A Dollhouse to Die For (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (23 page)

Suddenly I remembered Sarah trying to talk her parents into getting a dog when we’d first moved to Millbury, but we’d always resisted the idea. I shook my head in wondering affection, and also in the sneaking suspicion that Joe and I had been had.

By my very beautiful, very clever, very conniving daughter.

I grabbed a piece of pizza and grinned at my husband. My kitchen might be wrecked, my store rent doubled, but who the hell cared. Things were definitely looking up.

• • •

T
he next morning, I woke up early. Very early. I rolled over and glanced at the alarm clock. Only 5:45 a.m., but I was bursting with energy and the pure joy of being alive.

All the stress I’d been living under for weeks had magically disappeared. It also might have had something to do with the night of tender lovemaking that followed a hearty mushroom pizza and a bottle of Shiraz.

I lay there for a few minutes, luxuriating and stretching under the covers. I knew I’d never go back to sleep now, and not wanting to disturb Joe who was still sleeping peacefully, I slipped out of bed.

I grabbed some clothes, dressed quickly in the guest bedroom, and padded down the steps. Poor Jasper hadn’t even come upstairs at bedtime. He’d slept in the study all night long. Maybe I’d overdone it a bit with him yesterday. I needed to remember he was still a youngster.

I’d go for a walk and pick up breakfast and coffee on the way home from the diner. The dishwasher had been pulled out from the wall as well as the cabinets, and the less dishes to wash in the powder room sink, the better. I’d call Eleanor later and see if I could take a shower at her place.

Jasper roused himself and yawned, still so sleepy that his tongue fell out of one side of his mouth.

“Want to go for a walk, boy?” I whispered. He dragged himself to his feet and I knelt down and hugged him. “Poor little tired puppy. You could stay here if you like.” But he was already panting with excitement and looking up to where his leash hung on the hook on the wall.

The morning was cool and foggy, and there wasn’t another soul around on Main Street. I walked past the store, my heart swelling all over again at the realization I’d be able to stay in Millbury.

Sometimes a Great Notion was going to live to fight another day.

Soon we were down in the south end, making our usual pilgrimage to say hello to the giant pumpkin.

As we neared the white picket fence surrounding the Browns’ property, I frowned as I saw a glimpse of peach through the mists. I could have sworn Georgia was covered up when we passed by at the end of our walk yesterday afternoon. There was a dark streak across one side of her. I stopped and peered, trying to make out if it was just a shadow or perhaps the blanket had slipped off to one side.

Was that a prone figure lying across her expansive flesh?

“Oh my God. Sam!” He must have had a heart attack or something.

I fumbled with the latch for the gate and ran toward the pumpkin patch with the dog bounding alongside, yelling for Dottie.

When I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t Sam at all.

Chip Rosenthal lay across the pumpkin at an awkward angle, his head brutally smashed in.

A broken wine bottle lay on the ground nearby.

I
swallowed hard and gripped Jasper’s leash to hold him back. Chip was still wearing the same workout gear from yesterday, minus his knit cap. His Lycra pants were saturated with dew as if he’d been lying there all night. I closed my eyes briefly against the sickening sight of his blood-streaked face.

I fumbled for my phone, thanking God that I’d had the foresight to put it in my pocket today. I ripped my gloves off, shoved them in my pocket, and dialed 911.

After I’d been assured that the police were en route, Jasper and I ran toward the house. My screams and banging on their front door finally roused the Browns, and Sam came stumbling out, with Dottie close behind. A young man also ran over from next door just as sirens sounded in the distance.

With a strangled cry, Sam charged toward the patch.

“Stop, Sam! Don’t go any closer, this is a crime scene now,” I called.

The young neighbor grabbed him and held him back while Sam tried his best to wrestle free. I came up behind them for a better look at the hideous tableau.

Chip must have fallen on the pumpkin in the final throes of death, perhaps scrambling to get away from his killer, and the weight of his body had ripped the thick vine away from the enormous fruit, depriving Georgia of her life-giving food source.

All those countless hours, days and weeks of caring for her, lost in an instant.

“That
bastard
! Let me at him. I’ll kill him.” Sam was beyond distraught at the devastation, tears streaming down his face.

“For God’s sake, Sam,” Dottie cried, “he’s already dead.”

Tears filled my throat, too. Georgia’s swollen skin looked like it was actually weeping from the wound.

I wondered what kind of awful thing it said about me that I was more upset about the loss of a giant pumpkin than a human being.

The sun broke its watery way through the haze, lifting the dense fog. The first officers to arrive had already begun marking the area with crime scene tape and asking us to move back when Serrano came roaring up in his Dodge Challenger. He strode over to the body, giving me a “wait right there” signal as he passed.

I pulled out my phone again and left a frantic message on the machine for Joe.

