Mix-up in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “I didn’t even know—”

  “Thank you. Thank you.”

  What was I doing wrong lately that everyone felt free to interrupt me? “You’re welcome.”

  “A Ms. Taggart is going to accept the award for her.”

  “Paige Taggart? Not her daughter?”

  “It makes sense. Varena’s agent sent her speech over last week. In it, she planned to announce that her research assistant, Paige Taggart, had been—I have it right here, so I’m quoting—‘largely responsible for the continuation of my series of novels and should finally have the recognition she deserves.’ It’s all supposed to be a big surprise to reviewers and readers and so on, but I’m sure Paige told you.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have to go, Gerry, but I just wanted to say thanks again.”

  “My pleasure.”

  When I hung up, left to my own devices, I reviewed my suspect list again. Was the plan for the Lifetime Achievement Award another reason for Alicia to be jealous of Paige? But if she was inclined to murder out of jealousy, wouldn’t she have killed Paige instead of her own mother?

  The same could be said of Laura Overbee. Why not kill the object of her fury?

  My admiration for Paige, on the other hand, went up a notch.

  I remembered searching the Acknowledgments pages of the few Varena Young romances I owned, and noting that Paige Taggart was listed alphabetically along with many other people, including the women who typed Varena’s manuscripts. She’d come a long way, and apparently, earned the professional recognition of her mentor.

  How hard it must be for her now not to flaunt her great success. The young woman had character. Varena had good judgment in choosing whom she’d spend time with. I wished I could have lived up to her choosing me, if only for an afternoon.

  —

  Dum, ta da dum, ta da dum, ta da dum.

  We’d been finishing up leftover chicken and dumplings that Henry brought back when my cell phone rang. Maddie ran to see who had activated her marching band tune.

  “Uncle Skip, Uncle Skip,” she said.

  Henry and I made a modest effort to clank silverware and glasses while we eavesdropped on Maddie’s side of the conversation.

  “I miss you, too.”

  Pause.

  “I’ve been busy with a lotta, lotta homework.”

  Pause.

  “Yeah, maybe some time, but I have a lotta stuff to do.”

  Pause.

  “No, not so much surfing.”

  Pause.

  “I’m fine.”

  Pause.

  “Love you too, Uncle Skip. Here’s Grandma.”

  I took the phone.

  “What’s up with the little squirt?” Skip asked. My nephew was understandably confused by Maddie’s unenthusiastic response and lack of interest in helping him with his caseload.

  “You’ll have to ask her some time.”

  “I sort of did, but she didn’t really answer. She’s not growing up on me, is she? ’Cause I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

  “It’s complicated.” As weaselly as the phrase was, there were times when it fit perfectly.

  “Okay. Some other time. I thought you’d want to know the latest word on the ledger sheets.”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  Skip gave a loud laugh. “What’s going on in that house? Who are you and what have you done with the real Maddie Porter and my Aunt Gerry?”

  “I’m just trying to be polite and cooperative,” I said, laughing myself.

  “Yeah, well, I miss the old guys.”

  “Come on, Skip. What about those ledger pages?” I used my nastiest teacher voice, one I called up on those occasions when a promising young student clearly didn’t do her best.

  “That’s better,” Skip said. “The LPPD has access to the state’s greatest forensic accountants and they’re terrific at their job. But whoever pulled those pages apparently was no stranger to accounting either. Exactly what we need is there and the key transactions are highlighted to show the fraud perpetrated on the Rockwell Estate by its financial overseer.”

  “In short?”

  “Someone busted Charles Quentin.”

  I blew out a breath. Not that I was surprised, but I didn’t expect such a quick, unequivocal confirmation of my theory that Charles was hiding something. No wonder he was uncomfortable when I brought up Uncle Caleb.

  “How did this happen so fast?” I asked. “I just gave you those ledger sheets this afternoon.”

