A Dollhouse to Die For (A Deadly Notions Mystery)

by Cate Price

  I got up, put my arms around him, and held him as tight as I could.

  • • •

  On Thursday afternoon, after a long day of looking at balance sheets and not much else, I decided I was sick of worrying. Some fresh air would do me good. I hung a CLOSED sign on the front of the store, went home and picked up Jasper, and drove to Ringing Springs Park.

  Maybe I’d run into Bettina Waters and have a chance to chat. However beautiful and nice she seemed from a distance, she certainly had the motive to get rid of Harriet, the woman who had spitefully obstructed her future. She’d also had the opportunity to slip away from the medical conference, but what did she know about wiring a dollhouse?

  I’d make those other snotty women say hello to me this time, too, including the terrifying Virginia Axelrod.

  As it turned out, I found someone much more interesting to talk to.

  I arrived at the dog park enclosure just in time to see a few of the wine club members, quite literally, turn their backs on Ardine Smalls.

  She stood, unmoving, her hands shoved into the pockets of the camel hair coat she must have owned for decades, her head with its nest of wiry hair bowed against the cold.

  I let Jasper off his leash and he bounded joyfully into the center of the pack. I moved over to stand next to her. “Which one is your dog?” I asked.

  She looked around for a split second, almost comically, as if sure that I must be addressing someone else. Up close, her skin was pitted by years of long-ago teenage acne, and a dusting of dandruff powdered the shoulders of her coat.

  “That one.” She pointed to a scruffy terrier type whose bottom teeth stuck out, making him look like a miniature boar. “He hates me.”

  I glanced at her in surprise.

  “He’s horrible, but I can’t get rid of him. He belonged to my mother. She passed away two years ago.”

  She showed me the scars on her hands from bite marks. “I’m really scared of him.”

  My lips thinned as I watched the nasty little brute. This dog needed some serious discipline. He snapped at Jasper, who danced away, taken aback by the unexpected aggression. Jasper was a bit like my husband, who’d never met a living thing that didn’t instantly adore him.

  I recognized the two wine mooches, sour-faced Ginny Axelrod and floppy-haired Bobbie Zwick, sitting in the chairs among the array of coolers. There was another, matronly woman wearing a headband, long denim skirt, and red golf shirt. I bet the golden retriever belonged to her. The schnauzer with the permanent scowl was probably Ginny’s, and the two shih tzus had to be Bobbie’s, if the old adage that dogs looked like their owners was true.

  Ruthie wasn’t here today, and neither was Bettina. A younger woman in tennis whites arrived towing a giant poodle, and an aristocratic older woman joined in with a pair of pugs.

  Again, I was reminded of the cliques in high school. Me, Ruthie, and now Ardine were definitely not the cool kids.

  As I watched Jasper gallop around, sticking his nose up everyone’s butt, I winced. If dogs’ personalities also matched their owners, then I was somewhat goofy and more than a little intrusive.

  “I’ve brought some cider,” Ardine said, gesturing to the plastic bag she carried. “Would you like some? I don’t drink much myself.”

  “Well you don’t have to drink in order to bring your dog here, you know.” I smiled at her as I held out my hand. “I’m fine, thanks. I’m Daisy Buchanan. I don’t think we’ve met. But I did see you win the dollhouse competition on Saturday. Congratulations.”

  Ardine was wearing purple mittens with woolen balls hanging off the cuffs. “Were you there? Wasn’t it so exciting! I’m just sad that Mother wasn’t around to see me finally win.”

  When Ardine talked, it was like the top of her mouth was fixed and immovable and the bottom half could hardly move either.

  Her bright expression dimmed. “Although even if she were around, she would say the only reason I won was because Harriet Kunes wasn’t in the competition.”

  “Well, I thought your dollhouse was terrific.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I saw Harriet’s Tudor mansion. Rather gaudy. I know you would have won anyway.” I didn’t know that for sure, but if it made her feel better, it was worth it to see the big smile reappear. “I’m refinishing a dollhouse myself at the moment. For a little girl’s birthday present. It’s an 1860s Victorian.”

