by Deb Baker
Gretchen surveyed the group. She counted twelve heads, most of them familiar from past visits. Larry and Julia stood in the far corner in a small group of specialty collectors. Gretchen remembered each of them by their areas of interest. Rita Phyller collected Barbie dolls. Susie Hocker, the youngest member of the club, had an extensive collection of Madame Alexander dolls. Karen Fitz bought as many contemporaries as she could afford on a kindergarten teacher’s wages-Lee Middletons and Zawieruszynskis were her favorites, if Gretchen remembered right.
Nina pulled her aside. “How’s your wrist?”
“Broken,” Gretchen said.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“What? For dumping the detective on me? Or for giving him the shawl and doll picture?”
“I tried to resist, but he threatened to call for backup and arrest me. I’m sorry. I really am.” Nina sipped from her glass. “He’s very charming in a rugged sort of way. He was only doing his job.”
“If I remember right, you called him ‘the enemy’ earlier today.”
“I was distraught. I overreacted a little.”
“He’s a parasite. I can’t get away from him. Every time I turn around, he’s right behind me. How did he know I was at the hospital? Did you call him?”
“No. When that nasty nurse escorted Tutu and me out of the building, he was parked at the curb like he knew we were inside.”
Gretchen thought it over. “He’s been following us.”
“I never noticed. I’m sure I would have noticed.”
Gretchen glanced across the room and met the detective’s eyes. He saluted her with his glass. She looked quickly away. “We have to be more careful from now on.”
Nina worked her arm through Gretchen’s. “Let me introduce you to Joseph Reiner. He’s an antique doll dealer from Mesa and is a brand-new member of the Dollers.”
Gretchen followed Nina’s gaze. She would have remembered if she had met him in the past. Dark and swarthy, with diamond studs in both earlobes and a goatee, he wore a short-sleeved pink button-down shirt tucked into yellow shorts.
“I know,” Nina said. “You’re wondering if Joseph is gay. No one knows for sure. No hard evidence, and I would be the last one to start a rumor.”
Gretchen grinned at Nina. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“Just don’t offer him a glass of champagne,” Nina said.
“Why not?”
“He spent three months in jail. DWI. His fourth one. I hear he hasn’t touched a drop since he was released.”
Nina pulled Gretchen along and made the introductions. Joseph clutched a can of Diet Coke in his left hand, while he asked about the cast on her wrist.
Bonnie called out. “Yes. Tell us what happened. How did you break your wrist?”
Matt had a smart-aleck grin on his face as Gretchen gave them an abbreviated version, leaving out the part about the footrace. Even if Matt had been following Nina’s car, he couldn’t know about her encounter with Nacho, which took place behind a building off the street. So there was no accounting for the smirk on his face at the moment.
Then she remembered the chase across the busy street. Had he been there?
“Clumsy of me,” she finished, lamely. “I must have fallen on it wrong.”
“Speaking of falling wrong,” Nina said addressing everyone in the room. “Martha Williams took a serious fall wrong. I called this meeting to discuss Martha’s death and to ask for your help in locating Caroline. It’s no secret that a note was found with Martha that had Caroline’s name on it.”
Several heads nodded in agreement. Gretchen saw Matt scowl at his mother. She surmised that Bonnie wouldn’t be privy to any more juicy bits of evidence thrown her way by her son.
“And a valuable doll parasol was found in her pocket,” Nina continued.
Detective Albright slapped a hand against his head and looked up at the ceiling.
After a whispered consultation with Gretchen, Nina told the club members about the paisley shawl and the photograph of the French fashion doll and trunk, and about April’s evaluation of their worth. Gretchen heard the appropriate oohs and ahhs when they learned that the doll was designed by the world-famous Bru.
Gretchen could tell that the detective was disturbed by the direction the discussion was taking. It threatened to expose his shrouded secret evidence, and she planned on making her own contribution.
“Detective Albright,” Gretchen said. “Why don’t you show the club members the picture you confiscated. Maybe someone will recognize it.”
“Good idea,” Bonnie said. “Matt, you should have thought of that.”
