A Dollhouse to Die For (A Deadly Notions Mystery)

by Cate Price

  “I allus thought that Ardine were a rum ’un.”

  “Yeah, spooky,” PJ said.

  “What about Marybeth?” I asked Serrano. “Did you get a chance to follow up on that?”

  His bright blue eyes were full of amusement. “Daisy, I don’t think we even need a police chief now that we have you. Yes, I interviewed Marybeth Skelton this afternoon. Right after she got back to her office. At first she said she cut her hand while preparing a meal. But then one of our guys talked to the cleaning woman who couldn’t wait to rat on her. Marybeth mustn’t be very nice to the help. She said that Marybeth never cooks.”

  He took a careful sip of his beer. “So while you and I were dealing with Ardine, they interviewed Marybeth again, and this time she folded like a cheap card table.”

  “Why’d she do it?” PJ’s tone was razor sharp.

  “Chip informed her, via a text message, no less, that he was cutting her out of the waterfront deal. He was giving the brokerage to a younger real estate agent. Some woman he was dating. Marybeth went down to the park because she knew he liked to hang out at the old mill. In a fury, she hit him with a wine bottle. Said she never meant to kill him, just knock some sense into him, but apparently her golf swing is pretty powerful. In the process, she managed to cut her hand.”

  “Jeez,” I whispered. “She finally snapped. One last real estate deal gone wrong.”

  “He managed to get away from her, ran bleeding through the woods, and eventually collapsed and died on the giant pumpkin. Marybeth drove to Millbury and threw a different wine bottle into the pumpkin patch. One that she’d carefully picked up using a plastic doggie bag from the supply container they provide at the park. None of her footprints would be in the pumpkin patch, either. Quite clever, if you think about it.”

  “Class, today’s lesson is . . . be nice to your cleaning people,” I said.

  Serrano chuckled as Joe came over and refilled Martha’s champagne glass.

  “Thank you, Joe. Oh, impromptu parties are simply the best, aren’t they,” she declared, eyes sparkling. “Who knew murder could be such fun?”

  PJ swiped at her eyes and downed the rest of her tequila in one swallow.

  “Hey, PJ, are you okay?” I asked.

  She glared at me. “I know Chip was a jerk sometimes, but he was the only one left.” Her voice choked up. “Everyone’s gone now.”

  Martha was immediately remorseful. “Oh God, that was thoughtless of me. I’m so sorry, my dear.”

  PJ’s bony shoulders slumped. “I’m all alone in the world.”

  “No, you’re not. You have us,” I said firmly. “Come here.” I patted the sofa and she hesitated for a moment, but sank down next to me. I slipped my arm around her, and Jasper laid his head on her knee. Joe handed PJ a box of tissues and plucked the empty glass out of her fingers for a refill.

  “You know, I’ve been noticing something lately,” Eleanor said. “About doll collectors, and pumpkin growers, and Romeos who sing under your balcony at night. Isn’t there a lot of obsessive behavior in the world?”

  I could certainly attest to that. “I wonder how poor Sam’s doing?”

  “Oh, he’s okay,” Eleanor said. “I saw Dottie yesterday. She went with him to the weigh-in, just to see the other giant pumpkins and talk to the growers. They were all comparing sizes, and joking about whose is the biggest and so on.” She winked at me. “Anyway, the other guys felt so bad for Sam that they each gave him some of their prize-winning seeds. Next year, look out. There’ll be rampant pumpkin sex all over the place. Dottie said Sam is already drawing diagrams and figuring out which ones to mate together.”

  There was another knock at the door.

  “Boy, it’s like Grand Central in here tonight,” Joe said as he went to answer it. A few seconds later, he was back with Birch Kunes and Bettina Waters.

  “Hi, Daisy,” Bettina said. “We heard what happened, so we stopped by. We wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Just glad it’s over, and all the killers are either dead or locked up.”

  “How about a drink?” Joe slapped Birch on the shoulder.

  “Sure. Thanks. Those beers look good.”