  “Ah! You know, those early dollhouses had a very rough notion of scale.” She chuckled and shook her head. “They didn’t worry about the typical one inch to one foot. Many old examples look ludicrous when you compare objects in the same room.”

  Ardine’s eyes darted from side to side as if it was hard for her to look directly at me. “They’d have a two-inch-scale cup on one-inch-scale table, and so on. The important thing to remember is that it isn’t so much what the scale is, but that everything is in the same scale.” She waved her mitten-covered hands for emphasis.

  Jasper came over to check in with me. Ardine reached out gingerly and patted him on the head. He sniffed her in a friendly way, but without his usual enthusiasm. I ruffled his ears and he galloped off again to crash into the pack of canines.

  “Sometimes you look at the size of the bed, and you realize the person would have had to be a high jumper to get into it.” Ardine giggled, and I chuckled along with her. “Chairs reach halfway to the ceiling, and chandeliers were so low, a person would bang their head every time they stood up.”

  Now she was gasping for breath because she was giggling so hard. I felt my smile becoming slightly frozen.

  She glanced at me and quickly composed herself. “But for a child, you’re creating something that will be fun to play with, not like the dollhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, which were intended to be seen and never used.”

  “Do you want to sit down?” I gave up on my plan to ingratiate myself with the wine club. I could learn a lot more right here.

  “Okay.” Her face lit up and my heart ached for her. It was the same pain I’d felt when I’d encountered students who were bright, but came from such hideous home environments that their surroundings obliterated their potential. As a teacher, you could only do so much to change the world, but I’d certainly tried.

  Even though Eleanor had been a geek in high school, she’d developed confidence as she got older, whereas Ardine Smalls never had.

  There was a bench in a sheltered spot by the wall and we made ourselves comfortable.

  “You see, there are different schools of thought in dollhouse construction,” she continued. “Should they exactly duplicate full-sized versions? Should drawers and doors open? Should mortise-and-tenon joint construction be used?” Ardine was talking faster now, as if I was a mirage that might disappear at any minute. “Some people say yes—miniatures should be formed down to the minutest detail whether visible or invisible. Others, like Mrs. Thorne and Eugene Kupjack, say it’s not necessary.”

  I had no idea who these people were, but from the reverent tone of her voice, I gathered they were icons in the field and I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.

  Intrigued, I watched as she warmed to her subject. She was a good teacher. I could recognize the quality in another and found myself thirsty for knowledge, hanging on her every word. I wished I had a notebook with me.

  “Miniatures are a wonderful way to preserve settings for all time. I know people who have recreated their house, say, before they moved, down to the exact detail, even the wallpaper.”

  “The wallpaper?” I said.

  “Oh yes, there are companies that make custom wallpaper. You could replicate the antique wallpaper in your dollhouse if you wanted.”

  The wallpaper. Was there some kind of clue in the design on the walls? Like a treasure map or something? Some kind of hieroglyphical clue? I’d go over to Cyril’s first thing tom
orrow and check it out.

  “What did you think of Harriet Kunes?” I asked. “What kind of collector was she?”

  “Harriet was fanatical about being accurate in every detail. She was very scornful of those who mix and match items from different time periods.”

  I bit my lip as I thought of my modern toaster oven.

  “We used to argue about it all the time. When we were speaking, that is.”

  “You were friends?”

  “Oh, well, we were best friends once. In fact, I was a nurse at the same hospital where Birch did his residency. I introduced them.”

  “Really?” Curiouser and curiouser.

  “But Harriet changed. It’s sad. She became so competitive, she antagonized a lot of people.” Ardine played with her knotted dog leash. “In fact, I’m sure Harriet’s the one who sabotaged my entry at a show once by putting cockroaches inside. They scurried out when the judges opened the front panel and my chances of winning were doomed.”

  “Wow. I can’t believe she’d do something like that.”

