by Deb Baker
station and crawl right past. That works every time."
Gretchen decided not to ask her aunt how she came to know this.
"But first, you have to find the bozo who's sending you the messages."
"Impossible."
"I don't ever want to hear you say that word again. It's a sorry excuse for refusing to think your way through a situation. I'm going to help you this time because you're new at this, but after this time, you're on your own. Listen up. Are you listening?"
"I'm listening."
"Sometimes you're dopier than a dwarf. Every single one of those cupid dolls came in the same wrapping. Right?"
Cupid dolls?
Gretchen let the misnomer slide. "Right."
"Then why haven't you been down to that liquor store?"
"How many people would you guess buy alcohol from a liquor store? Hundreds?"
"Stake it out. You'll know the culprit the minute you spot him."
"Aunt Nina thinks it might be a woman."
"Your aunt Nina is one stop short of the nearest loony bin, and the train is leaving the station soon with her on board. Last stop: Nutsville."
"That's a little harsh," Gretchen said in defense of her temperamental aunt. The only reason the two women disagreed so often was because they were exactly the same. Strong, independent females, used to running their own shows, their own ways.
"It's a man, all right," Gertie said again. "Mark my words. I'd hop a plane and help you out, but I've got an investigation going on here that I can't leave. Three murders." Gertie whistled. "That's a handful. Watch your back, dearie."
Gretchen had enough trouble watching her front and flanks. She felt naked as a Kewpie doll but not nearly as happy. Still, she felt better having spoken with her Yooper aunt.
When the doorbell rang and she found April standing outside, Gretchen almost kissed her. Finally, someone to commiserate with.
"I hear you and your shadow are fighting," April said.
"Want some company?"
She noticed Gretchen staring at her outfit. "You like it?" April twirled in a blaze orange sundress the size of the state of Michigan, where wearing orange was the height of fashion. Aunt Gertie's hometown seemed to have one hunting season after another, and everyone wore blaze orange. In Arizona, well, April looked like a retro Volkswagen Beetle.
"Lovely, as usual," Gretchen said, grabbing her purse and calling Nimrod. He charged in, ready to go. Wobbles strutted behind him, graceful and lithe even without his back leg. April bent to pick him up, but he gave her a warning glare and flattened his ears.
"That's one ornery cat," April said, settling for running her hands over his lean back and swiping at his tail.
"He doesn't like to be held," Gretchen said, opening a phone book and running her finger down the list of Albrights. "We have to find out where Matt Albright's wife lives and get the Kewpie dolls back. I'm not sure that they mean anything, but I want them all the same."
April sighed. "Still thinking inside the same old box."
"And then we're going to find Duanne Wilson and get my box of Ginny dolls."
"That's more like it. Do you have a plan?"
"I don't have a clue how to find him, so we'll start with the Kewpies." She checked her watch. Eleven thirty a.m. "I gave Nina a two-hour warning. She's not answering my calls."
"That's easy. You want me to get her to respond?"
"Sure."
April picked up the kitchen phone and dialed. "By the way," she said to Gretchen, eyeing the phone book. "The Albrights aren't listed in the directory. Detectives don't usually advertise their home addresses, too many dissatisfied customers. But I know where she lives. Kayla has the house, and he's staying at… Nina, pick up. It's me, April… We're tracking down evidence, and we hope to crack the case today. If you want in on the apprehension and fame and glory, you better pick up the phone."
April paused as though listening and grinned at Gretchen.
"Yes," she said smugly into the phone. "We'll pick you up on the drive-by, and I'll give you the details then."
"See?" she said, hanging up. "You have to appeal to the adventuress in her. Let's go."
32
Peter Finch moves aside and grudgingly allows the uniformed police officer to enter his apartment. The cop eyes him suspiciously, or so Peter thinks, and he hopes he isn't some sort of suspect.
