by Cate Price
A soft raindrop touched my cheek, and I glanced up at the ominous sky. “Oh, I hope this rain holds off until after dinner.”
As we got into the car, I told him how Harriet had seemed desperate to buy my dollhouse. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice to her, Joe, but she simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.” He grinned at me. “Hello, Pot, this is Kettle calling!”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” I pulled the customer card out of my bag and read the address out loud.
Joe took a left at the end of Main Street, and drove up Grist Mill toward River Road as a crack of thunder sounded. He had both hands on the wheel of our station wagon to navigate the twists and turns of the rain-spotted road that ran alongside the river and canal.
When we got to Swamp Pike, he turned right and then headed down to the intersection with Burning Barn Road, where a famous artists’ colony attracted painters for weeklong retreats.
It was raining in earnest now, and I sighed. Guess the veranda was out.
A few minutes later, we pulled up to the Meadow Farms Golf Club and Preserve. A gold crest adorned each stone pillar at the entrance, and flags hung on tall poles on either side. The guard waved us through when we mentioned we’d come to visit Harriet.
We drove past the clubhouse and attached fitness center, a beautiful fieldstone complex with a flagstone patio in front. We’d been to a wedding there once. The clubhouse had an excellent restaurant and dance floor, and there was an outdoor pavilion next to the pool where the ceremonies were performed.
The radiant manicured islands on the eighteen-hole course were surrounded by prairie grass, shimmering ponds, and copses of trees turning burnt orange and crimson. The protected open space and the hills in the distance provided a stunning vista for golfers teeing off.
Beyond the clubhouse and the start of the course was an enclave of townhomes and single-family houses, bordered by scenic wetlands and walking trails. We wound our way through the development until I spotted the sign for Barnstead Circle.
This must have been a premium location when the builder first sold lots here.
There were only two other black-shuttered brick mansions on the quiet cul-de-sac besides Harriet’s, and hers was at the end that backed up to the woods.
Joe pulled onto the driveway behind a white Lexus SUV. I hurried after him as we dodged raindrops and followed the path toward the front door. There was an impressive porch supported by two white columns and a huge arched window above. I fished Harriet’s glasses out of my bag and rang the bell.
We waited, huddling next to each other on the stone step. Lights were on in the foyer, but no one came to the door.
Suddenly I caught a flash of something over to my left.
“Did you see that?” I asked Joe.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something . . .”
It could have been a figure running through the woods, or maybe just a deer. There were so many round here, and the bane of Joe’s garden existence, eating his hostas and daylilies. It broke my heart to see them killed at the side of the road. I was always on the lookout as I drove on some of these country lanes, even in fairly well-developed residential areas.
“Where the heck is Harriet?” Joe said. “Her car’s here.”
I could tell he was impatient to get to the Bridgewater Inn and his favorite meal, the house specialty of roasted rack of lamb with garlic mashed potatoes and almond-mint pesto.
He took a few steps along the path. He peered in another of the arched windows that fronted the exterior of the house and muttered an expletive.
“What is it?” I hurried over and looked into a study crammed with collectibles. Harriet Kunes was slumped over a large dollhouse on a display table.
“Holy smokes. Do you think she’s had a heart attack or something?”
Joe didn’t answer, but whipped around, his gaze searching the ground.
“What are you looking for?”
He picked up a brick from the path border. “I need something to smash this window.” He ripped off his sports jacket and wrapped it around his hand and arm.
I looked over at the front door in desperation. Hold on. Was it not quite shut all the way? I ran over and grabbed the knob.
The door swung open, revealing a magnificent two-story foyer with dual staircases, one curving up on each side. Dolls sat on every step, as far as the eye could see.
Joe dashed past me, dropping the brick on the entry mat and heading for the study. I ran after him.
Harriet was clutching the Tudor mansion with both hands as if someone were trying to take it from her.