Ronnie the psychic ducked under the tape and came hurrying up to me, wearing a silk floral robe and purple pajamas. “I knew it, Daisy! Didn’t I tell you something bad was going to happen? I had one of my funny turns again. I couldn’t sleep a wink last night.”

Without the orange caked-on makeup, she looked prettier, even in the harsh light of day. Older, but prettier. Her hair was wadded into blond clumps where she’d slept on it.

Jasper snuck his nose under her robe and breathed deeply.

“I don’t believe this.” Serrano stalked back and addressed the officer near me who had a roll of tape in his hands. “This is supposed to be a crime scene. Ever hear of securing the area?”

“Sorry, sir.” He waved his hands helplessly. “But it’s a whole punkin patch.”

“I can see what the frick it is. Just do it.”

Eleanor slipped through the space between the two men and stepped into the garden. She wore a white T-shirt, gray yoga pants, and her feet were bare.

Serrano ran a hand across his head.

“Oh, well, now it’s a fricking party. Anyone
else
out there want to come in?” he yelled as he made an exaggerated show of looking up and down the street.

“
Bonjour
, Detective,” she said, with a sly glance at me. “My, my. You seem a little testy this morning.”

Over where the Browns and their assorted neighbors had gathered near the pumpkin, Sam’s anger swiftly turned to inconsolable grief.

Eleanor raised a finely arched eyebrow.
“Zut alors. Quelle
commotion.”

The wailing was approaching operatic proportions, a monumental screeching dirge of despair. I finally understood what the word
caterwauling
meant. Like a vociferous feline with its tail caught in a door.

“Jesus
Christ
.” Serrano motioned to one of the officers. “Get that guy out of here. Or in exactly sixty seconds, I’m going to take out my department-issued firearm and shoot the sonovabitch.”

I hurried over to the Browns.

“He says he’ll never forgive me, Daisy,” Dottie shouted to me over the din. “I made him go to our granddaughter’s dance recital with me last night. Lucy was sleeping over afterward, and when we got home, I insisted Sam stay inside and play games with us instead of going out to the patch.”

She looked at me, despair in her eyes. “He’s convinced this never would have happened if he’d been here.”

I wasn’t sure whether she meant the murder of Chip Rosenthal or the death of the pumpkin.

“It’s not your fault,” I yelled back. “I think he just needs time to grieve.”

Lucy took her grandfather’s hand. “It’s okay, Grandpa Sammie.” Sam fell to his knees, buried his face in her little neck, and sobbed some more.

Once he’d quieted down somewhat, I went back to find Serrano and gave him a quick rundown of meeting Chip in the woods the afternoon before and then finding him in the patch this morning.

“You know what, Daisy, I gotta tell you, this is very interesting,” he said, pushing his elegant suit jacket back across his hips and slipping his hands partway into the pockets of his pants. “See, I have this rule. The best suspect is usually the last person to see them alive, or the first person to see them dead. In this case, you’re both.
Again
.”

I stared at him and sucked in a breath. His eyes were ice blue with none of the usual amusement when he looked at me.

“I need to talk to you. Alone this time.” He motioned to the back of the Challenger. “Let’s go.”

Joe came running up. “Daisy, what’s going on?”

Serrano nodded at him. “Take the dog, please.”

I handed Jasper’s leash to Joe without a word and got into the back of the car.

I stared out of the window as we sped away, even as my pulse accelerated. I wasn’t really in trouble, was I? Why the heck was Serrano acting like this?

He didn’t speak to me on the ride to Sheepville, only to the other officer in the front passenger seat. When we got to the station, we didn’t go toward his desk, but to a small interrogation room.

I slumped down at the table and looked around at the bare beige walls. I needed a shower big time, plus I had a severe headache from caffeine withdrawal.

“God, I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” I muttered.

Serrano glanced sharply at me.

“I’m kidding, Serrano. It’s just a figure of speech. Jeez.”

“Officer Spinelli, please get Ms. Buchanan a beverage.”

When the officer came back, and I’d accepted a Styrofoam cup from him with a grateful smile, Serrano clicked on a tape recorder. “Start at the beginning.”

I took a deep breath and repeated everything I’d told him at the pumpkin patch, except in greater detail, hoping I was making it crystal clear that there was no lingering animosity between Chip and me regarding the article in the
Sheepville Times
. I finished my account with describing walking Jasper this morning, seeing the body, and calling for help.

“You didn’t try to revive the victim?”

I shook my head. “It was obvious he was dead. He’d been there all night.”

“Let’s leave that up to forensics, shall we?”

I glared at the detective that I thought was my friend. What the hell was the matter with him?

Did someone get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what?

I bit my lip as I wondered
whose
bed. He’d shown up awfully fast. Eleanor, too, come to think of it.

