“Playhouse,” Dr. Ben said.
I nodded. So it seemed. The structure certainly hadn’t been built for anyone adult-sized. I’m short, but even I would have had to bend my head to get under the lintel. “I didn’t even know this was here.”
“In the summer you probably can’t see it.” He nodded to the overhanging branches, dipping low over the roof and doorway, threatening us with snow showers. “Unless you knew it was back here, you wouldn’t notice.”
“It must be the girls’ playhouse from when they were small.”
“I expect so,” Dr. Ben said. “We should check inside. Since we’re here anyway.”
“Of course.” I stood back and watched as he struggled with the latch. “Is it locked?”
“I don’t think so. But it may as well be.” He grunted, jiggling the mechanism back and forth. “It must be rusty. Here.”
He handed me his flashlight so he could use both hands on the handle. I juggled it and my own flashlight for a second until I could get one of them pointed at the lock so he could see what he was doing. The other waved around wildly while I did it, and that’s when I saw them. Two thin tracks, as if from bicycle wheels, through the snow. Parallel tracks, a couple feet apart, disappearing around the corner of the shed.
I followed.
“Where are you going?” Dr. Ben asked from behind me. “I can’t see.”
“Just a second.” I ducked around the corner and flashed my light around. The baby carriage was there, parked beside the wall. Empty, of course.
I stomped back to Dr. Ben and focused the light on the handle again. “The old baby carriage from the basement is parked next to the wall. We didn’t put it there. I think maybe Mamie did.”
Ben refocused his efforts on the door. “Give me the flashlight,” he said after a minute’s struggle.
I handed it over and watched as he hefted it and brought it down on the latch. There was a tinkle of glass as the flashlight shattered, along with the sound of metal screeching. The latch bent.
Dr. Ben worked it loose and pulled the door open. We both bent low and leaned into the doorway, playing our single beam of light around the tiny interior.
It wasn’t much to look at. Built-in benches around the perimeter, with a table in the middle. On it sat the doll-sized tea set I’d given Mamie yesterday. The doll from the carriage was propped up against a little chair on one side of the table, while on the other, a different baby doll stared out at the world through painted blue eyes. Mamie lay on the bench by the wall, curled on her side the way she had lain two nights ago when Derek and I had found her upstairs in her old room.
Dr. Ben pushed ahead of me into the tiny space, and straightened up. There was just enough space under the ceiling for him to stand upright. I followed and straightened, too, carefully, while he moved the couple of steps over to Miss Mamie. I watched as he put his hand against her cheek, against her back, and then against her chest. I already knew what he was going to say when he turned to me and opened his mouth.
“She’s gone.”
• • •
Things slipped sideways after that. I called an ambulance, and then I called Brandon and finally Derek, while Dr. Ben started lifesaving measures. We both knew she was dead, but I guess he felt he had to try.
The ambulance arrived within a few minutes, and right on the heels of it came Brandon’s patrol car with Henry Silva in the passenger seat and Darren in the back. By then, I was up at the front of the property, greeting people as they were arriving and telling them where to go. “Past the Dumpster, into the backyard, far left corner.”
“Wheels?” one of the paramedics asked, and I shook my head.
“You’ll have to carry her. But she doesn’t weigh much. Dr. Ellis is back there.”
They headed into the backyard, and that’s when Brandon and the Silvas arrived. I gave Brandon the same directions I had given everyone else, and he loped off. Henry followed, a little more carefully. Darren hesitated.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I told him.
He glanced at me. “Excuse me?”
“She’s your aunt, isn’t she? Or something like that? Second cousin a few times removed?”
“Oh,” Darren said. “Yes. Distantly related.”
It struck me that we were both talking about Mamie as if she were still living. “I take it you weren’t close.”
Darren shook his head. “This’ll really upset my aunt Henrietta.”
No doubt.
“I should go back there. See her. Make sure my dad’s all right.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked off past the Dumpster, his hands in the pockets of his cashmere coat. He had dress shoes on, I noticed; shiny and black. He must have run out without taking the time to change when he realized Mamie was missing.
I was just about to follow when I heard the sounds of running feet. A few seconds later, I saw Derek and Peter jogging up the street, at a pretty good clip, too, considering that they both had heavy winter boots on their feet.
They skidded to a stop next to me and took a few seconds to catch their breath. “You found her?” Derek managed after a while.
I nodded. “She was asleep in the playhouse in the yard.”
“There’s a playhouse in the yard?” He glanced at Peter, who was just straightening after getting his own breath back. Being winded and disheveled and sweaty did nothing to diminish either of their good looks.
“That’s what I said. It’s down in the far corner, overgrown by bushes and overhung by trees. In the summer, it probably isn’t visible at all. It wasn’t very visible now, either.”
“What was she doing in there?”
“Having a tea party,” I said. “With the doll from the basement and the tea set we found upstairs.”
An expression of shocked pity crossed Peter’s features. “Did the cold get her?”
“Must have. She wasn’t wearing a coat again. Just the dress and pinafore.”
