A Dollhouse to Die For (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (8 page)

“Might I point out that these are for the
customers
?” Martha snatched the box away as Eleanor stuffed the treats into her mouth. “Good God. Did you see that, Daisy? It’s like the woman unhinges her jaw like a
snake
.”

The doorbell rang again and the reporter PJ Avery sauntered into the store.

“How’d you make out with the wine club?” she said to me, by way of greeting.

She was wearing the same outfit as on Saturday. Olive painters pants, and a T-shirt that looked like it had been tossed into a laundry basket straight from the dryer and never folded.

I smiled. “Okay, I guess. It’s an interesting group.”

PJ eyed the plate of delicate ginger crisps stuffed with whipped double cream.

“Have one, dear.” Martha proffered the plate.

“Thanks. I’m so hungry I could eat myself.” PJ murmured in appreciation as she licked out the cream and crunched through the rolled wafer-thin spicy cookie. “
Holla.
These are bangin’. Where’d you get them?”

“I made them.”

PJ Avery stared at Martha with those strange purple eyes that had to be due to colored contacts. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“No. I really did. Have another.” Martha beamed at her. She loved to feed people and watch them eat. Well, everyone except Eleanor.

PJ needed no further encouragement and grabbed one more. “Man, this is great,” she said between bites. “Do you guys eat like this every day?” She yawned and stretched her arms above her head and the shirt rode up, revealing a stomach as hard and flat as a young boy’s.

“I thought you said they were for the cust—” Eleanor sucked in a breath and I couldn’t be sure, but I think Martha was standing on her foot.

“How about some coffee?” I filled another mug to the brim.

PJ took it with a nod of thanks and downed a large swallow. “This is awesome. I don’t usually get a chance to eat much with being on the road all day. Definitely beats gas station slushies and microwaved breakfast bagels.”

I pictured her apartment. A full ashtray on the coffee table, a bottle of vodka in the freezer. In the cupboard perhaps a half-empty bag of stale pretzels and an opened box of cereal. The fridge would contain a lone Chinese take-out container, but no milk.

Martha shot a horrified look at her and nudged me. “Don’t you have a sandwich in your fridge, Daisy?” she hissed.

“Yes, but that’s my lu—”

“Hand it over. Can’t you see the poor little thing is starving to death? You can always run home and make another.”

While I retrieved my sandwich of crusty French bread, roasted turkey, fresh sliced tomatoes, and romaine lettuce, together with a pot of Joe’s delicious homemade basil mayonnaise from the fridge, I stole a glance at Eleanor.

She had the air of an Olympic champion who sees the younger, faster rival nipping at their heels. There’s a hint of impending defeat, but being the champion that she is, she won’t give up the title without a fight.

PJ pointed toward a Hawkeye Refrigerator Picnic Basket. “Can I look inside that?”

“Please do.”

She lifted one of the two hinged lids. I noticed a silver skull ring on her thumb.

“How does it work?” she demanded.

I showed her the metal-lined removable ice compartment inside the woven rattan basket. “You would put ice on this side to keep the food cold.”

“Neat. Hey, you could use this at your wine club.” She closed the lid carefully.

“They’re not
my
wine club.”

“When was it made?”

“I would guess in the early 1900s.”

And so it went, through the entire store. She wanted to know what everything was, what it was used for, how it worked. She reminded me of the best students I’d had, the ones who always questioned, who were never satisfied with a pat answer. I showed her the passementerie—the tassels, ornamental cords, rosettes, elaborate trimmings, and fringes. She wanted to know the provenance of the quilts and the needlework samplers, the value of the vintage evening bags, the age of the antique spinning wheel and the cobbler’s rack.

It was refreshing to see it all through her eyes, and I made a mental note of the things she was drawn to, noticing treasures I’d almost forgotten. A new arrangement to place them front and center would make the customers notice, too.

Now I beamed at her, just as Martha had done.