Don't let on that you know, he reminds himself. If Gretchen Birch hadn't told him that Brett might have been pushed, he would still think it had been an accident, that Brett had stepped out into the street without looking. Like everybody else thought.
What a shock, if it is true. Then again, it must be true. Why else would this cop be standing in front of him, saying he is confiscating Peter's equipment?
Don't let on that you know, he says to himself again. For some reason, he instinctively knows that won't be wise. Play dumb.
Unless the cop is here about Ronny Beam. Just his luck to be at Chiggy's house at the same time as Brett and Ronny, and now both of them dead and the cop with a search warrant and eyeing him up like he's a common criminal.
But didn't he hear that they caught the guy who killed Ronny? The cop should pay more attention to the news. Peter spreads a hand across his gaunt face and rubs his temples with his thumb and forefinger, a dull throb pulsing under his fingertips.
"I can make copies of anything you want," he says again, grasping desperately for alternatives. "This is my lifeline. You take it, I don't have any income. I'll get you copies. What's the difference to you if it's originals or copies?"
The cop brushes past him, a little roughly, pushing Peter against the wall, stalking across the room, arms swinging loose and alert, elbows bent slightly in readiness, prepared for trouble.
Why me? Peter thinks.
And don't these guys travel with backup, other cops?
Before closing the door, Peter sticks his head out. No other uniforms outside.
The cop looks vaguely familiar. Where has he seen him before?
Peter looks at the name on the badge.
Never heard of him.
The cop begins bagging Peter's camera equipment, his flash cards, his downloaded discs. Taking everything instead of sorting through and taking only the photos from the auction. Although the cop has given no explanation for seizing his possessions, Peter knows it pertains to last week's auction and the dolls.
"Let me do it," he says, aghast when the cop starts throwing things haphazardly into plastic bags. "I have padded camera cases. You'll ruin everything that way."
Dumb cop.
Peter gently places his digital camera in a bag. Most of the doll pictures are already on the Internet, already a commodity, but the pictures taken at the auction are gone now. He wonders if he'll ever get them back. Then he remembers the woman and the extra copy he made for her. What a relief.
He recognizes this cop from someplace recently. The auction, perhaps, or the doll show.
That's it.
The doll show.
Peter opens the door for the officer, who has an armful of bags and a camera case slung over his shoulder. Peter watches him store the equipment in his vehicle. He returns, and Peter's heart drops a little lower in his chest when he sees what else the officer plans on removing.
"You can't take my computer." He watches him disconnect the cables and heave the heavy processing unit into his arms. He's strong, like a body builder.
Peter is scared, but he'll file a complaint as soon as the officer leaves. "You can't take a man's only source of income."
The officer doesn't reply. Can't the cop talk?
And why's he putting everything in the back of a pickup truck? Don't cops usually announce their presence better, drive squad cars with flashing lights and sirens?
Peter can't see any lights mounted on top of the truck. The officer adjusts his holster and comes back in. Now what? Peter wonders. There isn't anything left to take.
"Wait a minute." It suddenly dawns
on him where he's seen the cop before. He's even photographed him. "I know you."
The cop's eyes narrow. Staring into them, Peter realizes how brutally cold they are and what a deadly mistake he's just made.
Or maybe nothing he said would have made any difference anyway.
33
Detective Albright's estranged wife, Kayla, lived in the Fairview Place Historic District in Central Phoenix. Taking directions from her two backseat drivers, Gretchen drove along McDowell Road and turned on Sixteenth Avenue.
"Slow down. That's it right there," April announced, pointing at a Tudor with a For Sale sign in front of it. Garbage cans lined the curb up and down the street. Nina undid her seat belt when Gretchen stopped the car. She leaned forward. "I never noticed how small your Echo was until I had to sit in the back."
"You'd have a lot more room if you'd leave the dogs home," April said, voicing what Gretchen thought but was afraid to say. Communication with her aunt was still tenuous.