  “Funny thing, it wasn’t that fast. You didn’t know, and neither did I, that Varena Young had been secretly in contact with the state’s white-collar-crime division with suspicions that her moneyman was cheating her. She said she didn’t know how to prove it, but there was someone close to her who could help.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “That a brother who served twenty-five years for embezzlement might be the perfect connection to have at a time like that?”

  Exactly.

  Caleb had certainly taken precautions, approaching first Paige and then me instead of coming out in the open. Because he was embarrassed by his prison record? Or deathly afraid of Charles?

  I tried to recall the snippets of the argument I’d heard at the Rockwell Estate as I was leaving from my first visit. The exact words escaped me, but I was sure the tone was accusatory, the men accusing each other and Varena scolding one of them. There was an excellent chance the topic was Charles’s extracurricular activities.

  I repeated my recollection to Skip. “Doesn’t it seem that Charles murdered Varena so she wouldn’t expose him, and now Caleb is afraid he’s after him? That must be why he’s hiding in the bushes.”

  “A reasonable scenario, but we have to take it one step at a time.”

  I guess I missed that day at the academy.

  “What’s happening with Charles?”

  “We’ve taken him in for questioning. The state’s guys are interviewing him as we speak. Unless he can do some fast talking and explain away separate accounts and dummy corporations where he funneled some of Varena’s earnings, my guess is that an indictment is on the way.”

  “Why would he do that? Why would he steal from a family he’s been with practically all his life?”

  “Let’s face it, Aunt Gerry, you never can believe anyone would do something bad. Except me when I was a kid.”

  We shared a pleasant family chuckle.

  “But Charles Quentin is not a young man. Why would he want to risk dying in prison? Besides, he certainly doesn’t look poor. He has the whole Rockwell Estate, including chauffeurs, at his disposal.”

  “Maybe he wants his own little cabaña on the beach. Money is one motive that crosses all classes of people. The poor need it; the rich want more.”

  It sounded both obvious and sad.

  “And you’re working on the murder charge?”

  “He has an alibi for the afternoon.”

  “Provided by a chauffeur?”

  “Now that you mention it.” He laughed. “It might take a while to build the case for murder, but we’re on our way and he won’t be going home tonight.”

  “I’m happy to hear that.”

  I could rest easy. I wished I could pass the message on to Caleb somehow.

  “Nice work, by the way, Aunt Gerry, with Sedonis and Paige and the ledger and all.”

  “Thanks.”

  I liked to think I wasn’t as needy as an eleven-year-old for appreciation and praise, but it felt good to hear it.

  Chapter 22

  It didn’t take long for my crafter friends to descend on the new-to-them dollhouse in my atrium. On Fridays we worked on our individual miniatures, but on Wednesday evenings we typically worked on one project together, a house or room box that ended up at a children’s center or on the table of a charity auction.

  I hadn’t intended to offer Varena’s dollhouse for the evening, since it wasn’t mine to offer, but
I saw right away that it was going to be difficult if not impossible to rein in my group. The ladies hardly said hello before they’d flicked all the switches and exclaimed over the thoroughly modern lighting in the house. Then they plunged in with ideas and suggestions, rummaging in their tool boxes and totes.

  “It’s been so long since we’ve had a modern style to work on,” said Mabel Quinlan, our oldest member and an inveterate beader. “I think the foyer needs a chandelier and maybe a sculpture with primary colors. I’m thinking of red seed beads and yellow cat’s-eyes to begin with. And some bright blue tube beads, I think.”

  Mabel settled at the picnic table Henry had set up along one wall of the atrium, the working area. She opened her bead case, mumbling to herself about sizes and colors. She was on her way. Who was I to take away an octogenarian’s fun with small details like the ownership of the house?

  Karen Striker, who was a new mother, had her eye on the nursery as everyone predicted.

  “I saw this cool toy organizer that’s very modern looking,” she said. “It’s just rows of bins in a sleek frame. I could probably make it with found objects. I’ve been collecting small pillboxes. I can paint them to go with the primary colors on the walls.” And Karen was on her way.