What really caught PJ’s attention, though, was the box at the back of the store. I’d hung a former post office sign that said
MAIL,
except I’d crossed it out and written
MALE.
Underneath sat a wooden toolbox that Joe filled with treasures for the men, all priced at five dollars. Today it held things like a watch, a belt buckle, antique postcards, and a poker chip caddy. She finally picked out a Ronson “Tuxedo” lighter from the 1930s with an attractive green enamel Art Deco design. The front of the lighter swung open with storage for cigarettes inside.

“This is way beyond cool.” She fished out a crumpled pair of one-dollar bills from the back of her pants, and after she’d searched her pockets in vain for another couple of minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Take it. It’s on the house.”

“Awesome. Thanks.”

“There
is
something you can do for me in return, though. Tell me what you know about Chip Rosenthal.”

She rubbed at her eyes as if the purple contacts irritated her. “Not much. I know Harriet Kunes didn’t like him.”

I sighed. “Damn it. I wish Sophie had written a will. Then maybe Chip wouldn’t be the owner of this building.”

PJ frowned. “Actually, during our interview Harriet said that Sophie
did
write one, but no one knows where it is.”

“Really? Wouldn’t there be a copy filed with Sophie’s lawyer?”

“No, there isn’t, but I did some research. In Pennsylvania a holographic, or handwritten, will is still legal.”

“I guess working as a reporter makes you an expert in a lot of things.”

Her strangely colored eyes sparked with intelligence. “Trust me, I know more now about collecting miniatures than I ever wanted to know.”

“Why didn’t Harriet say anything to the authorities?”

PJ twirled a bundle of German button mushrooms with toffee-colored stems as she paced to and fro. “She didn’t want to tip her hand. She wanted to find it before Chip did, because she knew he’d destroy it.”

It was as if a swarm of mosquitoes were after her and she had to keep moving to avoid being bitten. I was feeling slightly seasick and had to avert my eyes. No wonder she was so thin. It was all that nervous energy. “Do you have any idea what the will said?”

“No. I wish I did,” she said vehemently. “Harriet was getting ready for the show, and I made some comment, and she suddenly goes,
Of course! Why didn’t I think of this before?
”

“Well, what did you say?”

“No idea.”

I told myself to muster my meager supply of patience. “
Think
, please.”

She arched an eyebrow at me as if to say that’s all she ever did.

“I was looking at her Tudor mansion—so perfect and proper just like her. I mean, it was beautiful and everything, but there was no soul to it.” PJ glanced around Sometimes a Great Notion and ran a hand through her jet black hair. “Not like this place. This has character, you can
feel
it. You can tell something about the owner the minute you walk in the door.”

I looked at my eclectic collage of merchandise and Alice the mannequin in her psychedelic dress and bit my lip. What the heck did my store say about me?

“Kind of how a book says a lot about its author, even though the writer might think they’re not revealing anything personal about themselves?” Eleanor said.

PJ gave her an odd look, and I wondered again what went on in that lively brain.

“Yeah. Something like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Hey, that’s it! I talked about how a house tells a story about the homeowner, and Harriet stares at me and goes,
My God, it’s the only place I didn’t search!
And then she quickly ended the interview, and I assume, came rushing over here.”

I blew out a breath. “Well, if Sophie Rosenthal wrote a will, she definitely didn’t hide it in my dollhouse. It’s been taken completely to pieces, with all its secrets revealed.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, there’s more.” PJ looked around as if to make sure there were no customers in the store. “Something else I’m working on . . .”

She clicked her lighter a couple of times, making us all jump. “Harriet thought that the housebound Sophie was murdered.”

“
What
?” Martha clapped a hand to her chest. “Murdered! Why on earth did she think that?”

“Cuz Sophie had been sad over her brother’s death, but certainly not enough to kill herself.”

“Did Harriet say anything to the police?” I asked.

“Nope. She had no evidence. She seemed pretty sure, though.”

Eleanor cleared her throat. “Martha, as fascinating as this is, we have to go.”