“Harriet!” I skirted between tables with more dollhouses and displays, trying to find a passageway through.
“Don’t touch her!” Joe shouted. He grabbed a Queen Anne chair and shoved it at Harriet like a crazed lion tamer. Her body crumpled to the floor in an ungainly heap.
I gasped. “My God, Joe, what’s the matter with you?”
He ignored me, frowning at the dollhouse. “I’ll call 911,” he snapped. “You start CPR on her, and don’t touch that damn thing.”
With one last jab of his forefinger at the Tudor mansion, he jogged back out to the foyer. A moment later I heard his footsteps clattering on the stairs down to the basement.
Harriet stared up at me with sightless eyes.
Oh, boy.
I kicked off my high heels, hitched up my dress, and dropped to my knees, swallowing against a spike of nausea. Leaning forward, I touched my mouth to her thin, almost nonexistent dry lips and started rescue breaths.
Come on, Harriet. Only the good die young.
A minute later, Joe was back, his face grim. “The circuit breaker was jammed.”
He picked up the chair again and knocked out the plug that attached the dollhouse to the wall socket. He frowned as he inspected the back of the house. “Something’s wrong with the wiring here.”
“How did you know to warn me?” I gasped, looking up at him in between breaths and chest compressions. “How did you know just by looking at her?”
“Some kind of sixth sense, I guess.”
Joe had been shop steward for his electricians’ union in New York before we retired and moved to Millbury for good. “You know, Daisy, like you can tell if something’s a real antique or not at a glance? And how it would all look the same to someone else?”
Sirens wailed outside, and it was with a feeling of raw despair that I moved aside a few moments later to let the EMTs take over. As they bent down to start working on Harriet, I saw the look that passed between them.
It’s hopeless.
Joe reached for me and put his arm around my shoulders. “Someone tampered with the transformer that runs the dollhouse lights, Daisy,” he murmured. “Harriet Kunes received the full charge of one hundred and twenty volts coming directly from that wall socket.”
Chapter Two
We stepped aside to clear the scene, now apparently a crime scene.
A good-looking man, early forties, with gray hair and smoky blue eyes, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, strode through the front door.
“How’re you doin’, Daisy? Joe?” he growled, in a New York accent.
Detective Tony Serrano and I enjoyed a pretty good rapport, seeing as I had helped him solve a case not long after he arrived in town. Kudos for Serrano, and for me, a new friend in the police force. The local female population had been whipped into a frenzy over him ever since.
I explained about the eyeglasses and the faulty wiring in Harriet’s dollhouse.
“Daisy, sounds like you might have been one of the last people to see her alive.”
I stared at him. “Am I a suspect?”
“Everyone’s a suspect ’til I figure things out.” His expression softened. “Relax. I do ne
ed a statement from you, though. You too, Joe.”
His eyes scanned the room, as was his habit. I imagined the whir and shutter close of a long-range camera lens. Click. Body on the floor, noting position and appearance. Click. Number of persons present. Click. Condition of the room. Curtains open. Lights on. Any sign of a struggle?
I quickly pointed out that the upturned chair was from Joe pushing Harriet away from the live current.
Serrano shook his head. “Well, this is a new one for me. Someone zapped by a fricking toy house. All right, let’s take your statements.”
He glanced around as if searching for a good place to sit. The study was crammed, so we moved out to the foyer, and then the opulent living room, where there was also nowhere to sit. Dolls occupied every chair and lined the seat of the Eastlake fainting couch. There was every imaginable style of dollhouse from farmhouse to plantation to clapboard Colonial Revival, either on tables or arranged on the floor. With a pang, I recognized a primitive cradle in mustard yellow I’d sold to Harriet last winter.
“Look at this place. Jesus Christ.” Serrano stalked out of the room.
We followed him down to the dining room with its octagonal tray ceiling. A child-size doll sat in every one of the twelve upholstered dining chairs.
