A Dollhouse to Die For (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (28 page)

Tonight was a necessary evil he obviously wanted to get over and done with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

He was wearing a dark gray suit which complemented his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He had the perfect muscular-yet-lean physique to wear a suit, and wear it well.

Eleanor narrowed her gaze in Serrano’s direction. “God, I can’t wait to see that man with his shirt off.”

Neither, apparently, could the crowd of women waiting outside, who had rushed into the garage now and were leaning against the car, trailing their fingers over the warm hood, cooing over it, huddled together and giggling in feverish anticipation.

Serrano’s ice blue eyes surveyed the scene, taking in everything, missing nothing.

“It’s a good thing it’s cold enough to wear gloves tonight, or he’d have a heart attack at the fingerprints on that paintwork,” I murmured.

To say that Serrano was slightly anal was like saying Philly sports fans were somewhat enthusiastic about their favorite teams.

We shooed everyone out again with some difficulty and I closed the doors to a chorus of groans. While Serrano took his jacket off and laid it carefully on the backseat of the car, Alex Roos adjusted the lighting. Martha dusted the car with a sheepskin cloth and Eleanor and I pulled the garbage cans into place.

We stood back to admire our tableau.

Suddenly I spotted faces through the row of windows at the top of the garage doors. The groupies must be giving each other piggy backs to try to peek inside.

I got up on a stepladder and Martha handed me pieces of black paper that I taped carefully over the small square panes so that not a crack of light shone through.

The stage was finally set.

“Okay, ladies.” Roos clapped his hands. “I think I can handle it from here. Good night. Thanks for your help.”

Eleanor sucked in a breath, but we couldn’t really object, not with Serrano standing right behind him. The photographer had obviously been given strict instructions to clear the scene.

One by one we trailed glumly into the house.

“
Damn
that Roos. Now
we
can’t see anything either,” Eleanor grumbled as I pulled the door to the kitchen closed behind us. “What a spoilsport. And why the hell did you have to be so efficient and cover up all the windows, Daisy?”

The tastefully remodeled carriage house had the same heavy ceiling beams as the garage, but the whitewashed walls and exposed stonework were softened with paintings of rustic subjects like a folk art pig, and there were top quality Persian area rugs covering most of the stone floors. It was a simple layout. A huge sleeping loft and a sitting room above, and a good-sized living room, dining room, and kitchen with walk-in fireplace downstairs.

Ruth was at the maple wood kitchen counter making a fresh pot of coffee and she grinned at our downcast expressions. “Don’t despair, my friends. All is not lost.”

She made a beckoning motion and we followed her to an alcove off the kitchen that was set up as an office. It also housed a closed-captioned TV system. Ruth poked the power button on the computer monitor and it flickered into life, showing a quadrant of pictures of the front of the house, the back door, the main gate, and the interior of the garage.

There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving so we could all get into a good viewing position before the show started.

We didn’t have long to wait.

Serrano didn’t bother going back to the changing area to don a robe or a towel like the other guys. He simply pulled off his tie right where he stood and stripped off his shirt while we held our collective breath.

Even in a grainy black and white image, the hard-muscled body was awe-inspiring.

“Good
God
,” Martha said.

The nighttime gray hues accented the rippled stomach and strong biceps that flexed as he moved, like a prowling mountain cat that wastes no energy, but is a focused, tightly coiled killing machine.

I swallowed, but there was no moisture left in my throat.

As Serrano slowly reached for his belt buckle, he glanced in the direction of the security camera, and it seemed as though his eyes met mine.

Roos tested his light meter near Serrano’s face and the resultant flash made my heart bounce.

With shaking fingers I turned the monitor off. “We shouldn’t be spying on the man like this. We’re just a bunch of sick old women getting our jollies.”

“And you’re jolly annoying.” Eleanor pouted and slumped back in a chair, crossing her arms over her narrow chest.

“Daisy, why don’t you come up to the house with me and visit with Stanley while the shoot is going on,” Ruth urged.

“Okay.” My heart was still racing.

“We’ll clean up here when it’s all over, dear,” Martha said to Ruth. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

As we left the room, I thought I could hear the whir of the monitor starting up again.

I grabbed my coat from the kitchen and Ruth and I walked the short distance up the curving driveway toward the magnificent main house.

The original section was from the eighteenth century with random width floors and fireplaces in most of the rooms. It had been added onto over the years and the newer wings had the same sage green siding as the carriage house. The carefully tended rose gardens, tennis court, and pool were situated behind the house, and open verdant acres rolled away in every direction with breathtaking views of the countryside.

