Free Murder in Miniature by Margaret Grace

fence between us. Eichler neighborhoods tended to be friendlier than most California tracts and subdivisions, as if sharing the same unique architecture bonded us all with the master builder, Joseph Eichler. “Don’t you have a date tonight, Skip?” June asked.
    “The night is young,” Skip said, and gave her a wink.
    “I’m here all night, Officer,” June said, and disappeared into her yard, probably blush red at her boldness. Beverly and I shared a glance, both wishing we knew more about Skip’s late-night adventures, both looking forward to the day when he brought someone home more than once. Beverly reminded him often that June, a tech writer at one of the few surviving dot-coms in Silicon Valley, was cute and single. We’d stopped inviting June to dinner for Skip’s benefit, but I enjoyed the light flirtation they kept up.
    Skip had another way of putting an end to his mother’s and my nagging him to settle down. He’d turn it around and ask when we were going to date again. Enough said.
    Tonight there was another country to hear from, and Beverly and I could remain neutral.
    “June is pretty. Do you like her, Uncle Skip?” Maddie asked, just before squeezing half a meatball into her mouth. Leave it to the very young to come right out with it. She washed it all down with a long swallow of cola. Tomorrow night she’d have only milk to drink, I told myself.
    Dum dum dum-dum …strains of “Hail to the Chief,” from Skip’s cell phone. I wondered if he’d called himself somehow to avoid his first-cousin-once-removed’s question.
    Skip raised his finger in an excuse-me gesture and stepped onto the grass past the patio bricks. He rested his black-sneakered foot on one of a ring of stones that surrounded my birdbath. We heard nothing but uh-huhs on our end.
    “Gotta go,” Skip said, clicking his phone shut as he walked back toward us, in the direction of the house. “A break in a case.”
    “My son, the detective,” his proud mother said.
    “Is this about the murder?” I asked.
    “Or the jewelry-store robbery?” Beverly asked.
    “Was there a shoot-out?” Maddie wanted to know.
    Skip laughed at the enthusiasm his call aroused. He rubbed Maddie’s red curls. “Maybe there’ll be another cop in the family,” he said. Her response was a wide grin. As much as I appreciated the law-enforcement profession, I’d been picturing Maddie as a doctor, like her father, or an artist, like her mother. If she was enamored of law enforcement, she could be a Supreme Court justice, but not patrolling the streets with a baton and gun, thank you. Not to worry, if she was like most kids, many ideas would come and go in the next few years.
    “I can’t say much right now,” Skip said.
    “I heard they took only the cash and some of the less expensive pieces,” Beverly said, pursuing the jewelry track. “Crane is lucky they left the good stuff, though they did get away with something like fifteen thousand dollars.”
    “Wow, fifteen grand.” Maddie whistled through a (happily) food-free mouth. “Any suspects?”
    Another resolution: to monitor my granddaughter’s television viewing more closely.
    Skip caught my eye, and addressed me instead of his tiny interrogator. “Maybe a suspect.” When he saw that Beverly and Maddie had left the table, distracted by a visit from June’s cat (not needing a crate to overcome the fence), he leaned over and whispered, “Well, you’ll find this out soon enough, Aunt Gerry. We think Jason Reed was involved.”
    A ripple went through me and the whole backyard shifted. “Jason? Involved in the murder?” I pointed to Skip’s cell phone, as if a corpse lay there on the touch pad.
    “No, no. Not in the murder. In the burglary.” Skip had his keys out.
    I sat back, took a deep breath and a long sip of red wine. Linda didn’t have a murder to worry about, at least. There had already been rumors about Jason and the burglary, but I’d been hoping they were just that,