They both shook their heads. Down the road I saw bobbing lights.
“The others are coming, too,” Derek said. “I called them after you called me. Well, Brandon called Wayne, I’m sure. But I called Kerri and Dab.”
“You know Kerri and Dab?”
“Of course I know Kerri and Dab,” Derek said. “Remember when I told you I knew someone who makes stained glass?”
“Sure.”
“That’s Dab.”
“She makes stained glass?”
He nodded. “Her father did the restoration of the stained glass windows in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. Remember when we were there for Ryan’s wedding, I told you I’d asked him advice on restoring the windows in Barry’s church? I met Dab then, three or four years ago. She came out to look at the church and decided she’d like to live here.”
“Huh.”
He nodded. “She has a cabin and a little studio outside town.”
“Do you think she might teach me how to make stained glass?”
“I suppose she might,” Derek said. “We can ask her. Only not right now.”
No, right now wasn’t a great time.
Kerri and Dab reached us at the same time as another police cruiser with Wayne behind the wheel. He must have stopped at home to pick it up. And to drop off Josh at the same time, because Josh wasn’t with him. “I sent him inside to give Kate and Shannon the news,” Wayne explained when I asked. “He can’t do anything here.”
None of us could really. Yet we were all standing around in a huddle under the streetlight. It wouldn’t be long before the neighbors started peering out their windows, too.
Footsteps crunched on the snow in the yard, and we all turned to watch the paramedics navigate around the Dumpster with their stretcher. Miss Mamie looked very small and cold. Henry Silva followed behind, his face pale, while Brandon and Dr. Ben trailed him. Darren made up the rear. Wayne gave us all a nod and went to talk to his deputy while the rest of us stood aside and watched as the param
edics loaded Mamie into the ambulance. Henry crawled in behind. Kerri took a step forward, maybe to offer her condolences, but when one of the paramedics closed the doors, she stopped. The paramedic went to join his partner in the cab, and the ambulance drove off. Silently, with no lights or sirens, while we all stood there staring after it.
Kerri turned to Darren, who was staring after the ambulance, his face blank. “Is your father all right?”
He turned to stare at her. A second ticked by, then another. “Yes,” he said eventually. “Fine.”
That couldn’t possibly be true—this wasn’t how any of us had wanted the night to end obviously. We’d all—I know I had—expected to find Mamie alive and well, if a bit cold, pushing her baby carriage around the Village with her “baby” inside.
A baby I noticed Dr. Ben had carried up from the playhouse, and which he was showing to Wayne.
I watched, forehead wrinkled, as Wayne nodded and looked around. He studied the group of us for a moment, but none of us must have passed muster—or maybe he didn’t see who he expected to see. Maybe he was looking for Henry.
He passed the doll to Brandon, who went to put it in his patrol car. After a moment’s hesitation beside the trunk, Brandon ended up putting it on the backseat.
Meanwhile, Wayne approached those of us standing in a silent cluster by the edge of the road. “Sorry.”
We all nodded.
“There’s nothing more any of us can do.”
Right. Time to go home.
He turned to me. “Dr. Ben told me what happened, but you’ll have to do a report, too, Avery.”
I nodded.
“It’s standard procedure,” Wayne added, “in an unattended death.”
“Of course.”
An autopsy was also standard procedure, I knew, but I refrained from asking whether one would be performed. Not while Darren was standing right there.
“You can do it now or tomorrow.”
“Is it OK if I leave it till the morning? I had to stop in the middle of a project when we left the house earlier.”
“Sure,” Wayne said. “Just come to the police station in the morning, give a statement, sign it, and you’ll be done. Thirty minutes, tops.”
I told him I’d be there, and he turned to Darren. “Can I give you a lift? To the hospital, or maybe home to pick up your car?”
“The car’s parked at the church,” Darren said.
“Get in. I’ll take you there.”
They drove off together. Brandon was already gone. The handful of us who were left stared at one another blankly.
“This is horrible,” Kerri said.
We nodded.
“Poor Henry.”
Poor Mamie. And Ruth. And I suppose Darren.
We stood in silence a bit longer.
“So how are the renovations coming?” Peter asked in an attempt to change the subject to something a little less disturbing.
“They’re coming,” Derek answered. “Slowly. We haven’t started the cosmetics yet.”
“So far it’s just been hauling junk and working on things like the plumbing,” I added. “The functional stuff that doesn’t have to be pretty, but has to work. Derek’s domain.”
My husband turned to Dab. “Avery was just saying the other day how she’d like a stained glass lamp for the dining room. Any chance you can show her what you’ve got?”
“Or show me how to make one,” I added.
He glanced at me. “You want to make your own?”
“Why not?”
“No reason.” He turned back to Dab. “Any chance you have time to give Avery a crash course in stained glass making?”
Dab nodded. “I’d be happy to.”
Her eyes were pale green behind the lenses, quite pretty, and her face wasn’t unattractive, either.
“Maybe I can stop by this Saturday?”
