I paused, allowing myself a moment to remember what seemed like a whirlwind hour behind the gates of Robert Todd Heights on what turned out to be the last afternoon of Varena’s life.
“Afterwards, I went directly to your house. Then Kay and the girls went for ice cream—what time would you say?”
“After Skip’s call.”
“Which was at six-fifteen. Now I remember looking at the clock to check how long it had been since I’d left Varena’s home. I wish I’d known how handy it would have been if I’d taken a log book with me.”
Henry smiled. “We’re figuring it out. Kay and the girls would have landed at your house around seven-fifteen, seven-thirty, and found the dollhouse.”
“Five hours. It’s a long window of opportunity for a delivery.”
“It includes the dinner hour; someone must have been home,” Henry said.
“We’ll see,” I said, with as much optimism as I could muster.
I started with June Chinn, my neighbor to the right, facing my house from the street. June was a tech editor and Skip’s current and longest-running girlfriend. Her Eichler was pale green with dark green trim, a nice complement to my two-tone blue version. There was a good chance June would be around now and also last evening since she often worked from her well-equipped home office.
I was delighted to hear her voice. Success on my first call. Then she launched into what was on her mind. “Hey, Gerry. What’s up with that woman who was murdered in the rich part of town? You usually have the skinny on such things.”
“It turns out, she was a friend of mine.”
The long pause told me I should have led up to the announcement more slowly. I hadn’t meant to sound abrupt.
“Oh, Gerry, I’m so sorry. Me and my big mouth. I haven’t talked to Skip or I would have known. We’re kind of on the outs.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t want to hear more bad news. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, never mind. It’s the usual. Taking our relationship to the next level and so on.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I hoped not right now.
“No, no. I’m sorry about your friend. On the news this morning, they said she was a famous writer and I’d never heard you talk about her.”
“It’s my fault, June. I shouldn’t have dropped that so unceremoniously. You couldn’t have known, and actually I’d just met her. But we clicked right away and I feel more of a loss than I expected.”
“I totally get it. Wow.”
I pictured the totally cute June, sitting in her sweats, with her straight black hair pulled into a ponytail. Skip’s mother and I were big fans of June, and apparently more eager than the two of them to seal the relationship with a marriage license. I wondered if that was the “next level” disagreement now in effect between them. I wondered which one wanted to go up a step.
“Do they know anything about who killed her?” June asked.
“Not yet.”
“That’s really tough, not even knowing.” A pause and a breath. “Oh, wait, are you working on it, helping Skip?”
“Not really.”
“You are. Great. All is well.”
Another vote of confidence for my detecting skills.
“I have a question for you that’s not connected to the investigation.” Not so far, anyway.
“Shoot.”
I heard the sounds of June taking a long drink from her ever-present water bottle.
“Were you around your house yesterday afternoon?”
“Yeah, I was here all afternoon with my head in my keyboard. We’re working on a new version of a GUI—a graphical user interface—that’s supposed to be delivered by the end of the week. That’s why I wasn’t even thinking that the victim could have been someone you knew.”
“Don’t worry about it, June.”
“Now I got you off track. Shoot with your question. Oh, bad choice. I hope your friend wasn’t shot?”
June seemed more hyper than usual; I wondered about the amount of caffeine she’d imbibed this morning.
“No, she wasn’t shot.”
“Whew.”
“There was a delivery to my house yesterday, some time between two-thirty and”—I looked over at Henry, who held up five fingers, then two, then a bent index finger; I smiled—“about seven-thirty in the evening. Did you happen to notice?”
“Gee, you mean like a UPS truck or something?”
“I’m not sure. It’s a very large dollhouse.”
“Hmmm.”
I took that as a “no,” but I persisted. “It wasn’t in a box. So, I’m assuming it probably wasn’t an official delivery service like UPS or FedEx. Maybe just a small truck or an SUV. But it would have taken two people a few minutes to carry it to the front door.”
“Hmmm. Sorry. I didn’t hear any noise or anything. I’m on the other side of the house, though. Did they send the wrong one?”
“Yes.” Close enough.
“Let’s see. Who might have seen something? Mari and Jeremy just got back from vacation this weekend and I know they were planning to take one more day at home. They might have seen something. They’re probably more observant than I am. Do you have their number?”
“Yes, but I’m not at home. Can you give it to me?”
I wrote down that number and those of several other neighbors and thanked June.
“No problem,” she said. “If I think of anything else, I’ll buzz you. And, again, Gerry, I’m—”
I couldn’t take another apology. “You’ve been a big help, June. I hope you can get back to work on your GIU.”
June chuckled and I figured I’d mixed up the letters. I didn’t flub on purpose, but I was glad she’d have a good laugh once I hung up. If she and Skip were on the outs, she might need one. I know I did.
I repeated my story to Mari, who lived on the other side of me.
“Don’t you know where you bought it?” she asked.
“It’s a gift. I think my son is trying to surprise me, but I don’t want to thank him if it was someone else.”
Henry gave me a thumbs-up, apparently not concerned about the easy lie he’d heard from my lips.
