Mix-up in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “I guess I’ll have to wait,” I said, knowing there wasn’t a chance that Maddie could hold out.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. It’s a dollhouse. There’s no box or crate or anything, just a humungous plastic bag. Did you order it, Grandma? Is it for us?”

  Dare I think it? Varena’s Tudor? She couldn’t have had time to arrange a delivery before meeting her vicious end.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s really big. It was outside on the step. It was just sitting there, and it took all three of us to push it into the atrium. It’s a really cool house. All streamlined.”

  I hadn’t been dreaming. Maybe Varena had arranged days ago for the dollhouse to be sent, long before our visit. Maybe Doris Ann contacted Varena herself or appointed someone else and neglected to tell me. I nearly cheered out loud.

  I paused in my thinking. Maddie had called the house streamlined. I wouldn’t have described a Tudor as streamlined.

  “Is it a Tudor, Maddie? Remember all the different styles of architecture we saw at Shellie’s store in San Carlos?”

  “I know what a Tudor is, Grandma. It’s the one with all the little brown beams everywhere on the outside and lead in the windows and the roof is thatchy.”

  Her Grandpa would have been proud.

  “That’s right. And you’re saying this dollhouse is more modern?”

  “Like, super-modern. There’s a lot of furniture, too. It got all thrown around, so we’re fixing it up. But even the furniture is modern. It’s all glassy and plain. Like Frank Lord Wright.”

  Close enough.

  More important was that Varena or her family had come through somehow and we had one of her dollhouses for our bookmobile auction. Tudor or modern, it didn’t matter to me.

  “The police station next,” I said to Henry, my mood almost cheery.

  What could go wrong now that there was a new dollhouse in my atrium?

  Chapter 6

  The Lincoln Point police station was about as far as one could drive from the lavish homes on the Heights and still be within city limits. We housed our law enforcement officers and detectives in the oldest building in town, at the edge of Civic Center. City Hall stood in the middle of the complex, with the library on the opposite side from the police department. The set of three buildings, all large and white, screamed “government.”

  A quote from the man we thought of as our town’s “founder,” Abraham Lincoln, dominated the center portico: I MUST STAND WITH ANYBODY THAT STANDS RIGHT, AND STAND WITH HIM WHILE HE IS RIGHT, AND PART WITH HIM WHEN HE GOES WRONG.

  “Tough love,” Skip called it.

  At eight o’clock on a Monday evening, the grand plaza in front of the buildings was lit by a row of streetlights along the perimeter of the semicircular Civic Drive. With both City Hall and the library closed, the police station’s windows were the only ones with signs of life.

  “Don’t bother to park,” I said, as Henry and I approached the end of Springfield Boulevard. “I’ll get out in front of the station. Skip can drive me home when we’re done.”

  “You don’t want me to go in with you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. If Skip’s too busy to take me home, I’ll call Beverly or Linda or—”

  “I get it,” he said. “If I’m in there with you, it will look too much like a date gone bad.”

  He’d read my mind. I had to stop underestimating Henry’s propensity for razor-sharp insights.

  “I don’t want to impose,” I said. A half truth.

  “Here’s an idea. I’ll browse around Rosie’s bookshop, and you can call me when you’re ready to leave.” He pointed to the corner opposite the police station. “She’ll be open until at least nine. And if you’re later than that, I’ll start thinking about posting bail.”

  I finally agreed. Henry would have a good time with our friend Rosie Norman, who owned the only bookshop in town. And I wouldn’t have to feel self-conscious with Henry on my arm, raising eyebrows.

  One of these years I’d stop worrying about what others might or might not be thinking and the position of the town gossips’ eyebrows. Probably the same year I became a good saleswoman, negotiator, and fund-raiser.

  —

  I’d been in the halls of the LPPD and in Skip’s cubicle often enough, but never in an interview room by myself. I was as nervous as if I’d been caught wielding a blunt object or a butcher knife. I wished I’d brought supplies like a bucket of paint and a sewing kit so I could fix up the walls and the torn seat cushion. The whole building needed a going-over, but this room was the worst I’d seen. Also, the temperature seemed to hover around freezing.

