Mix-up in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “We sent Paige Taggart home, by the way,” Skip said.

  “I’m glad to hear that. Is there some new evidence that cleared her? Or a new, more viable suspect?”

  A not-too-subtle way of finding out how the official investigation was going. I liked to think that I was among the first to learn about new developments in a case that was dear to my heart, but sometimes I had to resort to sneaky ways to get the facts from my nephew.

  “We have fingerprint results. Or, you might say, no fingerprint results. The handle had been wiped clean. No surprise, really, but you never know. We can usually count on the stupidity of criminals.”

  “So you’ve said. Thanks for telling me about Paige,” I said, recognizing that I wouldn’t be getting more than that tonight.

  “I figure she’ll be knocking on your door any minute.”

  “It will more likely be you.”

  “Might be. I am kinda hungry. ’Night, Aunt Gerry.”

  I started to dial Henry, whom I hadn’t seen since midafternoon. He’d left a couple of quick messages, but I’d been tied up with either Maddie or Paige in crisis mode. It wasn’t a standard day when we didn’t check in with each other a few times and I missed talking to him.

  Rrring. Rrring. Rrring.

  An incoming call rang through before Henry’s number cleared. I clicked over to Paige Taggart. A phone call instead of a knock on my door. Skip wasn’t too far off. It was hard to beat Detective Gowen and his insights.

  “I’m out, Mrs. Porter. I figured it might be too late to drop in on you, but I wanted to tell you right away. I can’t believe it. You can’t imagine what it’s like in there. I’m so relieved.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it, Paige.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for coming to see me and listening to me and all. I’m not supposed to leave town or anything, but I think they realize now that someone is trying to frame me. Like, why would I bother wiping that piece of the weapon clean and then storing it in my room?”

  I didn’t think Paige needed to hear Skip’s answer about dumb things killers do, presumably stashing the weapon being one of them. Besides, Paige was in a talking, not a listening, mood at the moment.

  Over the next many minutes I found myself saying “Uh-huh” and “Really?” often as Paige went on and on about her experience at the Lincoln Point police station. I heard that she’d been “stored in a disgusting basement cell while the police tried to figure out what to do with me”; that “if it weren’t for you, Mrs. Porter, those guys never would have believed my dollhouse story;” and that “they finally gave me this little cup of water before I died of thirst.”

  As Paige wandered through tales of her brief incarceration, I wandered into my crafts room for a visual distraction. It wasn’t unheard of that I’d put a caller on my speakerphone at times like this—such as when Linda Reed went off on a tangent about how none of her son Jason’s teachers understood him, or how the nurses coming out of school these days weren’t willing to work the long hours she’d put in when she was that age.

  I’d even been known to do a small chore while a caller talked incessantly, not requiring input from me.

  With three dollhouses on what used to be a picnic table in front of me, surely I’d be able to find something useful to occupy the large fraction of my brain that didn’t need to follow Paige’s every word. There was always a paint touch-up to dabble at, or a thread to be snipped, or a piece of furniture that called for a drop of glue, or a drawer of scraps to be silently sorted through.

  I’d begun knitting a multicolored rug for the floor in front of the hearth that was the centerpiece of my pueblo, but the pattern required too much concentration for multitasking, especially at this hour.

  One of the houses, a lovely Cape Cod that had been built by my crafter friend, Karen Striker, was finished, destined for a local school for a raffle to be held between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Henry had offered to deliver the house in the next few days. My gaze landed on the bell-shaped tag Karen had made from scrapbook paper, neatly printed with the name and home address of the school secretary who was organizing the donations. I smiled as I saw that Karen had hung the tag on the tiny doorknob of the neatly trimmed little cottage.

  Something about the tag reminded me of the murder investigation, or a comment Varena had made during our wonderful, brief meeting. But before I could make the connection, Paige’s voice poked through with a complaint about her time served as prime suspect.

