by Deb Baker
"Shhh," Gretchen said. "Keep your voice down. I don't know about Howie. He and Brett go way back. And what about the napkin? Someone had to have slipped it into my purse."
"Why would anyone do that?"
Gretchen looked up from the elastic in her hand. "I don't know."
"Next you'll be saying Ronny Beam's murder had something to do with Brett's death."
"The connect-the-dot lines are very short, Nina."
"They are, aren't they?" Nina moved over and sat down next to Gretchen with a thump. Sophie, the Yorkie, bounced on her lap.
"Two doll events back-to-back and a death at each of those events? Something's not right," Gretchen said.
"Was Ronny at the doll auction?"
"I didn't notice him there, but I hadn't met him in person yet and might not have recognized him. I didn't have that wonderful pleasure until the day after, when we went to Curves." Gretchen hooked a piece of elastic through the doll's neck. "Help me with this, Nina."
Her aunt put Sophie on the table and held the doll's head with both hands. Gretchen used the hook to work it through an elastic loop held by a stick.
"Thanks," Gretchen said, easing the head into place. "I was so nervous about bidding at my first auction that I didn't notice much going on around me. I suppose Ronny could have been there."
"Have you been practicing with your aura glasses?"
Gretchen threw Nina a quizzical look and searched quickly for a good excuse. "Have I had any time?" Or de- sire? she thought.
"Those glasses are important. They can help you solve crimes."
"I don't see how."
"You'd understand how if you were practicing."
"You have the gift without the glasses. Why don't you solve the murder-or, if Nacho is right, murders?"
Nina shifted uncomfortably. "I told you. I can't see men's auras, and my sixth sense tells me that men are at the bottom of this. Now where are they?"
"Where are who?"
"The glasses."
Gretchen didn't want to tell Nina that the glasses were in her purse. If she did, she'd have to wear the cheap cardboard things right here at the show. "At home," she lied. Before Nina could offer to drive over and get them, April finished an appraisal on an antique French doll and tottered over. "When are you going to open the package?"
"Never," Gretchen said. "I can't stand any more surprises. When I agreed to do this show, I thought my biggest problem would be sitting in the same spot for two days. Right now I could use a little more tedium."
April grinned widely. "The doll business is more exciting than you'd think."
That was an understatement.
Nina still had the repair hook in her hand and had begun to pick at the packaging tape with it. She worked her way through and pried open the small box. "This one is packed in newspaper," she said, removing a wad.
Some of the paper floated to the floor.
Gretchen, in spite of herself, leaned forward to peer into the box.
Nina removed an object wrapped in a brown paper bag and carefully opened it. "The bag's from Bert's Liquor again," she said, exposing the newest arrival, a chubby, smiling, four-inch Kewpie with a flag in his topknot standing on a small wooden platform.
"Chief Wag," Nina said, holding him up.
"Aw…" April said. "Isn't it cute? Butt naked except for the teeny red shoes."
"He doesn't have any markings," Gretchen said.
"Not all of the originals do. The platform is so he can stand up." April demonstrated by standing the Kewpie on the table.
"Well?" Nina picked up Sophie. "What's the verdict?
Does it have a message inside?"
"Like Message in a Bottle," April said. "I loved that movie."
Gretchen reached out and ran her fingers over Chief Wag. She turned him over and searched every inch of his body.
"No breaks," she said, surprised. "It's in perfect condition."
April noticed someone waiting at her table for an appraisal. "See you later. Let me know what happens." She lumbered away. Nimrod, napping in his poodle purse, woke when April brushed past, and he poked his head out. Nina followed April to her table with both dogs, sliding a final glance at the Kewpie doll.
Gretchen stuffed the Kewpie back in its box, put it under the table, and turned to two new customers browsing her table. But part of her mind couldn't stop thinking about the newest arrival. Why was the package left at the Boston Kewpie Club table? Was Eric the anonymous sender?
She'd have to learn more about Eric Huntington and the Boston Kewpie Club.
Gretchen's eyes traveled to the box. The first delivery, the Blunderboo, had a message inside: "Wag, the Dog."