“That would be fine,” Dab said. Derek told her we’d see her then, and we stood in awkward silence for a moment. Dr. Ben stamped his feet in the snow.
“Cold,” he told me when I glanced at him. “It’s all right for you, you’re young, but people feel the cold more when they get older.”
“We should go. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
We walked up the street together. Kerri and Dab went inside Kerri’s split-level when we passed it, and the rest of us parted ways outside the church. Peter got into his van and drove away, home to Jill and the kids, and Dr. Ben said good night and headed back to Cora. I glanced at the church, and the light glowing through the stained glass windows. “Someone’s inside.”
“Barry,” Derek said. “Lighting candles or praying for Mamie.”
I nodded. “We probably shouldn’t disturb him.”
Derek shook his head. “No.”
“Is Brandon lighting candles and praying, too, do you think?”
“What?” Derek said.
“That’s his car, isn’t it?”
I pointed to it, parked at the curb a few yards away.
Derek contemplated it with his head tilted for a few seconds. “Yes.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“No idea,” Derek said.
“Maybe he’s just filling Barry and Judy in on the details. I’m surprised Barry didn’t come over to the house with Brandon after I called him.”
“There was nothing anyone could do,” Derek said. “And Barry has things to do here. Light candles, activate the prayer chain, make sure Ruth is taken care of and has someone with her when she gets the news . . .”
“When will Wayne tell her, do you think?”
“Not until tomorrow,” Derek said. “He’s not going to wake her up for this.”
Of course not. “Should I go out there?”
“You don’t know her,” Derek pointed out. “It’s not like you’ll be able to give her a lot of comfort.”
Maybe not, but I had found her sister. And she might have questions.
“Why don’t you ask Wayne tomorrow morning?” Derek suggested. “When you go to give your statement. If he thinks there’s anything you can do, he’ll tell you.”
I nodded. And glanced at the church again.
“You said you had work to do at home,” Derek reminded me. “You left your Chinese lantern Christmas ornaments unfinished, remember?”
“I remember.”
“The home tour is only two days away.”
Yikes.
“We’d better get home,” I said with a last lingering look at the lighted stained glass windows. I was really curious to find out what Brandon was doing here, but Derek was right: The home tour was drawing near, and I had to finish getting ready.
So we got into the Beetle and drove home. I went back to work on my Chinese lanterns, and Derek watched for a bit before he asked if he could help. We finished the ornaments together, and hung them to dry on two big portable clothes racks I had brought from New York when I moved, and stored in the attic. It kept the ornaments apart enough that they wouldn’t touch each other and possibly smear the paint, and it kept them inside in the warmth, where they’d dry faster than if we hung them on the porch.
They’d turned out pretty nice, I thought. I planned to wait until they dried, though, to determine whether I needed to start over. They weren’t shiny, the way Christmas balls are, and I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be happy with that. I might just have to spray paint them all with high-gloss paint and decorate them again, but that was for another day. Today had enough troubles of its own, and I was beat. I took Derek’s hand and we headed up to bed.
—13—
The new police station—built long before I relocated to Waterfield, but new compared to the old police station they had before it—was a brick building located on the northwest side of downtown, on the Augusta Highway. Not too terribly far from the condo Derek and I had renovated in Josh Rasmussen’s building, which made a lot of sense, considering that Wayne had lived there with Josh before he married Kate, and he had bought the cond
o after his wife died because it was close to work.
When I walked through the police station’s door, Ramona Estrada, the police secretary, recognized me. “Morning, Avery.”
“Good morning,” I said.
Back when I first moved to town, Derek had given me the impression that Ramona was some kind of gorgeous, nubile Jennifer Lopez lookalike in a police uniform, and I don’t mind telling you I’d been jealous. In actuality, she was a plump and grandmotherly woman in her sixties, who might have been quite a looker in her youth, but who was old enough to be Derek’s mother by now. It had amused him rather a lot, too, when he realized I’d fallen for his lie, hook, line, and sinker.
“Wayne said you’d be in. He’s in his office.” She waved down the hallway. Security at the Waterfield police station is, to say the least, lax. I thanked her and headed down the hall toward Wayne’s office. I’d been there before, too.
He was sitting behind his desk with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose when I arrived in the doorway. The door was open, so I cleared my throat to let him know I was there, and he peered at me above the glasses and told me to come in and take a seat. “This’ll only take a minute.”
He continued signing off on paperwork for another short while and then he capped the pen and took the glasses off and looked at me across the desk. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I said.
“I know we all hoped for a different outcome.”
“I thought we’d find her rolling the baby carriage down a street somewhere, with her doll inside. Not that she . . .” My voice gave out. Guess maybe I was more upset than I’d realized.
Wayne didn’t say anything, just waited, and I got myself back under control. “She froze to death, right?”
“So we assume,” Wayne said. “There’s no reason to think otherwise. Unless you know something I don’t?”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe they let her wander off again like that. After what happened two nights ago, you’d think they’d be a bit more careful.”
Home For the Homicide (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) Page 15