  “Then they asked me again how come I went into the room where Varena’s body was,” Paige was saying. “I told them, like a million times already, that I was on my way out the front door and I heard a crashing noise coming from the hallway, down by the Lord and Lady Morley room, so I went to check.”

  Now I was interested. I hadn’t heard this particular detail of Paige’s discovery of Varena’s body. “What exactly did you see, Paige?”

  Paige breathed heavily. “Like I told them, by the time I got all the way down there, no one was there except Varena”—Paige paused for a breath—“but the back door at the end of the hall was open, which it hardly ever is.”

  “Did you look outside?”

  “No, I wish I did, so I could have told the police who it was. They said, even if I caught a glimpse of what he was wearing it would help, but I just flew over to Varena. I thought she fell but then I saw her head was all bloody and…”

  Paige’s voice seemed to be full of a deep sadness and I wished I could put an arm around her.

  “I’m sorry to put you through this again, Paige.”

  “I called nine-one-one and…”

  What a strange mind I had. Suddenly the connection to the tag on the Cape Cod cottage came to me, as if Varena herself had tapped me on the shoulder to remind me of how she’d designated the dollhouse she planned to donate to the bookmobile fund-raiser.

  “Paige, I have another question for you that has nothing to do with that room and that terrible experience. Can you help me with it?”

  “Sure.” Said between soft sniffles.

  “You said you saw the dollhouse, the same one that’s now in my atrium, at the Rockwell Estate, correct?”

  “Yes, in the Lord Weatherly annex. It’s a little sitting room next to the bedroom I use. It has a nautical décor. The real Lord Weatherly was a sailor in Scotland in the nineteenth century, I think.”

  I could hardly contain myself. I paced my own dollhouse room. “Did you see it there before Varena died? Or only after you got those texts and emails the other night? The ones about the envelope that was in one of the dollhouses.”

  “That dollhouse you have now was always in that room. Varena didn’t move the houses around much. I think she liked to pretend she was visiting each little setup as if it was a certain street in a town, you know? And that room was the beach. We both loved the beach.”

  And I loved the idea of my friend and miniatures enthusiast Varena Young doing what I did often, especially on nights when I couldn’t sleep—taking a pleasure trip to visit my houses and room boxes.

  “Was there another dollhouse in that room also?”

  “Oh, sure, there were two or three houses in almost every room, except the Morley room and the ones we used as bedrooms.”

  “Did you go into the Lord Weatherly room anytime during the day yesterday, before five o’clock?” Which was the time of her discovery of Varena’s body, not necessary to mention again.

  “Uh-huh. I go in there all the time because I use the closet as an extension of mine. Laura uses it, too. The ones in our rooms are so small.”

  I swallowed hard and took a breath. “This is very important, Paige. Did you notice a tag of any kind hanging from one of the dollhouses in the Lord Weatherly room?”

  I heard a low hum, the thinking kind. I hoped Paige was putting herself in the room with the fake sand and seashells, enjoying the salty breeze and smelling the ocean air, which must have been a much more pleasant mental trip than the one the police and I
had recently sent her on, where her boss and mentor lay dead.

  “I didn’t see a tag,” Paige said, causing my spirits to fall. “I noticed an index card on the table, though. Varena still used three-by-five cards for her outlines. This one had a name and address, but I didn’t go close enough to read it.”

  Up went my spirits. Varena had told me she’d tagged the Tudor for me. I loved it that she’d used an index card, part of my stock in trade in the old days.

  Paige had more to say and I was listening carefully.

  “But I’m almost positive the card wasn’t attached to the house in your atrium, Mrs. Porter. It was kind of halfway between it and the house next to it. Sorry, is that bad?”

  “Was the other house a medium-size Tudor?”

  “Yes,” Paige said, her voice rising to a triumphant finish, as if I’d just won a prize for the correct answer.

  I couldn’t have been happier if I’d won a gift certificate to our local Katy’s Krafts Korner.

  A dramatic scene unfolded, as if I were watching a play in my own crafts room. Everything happened in miniature, as I’d expect.