Ruth’s husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago. Before his illness, Joe and I used to join the Bornsteins occasionally for dinner during the summers when we vacationed in Millbury. Stanley Bornstein had been a successful chemist for one of the large pharmaceutical corporations based in Montgomery County. He’d made a fortune for the company, and for himself, and had retired about seven years ago in his early fifties.

I’d always thought of him as a highly intelligent, fascinating man. Brilliant, in fact.

And now he barely knew his own name.

Ruth took a deep breath before we headed upstairs. “Daisy, you haven’t seen Stanley in a while. I don’t want you to be upset, but he—well, he’s gotten much worse lately. He probably won’t recognize you.”

“That’s okay,” I said, and smiled up at her in reassurance. I’d never seen the tall, elegant Ruth not perfectly coiffed, and tonight was no exception. She wore an ecru flowing sweater coat over a silk top and dress pants, together with a necklace of intertwined gold rings. Her bobbed hair was dyed a rich chocolate brown and her dark eyes were enhanced with eyeliner of the same shade.

She’d always looked years younger than her husband, even before he got sick, but in the light cast by the chandelier in the foyer there were fine lines of exhaustion drawn around her eyes and mouth that even the most expensive night creams couldn’t erase.

We passed a guest bedroom on our way, and I caught a glimpse of some of Ruth’s things. When we walked into the master bedroom, I could see why. The imposing cherry four poster bed was gone. It must have been dismantled and stored somewhere else and was now replaced by a metal hospital bed.

I’d steeled myself to be prepared, but I had to press my lips together to hide my shock at Stanley’s wasted appearance. He’d always been a slim guy, but now he was incredibly thin, his cheeks sunken and gray hair standing up in wisps on top of his head.

His hands looked like little bird claws resting on the starched white sheets.

“Stanley, Daisy’s here to see you,” Ruth said.

He didn’t turn his head.

It must have been six months since I’d last seen him. At that time he seemed to know who I was, although he couldn’t quite follow the thread of the conversation. He kept asking Ruth about someone named Charlie. Turns out that Charlie was the cocker spaniel he’d had as a kid.

There were sheets covering the mirrors on the dressing table and also draped over the closet doors. Ruth followed my gaze. “Sometimes we see imposters in the room,” she said softly.

I bit my lip and nodded.

An array of medicines stood on the bedside table, and a nurse was sitting in an armchair next to the bed, knitting a pink and orange scarf. She got to her feet with a grunt.

“He wouldn’t let me change him, Miz Bornstein,” she said, pursing her full lips together.

“I’ll do it, Jo Ellen,” Ruth said gently. “You were right not to push matters. Evenings are always the worst time.”

Stanley coughed, a painful dry wheeze.

“His cold is getting real bad again, too,” the nurse said, shaking her head. “Doctor was here earlier to do his blood work and said he’s probably gonna need another course of antibiotics.”

“I’ll pick up the prescription tomorrow.” Ruth walked over to the table and trailed a graceful hand over the bottles. “Did you give him his meds?”

“Yes, Miz Bornstein.”

“And did you sign off on the chart?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The nurse glanced at me. She stopped short of rolling her eyes, but she may as well have. I gathered they’d been through this routine many times before.

Ruth touched a hand to my shoulder. “Daisy, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to see Jo Ellen out.”

They walked out of the room and I sat in the chair next to the bed. Even though I didn’t know much about how to deal with a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s, I knew I should talk to Stanley as normally as I could. If there was a part of him that could still comprehend, I wanted to respect his dignity.

I tried to ignore the faint odor hanging in the air that reminded me of teaching school in the early days, when some of the little kids didn’t always make it to the bathroom on time. I wondered how long he’d been lying here like that. Surely Ruth paid the nurse well enough that she could have handled the task, unappealing as it admittedly was.

I struggled to think of something to say.

Throughout the house there were hundreds of books. He’d been such a vibrant, educated man. There were even two bookshelves on the back wall of this huge master bedroom.

I’d always relished our conversations about novels we’d enjoyed, the current state of world affairs, and even news of his chemical research. He had a way of explaining things that made it easy to understand.

We also shared a passion for quirky historical facts.

“Hey, Stanley, did you know that Charles Dickens always faced to the north when sleeping?” I said to him, hoping to see some sort of familiar answering spark in his eyes.

“Or that ketchup was sold in the 1830s as a
medicine
?” He used to tease me about my penchant for putting the tomato condiment on anything and everything.

He stared unblinking at the ceiling.

Never mind not recognizing me, it was as if he couldn’t hear me at all.