  She looked directly at me for the first time. “You have no idea what those competitions are like.”

  “And would Harriet be the type to confront a killer if she found something awry?”

  Ardine frowned. “Not sure what you mean, but yes, Harriet was very confrontational.”

  A few raindrops spattered on the bench, and she scrunched up her nose as she looked skyward. “We’d better get going.”

  The wine club was busy packing up their coolers, and I smiled at the golden retriever owner who smiled back. Maybe they weren’t all bad.

  As Ardine struggled to put the leash on her annoying terrier while he snapped at her, Jasper suddenly wrestled him to the ground. He looked at me, his huge paw still pressing down on the little dog’s shoulder, as if to say, Sorry, Mom, but I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Silently I cheered, but said, “Stop it, Jasper!”

  “It’s okay, Daisy, this dog needs someone to straighten him out.” Ardine grinned as she clipped the leash.

  She put up her umbrella. One of the spokes was broken. “Thanks for being so nice to me.”

  I watched as she hurried to her car, the umbrella flying up in the rain.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, Mother Nature provided a taste of impending winter. It was lashing with rain so hard that the storm sewers couldn’t keep up, and there was standing water on the street corners. Jasper loved it—the wetter and muddier the better—but I cursed as I struggled to manage the umbrella and the leash. When we got home, it took longer to dry him off with a slew of old towels than it had taken for the walk.

  As it was Friday, Laura was managing the store, so I stopped at Cyril’s to check on the progress of Claire’s present. He was working on the roof, painstakingly attaching the shingles, one at a time. I handed him a cup of coffee from the diner and hid a grin when I spotted a library book about building dollhouses.

  “Aye up, you can snicker, but look at this. Queen Mary’s dollhouse. It were a right grand place.” He opened a page and pointed at some photos. “Four years to plan and build. Elevators from basement to top floor. Door handles that close and clocks that tick. It even had water pumped up from the basement.”

  I marveled over the description of water running into the tub and the marble-topped sinks in the king’s bathroom. The details were incredible: the wine cellar with its honeycomb walls that held a hundred dozen bottles of wine, a strong room for the crown jewels, the tiny piano equipped with real strings, hammers, and ivory and ebony keys. In the library, each minuscule book bound in leather and embossed with gold leaf was actually readable.

  No expense had been spared. The kitchen was constructed with thousands of tiny sections of oak, rooms were paneled in rosewood, and there was silver and porcelain throughout.

  “Ah’m worried about this ’ouse being historically accurate,” Cyril said.

  My eyes widened as I stared at him.

  He jabbed a finger toward the front porch. “Ah don’t know about these here winder boxes.”

  “It’s okay, Cyril. It’s for a little girl to play with. I know what you mean, and we’ll do our best, but only to a point. I still want my toaster oven.”

  He looked unconvinced.

  “Look. Think of it like a real Victorian house, bought by a person who loves the period and wants to preserve the beauty of the home, but lives there in the current day and needs modern conveniences.”

  He grunted and attached another shingle. “Did tha find another store to rent yet?”

  “Not yet. Marybeth is setting up more appointments.”

  I’d have to ask Laura to work an extra day. The familiar panic at the thought of leaving Millbury twisted inside me and I made a sudden decision. “You know what, I’m going to call Chip Rosenthal today and see if we can work something out. Get him to see reason.”

  “Mebbe you just got off on the wrong foot before.”

  I blew out a breath. “And maybe he’s the one who murdered miserable Harriet because she knew that her best friend Sophie did, in fact, write a will. And maybe he’s the one who came to my store that night trying to steal the dollhouse because he thought the will might be hidden inside.”

  Cyril pulled the lid off the coffee and stirred in a couple of creamers. “Getting a bit carried away, Daisy?”

  “I don’t think so. And I’ll see you Harriet’s murder and raise you one. There’s a possibility that Sophie was murdered, too. And guess who benefited most from dear old Aunt Sophie’s death?”

  He nodded. “Young Chip.”