  The rooms for witnesses or visitors were much nicer. Was this the room the police used for number-one suspects? Providing the most unpleasant ambience possible? If so, why was I here?

  As the minutes passed, my uneasiness grew and Henry’s comment about posting bail seemed less a joke.

  When the door opened at eight-thirty, I jumped, hitting my knee on the metal table.

  “Ouch,” said a broad-shouldered woman wearing a dark blue, loose-cut skirted suit.

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen her before. I figured her to be in her late thirties and tried to extrapolate her features back to her teens when I might have had her in class. As good as I was, I couldn’t claim to remember absolutely every student I’d ever taught or every colleague of Skip’s I’d ever taken cookies to, but I would have bet a few pieces of miniature furniture that I’d never given this woman a grade.

  “You okay?” she asked, pointing toward my knee.

  “I’m fine.” Just a bruised ego. Who are you? almost slipped out.

  She took a seat across from me and gave me a closed-mouth smile. “I’m Detective Rutherford, Detective Gowen’s partner at the moment. I’m new in town, but I’ve heard all about you, Mrs. Porter.”

  I smiled back, sure that she had. I wished I’d heard about her. My considerable language skills seemed to have abandoned me and I mumbled something trivial about hoping what she’d heard were good things.

  “It’s Geraldine, and I’m glad to meet you,” I added.

  Where was Skip? And why hadn’t he told me about a new partner—female at that? As far as I knew, Detective Rutherford was the first woman in the Lincoln Point Homicide Division. I’d been assigned the one detective I didn’t know. Practice for her or intimidation for me? I couldn’t wait to find out.

  “I know you’re probably used to special attention, Mrs. Porter, but this is a murder investigation and we have to take it by the book from the top.” While mixing metaphors, Detective Rutherford adopted a prayerful position for her hands, beating a rhythm on the table with her steepled fingertips, keeping her thumbs crossed.

  I stiffened. “Of course.”

  “How well did you know the victim?” Her fingers beat the table at “know” and “victim.”

  “Ms. Rockwell?” I asked, meaning, She has a name.

  “Ms. Rockwell,” Detective Rutherford granted.

  “I just met Ms. Rockwell today, but like everyone else in town, I’ve known of her as Varena Young for some time.”

  “She was a duchess, I understand.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  Detective Rutherford flipped through pages in a notebook. I suspected it was for show, that she was simply playing off a script she knew by heart and didn’t really need help remembering the facts of the case.

  For about a half hour, Detective Rutherford had me repeat what she must have known if she’d bothered to consult with my nephew. Why had I gone to the estate? What time did I get there? What time did I leave? What was the purpose of my visit, which, I didn’t point out, was the same as “Why had I gone to the estate?” Did I see or hear anything unusual?

  I took the “anything unusual” question as an opportunity to report on Corazón Cruz’s message to me about Varena’s brother and my subsequent overhearing of an argument possibly between him and Varena and another
male.

  “Yes, I have that here from Detective Gowen.”

  “Have you located her brother?”

  “You also told Detective Gowen that you left the victim’s residence around three forty-five?”

  I gritted my teeth, resigned, but not happy. “Yes, I did.”

  “And you went straight home?”

  “No, I went to a friend’s home. He’d picked up my granddaughter and I—”

  “The name of your friend?”

  I hated to give Henry’s name and contact information to this loathsome woman, but I had no choice. “Henry Baker.”

  “I understand Ms. Young also had a very valuable dollhouse collection.”

  “That’s correct.”

  It wasn’t like me to answer just this side of monosyllables. I shouldn’t have been intimidated by this woman. If she wasn’t a former student, she was certainly of an age to have been sitting in front of me nearly twenty years ago, fretting over a pop quiz on comparing and contrasting the comedies and tragedies of William Shakespeare. I threw my shoulders back. She’s the one who should be intimidated. I had to work on my confidence skills.