Maybe it was preparing her for this doll's arrival. And the note on the napkin. Was it from the same person who sent the packages? It wasn't clear whether it was the same handwriting.
Why go to all this trouble?
Gretchen could think of three possibilities:
One, the person who sent the dolls was playing some kind of strange joke on her. Considering the timing and the multiple deaths, Gretchen didn't appreciate the sender's warped sense of humor. She wasn't in the mood for a clever little scavenger hunt.
Two, both packages were sent by someone who wanted to share a secret but didn't want to reveal his or her identity. Three, someone was trying to scare her. Her knife was found in Ronny's back; now she was receiving packages from an anonymous source.
None of these possibilities made Gretchen feel any better.
Gretchen glanced down the aisle. She felt exposed. And watched.
A few doll dealers caught her staring at them and waved. She quickly looked away.
Should she turn the dolls over to Matt? Let him figure it out?
That seemed like the most reasonable thing to do. She should also tell him about Nacho's visit and the napkin she found in her purse.
"I'm back," April announced behind her. Gretchen turned to see April's arms filled with wrapped hot dogs, a smudge of mustard on the corner of her mouth. She handed one to Nina, and Gretchen watched her unwrap it and take an enormous, appreciative bite.
"Don't say a word, Gretchen," Nina warned, one cheek bulging like a chipmunk's loaded with nuts. "I can't stand one more minute without meat. I'm done eating grass."
"Thanks for treating," April said to Nina. "Isn't it good?"
"Better than lobster," Nina agreed.
April handed her two more hot dogs. Nina broke off pieces and fed some to the dogs. "Gretchen thinks someone's after her," she said, "because she found a napkin in her purse."
"I think someone's sending me messages, or warnings."
"Nina told me about your conversation with Nacho,"
April said. "Do you believe him?"
Gretchen nodded. "It substantiates the napkin. 'Pushed'
didn't mean anything to me until today."
"Maybe Nacho put the napkin in your purse," April suggested.
"I don't think so," Gretchen said. "The bar area was crowded, but one of us would have seen him."
"That's true," Nina agreed.
April bent down and came up with the Kewpie. "These aren't the original shoes," she said.
"Really?" Gretchen said, taking the doll from April and examining the shoes. "You're right."
April pointed at Chief Wag's legs. "The shoes and the platform have been added."
"I wonder why? You're the doll appraiser. Why would someone change it?"
"No particular reason," April said. "People do weird things to their dolls all the time, and then wonder why their collections aren't worth anything."
Gretchen finished her hot dog and wiped her hands on a napkin. "Nina, you had coffee with Eric Huntington. Tell me about him."
"Eric doesn't know much about the doll business," Nina said. "He's here mainly to watch after his mother."
"Eric said he knew my mother," Gretchen said. "Did she ever mention him?"
Nina shrugged. "Caroline knows everyone."
&
nbsp; Gretchen picked up Chief Wag. Not a chip or crack anywhere on his body. So why send him addressed to the doll repairer? She rummaged through her toolbox and picked out a solvent. She sprayed a tiny amount on the platform around the Kewpie's feet. Then she sprayed some along the top of his shoes.
"What are you doing?" April asked.
"An experiment."
"He asked me out," Nina said.
Gretchen glanced up quickly and saw Nina blush. She couldn't believe it. She'd never in her life seen Nina blush.
"Eric did? He asked you out?"
Nina nodded. "Monday. I'm showing him around town."
"You go, girl," April said.
Gretchen worked more solvent into the glue and felt it soften slightly.
"What's that man over there doing?" Nina said.
Gretchen looked up and saw the photographer from the auction approaching her table. The Leica camera hung from his neck, and he looked paler and shabbier than last time she'd seen him, if that was even possible. Recalling his name, she greeted him. "Peter Finch."
"I remember you, too," Finch said, removing the lens cap from the camera. "You were at the auction. Mind if I take a few pictures?" He waved a hand at her dolls.