Martha rolled her eyes at me. “Meeting of the Hysterical, whoops, I mean,
Historical
Society this morning.”

Eleanor was the president and Martha was the secretary. They hurried out, with the hyper reporter close behind them, pumped full of a thousand calories of cookies and untold milligrams of caffeine.

After they left, I stood in the middle of the store, deep in thought.

Did Chip kill his Aunt Sophie to inherit, knowing there were no other eligible heirs?
And had he heard that a will did possibly exist, and was
he
the one who came into my store and tried to steal my dollhouse?

If there was a chance that Chip Rosenthal was not really my landlord,
I was more than motivated to find that will.

I
was in the midst of rearranging the displays that afternoon when a man burst into the store, looked around wildly, and grabbed my arm. “Daisy, help me! I’ve gotta hide. Please, I’m begging you, don’t tell them I’m here.”

“Go upstairs, Serrano. I’ll cover for you.”

Odd.
The handsome detective was the type to stand in front of me and take a bullet, not leave me to face dangerous pursuers alone.

He’d barely made it to the top of the stairs when I noticed a group of women staring through the front display windows. One of them hurried inside. I thought I recognized her as one of the wine club.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“I’m just looking, thanks.”

A board squeaked upstairs, and I coughed.

“What’s that?” she snapped, on the trail like a bloodhound in heat.

“Oh you know these old houses, how they creak and moan.”

She gave me a suspicious glare and prowled through the entire space, looking behind the vintage-clothing rack and peeking into the prep room.

I didn’t have to be the psychic from across the street to be able to read her thoughts.
Where the hell is he?

I put on my best professional smile. “Can I help you find something in particular?”

“This is a nice bag,” she said, barely looking at the item nearest her, one eye on the stairs. It was an Edwardian silver mesh evening purse. “How much is it?”

I told her the price. It wasn’t cheap, but after she’d made a few more circuits around the shop and lingered as long as she could, she whipped out a credit card and signed without question. I wrapped it in tissue paper, tied a bow around it with my peacock ribbon, and placed it in one of my signature shopping bags.

With one last piercing look around, she picked up her purchase and swept out.

A couple of minutes later, I announced that the coast was clear and Serrano crept down the stairs.

“Hey, Tony, I could get a lot of sales this way. Thanks!”

“She’s stalking me. And it’s not just her. There’s a whole fricking pack of them.”

I hid a smile. A single, attractive man in a small town is automatically fair game, and a haunted male who also seems in dire need of a hug is an especially deadly combo.

Today he was wearing a faded denim shirt and jeans, with a hint of stubble on his face. I couldn’t decide which was sexier—the suave, elegant Serrano, or this slightly dissipated version.

As usual, my heart rate kicked up a notch in his presence. I was a happily married woman, and I might be fifty-eight, but hey, I wasn’t dead yet.

I stole a quick look in the mirror. I’d recently colored my hair, so the gray streaks were temporarily gone from the dark brown. I was even wearing a little makeup. Thank God.

“They keep baking me stuff. I must have put on at least ten pounds since I got here.” He rubbed his flat stomach, and nodded toward the window. “And I found
that
piranha waiting for me in front of my condo when I got home last night. She won’t leave me alone.”

Serrano rented a place in Quarry Ridge, near Claire and Patsy Elliott.

“Why don’t you just arrest her for harassment?”

The detective rolled his eyes. “Daisy, do you have any idea how the guys at the station would have a field day with that one? I’d never hear the end of it. The only way Serrano can control his women is put them in handcuffs?”

I smiled. “I see what you mean.”

“Besides, that was my first mistake. I’d heard about some women sucking down wine at the park, so I stopped down there to check it out. Make sure no one was drinking and driving.”

I busied myself with carefully straightening up the already neat pile of shopping bags at the end of the counter.

“Turns out most of them live nearby, so they walk, and the ones who don’t have a designated driver. One woman even has a limo that picks up a whole bunch of ’em.
And
the fricking dogs.” He blew out a long, shuddering breath. “When I asked to be transferred to Bucks County, PA, I thought it would be a nice, quiet existence.” He shook his head. “Thank God for you. And Martha and Eleanor, too, of course. The only sane females in this town.”