  “Bettina?”

  “Just a ginger ale for me, please.”

  “I heard the house is sold. Congratulations,” I said. “But wait—what happens now that Marybeth is out of commission? If you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Eleanor rolled her eyes.

  “One of the other real estate agents in the office will handle the sale until closing,” Birch said. “Angus is taking the rest of the furniture that we left for staging out in the next day or two. He’ll auction it off next Saturday.”

  “Speaking of houses,” I said, “you should see the fantastic job that Cyril did on the dollhouse for Claire.”

  Joe brought it in from the living room and set the restored dollhouse down on the steamer trunk to a chorus of various oohs and aahs.

  Cyril hung his head, a slight flush on his cheekbones.

  I explained how he’d added new shingles to the roof, repaired all the woodwork and balustrades, and refinished the floors.

  “It’s absolutely perfect,” Martha declared, “and ready in time for Claire’s birthday, too. She’s going to love it.”

  “Let’s plug it in and see if it works,” Eleanor said.

  “No!” Birch, PJ, and Serrano all exclaimed in unison.

  I laughed. “It’s okay. Joe did the lighting. It’s safe.”

  Joe plugged it in and the three fireplaces flickered to life as well as the sconces on either side of the mirror in the parlor. Every room was decorated and accessorized now, including the dining room, where Joe’s table gleamed in the light from the tiny chandelier above. The pretty lilac siding and yellow gingerbread trim were softly illuminated by the outside carriage lamps, and the hanging plants on the porch made it look like a welcoming, happy place.

  “Enchanting.” Eleanor raised her martini glass in a toast.

  Joe came over and hugged me, and I whispered in his ear, “Thank you. For everything.”

  I showed everyone the fainting couch, carved rosewood bed, marble-topped parlor table, and Chippendale desk. “These things were already in the house when I bought it. Sophie would have a stroke if she could see my toaster oven, plus the upcycled things I’m going to make with Claire. She and Harriet were fanatical about being historically accurate.”

  I picked up the Chippendale desk. “Look at the workmanship on this piece, for instance. Every drawer has mortise-and-tenon construction, and each one of them actually opens . . .”

  I tugged on one of the drawers. “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd?” Serrano leaned forward.

  “This middle drawer doesn’t open. Why would you make all the rest of them functional except for this one?”

  PJ peered at the desk. “Hey, you know what else is funny? Sophie had a desk in our living room that looked exactly like that. I mean, a real, life-sized version.”

  I sucked in a breath. “PJ, do you know where that desk is now?”

  She shrugged. “No idea. Guess Chip got rid of it.”

  “Or maybe it’s still at Sophie’s house, knowing Marybeth’s penchant for staging,” Birch suggested. “A nice piece like this would look great for showings.”

  I struggled to remember the scene when I’d peeked in the window to see Marybeth and Chip arguing. There was certainly furniture in the room, but I couldn’t be sure if there was a desk there or not.

  Serrano and I looked at each other, the now familiar spark of understanding zinging between us.

  He was already moving off the couch when I said, “Serrano—let’s go!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Where are we going?” Eleanor grumbled. She didn’t like to be separated from her Beefea
ter martinis.

  “Sophie’s house,” I yelled over my shoulder, hobbling toward the front door.

  Bettina took Birch, PJ, Martha, and Cyril in her car, and Serrano, who’d barely drunk a quarter of his beer, drove Eleanor, me, and Joe.

  Serrano called the real estate agent who was handling Marybeth’s listings and asked her to meet us at the house.

  When she arrived and unlocked the front door, we all raced past her into the living room and stumbled to a halt in front of the actual Chippendale desk. I pulled on the drawer that corresponded to my miniature, but it was locked, and no sign of a key.

  “Damn it.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Now what?”

  Cyril pulled a hairpin out of Martha’s red hair, watching spellbound for a second as a curly red tendril fell free. He bent down, wiggled the pin inside the lock, pushed against the other drawers for a minute, but it was still stuck fast. He bent down, took the pin out, licked it, and stuck it in again.

