Mix-up in Miniature (12 page)

“Or sneaking some cookies from the pantry.”

“I guess it would be easy to match the crime with the kid as far as the two of us are concerned.”

“Not to excuse Maddie, but you’re right that the world has changed dramatically,” I said. “There are temptations you and I couldn’t have dreamed up, let alone faced every day.”

“What are you going to do next?” Henry asked me.

A tough question. “I promised I’d wait until she got home before returning her parents’ call. She said she’d tell me this afternoon what this is all about. I’m anxious, but I guess I’ll keep my promise.”

“Maybe it’s something else entirely,” Henry said.

I looked at him. We both knew that wasn’t likely.

Buzzz. Buzzz.

We thought we’d have an hour or so to ourselves. No investigations of any kind. No inquiries into Varena’s murder. No poking around the dollhouse. No speculation about a blossoming life of crime for my granddaughter. No impossible task of locating a battered red truck with Arizona plates.

Buzzz. Buzzz.

No alone time either, it turned out.

I opened the front door, secretly hoping for another dollhouse delivery, preferably a midsize Tudor, with a clearly written
TO/FROM
gift tag, and unencumbered by secrets.

“I’m so glad you’re home, Mrs. Porter,” said the young woman on my doorstep. “I’m Paige Taggart.”

Paige Taggart, college student, research assistant to a bestselling novelist, discoverer of said novelist’s murdered body, possible author of said novelist’s recent works.

Another unexpected interview coming up. Did people just walk up to police detectives and ask to be interrogated, I wondered. If I were ever on speaking terms with my nephew again, I’d ask him.

“Welcome, Paige,” I said.

“Thanks. I was heading downtown and just took a chance that you might be home.”

I was glad the “I happened to be in the neighborhood” ploy was alive and well with the younger set.

I really should have guessed that Paige would pay me a visit. Hadn’t her late boss’s daughter told her that she should cooperate with me? Alicia had confessed to spreading the word even before I agreed to be hired, though I still wasn’t comfortable with the word.

Paige wore an expression that cleverly combined sadness at her old boss’s death and compliance with her new boss’s request. I wondered if she knew that her co-worker, Laura Overbee, had pointed in her direction as a highly motivated suspect.

She stepped over the threshold, pulling close a blue-and-gold football sweater, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my own college days. In fact, I hadn’t seen that much clothing on a woman her age in many years, in any weather. I’d become used to the fashions of June Chinn and her friends, who often wore what I considered undergarments on the outside and left little to the imagination as far as exposed body parts.

“Mrs. Porter, I…”

In a flash, her smile collapsed and her face turned white.

I turned to see what had caused her consternation. Surely not the benign presence of Henry Baker, retired shop teacher and my BFF. And not my peaceful ficus either.

It was the dollhouse.

Sitting on a card table, its edges barely fitting on the forty-inch-square surface, the modern-style dollhouse dominated the atrium, crying out for attention.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

With much stuttering the petite Paige said, “No, I…uh…have allergies this time of year.”

I decided to push a little. “Isn’t this a grand dollhouse?” I asked, drawing Paige into the atrium.

She slipped around behind me as if the streamlined rooms and angular staircases of the dollhouse gave off an unpleasant odor or a frightening aura.

“Grand,” Paige managed, after two significant throat clearings. I began to think she might be telling the truth about allergies.

“Have you ever seen a dollhouse this big?” Henry asked, backing me up. Not to be too subtle.

“I don’t think I have,” Paige said. “Well, except for the Morley Mansion.” She chuckled, seeming to have recovered her mental balance.

“What brings you here?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

“Alicia said you’d be wanting to talk to all of us. I can’t imagine what help I’ll be. I’ve already told the police everything I know.”

Not quite, I decided, since she was clearly holding something back vis-à-vis the dollhouse. I wanted to ask if she had any ties to a pickup with Arizona plates, but realized Paige wasn’t behaving like one who’d been responsible in any way for the delivery. On the contrary, she seemed to be holding back great surprise at finding the dollhouse in my home.

“It must have been a terrifying experience, to come upon your boss—your mentor, really—that way,” I said. I led her past the dollhouse, into the living room, watching her reaction, which was to treat the dollhouse as if it were one more dead body that she had to suffer.