"You can't let him take pictures," April said, loud enough for him to hear. "I know this guy. He sells pictures of dolls on the Internet." She turned to the photographer.
"Get your own dolls."
"Okay, okay. I don't want to make trouble." He looked over at Susie Hocker's Madame Alexanders.
"Don't think of going there either," April said. Peter Finch slunk away.
"A few pictures wouldn't have hurt," Gretchen said, astonished at April's verbal attack on the photographer.
"He shouldn't be making his living from other people's dolls without offering them a percentage of the profits. There should be a law against what he does." April muttered under her breath to herself, but Gretchen caught the words, "Bottom feeder."
The platform holding the Kewpie in place came loose, and Gretchen eased it away from the doll. She tipped Chief Wag over. The bottoms of the red shoes were perfectly normal except for a little residual glue. She wiggled the Kewpie's bare legs and sprayed more glue around the shoe tops.
"What are you doing?" Nina said.
"Since the shoes and platform are modifications, I thought I'd see how they were applied."
"With glue," Nina said, exasperated. "Even I can tell that, and I don't know anything about doll repairing."
"I guess the real question is why someone changed the doll's appearance."
"Lowers the appraisal value, that's for sure," April said.
"Any modification to the original doll devalues it. Must have been owned by a beginner."
Gretchen slowly and gently removed the red shoes from the doll, exposing two chubby Kewpie feet. She laid the shoes on the table.
April picked them up, rolled them around in her plump fingers, and said, "Don't put these back on. The doll's worth a lot more without the shoes and goofy platform. I wonder why they were added in the first place."
"Because," Gretchen said, turning Chief Wag upside down, "the bottoms of his feet have been ground off."
17
Nina, drinking diet soda through a straw at that exact moment, coughed up some of it. "Down the wrong pipe," she sputtered.
April, the consummate doll appraiser, couldn't help saying, "It's not worth a nickel now."
"Please don't tell me something's hidden inside," Nina said. "This is too weird."
Gretchen, silently agreeing with her aunt, peered into the Kewpie's hollow legs. "I do see something." She drew tweezers from the toolbox and poked inside the doll. April saw a customer approaching her table and called out, "You'll have to come back in five minutes. I'm working on something else at the moment." She leaned forward.
"This is so exciting."
Gretchen extracted a small square of paper, neatly folded in quarters.
"Keep going," April said. "Don't stop now."
Gretchen unfolded the paper. "It's a name," she said.
"Percy O'Connor."
"Let me see that." Nina plucked it from her fingers.
"You're right. That's all it says."
"Maybe this Chief Wag belonged to Percy O'Connor,"
April suggested.
"It's possible." Gretchen was hesitant. "If that's so, he went to a lot of trouble to put his name inside of it."
"I've never heard of collectors defacing their own dolls to put their names inside," April said. "It isn't done."
"Like cattle branding," Nina said.
"But he destroyed the doll's value," April insisted.
"Has anyone heard of Percy O'Connor?" Gretchen asked.
Nina and April shook their heads.
"What's going on over there?" Susie Hocker called from across the aisle.
"We're wondering if you know anyone by the name of Percy O'Connor?" April called back.
"Never heard of him. Is he giving a presentation or something?"
"Something like that," April said to her, heading back to her table. "I better get back to work. If you find out who he is, holler over."
"Find out who who is?" Eric Huntington said, leaning over the table and startling Gretchen and Nina.
"Percy O'Connor," Nina said.
Gretchen shoved the red shoes back onto the Kewpie's chunky legs, hoping Eric hadn't noticed the missing feet at the very bottom of the doll.
"He was a Boston doll collector," Eric said.
"Was?" Gretchen asked.
"He's dead."
"This must have been his doll." Nina held up the Kewpie. "His name was inside."
It was too late to give her aunt a warning signal. Nina's cosmic antenna had malfunctioned. Again.
Eric frowned. "It's possible that the doll belonged to him. He collected Kewpie dolls. But what do you mean, his name was inside?"
Gretchen watched Eric's face. If he had packaged the doll and sent it to her, he was an impressive actor. No sign of recognition flickered in his eyes.
