Mix-up in Miniature (11 page)

“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.

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 regular 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.

“I think I have a house,” I told Doris Ann.

“You think?”

I pictured her in her library office in the Civic Center, overflowing with books and papers. Her white hair would be beautifully coiffed, but her perpetual smile, telling everyone she had the cushiest job in the world, was the big attraction.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

She groaned. “Not you, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that everyone is using that phrase now, indiscriminately. My student aide was late and when I asked what kept her she said, ‘It’s complicated.’ When I asked my daughter why she and her husband had decided to separate, she said…Well, you see what I mean. It tells me the person doesn’t want to bother helping me understand. Or they think I’m too stupid to get it.” She paused. Reconsidering? “Not you, of course, Gerry.”

“Yes, me, too, I guess. Let me just say that I’ll have everything cleared up in plenty of time for the auction.”

“Good. I’ll take you at your word.”

I hung up hoping I could deliver. There was no denying it would be complicated.

—

I let
out a little gasp when I saw Henry, hammer high over his head, ready to swing at—and hit—the mystery dollhouse in my atrium.

He stopped in midair and smiled. “Scared?” he asked.

I cleared my throat. “Of course not,” I said, pretending to have known all along that he was teasing.

He followed through the swing, ending with a set of light taps on a miniature white bookcase in the bedroom. The books seemed to be glued in place, not budging from the shelves when the hammer landed.

“Nothing’s happening,” he said. “I guess that would be too obvious, a secret room behind a bookcase. It’s there, though. I made some measurements and I figure there’s a two-inch gap that must be what Maddie discovered.”

I admired the patience with which Henry accepted the results of his efforts. I knew he’d try again, but in the meantime, there was no panic or even frustration as there might be for me, and certainly would be for Maddie.

“I have an idea,” I said.

“Bring it on.”

I picked up the phone in the atrium. “I should have thought of this earlier. Linda Reed. She’s seen everything there is to see in tricks of the dollhouse trade. She might have a clue as to how to locate the secret room, even from a distance. If I can just be patient while she goes through the trials of the day.”

Henry already knew all sides of Linda Reed—the whiny perfectionist, complaining about the smallest inconvenience; the concerned, adoptive single mother of a troublesome teenager; the creative and generous friend. Linda could be counted on to ply you with complaints about the worst moments of her day, but also to show up with her nursing skills at the drop of a hat when someone she cared about was in need.

Linda picked up after a couple of rings. I let her go through her opening routine.

“Gerry, I was just going to call you. That new supposedly extra-hold glue I bought? Well, guess what? It won’t even hold paper to paper. Don’t buy it, no matter what it says on the package.”

“Thanks for the tip. I won’t go near it.”

“Did I tell you? Jason got hold of my credit card again and went crazy on eBay. He’s grounded. But then he sprained his ankle and you know what a soft touch I am”—I was about to break in and agree when Linda wound down—“So what did you call about, Ger? Anything special?”

Very special. “Have you ever seen a dollhouse with a secret room?”

“Sure. Lots. Remember, I showed you a photo of that one at the dollhouse museum in Carmel, Indiana? There was this beautiful flowered wallpaper in an upstairs bedroom, and you had to look really closely to see that part of the wall was a door to a little passageway. When you pulled on a little knob, the wall slid open and there was a hallway kind of thing. Very nicely done.”

Interesting, but there was no door or doorknob on my Frank Lord Wright, as Maddie had called it. “Any other mechanisms that you’ve seen?”

“Let me think.” A pause, then a slight gasp. “Oh, no. Gerry, are you building a secret room?” She lowered the pitch of her voice and I pictured her mouth screwed up in distaste. “Don’t tell me you found a kit?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that to you, Linda. What other ways can you rig a secret room or hallway?”

“Let’s see, I saw an idea in a book where they used a two-way mirror on a wall, one of those mirrors like when the police interview their suspects.”

How well I knew. “How does that work?” I asked. Though there wasn’t a mirror where Maddie had seen the passage, there was one on the side wall over a vanity. Maybe they were connected.

