savage.

Maddie and I each picked up a page for a closer look and read together, half out loud, half to ourselves. My first sheet was for an equipment upgrade on the heating and cooling system at the Duns Scotus in 2006. The RFP Issue Date was listed as February 6, 2006. The bids were submitted two months later.

Maddie showed me a similar breakdown on her sheet, with an RFP going out on June 13, 2005, and bids coming in three months later. There were seven bidding companies, with Mellace’s bid the second highest. Once again, Mellace had an asterisk next to its name.

“We’ve known this all along,” I said to Maddie (and myself), dejected.

Skip had processed all this information already, and Barry had as much as confessed these irregularities. I’d been hoping that with a closer look, I’d be able to come up with more, something that tied David directly to fraud. Barry had mentioned an upcoming major remodeling project for the Duns Scotus, but either the RFP for that hadn’t gone out or the printouts we had were simply outdated.