“Ha! That’s pretty sad, considering how crazy we all are.” I chuckled as I went over to the Welsh dresser and picked up two corners of a Wilendur yellow tablecloth with a lily-of-the-valley design. Customers were notorious for inspecting linens and not refolding them properly. Or at least not to my standards. Without being asked, Serrano took the opposite ends and we worked together to fold it into a perfect rectangle.

I’d never asked what he was doing out here in the back of beyond, but I wondered for the hundredth time—what deep, dark secret was he hiding?

“So. Thought you’d like to know Joe was right,” he said as he followed me over to the vintage-clothing rack, where I picked up a velvet jacket that had fallen to the floor. “Our guys checked Harriet’s dollhouse over and the wiring
was
tampered with.”

He straightened the dresses on the hangers, one by one. A Bob Mackie mint green strapless gown of pleated silk, a light blue taffeta number with matching bolero jacket, and a black chiffon evening dress. “Apparently the main power cord should only be connected to the primary winding. If it’s connected to the secondary, the way it was, it can produce an extremely hazardous voltage when it’s plugged in.”

He pulled the green dress out from the rest and draped it across one arm, as if picturing a dancing partner’s body inside. “This is a very well-made garment.”

“Well, it is a Bob Mackie, after all.”

Watching his tanned fingers slide slowly down the silky material, I could almost feel that hand against my own waist and I shivered involuntarily.

“Harriet Kunes had some lighting added to the house in preparation for the show,” he continued. “According to the electrician, Larry Clark, he showed her how it operated in front of some other customers at his shop. It worked fine then, and didn’t fry anyone. Clark was really shaken up about the whole thing when we questioned him.”

He frowned and switched the hanger holding the black chiffon gown so that it was next to the other two black gowns on the rack. “These should all be together. Right?”

I stifled a smile. “Sure. That’s fine. Now, Harriet came to my store when I’d just opened. Did she pick up her dollhouse right after that?”

“Yeah. Then she brought it home. The cleaning people from The Dazzle Team said it was just after they got there, around noon. She left them in the house and went to Tracy McEvoy’s place to pick up some custom pieces. Interestingly enough, Mac was the one who recommended that Harriet use Larry Clark in the first place.”

“Hold on a minute. Why couldn’t one of the cleaning people have messed with the dollhouse?”

“They could have, except Harriet put the fear of God in them to never, ever dust the collectibles. They all swore they never touched it.”

I pictured Harriet coming in with her groceries late that afternoon, not even stopping to put them away, bursting with anticipation to check out her perfect dollhouse, and install the finishing touches that she was sure would win her first prize in the competition.

I frowned, remembering the mugs and the bags on the counter. “What time did it say on her grocery receipt?”

Serrano grinned. “Nice, Daisy, you’ll make a good detective yet. 4:32 p.m.”

I smiled back. I’d felt a sudden kinship with him the moment we’d met, and it wasn’t just because we were both transplanted New Yorkers. Joe and I had lived in the city for most of our lives, until we sold the condo to Sarah and retired to Millbury.

I appreciated the fact that Serrano trusted me with confidential information, and I considered my role of his sounding board as providing good community service. Although I didn’t know whether to be flattered that he valued my friendship or mortified that I was apparently so old and safe that he felt comfortable with me.

He flicked a glance toward the window.

“Let’s go into the prep room,” I suggested. “No one can see us there from the street.”

He followed me and sat down at the maple two-piece dovetailed workbench that had a recessed portion in the middle for sorting and separating items.

“According to the guard at the gate, Harriet arrived home about twenty minutes before you and Joe,” he said. “There were no other visitors.”

I flashed back to the scene outside the house and I gasped. “Wait a minute. I forgot to tell you this before. I saw a movement in the woods when we were standing outside. I only caught a glimpse—it could have been a person or a deer—I’m not sure. But that could have been our perp.”