  Gail Musgrave, our city councilwoman and a new grandmother, had her eye on one of the other bedrooms, a kids’ room judging by the bunk beds and shelves of toys. “I’m torn between that and the nursery. I saw this neat circular crib in a catalog. You can remove pieces of the circumference as the baby grows, and eventually it becomes a toddler’s bed or two chairs,” Gail told us. “Imagine! I think I can make it in miniature using one of those mesh clip containers from an office supply store.”

  “Or you could use the basket strawberries come in,” Karen said.

  “Or the netting from a sack of those small potatoes,” Mabel said, sorting through her trays for the right red, blue, and yellow beads.

  “Or instead of looking in your trash for materials, you could crochet the mesh and starch it,” Linda said.

  The meeting had officially started.

  I knew Susan Giles would be the hardest to win over. Our relocated southern belle, who never met a ruffle she didn’t like, was into soft curves, not the sharp angles of Varena’s modern dollhouse. She’d worked for weeks sewing tiny velvet cushions and embroidering pillowslips for the lavish rooms in a flowery Victorian she’d earmarked for the children’s ward at Lincoln Point’s hospital.

  Susan ran her finger along the edges that formed the roof and the interior doorways. She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. A working television set in a dollhouse? This one’s just not my style. But I’ll think of something to contribute. Maybe I’ll work on an old-fashioned games carpet for the playroom.” We all approved.

  Once she determined the dollhouse was not from a kit, Linda was on board with working on it and announced a plan to use balsawood with a light stain for the base of a coffee table.

  “It should have a glass top,” Linda said.

  We all knew she meant glass, and not a piece of plastic that looked like glass. Linda would take herself to her workbench where glass and glass-cutting tools were available and the dollhouse would have a made-from-scratch coffee table.

  Henry stood next to Linda, nodding, as she pointed out all the flaws he’d already noted when the house first arrived. Unlike Henry, however, who praised it as a most-likely first attempt, Linda wondered why the original recipient didn’t send it to the dump. It helped that she grinned while she gave her judgment.

  Once the first rush of ideas was over, but before people settled into chatting and finding materials to work with, I announced an extra attraction for the evening.

  “Maddie has a little demonstration for us,” I said.

  Henry mimicked a drum roll with his fingers on the table.

  A very smiley Maddie stepped to the open back of the dollhouse and asked everyone to gather there. What she said was, “C’mon over here, please,” accompanied by dizzying waves of her arm.

  She ran her hand across the back wall of the larger of the upstairs bedrooms. “This looks like an ordinary wall, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  Everyone knew to say, “Yes.”

  Only then did I realize that in my excitement over retrieving the envelope with its valuable contents, I’d never even had Maddie show me specifically where the secret room was and what it looked like. No wonder she’d felt underappreciated.

  Maddie, with her usual flair for drama, ran her hand across the wall again, but this time stopped at one of the red circles and pushed it down. I could almost hear her silent “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi.”

  Half of the thin wooden wall slid along a nearly invisible track, revealing another wall, painted in the same geometric design, about two inches behind it. A small passageway between the two was carpeted in red felt.

  Confident that she’d never again forget how to open the panel, Maddie had stashed a chocolate cookie in the tiny hallway. She plucked it out and took a bite, then a bow. The oohs, aahs, and applause caused Maddie’s smile to broaden, though I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.

  I felt a swell of pride that Maddie was mine, and in a way, so was the dollhouse, simply because it had finally responded to our probing.

  “That’s why you were asking me all those questions about secret rooms, Gerry. I’ll be darned,” Linda said, scratching a spot under her retro beehive hairdo.

  Only someone who knew Linda well would have understood that “I’ll be darned” was high praise and meant that Linda was impressed.

  “Now I like it,” the recently divorced Susan said. “I’d put a romantic note in that little hallway, send the house out to sea, and see who it brought me.”