I left a message for Shelley and Joel across the street. Next to them were Yvette and Andrea, both of whom worked from home but weren’t aware of a dollhouse delivery.
“I could come by if you need help getting it in the house,” Yvette said, a nice gesture.
After five calls, I had no more information, but I did catch up on what my neighbors had been doing lately and acquired an insight into who was paying attention and how people responded to an off-the-wall question.
I felt like a reporter interviewing for a “man on the street” column. Or a police detective investigating a crime. Neither of which I had credentials for.
My last hope was Esther Willoughby, a nonagenarian who lived by herself in a beige Eichler with brown trim at the corner of the cross street near my home.
It took a few minutes for Esther to come around to my question. First, I heard about her club’s project to knit fifty baby blankets for the firemen’s holiday drive. In a burst of altruistic feelings, I offered to contribute one though it had been years since I’d knit anything bigger than six inches square. Then we reviewed the status of her four children, all older than me, an update from just last week. They were all doing so, so well, but none of them visited as often as she’d like.
Finally, she said, “I was in the front yard tending to my heather and azaleas—some have already turned brown, sorry to say—and I happened to see two men leave your door, Geraldine. It was around five, right after all the four o’clock shows. I switch back and forth, you know.”
I didn’t know, and tried to picture Esther wielding a remote, following several talk shows at once. “Were the men carrying the dollhouse?” I asked, cautiously excited.
“No, no. And I can’t even tell you for sure that they left anything at your house, because I didn’t see them walking to your door, just away fro
m it, empty-handed. They got in a red truck, kind of old and dusty, like the kind George and I had when Lincoln Point was all farm land. Nowadays families have those large types, those SVUs.”
I smiled and empathized with Esther’s mixing up the common letters as I was sure I’d mixed up the acronym for June’s work. The smile was also in honor of the first bit of information I’d had since starting my polling of my neighbors.
I let Esther go on. “I’ll bet these young mothers wouldn’t know what to do if they had to load their kids onto a bus, like I did with my four. We never even owned a car, you know, until my youngest was in high school.”
It was time to cut in before Esther could launch into a discussion of families these days versus those in the good old days.
“Can you describe the men?”
“Oh, dear, they were too far away for me to see any details. I’m sorry. They were husky, though, and white, and walked like they were kinda young, but everyone’s young to me.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, joining her in a laugh.
“They had those baseball caps that all the men wear.”
“Did you happen to see a logo on the cap or anything that would distinguish them?”
“No, sorry, dear. They drove right by me, but with these eyes I have now I couldn’t see inside. I tried, too. Not that I’m nosy, but I do keep watch for strangers in the neighborhood.”
Burglars, beware, with Esther on the job. “You’ve been a big help,” I said, for the second time in several minutes.
It was true. Esther had given me more than anyone else in the neighborhood. I knew from experience that when an older person gave you television shows as time markers, they were usually correct.
“There might be one other thing that could help you,” Esther said.
“What is it?” It always took awhile to leave Esther, whether in person or on the phone. I didn’t have a lot of hope for more information during the long good-bye.
“It probably doesn’t matter, but I did notice an Arizona license plate on the truck those two men were driving. I couldn’t see any numbers though. They weren’t sticking to the speed limit, if you know what I mean.”
“Arizona? You’re sure?”
“You can’t miss Arizona plates. They have a big cactus on the lefthand side. My granddaughter lives there, is how I know, and Terry’s the only one who comes to visit me, even though her parents live right across the bay in Union City. Terry goes to school in Tucson.”
I couldn’t wait to get off the phone and mull over this new information. It was more than I’d gotten all day. However, I couldn’t get away from Esther without a promise to stop in for tea very soon. “And bring that handsome new friend of yours,” Esther said. I knew there was a twinkle in her eyes at that point.
Maybe Alicia Rockwell should have hired Esther for this job.
—
“It’s something,” Henry said after I filled him in on Esther’s end of the conversation. He’d pulled over while I finished talking.
“And since nothing else was left on my doorstep yesterday, it’s a good bet that we’re looking for an old red pickup with Arizona plates.”
I envisioned our riding around all day scanning every truck’s license plate we passed. I hoped we’d come up with a better idea.
“How old did you say this lady is?” Henry asked.
“I went to her ninetieth birthday party within the last couple of years.”
Henry frowned. “Do you think her eyesight is reliable?”
“It’s not that good, but I think she would know her granddaughter’s license plate. She’s very sharp, writing her memoirs. June helps her with the computer.”
“She has a computer?”
I guessed Henry was feeling left out. He still refused to participate even in email, let alone online shopping or other activities. I didn’t blame him. If Richard and his family hadn’t lived in Los Angeles for many years, I probably wouldn’t have been as agreeable to learning how to email. I managed to retire from ALHS before it was a requirement for teachers. Now, even Maddie’s sixth-grade class accessed homework online.
But once you have a computer, I learned, you can find a myriad of uses, from keeping bank records to creating a calendar that can be shared with anyone you choose (very handy for scheduling Maddie-care), to making mailing labels from your address book.