  “This clue was staring us in the face all along,” I said, watching him work. “God, I’ve been so stupid. Harriet would have picked up on this in a second if she’d bought that dollhouse.”

  “What do you mean?” Eleanor asked.

  “A Chippendale desk is not the right time period for a Victorian house. It was made about a hundred years earlier. To historically anal Harriet, this would have been a giant red flag.”

  “Aye up now, I beg to differ. That’s not quite true.” Cyril swiveled around and pointed the pin at me. “According to this book on dollhouses ah’m reading, there were all kinds of furniture styles in the Revival period that hearkened back to the past. A desk like this would be perfectly acceptable in an 1860s Victorian home.”

  “Oh God, all right, fine, fine. Just focus, please,” I begged, waving his attention back toward the desk.

  Cyril wrestled with the drawer for a few more minutes, and finally it broke free. The drawer itself was empty, but when he turned it over, an envelope was taped to the underside.

  “You’re a man of so many talents.” Martha beamed at him.

  Cyril handed the envelope to Serrano, who opened it carefully.

  “Appears to be the last will and testament of one Sophie Rosenthal,” he said. There was silence for a few moments as he scanned the document.

  “Why would Sophie go to such lengths to hide it?” Martha said. “Why not just give it to Harriet?”

  PJ shook her head. “Chip was always skulking around, watching her at the end, perhaps suspecting she might pull something like this.”

  “Maybe Sophie was planning on giving her the dollhouse but never got the chance,” Eleanor said.

  I couldn’t take the suspense anymore. “What does the will say, Serrano?”

  He looked up from his perusal. “Basically she gave this house and some miscellaneous possessions to her nephew, Chip Rosenthal.”

  At the outer fringe of our group, I could see the real estate agent breathe a tiny sigh of relief. It might have made things a bit tricky with the closing if the will had said otherwise.

  “And the fifty prime waterfront acres along the Delaware River to one Margaret Jane Avery.”

  “My God, PJ, do you know what this means?” I exclaimed. “You’re a millionaire.”

  “Woot!” PJ gave a jump and high-fived the air.

  “Oh, yes, and to her beloved Millbury Historical Society, Sophie gave the commercial building on Main Street that currently houses a sewing notions shop,” Serrano said.

  Martha swept me up into a bone-crushing hug. I grinned over her shoulder at my good friend and new landlord.

  Eleanor Reid, president of the Historical Society.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at Cate Price’s next Deadly Notions Mystery

  Lie of the Needle

  Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

  It wasn’t every day you had the opportunity to see the best-looking men of your acquaintance naked. Almost never, in fact. And after tonight, I doubted I ever would again.

  The shooting for the ‘Men of Millbury’ calendar had been going on all week in the carriage house of Ruth Bornstein’s estate. The gorgeous fieldstone building was serving as both a studio and temporary living quarters for the high-fashion photographer she’d lured from California.

  The Millbury Historical Society, of which I was a member, was desperately trying to save an old farmhouse once inhabited by one of the founders of our quaint nineteenth-century village. The current owner was entertaining bids for the property and accompanying twenty acres situated in bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and the Society was up against a local builder who was intent on putting up a slew of cookie-cutter housing unless we could stop him.

  We’d gone the bake sale route. Now we needed some serious cash.

  “Having fun, Daisy?” Mr. February, who also happened to be my very handsome husband, Joe Daly, came over and wrapped his arm around me.

  I grinned and leaned into his embrace.

  Not only did we want to save the character of our beloved Millbury, but the rambling farmhouse would be turned into a community center, providing badly needed recreation space for the local children.

  Somehow my best friend, Martha, secretary of the Society and a fiery redhead, had convinced these twelve brave souls to take it off for the sake of historical preservation. Perhaps the fact that it would benefit the children had been the motivating factor for these guys, and not so much Martha’s salesmanship or, should I say, relentless arm-twisting.