  Detective Rutherford disentangled her fingers and sat back. She glanced at the ceiling and I followed suit. I wondered if she had the same thought about the spotty soundproofing, with tiles scattered over the ceiling and one wall, a project that was either coming or going. No wonder assorted wails and thumps from the hallway seeped through. With all my senses on high alert, I heard every groan and imagined handcuffed riffraff passing by outside the room.

  “Did you kind of wish it were yours?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You do dollhouses, right?”

  Do dollhouses? Like Debbie does Dallas? I let out a sigh and bit my lower lip. “I’m a miniaturist, yes.”

  “So. The dollhouse collection. Did you envy it?”

  “Excuse me?” I said again, this time more forcefully.

  She sat back and put her hands in the shallow pockets of her jacket. “Did you envy Ms. Young’s dollhouse collection?”

  My inner English teacher cringed at her incorrect usage. Envy was directed toward people, not things.

  “Are you asking if I’m envious of Ms. Young because of her dollhouse collection?”

  “You tell me,” she said.

  I folded my arms, reeking of confidence. “No,” I said.

  I felt a growl at the edge of my throat. I scanned the bare room as if I’d missed something in the last hour. Skip, perhaps, standing in the corner, laughing at the prank. Maybe the woman was his latest girlfriend and this was his idea of a clever way to introduce us. I couldn’t hold onto that idea very long, however. He and my neighbor, June Chinn, seemed a solid couple.

  Even if Skip were uncommitted, I couldn’t think of a worse match than Detective Rutherford—too serious and full of self-importance on the personality side, and too old and too solidly built in the looks department. Skip preferred slight, girly girls, as he called them, probably to annoy his mother and me, women who could hold their own in a teasing match. The woman grilling me was singularly not a teaser, large-boned, and looked like she could throw a mean punch. I doubted she’d ever played with a dollhouse or been fascinated by a four-inch-high working fountain.

  “Any chance she willed one or two to you?” she asked.

  I thought of the dollhouse that arrived in my garage a couple of hours ago. It had not been willed to me. And I hadn’t actually seen it. All I had was hearsay from an eleven-year-old. I had no reason to assume the dollhouse had been willed to me from the Rockwell Estate.

  “No.”

  Detective Rutherford breathed a heavy sigh. “Let’s go back to the time of the crime, Mrs. Porter.” She flipped through her small notebook. “Your meeting with the victim was in a room with a very large dollhouse.”

  No question, no answer.

  “Did you touch anything in the room?”

  “Yes.”

  Another heavy sigh. I expected the detective to slap handcuffs on me any second. “What did you touch, Mrs. Porter?”

  “I handled many of the artifacts in the dollhouse.” I elected not to utter Lord and Lady Morley’s names in this room with this wretched interrogator. “A tiny signature plate from Currier and Ives, a chair made from an emerald brooch, the lace canopy over the bed in the main bedroom.” I threw up my hands. “Lots of things. I’m not sure I can remember everything. Did you locate Varena’s brother, by the way?” I asked, thinking it was worth another shot.

  “And in the rest of the room? Did you handle anything other than what was in the dollhouse?”

  I didn’t expect the detective to acknowledge my question about Varena’s brother. I was embarrassed to acknowledge that I merely wanted to annoy her. Tit for tat. Very mature.

  “I sat down for a minute. I suppose I touched parts of the chair. The life-size chair.”

  “Anything else?”

  What was the point of nagging me? I wanted to run from the room, find Skip, drag him into a corner, and give him what-for.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “There’s a sword set on the wall and a replica in the dollhouse. I ran my hand over the longest sword in both sets. The life-size one and the mini one.” I felt an anxious twinge. Skip had said Varena was struck with a heavy object. “Was one of the swords the murder weapon? Is that why you’re asking?”

  Detective Rutherford pushed herself away from the table, as if the game were over and she’d finally won.

  “Thank you Mrs. Porter. You can go for now.”