  “Was there anything in the room when you first opened it?” Gail asked.

  I started to speak, but Maddie preempted me. “Nothing important. Just an old envelope,” she said.

  —

  As the evening wore on, the featured dollhouse sported many new items. From Susan, a colorful games carpet in the loft, with blocks for checkers, backgammon, and marbles. From Maddie, working with Henry, a new picnic cooler right inside the kitchen door, thanks to my stash of molded Styrofoam packing material. From Mabel, a chandelier of clear plastic with crystal beads.

  Gail made headway on the circular crib and Karen simply played with the secret room, trying different items and making up a story for each one.

  I wondered what Varena had done with the secret room when the dollhouse was new. Stash away pages of her diary? Hide notes from a boy she liked? I’d have to ask Paige if Varena had ever written a novel with a hidden-treasure theme.

  “Who did you say built this house?” Karen asked.

  I was speechless for a moment and Henry filled in with “The brother of a friend of Gerry’s.”

  Buzzz. Buzzz.

  The doorbell was just what I needed while I thought of other details I could share about the house’s architect.

  Henry went to the front door and stayed there a few minutes talking to my guest. I strained to listen. Not Skip. An older male voice, but not Charles, fortunately. A voice I may have heard before. I was ready to take a nonchalant stroll to check out the visitor when Henry led him into the atrium.

  The newcomer was a man unmistakably related to Varena Young, that is, Mildred Swingle.

  Caleb Swingle, tall, but a bit stooped, smiled almost imperceptibly when he saw that his dollhouse was the object of everyone’s attention. “I’m sorry to interrupt your meeting,” he said. “But Mr. Baker here said you’ve all been working on my sister’s dollhouse. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  I liked him already.

  —

  For the next hour, Caleb became part of the group, quietly explaining the kind of tools he’d worked with as a twelve-year-old, how he’d fashioned the secret room, crudely at first, then in a more sophisticated way as batteries and circuitry improved. He expressed delight with the
new window treatment I’d come up with for the smaller bedroom and praised everyone’s efforts to spruce up the old house.

  It felt as though Caleb Swingle had been part of the group for years. There were a lot of things I wanted to know about the man and his family, but for now I enjoyed watching him bask in the praise and appreciation my crafter friends heaped on him.

  The ladies of the club were so taken with the builder of the newest dollhouse, I knew I’d never tell them that he was an ex-con who’d been stalking me for a few days.

  —

  Once the ladies had dispersed, I went to the front bedroom to say good night to Maddie, leaving the men to continue talking. I’d already learned how old they were when they got their first serious woodworking kits (ten for Caleb, eight for Henry), what their first projects had been (a model boat for Caleb, a log cabin for Henry), which kind of glue sets fastest (yellow for both), and the best use of rubber bands (as clamps while the glue dries).

  Lying on her baseball sheets, Maddie struggled to stay awake long enough to ask me the most important question of the evening.

  “Did you tell Uncle Skip, Grandma?”

  I didn’t have to ask what she meant. “No, sweetheart. That’s up to you, whether you want to tell him or not.”

  “Do you think I should?”

  Why did a child’s questions get tougher every year?

  “I don’t see why, unless you think you’ll feel better. Uncle Skip wasn’t really affected by what you did.”

  “Except I couldn’t help him on the computer.”

  “True, but you were a great help with the secret room in the dollhouse. You don’t need a computer to be smart.”

  “Did I do a good job tonight?”

  “Outstanding.” I ruffled her curls for emphasis.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell anyone.”

  “I think that’s a good decision for now. You know, some day something might come up and you might feel like telling Uncle Skip, or someone else, what happened.” How many weasel words had I fit into that one sentence? “But don’t worry about that now. You can explain to Uncle Skip that you’re just recovering from a nasty bug and you’ve been catching up with homework and you’re going to be your old self very soon. All of that is true.”