  “Exactly. Serrano is convinced that Birch Kunes killed Harriet, but I have a bad feeling these two deaths are connected, and the linchpin is my new landlord.”

  Suddenly I remembered Ardine’s comment about the wallpaper. I got up and peered inside, inspecting the walls for a clue, but as hard as I looked, nothing seemed like writing to me. It was simply a classical Greek ornamental design.

  “Ah’ll fix the broken chimney today, and the balustrade on the second-floor balcony. We’re going to need more shingles to finish the roof.”

  I broke the news to Cyril that I wanted to paint it, too, but to my surprise he didn’t explode.

  I had a feeling he was getting into this as much as me, sharing my fascination with the perfect little world inside the dollhouse.

  Not like the messy real one, with its evil landlords, murdered women, and cheating husbands.

  • • •

  On my way to Sheepville, I had to swerve around several downed trees that were partially blocking the road. I cursed as one car driving too fast in the opposite direction kicked up a huge wave of water, dousing my windshield while I drove blind. Some yards were already completely underwater, and ROAD CLOSED signs were up on the side streets that crossed over the creeks.

  When I got to Jeanne’s, I pulled out my cell and called Chip Rosenthal. He wasn’t in, but I left a message saying I’d like to discuss the lease, and asking if he could meet on Monday.

  I picked up the shingles I needed and spent a few minutes admiring the displays. In the attic of one house was a myriad of enticing items—ice skates, a Victorian pram, some luggage, a bare light bulb in a socket with pull string, and a wood violin with bow and velvet case. Even a mousetrap.

  I couldn’t resist the bare light bulb for Claire’s attic. I selected a three-tier petit four stand for the dining table, and was lingering over some tiny kitchen utensils when Jeanne came up to me.

  “Aren’t these darling?”

  “Yes, Jeanne, but before I get too carried away, I want to try to stay as authentic as possible.”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry about it too much, sweetheart. Just have fun.”

  Ardine Smalls came around the corner of an aisle, carrying a box. “Yes, you don’t have to worry about it
unless you’re going to be the next Mrs. James Ward Thorne.” She giggled, showing those uneven teeth.

  “Who was this paragon?” I asked.

  “She created remarkable rooms in the early twenties. They’re at the Art Institute of Chicago now. Totally historically accurate through five centuries, from the sixteenth to the twentieth. She designed all the textiles inside, too.”

  “You’ve discovered my little secret, Daisy,” Jeanne said as she pointed at the box Ardine was holding. “Ardine designed a lot of the displays here in the store for me.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  Ardine beamed at me. “I love doing them. It’s kind of like interior design and stage design rolled into one.”

  She set the box down and I peered into an open-plan kitchen and living room. On the kitchen counter, I saw a bowl of batter and balls of chocolate chip cookie dough set out on a baking sheet. It was so clever and realistic, I felt my mouth water.

  In the living room, there was authentic clutter—projects in progress, a bookshelf crammed with books, and a coffee table holding some knitting, a sewing pattern, and tiny needles.

  “It’s good to suggest movement and a sense that someone has just left the room.” Ardine bent down next to me. “Look at your composition from every angle. Also think of where the traffic lanes are.”

  I felt myself zooming down to one inch tall. I would have simply positioned the furniture in my dollhouse wherever it looked good. But could I really pass between the parlor table and the fainting couch?

  “This is fascinating, Ardine. I had no idea that so much went into it.”

  We both straightened up, although it took me a little longer.

  “And the most important thing?” Ardine waggled her finger. “A room has to have a personality. Finding the rhythm in a room is a subtle thing. Like music, you have to get it just right.”

  I nodded and picked up a steamer wardrobe travel trunk. I knew that was proper Victorian detail and would appeal to Claire, too. She could pretend the occupants of the house were packing for a journey. Speaking of which, they would need toiletries. I added a bar of soap and a hot water bottle to my pile. There was even a chamber pot, but I passed on that. I chuckled as I imagined Claire’s reaction. Ew!