“Is it just me, or is that fricking weird?” He sighed. “Let’s try the kitchen.”
I didn’t say anything as I walked down the hall, but secretly I agreed. This was a massive house with soaring ceilings, but somehow it felt claustrophobic.
The kitchen was thankfully the only place that wasn’t chock-full of collectibles. It had dark mushroom-colored cabinets with crown molding, a six-burner commercial stove, double wall oven, and a pot filler over the range. The hardwood floor was of black walnut, like the rest of the rooms. This place must have cost well over a million dollars with all the upgrades. Grocery bags were sitting on the granite-topped center island and I ached to put the food away before it spoiled.
As if reading my mind, Serrano said, “Leave it, Daisy. Sit down.”
I obediently sat at the table in the breakfast area. Joe took the seat across from me, and Serrano leaned against the island. There was one small dollhouse on the breakfast table—an enchanting Victorian with soft lilac siding and stained glass windows. Beds of flowers cradled a gazing ball in its little garden, and a bluebird sat on the ornate fretwork railing.
I went over the events of the day, while Serrano scribbled in his notebook.
He once told me that he wrote absolutely everything down. Everything, because you never knew which minute detail that seemed insignificant at the time could prove to be important later on.
He dotted his pencil on the pad and turned to Joe. “So what’s the deal with the funky wiring?”
Joe leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Well, normally a twelve-volt transformer would convert a household circuit of one hundred and twenty volts down to a lower, safer level for the dollhouse lighting. The wires were skinned back too far though, well past the connection with the screws. The splices weren’t soldered, and they should have been wrapped in electrical tape. Wet conditions also reduce resistance, and with the weather tonight, and her hands damp . . .”
“How’d you know the faulty wiring was intentional?” Serrano asked. “She coulda had someone wire it who didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe the old girl herself had a go at fixing it.”
“That’s true, but what about the breaker in the basement?” Joe said. “If it hadn’t been jammed, there’s a chance it could have saved her life.”
The bags on the kitchen island were calling to me. I couldn’t stand to waste food. I wasn’t sure why I was so worried about it. The dead woman wouldn’t be able to use the stuff anyway, but between that and the lilac dollhouse, I was only half listening.
“What’s important is the path the current takes through the body,” Joe was saying. “If it flows through one extremity and travels across the heart to another extremity, it’s much more dangerous than from, say, leg to ground. I’ll bet you five bucks right now that the cause of death will be ventricular fibrillation.”
I pictured Harriet grasping her dollhouse with both hands.
“But why was she still holding on to it? Why didn’t she feel the shock and let go?” Serrano asked.
“A high enough current can cause a spasm that makes the person grip and be unable to release.” Joe leaned back in his chair. “You know, it’s funny. Guys can sometimes survive a super high-voltage shock, like from a power line, because it throws you back. It’s not so much the voltage, but the current. Household current is especially dangerous because it exceeds the ‘let-go’ threshold.”
An officer came into the kitchen, and waited patiently until Serrano glanced at him.
“The house is locked up tight, sir, except for the front door. No signs of breaking and entering.”
“Thanks.”
I thought about Joe almost smashing the window. “So could it have been someone Harriet knew and she let them in?”
Serrano nodded toward two mugs set out on the counter. “Looks like she might have been expecting a guest.”
“But she just got home,” I said. “And how could anyone mess with the dollhouse while Harriet was here? Even if she went to the bathroom or something, or left them in the study while she went to make tea, I doubt they’d have had time to work on it. Joe, what do you think?”
“It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t know how they could have gotten down to the basement as well to mess with that breaker.”
After we finished giving our statements, Joe and I decided we were exhausted, and it was too late to go out for dinner. Plus it was pouring now, so the outside veranda wouldn’t be open. We headed back to our 1842 Greek Revival on Main Street. It was situated a block down from Sometimes a Great Notion, where the stores stopped and the houses began. It had been our vacation home for thirty years, until Joe convinced me to take early retirement from teaching.
