Mix-up in Miniature (18 page)

I gave my bland brown hair a quick finger-brushing and headed for my garage and my dull blue car. Not even my vehicle had much color.

It was time to meet Charles Quentin, the nonsuspect.

I drove up
the winding road with densely wooded areas on both sides to the Rockwell Estate, my mind a blur of possibilities and hope for the meetings with two new-to-me figures in Varena’s life, her son and her financial manager. I’d had only cursory dealings with Charles Quentin since Monday and only hearsay about Adam Rockwell.

The road to Robert Todd Heights was familiar to me now, but for all the wrong reasons. I imagined instead a world in which Varena Young and I had bonded as friends and I’d become a regular visitor to her home. Perhaps she would also have ventured down to my humble Eichler once in a while, or she might have joined the Wednesday night crafts group, regaling us with fascinating stories of how her astounding collection came to be.

I tucked the dream away with all the other might-have-beens in my life and tried to focus on the wonderful parts I still enjoyed.

—

I parked
my car in what I now considered its usual spot at the edge of the driveway in front of the main entrance. As I walked in toward the lion’s head knocker, I wondered if the household had been at all prepared for the turmoil Varena’s death would bring. If preparations had been made, they would have assumed a natural death at a later date, with an orderly transition of the estate. With no one associated with Varena’s household suspected of murder, no remnants of crime scene tape to deal with, no police or pseudo-investigators coming to lunch.

I wondered if there was a will to haggle over? Jewelry, vacation properties, artwork, other heirlooms to parcel out? Would there be a peaceful settlement of this impressive legacy? Though it was none of my business, I hoped there would be no further drama in the lives of the Rockwell family.

Dum, ta da dum, ta da dum, ta da dum.

I checked my cell phone screen. Henry had caught me halfway to the double set of concrete stairs. I stepped to the side and sat on a granite garden bench with an elaborate
R
etched on its back and another on its seat.

“Reporting from the field in Palo Alto,” he said. “Maddie is safely deposited with her peer group.”

“Thanks, Henry.” How old would my granddaughter have to be before I wouldn’t feel a sense of relief at that message, even when there was no apparent threat to her well-being? “Did anything of a criminal nature come up as you were driving down?”

Henry laughed. “Yeah, she opened with how I might have to give back the key ring. It was all smooth from there.”

“I’m glad. I’m sure every little step takes away some stress.”

“Any news from the Heights?”

“Not yet. I’m just heading in to the house.”

“Got your interrogation list all ready?”

I was sorry he asked. The question nearly ruined the clear sunny skies and the mixed scents of the lush flowery trim around Varena’s life-size castle.

“Sort of.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t need any.”

“Thanks again.”

“Since Maddie’s getting out at noon today, I’m going to hang around Palo Alto. I’ve been wanting to get to that hobby shop in town. They might have what I need to finish that ceiling fan for your kitchen.”

For a moment, I was confused. I already had a ceiling fan in my Eichler kitchen. But not in my contemporary ranch dollhouse kitchen. I’d almost forgotten that Henry had decided I needed a working ceiling fan with wooden blades, two speeds, and three lights. I didn’t disagree. Future home improvement projects, with which I also concurred, included a microwave oven with a light showing through its door for the ranch home, and Westminster chimes for the doorbell in my colonial.

Even as I compared my old life-size Eichler with the larger-than-life Rockwell mansion in front of me, I felt very rich.

“I’d rather be shopping for tiny pieces of wicker,” I said, referring to the decorative centers of the ceiling fan blades.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Well, once this is over, I will.”

“That I believe.”

There was an upside and a downside when you let someone get to know you very well.

I heard a rustling in the thicket of eucalyptus trees behind me and turned to look, standing up at the same time. My early training growing up on the streets of the Bronx made me suspicious of creatures that lived in the woods. I brushed off my slacks, signed off with Henry, and started again for Varena’s home.

—

It
wasn’t that long a distance to the steps of the house, but long enough for another call to come in. This one was from the police. I stood in place this time.

“Hey, Aunt Gerry. You did it again, with that brother thing.”