“Esther has trouble locating her files now and then, but so do I,” I said. “Otherwise, June’s very impressed with what Esther can do.”
“A motley crew of neighbors,” Henry said. “Is that about it for calls?”
“For now,” I said. “What do you think about searching for that pickup? What if it’s back in Arizona?”
“We could alert Skip.”
I grunted. “Maybe not right now.”
“You’re telling me you’re not on good terms with the one person who can help us out?”
“I’m afraid not. He might be mad at me.”
“Well, he’s not mad at me,” Henry said.
“Get on it then,” I said, giving him a playful jab in the ribs.
I loved it that Henry brought out a side of me that was dormant most of the time.
—
We pulled up in front of my house after a morning that was more eventful than I’d expected. I scanned the rows of Eichlers on both sides of my street, in different colors and trims, and pictured the neighbors I’d just spoken to, going about their business.
All was quiet.
I glanced at my blue doorway with some trepidation. Whew. No deliveries this morning.
On the other hand, I felt a twinge of disappointment that a midsize Tudor hadn’t been set on my front step. It also would have been nice if a red pickup with Arizona plates had been parked at my curb.
This detecting work was harder than I’d thought.
Chapter 11
I was a firm believer that often inspiration for one project comes when you’re working on another. (In other words, I was the world’s best procrastinator.) I decided to take stock of my dollhouse inventory before digging further into the secrets of the new house in my atrium. My visit to Varena’s home and my short-lived friendship with her had inspired me to get myself organized.
Besides, Henry had offered to take a shot at unlocking the secret room Maddie had found.
While he rummaged around my garage and crafts room for tools, I surveyed my collection of finished and half-finished dollhouses and room boxes. The midsize-Tudor-turned-large-modern dwarfed my own projects and highlighted their deficiencies.
Most of my pre-special-delivery houses were squeezed into my crafts room. I saw my holdings in a new light. Stuff—there was no other word for it—was crammed into miniature bedrooms, living rooms, and playrooms. Using found objects was my forte, and much of the so-called furniture was made from bottle tops and plastic throwaway items.
Not for the first time, I considered my friend Linda’s perfectionist approach to crafts. I wondered, if I’d put my investment of time and energy into one really well made and beautifully furnished dollhouse, like ones Linda crafted, it would have been a better use of my time.
That was Linda talking, I decided. There was more than one way to approach a hobby, and as long as it gave me pleasure, no further judgment was called for.
I checked out my street of stores—replicas of the bookstore, ice cream parlor, and bagel shop in town. I mused about adding a French bakery. How hard would I have to work to get Maddie to help with that one? Not at all.
All day I’d been avoiding thoughts of Maddie and what she had to tell me. She’d be home in a few hours and my nail-biting would be over. Or just starting.
Skip was right, though. I had to get rid of a couple of houses. One was already earmarked as a donation to our Lincoln Point Library playroom. I’d talked to our chief librarian, Doris Ann Hartley, about fixing it up so that each room was decorated as a scene in a different children’s story. I planned to introduce the idea at the regu
lar meeting of my crafts group tomorrow evening. My goal was to persuade each lady to sign up for a story.
I’d already decided I’d take on Snow White. Nothing was more fun to craft than the seven dwarves. Except I wouldn’t actually make the characters, I’d make something to remind the children of them. A few crumpled tissues for Sneezy; a pillow for Sleepy. A—
Rrring. Rrring.
Someone was calling an end to my escapism into the land of little things. I checked the screen on my landline phone. Doris Ann Hartley herself. I realized I’d been hoping for a call from Skip all morning. I wasn’t used to our being at odds and wondered who’d give in first.
“Gerry? I heard about Varena Young. What happened?”
“I wish I knew.”
Our librarian since as far back as our family had a Lincoln Point Public Library card, Doris Ann called herself the Two-Thousand-Year-Old Librarian. She certainly seemed to know everything that had gone on during that period of human history and beyond. She was such a willing and knowledgeable resource for school children, they probably thought she’d done live interviews with the cave men.
“Everyone here’s talking about it,” Doris Ann said. “She has so many fans in town, I have a hard time keeping enough of her books on the shelves. I can’t believe it. First you say you’ll be in contact with her about a donation for the bookmobile auction, and the next thing I know she’s murdered?”
I hoped I didn’t need to remind Doris Ann that the two events weren’t connected, Detective Blythe Rutherford’s opinion notwithstanding.
“It’s a great loss to everyone,” I said, not meaning to sound like a graveside preacher.
“I hate to ask at a time like this, Gerry, but I’m working on the publicity for the auction as we speak. Do we have a dollhouse?”
I hesitated. How could I be sure the modern dollhouse was available to donate if I didn’t know who left it on my doorstep? Maybe there was a midsize Tudor on the way to my house now, as promised. Maybe not. I should have asked Alicia when I had the chance, or even Laura Overbee. Alicia had offered to compensate me with a couple of dollhouses. I liked the sound of that, but we never closed the deal. At the time it seemed the thing to do was to cut off the discussion until I knew more about the modern house that had been delivered, apparently without her knowledge.
Mix-up in Miniature Page 11