Nimrod, Tutu, and Sophie, the Yorkie trainee, bounced back and forth across Nina's lap, smearing the windows with wet nose goo. It looked like doggie day care in the backseat.
"Cozy," April said, gazing at the house.
"Unpretentious," Nina added. "Bonnie told me that Matt's staying with a cop friend until the house sells. Bonnie wanted him to move home, but he refused. Probably all those dolls in Bonnie's house. Even though he's working on his phobia, that would be hard. Besides, who wants to move home with their mo-" She clasped a hand across her mouth.
Gretchen pretended not to hear. She had to look for her own apartment ASAP.
"We're in luck," she said, pulling to the curb. "It's garbage pickup day, and there it is."
How lucky could she be? The box sat right out in the front yard. No need to confront Matt's wife over it. She'd simply swipe it back.
That is, if the dolls were still inside the box.
"Everyone stay here," Gretchen said, unlatching the trunk from inside the car. "We'll make this as quick as possible."
"I'll get it," April said, making a move to open her door.
"No," Gretchen said firmly. "I made the mistake of giving it to the wrong person, and I'll fix my own mistake."
What she didn't say was that the words April and quick created an oxymoron, impossible to use together in the same sentence. Even on a good day, April moved with the speed of a tarantula.
Gretchen popped out of the Echo before April could react, ran around the front of the car, opened the box flaps to make sure that the broken doll pieces were still there, and picked up the box.
"What do you think you're doing?" an angry voice shouted from the house.
"Just salvaging a few things before the truck hauls it away," Gretchen replied, keeping her back to the woman in hopes that she wouldn't be recognized. "For our church rummage sale."
"Get out of my yard, Gretchen Birch. Haven't you done enough damage?"
Gretchen turned and risked a glance at the enraged woman. She was everything Gretchen wasn't. Wispy thin, fine bones and features, silky brunette tresses featuring both highlights and lowlights. With the right gown and necklace, she could have been the lead model for the stacks of paperback romance novels sold in every airport.
Gretchen felt chubby, awkward, mousy, and a multitude of other unattractive adjectives.
Kayla picked up a decorative stone from the base of a prickly pear cactus and flung it toward Gretchen. It bounced off her car, and a small scratch appeared in the finish.
"Drop the box," Kayla said, picking up more stones.
"Or I'll hit your car again." She cocked her arm like she thought she was Joe DiMaggio.
Gretchen dropped the box and heard the porcelain pieces inside rattling around.
Kayla marched up with a fistful of stones and stopped when she saw Gretchen's bodyguards rising from the Echo.
April emerged in her orange regalia, followed by Nina with her out-of-control canines lunging at the ends of three dainty leashes.
"Back off," Nina said, threateningly, "or I'll let them go, and it won't be pretty."
A loud snort burst from April, and she and Nina started laughing hysterically.
"Get out of here, or I'll call the police," Kayla said, whirling on Gretchen. "You can have him. You did me a huge favor, you know."
"I really don't know what you're talking about."
Gretchen sized up the distance from the box to the trunk and thought about making a run for it. She could always leave the comedy team behind. The only thing that stopped her from abandoning her convulsing sidekicks was Nimrod. She couldn't leave without him.
"Act innocent all you want," Kayla snarled. "Just be careful what you wish for. He's not what he seems on the surface, that golden boy fake front. He's been threatening my life, you know. I have a restraining order to keep him away. The man is insane."
April lumbered over and picked up the box, still trying to stifle her giggles, and Kayla didn't move while she stowed it in the trunk. Who could blame her? April could have been a sumo wrestler in her younger days. "Let's go,"
April said, slamming the trunk closed. "Everybody in."
Kayla stood glaring at them as they screeched from the neighborhood. Two blocks away, Gretchen glanced in her rearview mirror. Kayla still stood motionless, watching.
"Good thing you had us along," April said.
"Well, that confirms it," Nina said. "Bonnie's right. She needs to be heavily medicated."