“I hate to break it to you, Daisy, but real cops don’t say
perp
.”

“Oh. Well, what do you say, then?”

“Just
the guy
.” There was a bag of vintage buttons on the bench from a recent box lot I’d bought at auction, and while he talked, Serrano didn’t seem to be able to help himself. He tipped the bag out, and started moving the Czech glass with their iridescent finishes to one side, the ivory buttons to a separate pile.

“As far as alibis, Birch Kunes was one of the featured speakers at the medical conference he was at, so it’s easier to account for his movements, but his girlfriend might have had the opportunity to drive back and forth. He got kinda prickly when I brought it up, though. He’s real protective of her.”

I was concentrating on the cut steel and the Bakelite, but I looked up from my button sorting. “Did you know she’s pregnant? I mean, I probably shouldn’t say anything as I don’t know for
sure
, but . . .”

“Interesting.” Serrano’s gaze narrowed. “Cheating bastard.”

“How about Chip Rosenthal?”

“What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Well, Harriet thought that Sophie did in fact write a will. Maybe whoever killed Harriet did so to stop her talking? Someone who wanted the fact that Sophie died intestate to prevail. Like Chip Rosenthal, for instance.”

Serrano grunted as if he thought I was grasping at straws. “Okay, I’ll check on him. Harriet’s sister, the real estate agent, was showing houses that day, and has clients who can confirm where she was. That strange woman who was her main competitor—”

“Ardine Smalls?”

“Yeah. She’d already installed her dollhouse at the Expo Center. People saw her fussing with it all day. The only one without a real alibi is Tracy McEvoy, who was alone in her studio. Apart from when Harriet visited to pick up her stuff, that is.”

Serrano ran a hand across his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. “I gotta tell you, Daisy, these collector biddies are too much for me. Could I ask you to keep your eyes and ears open for any relevant information, seeing as everyone congregates in this place anyway?”

“Sure. No problem.”

Once the buttons were sorted, I did a quick reconnoiter outside to see if the coast was clear before he gingerly exited Sometimes a Great Notion.

• • •

T
he weather degenerated into a gray funk, and a fine drizzling rain misted over the village. An annoying rain, as it was too warm for a raincoat. The humidity was back, with days in the seventies. Typical of the fickle Philadelphia area climate in the midst of September.

It had been raining the night of the murder, too. Why did Harriet park on her driveway? Why not drive into the garage and enter the house that way?

I knew that Joe would tell me to mind my own business and let the police handle things. After I almost got myself shot this summer, he was still a little sensitive on the subject. But Serrano had practically given me a gold-plated invitation, hadn’t he? Besides, just gathering some useful clues wouldn’t be that dangerous.

I rearranged a display of various boxes—an orange five-finger Shaker box, a Kingsford Silver Gloss Starch wooden crate, and a wonderful trifold Victorian sewing box with a writing slope covered in its original blue velvet.

Marybeth Skelton called to say she was lining up a few more places for us to see. I thanked her with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. After I hung up, I realized I hadn’t told Serrano about the Ohio Valley land and her resentment toward her older sister, Harriet.

Because you don’t want to see your real estate agent arrested until she’s found you another place?

I glared at Alice. “Now, that’s not fair.”

Her eyes with their long lashes slanted speculatively toward me, and I gritted my teeth.

It was a slow morning at the store and an even slower afternoon. My only sale all day had been Serrano’s stalker, and I was considering closing early when the phone rang.

It was Angus Backstead, the auctioneer. My best friend in the world, apart from Martha and Eleanor.

“Daisy, I need your help.”

“Sure, what is it?

“Birch Kunes wants to clean out Harriet’s house in preparation for a sale. He’s going to send the collectibles to auction. I’ve had some dolls through the auction house from time to time, but I could use your help with the appraisal. I’m going over there tonight.”

“Well, I’m no expert either, but between the two of us, we might be able to wing it.”