Even a poorly worded compliment gave me a lift. “The thing worked out? You found Caleb?”

“We found out where he’d been all those years. In prison in Chicago. Sentenced to thirty years for embezzlement, served twenty-five. The guy is now eighty-three years old.”

I soaked up the information, trying to do arithmetic at the same time. When had Varena and her brother gotten back together? I needed a calculator.

In the absence of a verbal response from me, Skip continued. “It’s a pretty steep sentence for a nonviolent offender; someone must have had it in for him. We’d been looking for a Rockwell in California. And since the states don’t share that well, we missed a Swingle who was in prison in Illinois and got out eighteen years ago.”

Though I’d guessed Caleb’s history from Varena’s
A Family Betrayed
, hearing Skip’s confirmation was still a bit of a surprise. Surprise that I’d guessed correctly? Probably. It seemed a long road from my nephew’s doubting my ability to understand Corazón Cruz’s accent to the actual existence of a living brother for Varena.

I walked back a few steps to sit on the granite bench.

Did this new information mean that Caleb was in fact one of the men in the argument I heard shortly before Varena was beaten to death? I shuddered at the image and wished I could stop flashing back to the details of the murder.

“What else can you tell me, Skip?”

“I have a fax here with the basics. Nothing very creative in the guy’s life except for his crime. He was an executive vice president for a real estate investment company and needed money for gambling debts, so naturally he took it from the company. He finally paid off all the money and a court-ordered fine a few years ago. His last known address is in Chicago.”

“Not Arizona?”

“Not Arizona.”

I sent a pouty, disappointed breath over the line. Or over the waves from the towers that carried cell phone messages.

“But I can tell you who recently moved here from Arizona and still has the old plates on his red truck.”

I drew in my breath, now excited. “Who?”

“What’s it worth?”

“Skip!”

“Just thought you might have missed my teasing while we were estranged.”

I wished he hadn’t used that word. Estrangement meant a thirty- or forty-year separation, like Varena and her brother had undergone.

“You’re right. I’m glad to be teased. Now, who?”

“A guy we interviewed on the scene. Roberto Sedonis. He’s one of the estate’s drivers.”

“Thanks, Skip. A lot of things are starting to fall into place.”

Everything but who killed Varena.

As I clicked off my phone, I heard the same rustling noise as earlier from behind me. I should have known better than to come back to the bench. It would serve me right if a raccoon or a gopher hopped up beside me. Or worse, a skunk. I wasn’t comfortable with animals that didn’t have names and collars with ID tags.

I walked quickly away from the bench. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white flash that turned out to be the sun reflecting from an envelope. I was sure it wasn’t there when I sat down, either time.

I stood as still as I possibly could, held my breath, and listened. The traffic and construction noise at the intersection of Gettysburg and Springfield might as well be two counties away. Not a sound reached this part of the Heights except that from a slight breeze rushing through the eucalyptus. I looked back at the engraved bench. Should I pick up the envelope? Call Rockwell security? Run for the front door? Make a beeline for my car?

I was frozen with fright and indecision.

Two things were clear. One, that the envelope was placed there for me. Two, that it hadn’t been deposited by a bobcat.

—

I figured
such a thin envelope couldn’t hold a ticking bomb, and the chances of an elaborate anthrax plot against a miniaturist from a small California town seemed slim.

When I could finally unfreeze my stance, I gingerly picked up the unmarked business-size envelope, then rushed back to my car, trying to cover three hundred and sixty degrees of surveillance as I hustled.

Thanks to good planning and the construction-free route I’d taken to the Heights, I still had a few minutes to open the missive and compose myself before I needed to appear for my meeting with Charles.

Still, it took a while for my shaky fingers to extract the single piece of paper from the envelope.

I read the neat printing:
HOLD DOWN THE RED CIRCLE. WATCH OUT FOR CQ
.

Maybe the note wasn’t for me after all.

Figuring out the significance of the note in the short time I had was hopeless, except that CQ must refer to Charles Quentin. How handy that I’d be calmly sitting across from the man soon, with this new directive to watch out for him floating around my head.