  Varena’s brother, Caleb, goes to the Lord Weatherly room where the dollhouse now in my atrium was located. He opens the door to a secret room and inserts an envelope containing evidence that will incriminate someone who wants to harm his sister.

  Later I’d have to figure out how Caleb knew the old dollhouse had a secret room. Plus a few other things, but for now, I had a story to finish.

  Two men drive a red pickup to the Rockwell Estate. They climb the stairs to the Lord Weatherly room and look for the dollhouse with an index card that has my address on it. But Caleb has disturbed the table and somehow the index card ends up closer to the big old dollhouse with a modern style. The men take the wrong house to my address.

  This scenario required that Varena arranged for the pickup before she died, which almost had to be before she met me. It was possible, but it would be nice to find out just who the men in baseball caps were and from whom they received their pickup assignment.

  “Mrs. Porter.” Scratch, scratch. I heard noises that might have been Paige tapping on her phone to get my attention. “Hello? Mrs. Porter?”

  “I’m here, Paige. It’s getting late and I should sign off.”

  “Oh, sure. I’m sorry. Sometimes I go on and on. Thanks again, Mrs. Porter. You’ve been such a huge help.”

  “So have you, Paige.”

  —

  My phone seemed as excited as I was, summoning me to two more calls in the next half hour. The first one was from Henry.

  “I started to call you earlier,” I explained.

  “I miss you, but I figured you had a lot to work out today. How’s my Maddie?”

  I liked it that he thought of Maddie as his.

  Henry sat through a summary of my day, including the tears, the parental intervention, the eventual smiles, and the duplicate ice cream sessions. Or maybe he’d wandered out to the workbench in his garage and swept up some wood shavings while I rattled on.

  “Poor kid,” he said, not surprisingly on her side.

  “Maddie and Mary Lou learned a lot, I believe, and are fine. I haven’t talked to my son yet, but I’m hoping he’ll follow suit.”

  “As long as Richard doesn’t make me give back my nice silver key chain.”

  I promised to do my best to protect Henry’s right to his present.

  The next part of our call consisted of a summary of my talk with Paige Taggart and my theory of how The Little Dollhouse That Could got to my atrium. “Do you think that’s a crazy idea?” I asked, realizing the leaps and bounds it took to get from point A to point B in my proposed reconstruction.

  A short pause and an intake of breath. Then, “He built it,” Henry said.

  “You lost me.”

  “Varena’s brother built the dollhouse. Remember I told you I thought it was some kid’s first big woodworking project? I’ve seen a few.”

  “That’s how he knew it had a secret room.”

  “He put it there.”

  “You’re brilliant, Henry. Why aren’t you here so I can kiss you?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  We laughed, considered the idea of a late date, and middle-agers that we were, deferred it to tomorrow.

  “We have to find that secret room, Henry. I hate the thought of breaking the whole house down, especially now that we know Varena’s brother made it for her when they were children.”

  “Allegedly,” Henry said.

  “Do you think Caleb is still alive?” I asked Henry.

  “Uh-oh. Is this a trick question?”

  I laughed, remembering when I desperately needed his support as I’d tried to convince Skip that Varena even had a brother.

  “No,” I said. “There’s no right answer this time. Anyone could have signed those emails and texts to Paige.”

  “And your friend Corazón who told you Varena’s brother was in the house?”

  “That seems a long time ago. It could be that he’s alive, but why tell everyone, including her own children, that he died in an accident? There was obviously a special bond if he built her a dollhouse, say it was her first, and she’s collected them over all these years.”

  “Maybe the two became estranged and she wanted to keep it private, instead of going public with family business,” Henry said.

  “Could be.”

  “Could be.”

  I sensed Henry was fading fast. And so was I, as the stroke of midnight of a long day closed in. Before we hung up, Henry talked me into letting him pick Maddie up and take her to school in the morning so I could focus on my meeting with Charles Quentin at the Rockwell Estate.