“The mirror looks ordinary until somehow the room behind it gets lit up. I always thought it would be fun to put a really creepy staircase behind the mirror in a narrow room and you could use a remote control to operate the lights. It would be cool for Halloween, don’t you think?”

“I’ll think about it. Anything else? Maybe something simpler?”

“Well, unless you want to do the old standby of pushing on a bookcase, but how boring is that?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

I heard an intake of breath; Linda had thought of something else. “Oh, there was this stairway I saw, but it was in a real house, not a dollhouse. The lady had a remote and when she pushed it, this half flight of stairs leading up to the next floor swiveled up on hinges. Then you saw this other half staircase leading down to a lower level. I can draw a picture if you want.”

“Never mind,” I said, losing interest by now. There were only full staircases in the house in my atrium. They were open on both sides, the levels clearly distinguishable from the open side of the house. I didn’t see how there could have been anything hidden under them.

“So are you going to tell me what you’re going to use, Gerry? Are you really building from scratch?”

Linda was still under the impression that I was building, not unbuilding, a secret room. Rather than explain that it was complicated and perhaps annoy her, I let her misconception stand and thanked her for her ideas. Nothing Linda said helped a lot. It was going to take brute force to find the room and that intriguing letter, searching splinter by splinter if need be.

I promised Linda I’d explain everything at our next crafts meeting tomorrow evening, and we hung up. If I hadn’t solved the problem by then, I might just make finding the secret room a group project. Or I might encourage Henry to complete that hammer swing with full force.

—

Noises
from the kitchen led me to Henry, taking a break. He rummaged through my refrigerator, looking for something to call lunch. I liked it that he felt free to make himself at home. I didn’t like it that I’d neglected my larder lately and the pickings were slim.

“Back to the bakery?” he asked.

“I don’t think I can take another pastry for a while. I’m sure I can whip up something.”

It was over basic tuna melts that I had a brainstorm. Not about the secret room, but about Maddie and her secret. Something Linda had revealed about Jason’s most recent offense had been nagging at me.

“I think I know what’s wrong with Maddie,” I said, refilling our cups of tea. “You know those presents Maddie has been buying?”

“Like my keychain?” Henry asked.

“That, and did you know that she bought Taylor an elaborate set of markers?”

He scratched his head. “Yeah, now that you mention it. Where are you going with this?”

I counted off two other presents that I knew of. Miniature earrings for the dresser in my latest room box project, and a specialty lotion for Kay. I was fairly sure there were gifts I didn’t know about, for her Palo Alto friends, or for Skip and Beverly.

I told Henry what Jason had done with Linda’s credit card, and how Maddie didn’t want me to return Mary Lou’s phone call, and how two and two might add up to a huge misdemeanor for my granddaughter.

Henry shook his head. “I just don’t see her doing anything like that.”

“I don’t like it, either. But think about it. She was home alone, bored, for several days, with a bug, not so bad that she was in bed, or Mary Lou would never have left her. She had neighbors checking on her regularly, and of course, her parents and I called her often, but essentially she was on her own with not a lot to occupy her.”

“I’m with you.”

“I wasn’t feeling that well myself or I would have gone to stay with her. Now I wish I had. Maybe if I—”

“You don’t need to go there. And I don’t mean to Palo Alto.”

“You’re right, and thank you. But there was my poor granddaughter with access to her parents’ room and their desks and she must’ve known where there might be a credit card lying around.”

“Kay leaves one by her computer. I never understood that.”

“I’ll bet Mary Lou does that, too. She makes a lot of online purchases and I’m sure it’s just more convenient. Now, suddenly all of Maddie’s relatives and friends are getting presents. Then, her parents call me, and Maddie makes me promise not to return the call until she can talk to me.”

“And, also, suddenly she’s not interested in using the computer.”

We looked at each other, neither of us wanting to say it out loud.

Henry broke the silence. “She’s been busted,” he said.

“And grounded, as far as computer use. I’m sure that’s what Richard and Mary Lou want to tell me.”

We both went back to tuna and tea and deep breaths.

“I don’t want to believe this,” Henry said.

“It breaks my heart.”

“It’s a different world, isn’t it?” Henry mused. “The most trouble we could get into was skipping school for a day at the lake.”