I sighed, remembering one time when the four of us had gone out to dinner, right before he retired. Stanley insisted on taking the bill when it came to the table because Joe and I had treated the time before. But then he took so long figuring out the tip that Ruth pulled out her own credit card. Stanley was furious at his wife and it was an uncomfortable scene, to say the least. She’d excused the episode afterward by saying he’d been under a lot of stress at work.

Now I wondered if Stanley had retired because he’d had a premonition that something might be going wrong.

His thin fingers plucked restlessly at the sheet and he turned to look at me.

“I know you.” His face crumpled and he started crying. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. And I forgot your birthday.”

“No, no, it’s not my birthday. It’s okay. Really.”

“Card. I should have bought you a card.”

I tried again to tell him it wasn’t my birthday, but he wouldn’t be consoled. In fact, the more I protested, the more agitated he became. Desperate, I looked around. There was a small writing desk near the window with a stack of expensive cream-colored writing paper.

“Okay, you know what, Stanley? You’re right. It
is
my birthday. So let’s make a card. What should I put on it?”

But he lapsed into silence once more.

I knew he liked dogs, so I drew a stick figure of a dog that looked a bit like my golden retriever mix puppy. I added a bunch of flowers and wrote
Happy Birthday
inside.

I came back to the bed and sat next to him. “Look. Here it is. Do you want to give it to me now?”

I held it out, but he suddenly gripped my wrist so tightly that the paper dropped from my fingers onto the white sheets.

“Help me, Daisy,” he said in a hoarse whisper, his eyes focused and very bright. “She’s trying to kill me!”

The Millbury Ladies’ Home Companion

Decorate a Dollhouse on a Dime

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to decorate a child’s dollhouse. Many items that you have lying around the house can be cleverly repurposed into furniture or accessories. Here are just a few fun ideas that will work with variously scaled dollhouses:

• Make a cute bistro chair out of a champagne cork holder. Clip, remove, and straighten the bottom wire from the “cage.” The cap is now the seat and the four twisted wires are the legs. Form the center of the straight wire into a circle design, and reattach to the two back legs to make the back of the chair. Voila!
  
• A stack of matchboxes makes a great chest of drawers, with the addition of brass paper fasteners for drawer pulls.
  
• The tiny plastic stands that come in pizza boxes are ready-made doll’s tables, especially when covered with a cloth.
  
• Small doilies are perfect for tablecloths and bedspreads.
  
• After Eight mints have an ornate clock design on the wrapper to decorate your doll’s grandfather clock.
  
• Empty eye shadow containers make good serving trays or picture frames.
  
• Use the metal palettes that held the eye shadow itself for baking trays in the oven.
  
• Buttons can be used as plates, and beads as vases or bottles.
  
• Empty toothpaste caps can also serve as vases.
  
• Coat buttons, or buttons covered in fur, make nice little throw pillows for the sofa.
  
• Think of using empty thread spools for table bases, stools, and perhaps a plant pedestal.
  
• Small candy boxes, like Russell Stover chocolates, make the ideal doll’s bed. Glue on wooden beads for the feet.
  
• Empty creamer containers can be repurposed into lampshades, and a golf tee is a good lampshade base.
  
• Use thimbles for flower planters, and lids from narrow hair spray bottles for trash cans.
  
• A beer cap can now be the top of a barstool.
  
• Cut down birthday cake candles for doll-sized candles.
  
• String together bits of old jewelry for pretty chandeliers.
  
• Popsicle sticks laid side by side make a great hardwood floor.
  
• An empty, clean applesauce cup might find new life as a laundry basket.
  
• Paper clips can be re-twisted into tiny clothes hangers.
  
• How about wrapping paper for wallpaper?
  
• Postage stamps or miniature pictures from magazines can be framed with toothpicks for your doll’s artwork.
  
• Foil, cut in either a rectangular or oval shape and pasted to the wall, makes a good mirror.
  
• A drinking straw is an easy curtain rod, with fabric scraps or old handkerchiefs for curtains.
  
• Wine corks, empty egg cartons, and cardboard paper towel rolls are all good items to save for future projects.
  
• So think small and let your imagination be your guide!
  

Trick or Treat? A Mini Pumpkin Wreath

• Cover a 20-inch foam form with sheet moss, using a glue gun.
  
• Wrap a 3-inch-wide burlap ribbon over the wreath to make a hanger long enough to reach the top of the door and allow the wreath to hang at eye level.
  
• Insert wooden florist picks into the bottoms of mini pumpkins and/or little gourds, and hot glue the connections.
  
• Once the glue has cooled, stick the pumpkins and gourds into the foam.
  