I decided to risk being late for my meeting and spend a minute or two putting together the new information from Skip with miscellaneous tidbits from Alicia. I needed to figure out the timeline of Varena’s and Caleb’s lives. If I didn’t, I’d be even more distracted while trying to conduct an interview with Charles.

Alicia was told that her Uncle Caleb died when she was two years old. Around the same time, her mother’s writing career began to take off and the family moved from Chicago to California.

Adding in the admittedly questionable source material I’d gleaned from the Internet, this would mean that Mildred Swingle, a high school dropout from the farmlands of the Central Valley of California moved to Chicago and wrote romances under the pen name Varena Young. When her brother went to prison—died, in her mind—she moved back to California, this time as the mistress of the Rockwell Estate in the affluent South Bay Area.

Another piece of trivia from Skip when he called to tell me my friend had been murdered: Varena had two ex-husbands. I wondered which one was Rockwell? And, how uncouth would it be to ask Alicia?

As for Caleb, now eighty-three, he’d served a twenty-five-year prison term and then worked many years at paying off the fine that was part of his punishment. Now, for some reason, Caleb was back and skulking around the woods surrounding his sister’s home. When he wasn’t stuffing papers into secret dollhouse rooms or upstairs in the Rockwell mansion, arguing with Varena and CQ, for whom I had to watch out.

No wonder I was dizzy.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap
sounded on the window nearest my head
.

“Geraldine?”

I gasped, jumped, and banged my knee on my steering wheel, almost at the same time. Not that I was on edge.

Things got better when I saw that it was the lovely Alicia Rockwell at my window, and not an especially dexterous jackrabbit.

—

As
I made my third approach on the lion’s head knocker, this time with Alicia, I took a chance that she’d fire me for rudeness and asked her the freshest question on my mind.

“I’m curious, Alicia, which of your mother’s husbands was Rockwell?”

Alicia laughed. “You know about my mother’s dramatic habit of loving and leaving? Neither marriage lasted very long. Actually, Adam and I have different fathers, which might account for the vast differences in our personalities. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

“Same here.”

“Adam kept his father’s name. My brother is Adam George. I think it’s a shortened form of a long Greek name. Mother married my father, Bernard Willis, who, she told me, was a philandering artist. She divorced him when I was still an infant and went back to her maiden name. She changed mine at the same time. Alexandra Rockwell was her maiden name.”

Of course it was.

“Thanks, that clears things up,” I said.

Alicia had a lot to learn about her family history.

“Adam and I were very fortunate as kids. By the time we were in grade school, Mother’s books were very popular and her publisher released three or four a year.” We’d reached the bottom of the stairway. Alicia spread her arms to encompass this estate on the hill. “All of this is from romance. Can you believe it?” she asked.

I wondered if romance, fame, and fortune had also brought Varena’s violent death.

—

Alicia
went off to make an overseas call while I waited for Charles in the same room I’d enjoyed before I met Varena Young. A tall, narrow oil painting that dominated one wall, behind the grand piano, was of a black-suited gentleman from a century ago. The imposing effect was spoiled by my new knowledge that the man wasn’t a Rockwell ancestor, and that the portrait might have come with the mansion or with the purchase of the fancy frame.

While I’d waited for Varena in this music room on Monday afternoon, I worried that she might be aloof and hard to talk to. Once I met her, I found her to be warm and giving. Now that her death had unearthed her secrets, the lies she told her family, I didn’t know what to think of her.

Was she devious, hiding not just her older brother’s criminal past, but perhaps her own? Or was she simply trying to protect her children from the discriminatory practices people who rose from poverty often had to abide?

Ten-twenty
A.M.
Charles was now officially late. My first meeting with him, when Henry and I (as Mr. and Mrs. Porter) had driven up to offer our condolences, had been short and perfunctory. He’d refused to acknowledge my need for Corazón Cruz’s forwarding address and was eager for me to leave.

I remembered the only uncharacteristically polite question he’d asked on that day—had I seen or heard anything that might have upset me?