7 Madness in Miniature (21 page)

I fell to the floor and picked up the phone that I’d left there. The activity spurred me on a little bit. I heard water running. Megan in the kitchen, barely audible. I punched Redial. I couldn’t remember the last call I’d made on my landline. I hoped it wasn’t for pizza.

“Hey, Gerry.” Bev’s voice. “I was just going to call you. Skip is on his way there. He found out that Megan never boarded that flight this afternoon.”

No kidding. “She’s ’ere,” I said, my voice sounding drugged.

“What? What’s wrong, Gerry? Gerry? Oh, no!”

More noise. Megan cursing. I crawled across the atrium, down the entryway, toward my front door. Megan yelling. The door opening. Skip’s voice: “Aunt Gerry, can you hear me? Aunt Gerry?”

Then nothing.

By the time
SuperKrafts had been open two weeks, I could hardly remember when the giant source of crafting goods wasn’t part of our landscape. Leo Murray and Catherine Duncan (minus Video Jeff) were back in New York City, and strangest of all, Bebe Mellon was named manager of the new store.

As a favor to me for (in her opinion) helping catch the real killer, Catherine Duncan declined to press charges against Bebe and her co-conspirators, who were responsible for the upsetting correspondence slipped under her door.

“Everyone’s suffered enough,” she’d rightly said.

It had taken the brilliant detectives of the LPPD a little while to extract Megan’s confession. She’d stolen Leo’s car because it was a distinctive blue that someone would remember, making Leo blameworthy for whatever she did while driving it, thus buying her a little time. She needn’t have bothered, since Esther was lucky if she could distinguish blue from green. Megan had dumped her own car at the airport and taken a cab back to SuperKrafts, counting on Leo to have stayed put at the store. On such a busy first day, she was safe in that assumption. She’d entered my home and spiked the pitcher of tea in my fridge. No wonder we’d seen no signs of burglary.

Now Megan was safely in jail in Lincoln Point. What irony. If she thought the town was boring when she was a free woman, what did she think of it now?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the details of what Megan had used to spike my tea, but Skip was determined to tell me.

“You’ll just ask me a week from now, and I’ll have forgotten,” he said.

I listened, along with the rest of the family and friends assembled in my living room, while Skip described a mixture of a roofie, sleeping pills, and alcohol. In a large enough dose, the combination was lethal. Megan had come back to be sure it worked.

“The doctors who pumped your stomach said it was a good thing you’d had enough to eat, and also you have a pretty strong constitution,” Bev said.

“I knew that.”

“I thought they fixed it so that any clear liquid turns blue when a roofie is dropped into it?” Henry said.

“Only some formulas. There are generic versions that don’t have that property,” June said. “I saw it on TV.” June was now the proud owner of a miniature police station, thanks to Maddie’s idea.

“So she’ll think of Uncle Skip whenever she sees it,” Maddie had said.

Eventually, all the girls in the extended family, including Maddie and me, found a time to go shopping together. We’d come home with enough clothes, shoes, and accessories to outfit a seriously large bridal party. Even Maddie chose a dress—a blue silk sleeveless with a wide gold belt, sparkly, of course, and identical to Taylor’s dress, the same style in fuchsia. I thought I’d never want to look at a shiny bead again, but I got over it once the girls modeled the very “in” creations.

With less than two weeks to go, there seemed to be no end to wedding talk. Who would sit where? Had all the music been selected yet? Was there time to add another dessert to the menu?

Henry leaned in to me on the sofa. “Once this wedding is over, we should talk,” he said.

“Don’t we talk?”

“I mean really talk.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Not unless you’d mind one more shopping trip for wedding clothes.”

I looked at my BFF and saw in his eyes exactly what he meant. We inched closer and clasped hands.

“Do you think we can keep it below one hundred guests?” I asked.

He smiled and kissed my cheek. I knew it was time to call Loretta at the KenTucky Inn. I wondered if she’d be willing to take her sign down for just one afternoon.

Gerry shares her tips for making dollhouse furniture and accessories from everyday objects.

Lollipops

Don’t toss that old hairbrush away. If it has the kind of bristle that’s a stiff plastic rod with a little “knob” on top, cut to size and put a few of them in a holder.

Glasses, containers

Use a colored or transparent stiff drinking straw cut to size for a drinking glass (no bottom needed unless you’re going to show it tipped over), or as a holder for lollipops (above) or pencils (toothpicks).

Purses

Use binder clips! Remove the metal prongs. (It’s easier than you think—simply squeeze together the ends that run along the track of the clip and they’ll slide out.) Cover the body of the clip with fabric of your choice, or (the easy way) buy clips with designs already printed on the metal. Add a handle: a chain or a thin strip of leather. You’re ready to go shopping!

Bathroom scale

A disposable razor makes an excellent start for a doctor’s-type scale. Stand it on its end and glue to a base of the same color. Add a strip of numbers to the top along the razor, either from printables
or drawn yourself.

Springs

The small springs found in ballpoint pens have many uses. Stretch one a bit and attach it to a screen door for a realistic look; place it on the floor of a child’s room as a Slinky. You can also bend it into an arch and glue the ends down for another typical Slinky look.

From Stickers to Props

Check the sticker aisles of office supply and crafts stores. Many have a 3-D look and can be used as is. Flip-flops are a common sticker item and can simply be stuck to the floor of a dollhouse bathroom, a porch, or the towel in a beach scene. Give three-dimensional musical instrument stickers extra depth by gluing to a piece of foam board, cut to shape. Lean a guitar against the wall in the retro-hippie’s room.

Charms to Go

See above, on stickers, and apply to charms. Even more designs await in charms. But, since charms are most often silver, gold, or pewter, they’re better when painted, for a more realistic look. Also, jump rings and other jewelry findings may need to be removed or hidden.

Toys to Go

Many types of toys and games make great material for furniture. Dominoes, for example, offer twenty-eight identical blocks that can be used to build the familiar style of open-work entertainment center with shelves for books, electronic equipment, or objects of art. They come in different colors, and the dots can be painted to match or covered with paper or fabric. Some small toys, like cars, balls, and board-game tokens can be placed in a nursery or child’s room as is, with no additional labor.

Margaret Grace, author of six previous novels in the Miniature series, is the pen name of Camille Minichino. She is also the author of short stories, articles, and twelve mysteries in two other series. She is a lifelong miniaturist, as well as board member and past president of NorCal Sisters in Crime. Minichino is on the staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and she teaches science at Golden Gate University and writing at Bay Area schools. Visit her at
www.minichino.com
and on
Facebook
.

MYSTERIES BY CAMILLE MINICHINO

Miniature Mysteries, written as Margaret Grace

Murder in Miniature

Mayhem in Miniature

Malice in Miniature

Mourning in Miniature

Monster in Miniature

Mix-up in Miniature

Madness in Miniature

Periodic Table Mysteries, written as Camille Minichino

The Hydrogen Murder

The Helium Murder

The Lithium Murder

The Beryllium Murder

The Boric Acid Murder

The Carbon Murder

The Nitrogen Murder

The Oxygen Murder

Mathematical Mysteries, written as Ada Madison

The Square Root of Murder

The Probability of Murder

A Function of Murder

The Quotient of Murder