• Fill in the gaps between the pumpkins and gourds with more moss, securing with the glue gun. (You could also use putka pods, which are dried seed pods that look like tiny pumpkins, but glue them directly onto the form. You may need to do two layers of putkas to cover the gaps where the moss shows through.)
  
• Attach the burlap ribbon holding the wreath onto the top of the front door with an upholstery tack.
  
• This rustic wreath could also be used as a lovely candle ring for Thanksgiving Dinner.
  

Out, Out, Danged Spot!

This is Eleanor’s secret recipe to bring back water-stained (and otherwise-stained) fabrics.

HOT HOT HOT water

1 cup of laundry detergent

1 cup powdered dishwasher detergent

1 cup bleach

¹
/
₂
cup borax

Mix all items together in the smallest container that will hold them. Soak for a minimum of 30 minutes, or longer for even better results.

You can omit the bleach the first time you soak and see if it works. If it doesn’t, then you can try the bleach. (Unless the item is silk—then no bleach, ever!)

Sausage, Cabbage, and White Bean Soup

A delicious, hearty, but relatively healthy soup for a cold winter’s day.

4 tablespoons olive oil

12 ounces fully cooked chicken-apple sausage (about 4), halved lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1⁄2-inch-thick slices (You can also use Italian turkey sausage)

4 cups thinly sliced green cabbage (about 1⁄2 small head)

3 leeks (white and pale green parts only), washed well and halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced crosswise (about 3 cups)

2 cups sliced baby carrots

2 tablespoons tomato paste concentrate

2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

8 cups low-salt chicken broth

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage slices and sauté until brown around edges, about 5 minutes. Add cabbage; sauté 2 minutes. (I never know what to do with half a head of left-over cabbage, so sometimes I use the whole head of cabbage in this recipe.)

Transfer to a bowl. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the pot and heat. Add the leeks and carrots and sauté them until soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes.

Add the tomato paste, parsley, and rosemary to the carrots and leeks and stir 1 minute. Add the broth, sausage-cabbage mixture, and beans and bring to a boil. (Depending on your taste, you may want to add a tad more tomato paste.)

Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Taste it first, though. Surprisingly, you may not need any!)

Note: If you don’t have fresh herbs on hand, the world will not come to an end. Use 2 teaspoons of dried parsley and 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary as a perfectly fine substitute.

Martha’s Marvelous Madeira Cake

A classic English cake, similar to a moist pound cake, flavored with your choice of lemon or orange. Perfect for afternoon tea! Serve with some fresh fruit on the side.

1
¹
/
₂
cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup sugar mixed with 2 tablespoons lemon rind (from 2 small lemons) OR the rind from one big orange

¹
/
₂
cup vegetable or canola oil

1 cup (8 ounces) plain Greek yogurt

2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a loaf tin with butter or cooking spray. Dust with flour and shake out the excess.

Mix the flour, baking powder, and sugar mixture together in one bowl.

Mix the oil, yogurt, and two eggs together and then combine with the dry ingredients.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes or until golden brown on top and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

If you like, make a glaze for the top with 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. It’s also delicious sliced and toasted for breakfast.

Lackluster Silver?

First, a simple chemistry lesson from my high school teaching days:

Silver tarnishes because it undergoes a chemical reaction with sulfur-containing substances in the air to form silver sulfide, which is black, and darkens the silver.

One way to remove the tarnish is to use abrasive, toxic polishes that take off the silver sulfide, but the problem is they also remove some of the silver along with it. Or, you can “reverse” the chemical reaction to turn silver sulfide back into silver (without removing any of the silver) by using the following items you probably already have in your kitchen: a pan, aluminum foil, baking soda, and water.

• Place sterling or plated silver in an aluminum or an enamel pan large enough to immerse the utensils. If using an enamel pan, place a sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom. Make sure that the silver touches the aluminum. They must be in contact with one another for the electrochemical reaction to take place.
  
• Sprinkle
  ¹
  /
  ₂
  to 1 cup baking soda over the silverware. Use about one cup of baking soda for each gallon of water.
  
• Keeping the pan in the sink to minimize splashing, pour in enough boiling water to cover the utensils. The mixture will froth up, which is why it’s a good idea to do it in the sink.
  
• If the silver is only lightly tarnished, all of the tarnish will disappear within several minutes, and be transferred to the aluminum foil. If it’s badly tarnished, you may need to repeat the process.
  
• When the tarnish disappears, remove the silverware, rinse, dry, and buff with a soft cotton cloth.
  

Note: This process will remove ALL the tarnish, and even tarnish in crevices that polishing normally doesn’t remove. If you have a piece where the dark contrast in the crevices adds to the beauty, you may not want to use this method on that particular piece.