Her hands disappeared into the long sleeves of her sweater, meant for a much larger person, most likely a male. Her face took on a tragic look as she settled into a chair.

“Can I get you some tea or coffee?” Henry asked.

“I’m good,” Paige said. The current synonymous expression for “No, thank you.” I wondered if she was wishing something stronger was on the menu.

I needed to quickly decide which role I would assume, since Henry had drifted into and out of the room and into the role of host. I could play mother and try to soothe Paige after the terrible ordeal she’d been through. Or I could take on the persona of homicide detective. I’d had a good model of how intimidating it could be as I sat across from Detective Blythe Rutherford.

I’d always had the most success with the teacher role, however. One look, arms across my chest, and freshmen and seniors alike withered and confessed to the real reason their homework was late. Though Paige hadn’t passed through ALHS, she fit the universal type.

“What year are you in, Paige?” I asked, establishing her status as a student, and thus an underling.

Paige sat erect and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m a junior English major at San Jose State.”

“Wonderful. That was my field, too, so of course I’m happy it’s still popular. I taught English for many years at Abraham Lincoln High School. I’d love to talk to you about your reading list some time.”

“My concentration is in creative writing, so this semester, I have a bunch of workshops and a class in the American novel.”

Suddenly, I wanted to go back to college. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last.

“It’s quite a coup that you got to work with a bestselling author.”

“Varena was like a mother to me. I couldn’t believe my luck that she chose me. There are seniors I know who would have killed for the job.” Paige gasped. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I said that.”

I let her stew for a while, mean person that I am, while Henry announced that coffee was ready, in case she’d changed her mind. I was impressed that he’d found just the right small platter for the cookies. There were only two cups on the tray.

“I’ll be in the garage,” he said.

I gave him a grateful smile. “Why do think Varena chose you, Paige? Had you published your own work by then?”

“I wouldn’t say published, but I’d already written a couple of romances. I’ve always loved them, and I submitted a few chapters with my application to work for her. During my interview she told me I had great promise.” Paige broke down in tears. “She was like the mother I never had. My parents were both alcoholics. That’s probably why I started reading and writing romances even when I was a kid. I’d sneak into that part of the library to hide and go into this, like, perfect world where everyone loved each other.”

This wasn’t the direction I wanted for this interview. It also wasn’t the thread of the few Regency romances I’d read, where a rich, ugly nobleman tries to steal a maiden away from her young, handsome true love.

I didn’t necessarily think Paige was lying about her childhood, but I strongly suspected she was manipulating me. The way any junior, in high school or college, might. I couldn’t let her emotional state sway me.

I waited until Paige calmed down, resisting the temptation to pat her on the back or whisper soothing words. I reminded myself that I’d been “hired” to investigate her and everyone else. I needed a lesson from Detective Rutherford.

Once Paige lifted her head, I was ready. “Did you feel Varena gave you enough credit for all the work you did for her books?”

Paige mopped her eyes with a tissue. “Oh, yes, I was very happy working with Varena. I loved the research on the Regency period, looking up whether they had zippers and stuff like that. Making sure the family trees all were consistent from one book to the next.”

“It sounds fascinating.”

“And I knew eventually Varena would put my name on a book. She said, when the time was right.”

“And you were satisfied to wait.”

“Of course. I’m not like Laura, you know.” Paige took a settling breath. “Laura Overbee, I mean. She was trying to write, too. Not romance, but poetry mostly. Lots of luck trying to get poetry published these days.”

“What did that have to do with Varena?”

“Laura was always complaining that Varena went back on a promise she made when she hired her.”

“What kind of promise?”

“Supposedly, Varena told Laura that if she took the job as assistant, which we all know is really just a glorified secretary, making travel plans and booking events, things like that, that she’d help Laura get published, but she never did. Laura would beg Varena even for an endorsement, but Varena just wasn’t interested in the kind of things Laura wrote.”

An image came to my mind of two people, Laura and Paige, their fingers pointing at each other, like the hands in the Escher drawing, each writing on the other’s shirt cuff:
GUILTY!

“And just to be clear, you didn’t feel any resentment at the low level of acknowledgment Varena gave you? Simply listing your name with many others who helped her?”

