Free Murder in Miniature by Margaret Grace Page B

of the sandpaper rash that seemed to start it all. For the rest of the reading world, scarlet fever was the disease that took the beloved young Beth, in Little Women . For the Porter family, it was reality, not fiction.
    Even now, every time Beverly was fatigued or complained of joint pain, I saw it as a sign of the disease, though she herself played it down. I’d suggested an activity closer to home than Oakland, but we both knew Maddie had her heart set on a return to the reptile room.
    “Don’t worry,” Beverly said. “I’m not going to die on you.”
    I hoped not.
     
    “A Ramona book,” Maddie said when I asked her reading choice for the night.
    We curled up on the bed in her father’s room and delved into the boisterous, slightly rebellious Ramona Quimby’s first day of a new school year. Quite a switch from the little girl whose daytime vocabulary included phrases like chick magnet and fifteen grand . I remembered the same back-and-forth behavior from Richard at that age. One moment he was The Too-Big-Now Kid, refusing to kiss his parents in front of his friends; the next he was hanging on to me or wanting one of us to stay by his bed until he fell asleep.
    A girl after her English teacher grandmother’s heart, Maddie had filled an entire tote bag with books for her trip. I was glad to see that the number of knock-knock joke books was down from last year.
    My mind was only partly on Ramona’s nemesis, Yard Ape, and whether he would dip her pigtails in the inkwell, or whatever the modern-day version was. (Dunking her cell phone into an oversize drink cup? Rubbing her iPod in a handful of neon green gunk?)
    Most of my attention was on Linda’s plight. I never thought of myself as having a great imagination. I preferred to enjoy other people’s stories and poems. Yet now my brain seemed to be working overtime, creating links between Jason’s alleged burglary and Linda’s Friday evening/Saturday morning trouble.
    What if Jason’s mentor, as Skip called him, had abducted Linda and left her at that pay phone? A possible reason eluded me, but my number-one candidate wore an elaborate belt buckle and cowboy boots and drove a red sports car probably only 2 percent his, 98 percent some creditor’s. On the other hand, I couldn’t guess why Chuck would behave so dramatically with Linda. He seemed happy enough just to hassle her in the usual ways.
    At eleven o’clock the phone by my bed rang. Linda’s home phone number showed in my little ID box. I grabbed the receiver before the noise could wake Maddie, I hoped.
    Once again I heard a voice in trouble. “The police think Jason robbed Crane’s,” Linda said.
    I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I wasn’t surprised. “That’s awful, Linda. Did they arrest him?”
    “Absolutely not,” she said, sounding as if that were the most preposterous idea she’d heard since someone suggested she spray paint her fine furniture pieces. “He’s right here. In bed.”
    I bit my lip and rolled my eyes to the ceiling, tempted to hang up and unplug my phone. Instead, my pushover personality kicked in. “Do you want to come by for coffee?”
    “Okay, if you want me to.” That was Linda, making the whole thing my idea.
    “Of course,” I said.
    It wasn’t two in the morning at least, and it wasn’t from a pay phone in the hinterlands. And I didn’t even have to leave my home.
    Things were looking up.

Chapter 7
    Crafts fair weekends always tired me out, even when all I had to worry about was smiling a lot, and keeping inventory on hand and my thermos filled. This weekend was over the top, however, with two nearly sleepless nights and the added responsibility of making sure Maddie was taken care of, and—very important—that she was spared the drama in the lives of her grandmother’s friends.
    At just after midnight, I poured second cups of coffee for Linda and me. We sat in the atrium, the heart of the house, where I kept a cozy arrangement of two chairs and a