“It doesn’t sound like you had a very high opinion of the victim, according to an account in the local paper yesterday,” he continued in that same cold, clipped fashion. “He was making life difficult for you. Maybe you’d have liked to see him out of the picture. Sounds like a plausible theory to me.”

“Well, sometimes your theories are all wet!” I snapped.

Those icy blue eyes turned positively glacial. “Ms. Buchanan, are you seriously mouthing off to a senior member of the police force?”

At that moment, there was a knock at the door, which Officer Spinelli answered with alacrity. He came back to their side of the table holding a large plastic baggie with a broken wine bottle inside.

“Ah. The wine bottle that was found near the body,” Serrano said. “Probably the murder weapon.”

I gasped, suddenly recognizing the elegant black and yellow label on the bottle. A 2009 Pouilly-Fuissé from the Mâcon region of France.

Just like the one I’d thrown in the recycle container.

“What is it, Daisy?” Serrano leaned forward, searching my face.

It had to be the same one. How many bottles of pricey white burgundy would be hanging around Millbury?
Oh, God.
Would my fingerprints be on it? Like it wasn’t enough that I seemed to be in a sticky situation already.

As if reading my mind, Serrano said, “It’s been dusted for fingerprints. You don’t mind giving us yours, do you?”

I swallowed.

It wasn’t really a yes or no question. I tried to remember if I was wearing gloves yesterday.

“Do you know who drinks this particular type of wine?” he asked.

“No. I’m not exactly in the clique, as it were.” I took a slow sip of coffee while my mind raced.
Everyone shared wine down at the dog park. There could be a whole bunch of fingerprints on that bottle.

An hour or so later, Serrano decided he was done with me and the other officer left the room.

“Come on, Daisy, I’ll give you a ride home.”

I got up, tight-lipped, and trailed after him out of the building.
You’re in big trouble, mister. I don’t appreciate your attitude in class today.

He opened the front passenger door of the Challenger for me and I got in without a word. There was a frosty silence between us until we took the left turn onto River Road.

Serrano was the first to break it.

“I know you’re pissed at me, Daisy, but here’s the thing. I have to set an example for my men. Do everything by the book. They need to know that I’ll always do what’s right, regardless of the personal feelings involved.”

I turned away and stared out of the window.

“The fact is, the day before he died, you and the victim had a very public spat. In the press, no less.”

“I didn’t say all that stuff!” I exploded. “PJ made it up. And I told you, Chip and I had worked things out.”

“You know, this murder is different, though,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The other two victims sort of killed themselves. Murders from a distance, if you will. This was a hands-on, full-out act of passion.” He sighed. “How many fricking killers am I dealing with here?”

Serrano looked like he could use a cup of coffee, too.

“Maybe some kind of affair gone wrong?” I suggested.

“With one of the wine club women?”

I thought for a moment. “Not sure about that.” I pictured the usual crowd down at the dog park. There were a few women in their thirties, but most of them were older. “I think they were all a bit long in the tooth for him.”

“Don’t discount the mature woman,” Serrano said as he smiled at me.
Finally.

“PJ Avery would have been my first choice of suspects,” he continued, “but she was covering a charity dinner last night, which Birch Kunes and Bettina Waters also attended. The medical examiner pegged the time of death somewhere between 7 and 9 p.m. They were all there until well past 10 p.m.”

“Birch is no more a killer than Jasper,” I said. Although if the murder victim was a squirrel, I couldn’t swear to it. “Marybeth wouldn’t have done it, either. He was her meal ticket to major commissions. I can’t think of anyone else Chip might have known, but with the way he carried on, I’m sure he alienated more than a few people.”

Serrano pulled up in front of my house. “Do me a favor. Try not to find any more dead bodies for the rest of the day. It
is
Sunday, after all.”

I smirked at him and got out of the car.

After I reassured Joe I was okay, I called Eleanor and asked if I could use her shower. Angus had offered the use of his facilities, too, but she was closer, plus I thought I’d be more comfortable at her house.

I packed a bag with a towel, shampoo, soap, and a change of clothes and set off. On the way, I stopped at Cyril’s place to feed the cat. I still couldn’t see the little guy, but the food was gone from the dish. He was still alive, somewhere. I filled it to the brim with dry food and put fresh water in his bowl.

When I stepped out of the trailer, I suddenly spotted him, peeking from around an old bathtub. I knelt down, and softly whispered for him to come closer. He stared at me for a moment as if weighing his options, then decided better of it and was gone.

Patience, Daisy.
At least he was showing himself now.

Eleanor lived in a pretty Victorian on a side street called Henrietta’s Alley. The house was a very pale blue, with white shutters, white front door, and rosette and ribbon detailing on the gable. She’d completely redone the whole house inside, and painted it a soothing mix of light and dark grays, creams, and white.