Bernard Waites can't pull his eyes from the fallen woman. How many years has he known her? Twenty? Fifteen, at least. They are. . were a team. He built dollhouses to perfect scale, and Charlie designed the miniature furniture and room details.
They are. . were a good team.
His eyes swing to the dollhouses displayed on shelves along the far wall. He'd built every one of them with his own hands and his own tools. He lifts a veined and knarled hand and studies the back of it. It shakes slightly. Bernard is proud of his craftsmanship. His favorites are the American farmhouse, a Victorian cottage, the English Tudor, and especially, the Queen Anne mansion. He looks at the dollhouse pieces lying on the floor, furniture catapulted everywhere. His eyes shift back to Charlie's body. Two EMTs are loading her onto a stretcher.
"Careful," one of them warns the other.
The one doing the cautioning is a female, as are several of the cops in the room. In his day women didn't do this kind of work. They knew their place just like the men knew theirs. The world is a changed place, and Bernard isn't sure he likes it.
Will they cover Charlie's face before carrying her past the gawkers outside the shop? Look at them out there, straining to see through the window from their positions on the other side of a line of cops, all hoping for a good view of something horrible. Anything will do.
And the ones inside don't give a hoot about Charlie Maize. Nosy gossips, the bunch of them. If they craned their necks any farther, they'd look like geese. Bernard watches the EMTs prepare Charlie for the ambulance, strapping her in. Once, long ago, Bernard had been an emergency medical technician himself, back before all the governmental licensing requirements and insurance restrictions. He knows what death looks like. He knows it in all its forms. Grow as old as he is, and you watch friends and family drop one by one. The curse of old age. All his friends gone and not much family left either. The two EMTs heave Charlie up between them and carry her out. It was hard to see what was happening before, such a cluster of people swarming around her and him forced back into a corner with the rest, like a herd of cattle. Yellow tape used as fencing strung everywhere. Camera flashes going off. Someone is making one of those newfangled movies of the shop. Not good. Several more cops arrive. They begin interrogating everyone inside the shop. Let them. His turn is coming, and he is more than ready. The key weighs heavy in his pants pocket. Bernard is puzzled by one of the boxes on the floor. Why did she build a room box herself? Why didn't she ask me to do it?
Bernard knows Charlie must have made it herself, because it isn't exactly perfect. Not even close. The edges are rough, the sides don't fit together like they should. A craftsman would have done much better. This one was amateurish. Looks like she used a jigsaw and fiberboard to construct it. He glances around and sees the ones he made. His practiced eye skillfully measures each one, calculates the dimensions: nineteen inches by twenty-six inches by fourteen. Large room boxes, crafted to Charlie's specifications. He wants to pick up the one she made and study it, but the cops are attentive, watchful of the so-called "witnesses," treating them more like suspects than concerned friends of Charlie's.
"Are you the one who unlocked the door?" a cop asks him. Bernard stares at his badge.
"Yes, Officer Kline. I have a key." He keeps his voice low and respectful.
"What are you doing with a key?"
"I've had one since the day Charlie opened the shop. She gave out keys like candy." He hopes his hand isn't shaking noticeably when he points at the dollhouses. "I made those." He sees the tremor running along his index finger and quickly closes the finger against his palm. The cop's indifferent eyes slide up to the dollhouses. He writes something down in a notebook.
"Name."
"Bernard Waites."
"When was the last time you saw Charlie?"
"Yesterday," he lies as pat as a slice of butter, or so he imagines. The cop eyes him with a piercing stare, but Bernard stays calm and pierces him right back.
"Let me see the key," the cop says.
Bernard dutifully presents it.
"Same key fit the back door?"
Bernard nods.
"Did you ever think you might have destroyed evidence by letting all these people in here?"
"I had to see if she needed help. How was I supposed to know she was dead?" Tears form in his eyes when he says the word dead. He allows his sorrow to show.
The cop closes the notebook and hands Bernard a piece of paper. "Fill this out. At the moment, we're using every clipboard, thanks to the free-for-all. We have an entire room full of potential witnesses who haven't seen a thing." The cop looks frustrated. "You'll have to find something firm to write on."
Bernard looks around the room with satisfaction. People are filling out paperwork left and right. They're hunkered over the questions as though this is a written exam, and they want to get all the answers correct.
"And stay on this side of the room," the cop cautions him.
"What about my key?" Bernard says.
"We'll get it back to you."
A woman enters and approaches the officer, "I have to leave," she says. "I have an appointment."
She's good-looking, about thirty, give or take, wild hair, buxomy. Bernard always liked his women full-figured. Most Arizona women look like toothpicks, like they'd snap if you squeezed them. Not this one.
He notices the dog. It looks like a black dust ball.
"You can go," the cop says to her. "I have your number, if I have any more questions." She nods, stands in the entrance searching through her purse. Must be chock-full of whatever women carry with them, because it takes her a while. That dog is in there, too. She draws out sunglasses and puts them on, then swishes out with her bowwow dog. But first she touches the palm of her hand to the doorframe. Fingerprints.
The more, the merrier.