  She was out the door in a flash.

  I was right behind her. For now.

  —

  I let the heavy door slam at my heels and took my first deep breath in a long time.

  It said something about the awfulness of the interview room that the police station corridor, with its quota of DUIs and other generators of unhealthy odors, seemed like fresh air.

  I dusted the back of my pants as if I’d been sitting in the gutter. I searched the noisy, busy area for my nephew, making elaborate plans for when I got my hands on him.

  There was no sign of Skip, but I saw Henry off in a corner near a vending machine. A glance at the battered wall clock told me it was well after nine, Rosie’s closing time. Henry was engaged in deep conversation with a tall woman in a vibrant, flowing outfit.

  My breath caught. Was that Varena Young? Was this all a mistake? A rumor, nothing more, that she’d been murdered?

  The interview with Detective Rutherford had robbed me of my good judgment. I saw now that the woman was a much younger version of my friend. She had to be Alicia, Varena Young’s daughter.

  I could hardly wait to meet her. Except, she’d stood up and appeared ready to leave. I rushed toward the corner, nearly knocking over a female officer and coming perilously close to sending someone’s cup of coffee to the floor.

  Still I was too late. With great dismay, I saw the blues and purples of Alicia’s diaphanous cloak float out of the station. I could have sprinted to cut her off, but I was already slightly out of breath and knew it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. Of all times to worry about protocol.

  Henry stood and put his arm around my waist, a calming gesture and a gentle message not to run.

  “Don’t worry. I have it all on tape,” he said, with a comforting grin.

  I wished he weren’t kidding.

  —

  Maddie could be put off for just so long before she forgot her manners. While Henry and I walked to his SUV, I called my home phone line, knowing Maddie would answer.

  “Hello?” she said, in that way that translated into a reminder that we’d been gone forever. Away So Long. “We’ve already had our ice cream. Aunt Kay said we’d better not wait since it’s a school night and we need to be in bed soon. And you haven’t even seen the dollhouse yet.”

  The girl knew how to scold. Where had she learned the technique? Looking way into the future, I pitied her children.

/>   “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll be there to tuck you in. Everything took longer than we expected.”

  “What everything?”

  Nice try, but Grandma was getting wiser every day, just to keep up. “I’m glad you had your dessert. Put Kay on for a minute, would you?”

  Maddie sent a loud, meaningful sigh across the wires. I wasn’t too worried since my granddaughter was easy to win back.

  I hated to admit that I’d been wrong about my readiness to give up involvement in the case. I couldn’t drop it while the police were uninterested in my valuable input. Since when did an argument moments before a murder not count? Since when was a documented reference to a victim’s brother dismissed?

  I’d find a way for Maddie to use her computer skills in a harmless way in the investigation, maybe to track down Varena’s brother.

  First I had to find a way to use my own skills. I turned to look back at the police station, its windows still alive with lights. I wondered if Detective Rutherford was writing up a report on me. After my treatment this evening, Skip owed me a place in the investigation.

  “We’ll be home in about fifteen minutes,” I told Kay when she came on the line. “I’m so sorry to hold you up all this time.”

  “Not a problem,” said Henry’s daughter who had the calm gene, leading me to believe I’d been misjudging lawyers all these years. “Maddie gave me the greatest present. I’m always complaining about my dry hands, so she gave me this wonderful, buttery hand cream from a specialty store in Monterey.”

  I didn’t remember Maddie’s being on a recent trip to Monterey. But it was less than two hours from her Palo Alto home and there certainly could have been a day trip I didn’t hear about. “Did I miss your birthday?” I asked Kay.

  “No. This was just an unsolicited gift. Very sweet.”

  I allowed myself a little puff of pride, thinking of the no-occasion miniature earrings Maddie gave me earlier today. I wondered if my son had increased his daughter’s allowance.

  We’d reached Henry’s car. I strapped myself into the SUV. “We have only about ten minutes to get home before Maddie goes into overdrive,” I said. “What did you learn from Alicia?”