Paige bit her lip. “No, no. I told you, Varena was like a mother to me.”

She was sticking to her script. I had to rethink my theory. College juniors were more persistent than high school juniors. Too bad for me. I needed another tack, and clearly, some prep time. I knew Paige was hiding something she knew about the mysteriously delivered dollhouse, but I couldn’t come up with anything to coax it out of her except a direct question.

I pointed toward my atrium. “Paige, I have a feeling you’ve seen that dollhouse before. Is it my imagination or do you recognize it? Is it from Varena’s collection?”

Paige’s eyes twitched, as did her hands, which retreated further into the sleeves of her sweater. “I told you, Mrs. Porter, I had some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe it’s your plants.”

“Of course. That must have been what I noticed,” I said. I was almost glad when Paige’s cell phone interrupted us. I could tell she was digging in and would give me nothing useful.

Paige was even happier about the call than I was.

“Bummer,” she said, holding out her phone, as if I’d be able to read the small screen from several feet away. “I gotta go.”

“Bummer,” I said.

I saw her to the door, but I had a feeling I wasn’t through with Paige Taggart.

—

Three
in the afternoon and what had I accomplished? Trying to be positive, I ran through all the interactions I’d had since our wonderful French-delights breakfast. I’d at least become familiar with three of the main players at the Rockwell Estate. Varena’s elegant, fashionable daughter, Alicia, who commanded the respect of her household staff. Laura Overbee, Varena’s aide, and Paige Taggart, her research assistant, who all but accused each other of Varena’s murder.

There were more loose ends than leads, however.

There was the matter of the missing housekeeper, Corazón Cruz, and the mystery of Varena’s brother. If Varena’s only sibling was deceased, to whom had Corazón referred yesterday? And who did I hear arguing with Varena? (Or was her real name actually Mildred Swingle?)

I’d had only the briefest of interactions with the Rockwells’ financial manager, Charles Quentin, as he closed the door in my face. Did he fall under Alicia’s directive to cooperate with me, or was he above it all?

I needed to meet Varena’s son, Adam. Should I rule him out as a suspect since he was three thousand miles away until last evening? Nothing said he couldn’t have hired someone.

I stopped. How desperate was I, to imagine a hit man being hired by a member of a Robert Todd Heights family to murder his mother? If the police were trained to think this way, it was no wonder some of them turned into skeptics like Blythe Rutherford. It’s a good thing Alicia, so determined to get to the bottom of her mother’s death, wasn’t spending money on this investigator she’d hired.

Calculating my score as a detective, I nearly forgot the unreachable clue in the letter hidden in the secret room of a dollhouse I could trace only to an Arizona vehicle, on the word of a ninety-plus-year-old neighbor. It was a dizzying string of facts. More in the loss column than the win, even before I counted the rift with my nephew and the possibility that my granddaughter had begun a life of crime.

“Getting your mind in order?” Henry asked, coming up behind my chair. I hadn’t moved from the living room since Paige Taggart left. Neither Paige nor I had touched our coffee, now too cold to be appealing.

“I’m trying, but it’s complicated.”

He leaned over for a hug and I was glad to have one solid person to hang on to, one who didn’t mind my saying things were complicated.

“I struck out with the secret room,” he said, taking the chair opposite, where Paige had sat. “Can’t find anything to open that wall, unless I tear the building apart. I think we should give Maddie another try before we do that.”

I nodded agreement. “She found it once, she can probably do it again if she’s not under stress.”

Henry sent a meaningful look to the large clock. A look that said the time was approaching when I needed to pick up Maddie from school.

Often the trip to Palo Alto to retrieve my granddaughter was the highlight of my day. I never tired of praising her latest artistic endeavor, listening to stories of lunch-swapping with her friends, and being impressed by the newest fact she’d learned in history class.

On the drives home, Maddie served as my conscience on matters of everything from recycling to world peace, expressing her views with the simplicity reserved for the very young.

Today was different. Today the issue was not helping the poor and imprisoned, but what Maddie herself had done that might merit punishment. The state of affairs turned my stomach to the consistency of tacky glue.

“Shall I come with you?” Henry asked, as if he’d been following my train of thought.