Nina held up the piece of paper with Percy's name scrawled across it.
Eric stared at it. "A Kewpie doll belonging to Percy O'Connor was inside the package I handed to you?" He was either genuinely surprised or an accomplished fraud.
"What makes you think this doll was in the package you delivered?" Gretchen asked. "We didn't tell you that."
Eric pointed to the floor. "Brown bag, newspaper, and the same packaging. I simply surmised that you had recently opened it. The Kewpie would have fit conveniently inside the box. Quite a sleuth, I must admit."
"Very astute of you, Sherlock," Nina said, a silly smile on her face. "Do tell us about Mr. O'Connor."
"Percy O'Connor pretended he was of the Old Guard from the wealthiest end of Boston. Old, old blood, he said, but of course, the actual blue bloods of Boston knew he wasn't, and he never quite fit in. His father came into some money during the war, I believe, an inheritance or something."
"Nouveau riche," Nina said.
"Exactly." Eric nodded solemnly. "Aside from quite an impressive collection of dolls, he was also an avid historian. Fascinated with World War Two. Talked about it ad nauseam."
"I assume," Gretchen said, "he was a member of the Kewpie Club?"
"Yes, but not an active member. He rarely attended meetings."
"When did he pass away?" Gretchen took the piece of paper from Nina and glanced at the name.
"Just three weeks ago. But he didn't exactly pass on. Percy was well into his seventies, yet he had boundless energy, worked out at the men's club, swam, jogged. Incredible form really, for his age. Remarkably healthy, we all said down at the club."
Eric's weak chin and flabby jowls contradicted his own claim to physical fitness.
"So what happened to him?" Nina asked, a starry look on her face.
Gretchen knew what Eric was about to say. Nina would attribute this knowledge to Gretchen's alleged psychic abilities. But it was deduction
, really. No one from the doll community seemed to be dying of natural causes lately. Why start now?
"The poor boy was shot dead. Right in his home, in the library."
Nina, the supposed psychic, hadn't seen it coming. She gasped and covered her mouth with a jeweled hand. "How awful."
"Two shots to the head, it was," Eric said, immersed in the drama and savoring Nina's reaction. He held up his forefinger and thumb in the classic pistol pose and said,
"Bang, bang."
Nina gave a theatric squeal, setting off the dogs. All three started barking madly, emitting piercing, shrill yaps. The story of Percy O'Connor's untimely demise was temporarily interrupted while Nina quieted the dogs.
"Doggie cookies," Nina shouted over the yipping, rapidly distributing a round of biscuits. "I have to take them outside for a little walk," Nina said. "Would you like to join me, Eric?"
"My pleasure," he said.
"Wait a minute." Gretchen put up both hands to stop them. "What happened? What's the rest of the story? Did they catch the killer?"
"Alas," Eric said. "The police had very little to go on. Nothing was stolen, so they ruled out robbery. No one seemed to have a personal vendetta against Percy. Nothing that the police could sink their teeth into, so to speak. All very strange."
Nina had already thrown a purse over each shoulder, each containing an energetic ball of fur, and Tutu, the selfabsorbed schnoodle, pulled impatiently on her pink leash.
"Ready," Nina said to Eric.
"The only thing out of place," Eric continued, "I mean when the police arrived, was… well, besides the poor boy slumped over his rosewood desk… was a Kewpie doll shattered on the floor."
"Really?" Gretchen felt queasy. "What kind of Kewpie?"
"If I recall correctly, it was a Blunderboo," Eric said, taking Tutu's leash from Nina and guiding her down the aisle.
"What's with all the Blunderboos?" April said, after Gretchen filled her in. Business was light at the moment, allowing the dealers time to visit with each other.
"I think someone's trying to scare me by sending Kewpies to me." Gretchen nervously rearranged the dolls on the table to fill gaps where some had been selected for purchase. "What if I'm next?"
"Next?" April exclaimed, frowning over the top of her reading glasses. "Next to what? Die? Ridiculous. You aren't next."