To the casual observer, our house might appear to be in reasonable shape, but after three decades of never-ending restoration, it was almost time to start over with some of the earlier tasks. Like repainting the huge living room with its twelve-foot-high ceilings, original millwork, and six-over-six windows. Even when we were younger, it had taken close to a week to finish the whole thing, but now, the prospect of a big job like that was overwhelming. I didn’t even want to think about the state of our basement. Fortunately, Joe was very handy around the house, because there was always something that needed attention.
While I set out some honey goat Gouda and creamy blue Stilton on a cedar plank, together with flatbreads, Marcona almonds, and dried apricots, Joe selected a bottle from the wine rack.
Jasper, our goofy golden retriever mix puppy, sat at high attention, his ears pricked, eyes never leaving the board of cheese and crackers. He wasn’t technically our dog. He actually belonged to my daughter, Sarah, who’d rescued him off the streets of New York. She worked in film production as a script supervisor, and seeing as she was in Spain on the set of her latest movie, he was staying with us. Secretly, I hoped it would turn out to be a permanent arrangement.
Jasper panted and a drop of drool landed on the floor.
“Have a heart, Daisy, give him some cheese,” Joe said as he uncorked the wine.
“Do you have any idea what this cheese cost?” I shook my head, but cut a tiny sliver, put it on a cracker, and held it out to him. “Ow. Jeez, Jasper. You nearly took my fingers off.”
We sat and sipped our wine at the butcher block table under the glow of the schoolhouse light fixtures. Sometimes home really was the best place to be.
Joe had remodeled the kitchen a few months ago, inspired by an unfortunate incident when Jasper chewed up part of the linoleum. One thing led to another, and now I had new hardwood floors, cherry cabinets, granite countertops, and an island fo
r our cookbook storage.
“I never get tired of looking at this kitchen, Joe. It’s so beautiful.”
“Hopefully this is the last and final big project we’ll ever have to do in this house.”
I crossed my fingers. “Shh. Don’t jinx us.”
Joe smiled as his gaze traveled over my bare legs. I’d slipped off my stockings and pumps, but was still wearing the Dior. “Nice dress. Too bad I didn’t get to take you out to dinner. I was really looking forward to my lamb and mashed potatoes, too.”
He piled a lump of Stilton on top of an apricot and grimaced. “Sorry. That sounds rather petty under the circumstances, doesn’t it?”
“It’s okay. But poor Harriet. Who the heck could have wanted to kill her?”
He shook his head. “No idea. But whoever it was, they went to a lot of trouble. That’s a fairly elaborate way to do someone in.”
I shivered. We sat in silence for a moment. For Harriet, there would be no more dinners, no more celebrations, no more birthdays, no more anything.
After we’d finished our cheese and wine, Joe cleaned up while I quickly got changed. I came back downstairs and grabbed Jasper’s leash off the hook on the kitchen wall. “Come on, boy. Let’s take a trip around the block. It won’t be a long walk tonight. I’m beat.”
Once outside, I managed to put up the umbrella while the wind whipped along the street. Jasper ran behind me and wrapped the leash around my legs, but once I untangled myself, we were off.
When I’d first opened my store, the local economy was in bad shape, and most of the buildings along Main Street were vacant. I was lucky enough to get a relatively cheap rent, which was a big help for a start-up business. The lease had expired, and now I was month-to-month. I hadn’t requested a new one yet as I didn’t want to rock the boat.
Lately several storefronts had been rented, and it was nice to see the street vibrant again. Next door to my place was the new cheese and gourmet pantry shop. Across the street on the corner, a former real estate office had been turned into a garden-themed paradise with planters, fountains, terrariums, and birdbaths. A palm reader occupied the space next to Tony Z’s, the barber. The latest newcomer was a chocolatier on the other side of Eleanor, just before the one-room schoolhouse.