  “I’m not sure I’ll do any better with preparation,” I said.

  “You’ve done great so far,” he said.

  I wanted to believe him.

  “And this way, I’ll get to see you, first thing in the morning, with pastry from the French log cabin,” Henry continued.

  Those two thoughts tipped the scales.

  “You’ll have to fight the traffic in town,” I warned, hoping that didn’t dissuade him. The éclairs we’d taken home were long gone.

  “I’ll get Kay or Bill to take Taylor to school, so I have plenty of time for a little detour.”

  “In that case…just make sure you don’t speed through the Gettysburg-Springfield intersection.”

  “Why’s that so special?”

  “Big Brother. I’ll show you when you get here.”

  —

  The second call on Tuesday night came from my boss, so to speak, Alicia Rockwell.

  I’d checked on Maddie and was already in bed with a historical young adult novel set in nineteenth-century New York City, which was enough reason for me to enjoy it. I considered sending the call to voicemail. Surely I deserved a pleasant end to the day. Or maybe not. I felt like an employee who has been found wanting, not accomplishing what I’d been tasked to do. And if my boss was calling to reprimand me, we might as well get it over with.

  “Geraldine, I hope I didn’t wake you. I’m an insomniac and I tend to assume everyone else is. But I wanted to tell you how grateful I am to you for getting Paige away from the police. It’s preposterous to think that child killed her mentor. My mother loved her as if she were her own daughter.” I heard a soft laugh, then “Perhaps more than her own daughter. I knew I hired the right person. I hope the police are pursuing other leads. Do you know who else they have on their radar? I know they can’t share too much about an ongoing investigation, but it’s so hard to get information from them.”

  I wondered if Alicia had tried to query Skip directly. I had an idea how that would have gone. In my never-ending desire to please, to be more forthcoming than the police, I told Alicia a half truth. “I expect to be talking to Skip soon.”

  “Excellent. You’re as good as they say, Geraldine.”

  Who in the world was saying that?

  “Alicia, I need
to ask you about your Uncle Caleb. Was he—”

  “Hmmm. I don’t remember anything, really, but I know from that one photo that he resembled Mother, of course. Very tall. He was in business, but don’t ask me what sort. Adam might remember more. He was five at the time of the accident. We were living in Chicago then and moved out here shortly afterwards. I need to run soon, Geraldine. It’s business hours in Paris. And, Geraldine, you’re a gem. I know you’ll get to the bottom of things.”

  “Thanks for your confidence, Alicia, but I—”

  Another interruption, not to spoil her record. “Oh, I just remembered. You’re going to the estate tomorrow to speak to Charles. I’m sure he’ll be a big help to you, Geraldine. He’s been with the family since we were in grade school, which is when Mother’s books started to really take off. I’m looking forward to seeing you. I thought we’d leave some time for a little tour of Mother’s dollhouses, if you’re interested.”

  I could hardly keep my heartbeat in control. “I’d love to see—”

  “Good, then. By now you’ve probably guessed that I don’t much relate to the little houses. I never saw the point of making things you couldn’t wear or drive. It’s good that Mother had Paige. And you, too, Geraldine.”

  “I wish I’d—”

  “My brother should be at the house for lunch, too, finally, and I must introduce you two. I have a frantic deadline to pack up three designs and ship them off to Paris, but I think I’ll simply delegate the task. I hope you’ll be able to stay for lunch with us.”

  “I’d love to.”

  I’d finally figured out that short sentences worked best with Alicia.

  That was fine with me. I didn’t have another long one in me as I allowed myself to call an end to the day.

  Chapter 17

  With Maddie safely on her way to school in Henry’s shiny white SUV, and my stomach fully satisfied by a sugary French breakfast puff and two cups of an excellent Sumatra blend coffee, I had no excuse for not buckling down to the job Alicia had hired me to do. I counted myself lucky that she was so easy to please and thought I’d done well enough already.