  “It’s crazy out there tonight,” Joe said to me. “Think you might need a couple of bouncers for the next guy.”

  There was high excitement in the air. Tonight we would see the crème de la crème.

  Dark and dangerous Detective Serrano, in the flesh.

  Literally.

  Although these guys weren’t completely baring it all. Depending on the way they made a living, the photographer had used a discreetly placed object to cover the family jewels, like a fire helmet, a barbershop chair, or a farming implement.

  We were working in the garage of the carriage house, which was still a beautiful space with its heavy wooden timbers overhead and whitewashed walls. It was even heated, which was a definite plus on an early winter’s night. The building looked like an L-shaped barn, with the long part being the garage with its three wide mahogany doors. In the summer, swathes of orange daylilies grew along the sides of the house, which was half fieldstone on the bottom and light green siding above.

  It would certainly have been easier to produce this calendar in the summer when we could have used outdoor locations, but seeing as it was early November, the clock was ticking to get it printed and into the stores in time for Christmas.

  By the way, I’m Daisy Buchanan, the fifty-something-year-old proprietress of Millbury’s antiques and sewing notions store Sometimes a Great Notion. Actually I’m fifty-eight, but fifty-something sounds better. I’d kept my maiden name of Buchanan when we married. Joe was secure enough in his masculinity that he didn’t have a problem with that, or about sitting bare-bottomed on his lovingly restored vintage bicycle.

  The shooting had been going on since last Wednesday, with one or two guys each day. Joe had had his turn on Monday, and yesterday the local butcher brought a string of fat Italian sausages with him as his prop, which caused more than a little hilarity.

  All in all, this project had been a lot of fun. Our models had been pretty good-natured about the whole thing. Privately, I think they’d quite enjoyed the fuss.

  Some of them, like the firefighters, had been filmed in situ, but for the rest we’d created a set inside the garage.

  Tonight Joe had helped us by hauling in bales of hay and stacks of gourds because first up under the lights was Mr. October, a former mailman whose hobby was growing giant pumpkins. He was in his early sixties now, but still in good shape thanks
to years of extreme gardening.

  The plan was for him to hold a pumpkin in front of the essential bits, and there was lots of cheerful ribbing going on.

  “Hey, that’s a mini pumpkin!” Sam yelled, still fully clothed, as Martha gave him his prop. “I’m gonna need a bigger one than that!”

  Eleanor Reid, president of the Society, and my other best friend in the world next to Martha, sidled up to us, her gray eyes sparkling with anticipation. She wore her usual all-black attire—a long-sleeved baseball shirt and yoga pants—which actually seemed to fit with her role as photographer’s assistant. Her white hair was cropped mannishly short.

  Eleanor owned a store across from mine on Main Street called A Stitch Back in Time where she restored and restyled vintage wedding gowns. She only worked whenever she felt like it, which wasn’t very often, but in some mysterious manner she always seemed to maintain an exceedingly comfortable lifestyle.

  Enough to put gas in her red Vespa and chilled Beefeater in her martini glass anyway.

  “There’s a huge crowd outside those garage doors,” she said to us in her husky voice. “All kinds of women from the village, not just from the Historical Society. Like a rock concert or something. Far out. I feel like I’m back in Woodstock.”

  I could feel the tension building, like the pressure in the air before a summer thunderstorm. The mailman was nice enough to look at, but it was nothing compared to the main attraction.

  Detective Serrano was a transplanted New Yorker, like Joe and me. He was the hottest, most exciting import into Millbury in years and he spent as much time fending off the local females as he did catching criminals. Somehow I’d become a bit of an amateur sleuth, thanks to my, um, inquisitive nature, and I’d helped him solve a couple of cases, whether accidentally or on purpose.

  Martha had finally given Mr. October a large enough pumpkin to satisfy his manly ego, and she swept over to us, carrying a clipboard, and trailing Cyril Mackey in her wake.

  I wasn’t sure what the clipboard was for, seeing as we only had two models to keep track of, but I didn’t dare ask.