Gretchen didn't respond. Kayla was certainly bitter and vengeful and could be making up things about Matt. She wasn't an entirely believable source, but her comments about Matt drove another wedge in the small crack of mistrust that already existed. Gretchen glanced into the backseat and did a head count. Three women, three dogs. The trunk held a box of broken Kewpie dolls poorly crafted by Chiggy Kent. All accounted for.
"You should have seen the swirl of dark colors whirling around her. It was like the middle of a dust storm," Nina said from the backseat. "That woman's dangerous."
Nina seemed back to normal, entourage in tow and energy fields spurting all around her. "Have you been practicing with your aura glasses?" she asked.
"I haven't had time."
"What glasses?" April asked.
"Check them out. They're in Gretchen's purse."
"Mind if I find them?" April said, picking up Gretchen's purse. "This thing must weigh twenty pounds." She looked inside. "Jeez."
"They're in the side pocket," Gretchen said, turning toward the senior center that housed the evasive doll maker. April extracted the cardboard glasses. "What are they supposed to do?" she asked, putting them on.
Nina explained auras and the practiced ability to see colors emanating from people.
April turned to study Gretchen, squinting through the aura glasses. "I see something, kind of like yellow light."
"Wonderful," Nina clapped her hands. "You're very advanced for a novice."
"Nina," Gretchen said, "isn't light normally yellow?"
"The reason you can't see anything is because of your skepticism," Nina retorted. "You have to let go of your rigid thinking, learn to use your third eye, and embrace the visual that doesn't necessarily follow human logic. Logic, I will remind you, that is flawed to begin with."
"Here it is." Gretchen turned into the driveway of an institutional building that was well-disguised as a senior community for well-heeled Arizonians. She pulled up to a guard station and lowered her window.
"We're here to see Florence Kent," she informed the man when he stuck his head out of the door. "Please open the gate."
He poked his head back inside, pulled a radio from his belt, and spoke into it. He returned the radio to his belt and opened the door wide, framing it with his considerable bulk. "No visitors," he informed them. "No names on the list for Florence Kent today, so you can't go in. Call for an appointment. Then your name will hit the list, and I'll open up. That's the way it works."
"Can I call and talk to her?" Gret
chen asked.
"You have to pass it through the switchboard, but I think she's restricted."
"Is this a prison or what?" April called through the open window. "I never heard of a lockdown like this in all my life."
The guard hiked his pants and leaned over to peer in at the passengers, taking in April, Nina, and the festival of canines crowding the car window. "The privacy that our residents receive at Grace Senior Care is the exact reason they come here. They don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry rolling in whenever, like you women are trying to do."
He frowned when another car pulled in alongside of the Echo. "Now back up and pull away before I get annoyed. You're blocking traffic."
Gretchen backed out of the driveway and drove out of sight of the guard station before finding a parking space.
"Now what?" she asked. "Either Chiggy doesn't want company, or someone else is making sure she doesn't have any."
"We can walk in," April suggested. "They probably don't have much security inside because of the guard at the gate. We can walk down that sidewalk over there," she pointed along a walkway. "And go right in."
"Okay," Gretchen agreed. "What do we have to lose?
But… you'll have to stay in the car, April."
"Why?"
"Because you look like a mutant orange tulip."
Gretchen saw April's face caving in and beginning to register a look of anguished hurt, so she added quickly. "Beautiful and vibrant and totally memorable. The last thing we want is to stand out."
April glanced down at her dress and beamed. "I see what you mean." Then, a little sheepishly, "I didn't want to go anyway."
"I suppose you think I should do this instead of April?"
Nina piped up. "What you're planning is probably against the law. Since when did you start sneaking around?"
"I guess since I started getting threatening letters."
"That's melodramatic." Spoken by Nina, queen of the dramatic actors association. She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm staying here, too. If you're in jail, somebody will have to take care of Nimrod and Wobbles."