Mix-up in Miniature by Margaret Grace Page B

at breakfast.
    I pulled a paper towel off the roll and wet it, ready to kneel down and help clean up the spill.
    “Please, please, please, Grandma.”
    Maddie, hiding tears, I felt, buried her head in my chest. My first thought was how incredibly tall she’d gotten and how increasingly inadequate a counselor I’d be as she got older. But that wasn’t the immediate problem.
    “Maddie, please tell me what’s wrong. I know something is bothering you. Maybe I can help.”
    She sniffed a few more times, then broke away. “Grandma, I promise I’ll tell you, but can we please just wait until after school?”
    It was a step in the right direction, if not great progress. Maddie had at least owned up to a problem. It broke my heart to think she’d been suffering with it for even a day.
    “I’ll wait, but only if you answer a couple of questions,” I said.
    I heard her weak “Okay.”
    I took a breath. “Is anyone sick? You, your mom, your dad?” I thought a minute and threw in Beverly just in case.
    “Uh-uh. No one in our family is sick.”
    Maddie crossed her heart and held her right hand in the air.
    “Is anyone in trouble?” I didn’t have any idea how to make the question specific. Trouble with the law? Richard was about the straightest arrow I knew. Skip teased him about it when they were kids, and he teased him about it now. Mary Lou was a little more adventuresome, but not in the gamble-away-your-house or lose-your-family kind of way.
    Dum, ta da dum, ta da dum, ta da dum.
    My cell phone-cum-marching band, wired to the wall through its charger.
    Maddie pounced on it. “Don’t take it, okay? Let it go to voicemail.”
    “Your mom?”
    Maddie nodded, her eyes more soulful than when she’d sat on Santa’s lap, barely able to talk, and earnestly pleaded for a tricycle.
    I gave her a silent “Okay.” I’d made a promise. I hoped I wouldn’t regret keeping it.
    Buzzz. Buzzz.
    Maddie’s face collapsed into relief. “Grandma, can you get the door? I don’t want the oatmeal to burn.”
    She returned to the stove and stirred the oatmeal with a clean spoon. She knew I wouldn’t continue my probing in Henry’s presence, though I hadn’t ruled it out. I needed advice from an adult and Maddie’s parents were off limits, thanks to my rash promise.
    “We’re going to continue this as soon as you get home,” I said in my firmest voice. I hoped the hug that accompanied my admonishment didn’t detract from my position of authority.
    “Okay, okay, okay.”
    I opened the door to a smiling Henry, who bent down and gave me a kiss.
    “Nice,” I said. “Have you had breakfast?”
    “Not yet. I smell oatmeal, but I had something less healthy in mind, after we drop Maddie off.”
    “I like a man with a plan.”
    Henry sat and drank coffee while Maddie ate oatmeal and I pretended to be too full from dinner to have any.
    For Henry’s benefit, and as another chance to entice Maddie to action, I summarized my needs and failure at the computer. It still wasn’t clear to me why Maddie hadn’t been bombarding me with a million different things she could do for me on the computer, if I’d only let her skip school today.
    “I’m trying to find out if Varena Young put out a newsletter or something like that,” I said. “She’s listed on her publisher’s page, but there’s no information of a personal nature.”
    “Did Taylor finish the puzzle we started yesterday? The one with no straight edges?” Maddie asked Henry. A conversation ensued about the pros and cons of jigsaw puzzles online and in a box.
    I was free to go off mentally on my own, and I took the opportunity. I was sure Varena’s personal assistant, the stiff Ms. Overbee, knew her employer’s personal details. I made a note to ask her, but I didn’t hold out much hope of her cooperation. I needed a way to meet with her and Paige, the research assistant. Or if my lunch with Alicia went well, maybe all mysteries surrounding her mother’s death