Free Murder At The Mendel by Gail Bowen

hours making those with me when I was little.”
    “You always dropped the cookie dough on the floor at least four times,” said Nina. “All those dirty little cookies.”
    “But always miraculously perfect when they came out of the oven. How did you do that Nina, smoke and mirrors?”
    “No,” she said, laughing, “more domestic than that. I always had an extra batch of dough in the refrigerator. I still do. Sometimes grown-ups have to intervene, you know, for everybody’s good.” She turned her perfect heart-shaped face to me and smiled conspiratorially. “While we’re being nostalgic, come upstairs with me and let me show you what I’m giving Taylor for Christmas.”
    When we came to the guest room that Nina was using during her visit, I was surprised to see her take down a key from the molding over the door.
    “A bit Gothic novel, I know,” she said, “but I’m a believer in Christmas secrets. Now you close your eyes, too. I want to see your face when you see Taylor’s present.” She led me into the room. “All right, Jo, you can look now.”
    When I opened my eyes, I was back forty years in the brick house Sally and Nina and Desmond Love had lived in on Russell Hill Road in Toronto. On Nina’s night table, faces carefully painted into expressions of gentility, were those emblems of nineteenth-century womanhood, Meg, Jo, Amy, Beth, and Marmee from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women . An American dollmaker had produced the dolls in the late 1940s. The woman’s name was Madame Alexander, and the dolls had become famous. Nina had gone to New York especially to buy a set for Sally’s fifth birthday.
    “I see you replaced Amy,” I said.
    “Yes,” said Nina, straightening the ribbon on the Marmee doll’s hair.
    A memory. A room full of little girls in party dresses and patent leather shoes, clustered around the dolls, watching. And Nina with that same gesture. “You see, this is Marmee, the mother doll. She’s a mother like me, and these are her girls. This one with the brown eyes and the strawberry blondhair is Meg. She’s the oldest, and this one with the brown hair and the plaid rickrack on her petticoat is Jo – she likes to read, like our Jo does, and this is Amy, she’s Marmee’s little artist, like you, Sally, and she has beautiful blond hair just like …”
    But Sally wasn’t listening any more. Her face dark with fury, she grabbed the Amy doll by the ankles and smashed her china face against the edge of the table. Her voice had been shrill with hysteria. “She is not me. I am my own Sally Love,” and she’d hurtled blindly past all her birthday guests and out of the room.
    In this room, now, Nina was talking. “Yes. I replaced her, and she cost a small fortune, but Taylor’s worth it. She’s such a bright little girl, and she’s like you were, Jo; she wants to learn. It’s fun to do things for her. She’s going to grow up to be a beautiful and gracious woman.”
    “Like her grandmother,” I said.
    Nina’s face shone with happiness. “Thank you, Jo. That means a lot. Everyone needs to feel valued. I haven’t had enough of that feeling lately.” She shrugged. “But no self-pity. It’s Christmas. And I have wonderful things to look forward to in the new year.” She took both my hands in hers. “Come on, let’s sit down for a minute. I have some news.”
    We sat down facing one another on the edge of her bed. I could smell the light flowery scent of her perfume. Always the same perfume – Joy. “A woman’s perfume is her signature, Jo.” That’s what she’d told me. The glow from the lamp on the night table enclosed us in a pool of yellow light, shutting out the darkness.
    “Stuart’s asked me to move here permanently,” she said. “When I came, we’d agreed to try the arrangement until Sally came to her senses, but I think we all know that’s not going to happen. Stuart thinks Taylor needs a mother or at least someone to take the place of a mother in her