Free Mourning In Miniature by Margaret Grace

now I wished I knew precisely how badly it had gone.
    Skip bent down to the floor on the side of his desk and picked up a brown paper bag. Too large for lunch. Big enough for evidence.
    I was on pins and needles as he reached into the bag. What he pulled out was one of the last things I would have guessed, right before “a flock of seagulls.”
    Skip took his time. Rosie’s locker room scene emerged from the bag, one tiny, gray locker at a time. I couldn’t blame Skip for playing out the drama.
    I didn’t remember so much red in the décor. I looked more closely. The scene had been trashed. I hate David had been written in red paint across three or four adjacent lockers. The tiny jersey with David’s old number thirty-six had been torn to shreds. There was “trash” everywhere, in the form of bits of cloth and paper and a deflated football.
    “Where did you get this?” I asked.
    “Can you identify the item?”
    I gulped. I felt as though I were in a witness box. Or on trial myself.
    “It’s Rosie’s,” I said. “I mean it looks like Rosie’s. What do you think it means?”
    “My question exactly.” He placed the room box on his desk. “Look carefully. It’s been dusted, as much as we could, considering where we found it, but you still shouldn’t touch it.”
    The most I could ever hope for from my nephew was that he would answer half the questions I asked. I didn’t push the issue, lest I inadvertently give away something that incriminated Rosie.
    I squinted at the ravaged scene. I reached into my tote for the magnifier I always carry and held it close. It took a great effort not to run my finger across the red paint. I grimaced as if it were real blood.
    I saw what had impressed Skip. The most striking addition to the scene was a bottle of poison. It seemed Rosie had taken a piece of white filter paper from the coffee system that every hotel room has these days and fashioned a small cylinder to resemble a bottle. She’d used the plastic packaging from a coffee pouch to shape a bottle top. Not too many people would have been able to identify this clever use of found objects, but it happened to be my specialty. The work had been done in a hurry (or in a state of torment) but was what my crafters group would have declared “cute.”
    Except for what was written on the bottle. Rosie—or someone else, I reminded myself—had drawn the shape of a label, with a skull and crossbones and the word poison .
    Lavana Rollins had been right when she called it a strange piece of evidence that I’d find “very interesting.”
    “Well?” Skip said. “What’s it supposed to be? Something other than a clue to her state of mind? And, by the way, there’s more potential evidence that I can’t tell you about right now.”
    I felt it necessary to explain the craft group’s Alasita project to Skip, hoping the context would work in Rosie’s favor. “Before the vandalism, it was like a prayer for a happy meeting between Rosie and David,” I said.
    “I’ve heard of that.”
    “You have?”
    “When June and I went to Mexico we saw a version of Alasita. They had parades and dancing and all, but the miniatures were nothing as fancy as this. They were more likely to do something rough or just buy a little key chain if they wanted a car or a house.” He rummaged around the back of his desk and extracted a wooden owl. “June got me this. To bring me wisdom.”
    “You said there was something else. More potential evidence? Not that this is evidence.”
    “Yeah, well, never mind that right now.”
    “But David wasn’t poisoned. Doesn’t that count?”
    “Gotta go, Aunt Gerry.”
    I managed a few more Q-and-As before he got serious about my leaving. The gentle pressure on my arm as he led me from his cubicle told me that it was time.
    If I ever needed an owl, it was now.
     
     
    I drove north on Springfield Boulevard toward my neighborhood, and it so happened, Henry’s also. Since this was the main street for