After sending a scathing look at his mother, Matt went out to his car and returned with the bubble-wrapped package. He pulled at the tape until the items inside were exposed to all the club members.
No one from the Phoenix Dollers owned a Bru French fashion doll, nor did they know of anyone in the valley who might possess such a rare find. Murmurs of appreciation filled the room when they saw the photo.
“I heard that Martha owned a French fashion doll years ago,” Rita Phyller said.
“That’s an old rumor,” Joseph said. “I knew her quite well before she took to the streets, and she never said anything to me about owning a Bru.”
“What was a Bru parasol doing in her pocket then?” Karen Fitz wanted to know.
“Caroline has some answering to do,” Bonnie added, glancing at Nina. “I know she’s your sister, and I don’t want to say anything bad about her…”
“That would be a first, Bonnie,” Nina said, glaring at Bonnie then holding up a hand. “I know it doesn’t look good. But Gretchen and I are convinced that if we can locate her, she will be able to clear this up. Has anyone seen her since Martha died?”
Gretchen listened in dismay as she realized that no one in the room had any helpful information. They threw around theories, careful not to insult Nina or Gretchen with innuendos, but in the end, nothing new came to light.
“Joseph,” Matt said. “You said you knew Martha well?”
Joseph rubbed his fingers on his right ear, a nervous gesture, Gretchen thought.
“She’d come around to see what I had in stock. We’d talk shop.”
“Did she ever buy anything?”
“Naw. She didn’t have two nickels to rub together. She only came to look.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“I’d have to think about it.” Joseph’s fingers twirled a diamond stud, and Gretchen could see tension etched on his face.
“We can wait,” Matt said.
Bonnie tittered nervously. “What is this? The third degree? Next you’ll be asking all of us for alibis.”
The detective’s eyes met Gretchen’s. “At the moment,” he said. “I’m only interested in one specific alibi.”
Caroline’s hands trembled as she held the nineteen-inch china doll on her lap. She studied the marking on the doll’s body and stroked the cream dress with dainty blue feather wisps in the design. Was this it? The Madame Rohmer she had crossed the country to find?
It had to be. Could there be another exactly like the one she sought? Impossible. But she had to be sure.
Caroline would have examined the inside of the doll’s head if the pate had been loose. With the doll’s new owner sitting next to her, she couldn’t very well rip its head off.
“Do you have a flashlight I can use?” she asked.
Rudolph Timms’s piercing eyes searched hers questioningly. “Excuse me? I thought you wanted a picture.”
Caroline, remembering her ruse, quickly arranged the doll on the ornate sofa and moved back, camera to her eye. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, after snapping several pictures with her filmless camera. “It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to examine such a wonderful specimen so closely.”
Rudolph preened as though she were complimenting him personally.
“A flashlight would illuminate the doll,” Caroline s
aid, desperate to convince him of the truth of her lie. “The picture will be more striking with additional lighting.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” He hurried across the room and opened a drawer in a desk against the wall. “This should do.”
To continue the illusion, Caroline arranged the light and took more pictures. Then with the doll on her lap, she tapped on the doll’s head and listened. She tapped again on its cheek. She heard a dull thud. Her excitement grew.
She pulled the wig high and held the flashlight against the back of its head. She examined the face of the doll, moving the light as she worked.
Rudolph Timms cleared his throat.
“Remarkable,” Caroline said, without looking up from her work. “Simply remarkable.”
The light’s rays penetrated the layers of transparent porcelain.
Caroline’s gasp of relief caught in her throat.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She had the doll right in her lap.
10
Deceptions are practiced wherever money can be made, and the doll world is no exception. Swindlers scour the country buying damaged dolls and sometimes work with an accomplice who repairs the dolls for them. These con artists represent the dolls to avid buyers as something they are not, sell them at inflated prices, then quickly disappear from sight.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
As Gretchen stood outside of Nina’s house, she heard a coyote howl in the distance. Larry and Julia were the last to leave. Larry wandered out to join her while Julia and Nina worked in the kitchen. Julia, apparently allergy-free tonight, had offered to help clean up in the spirit of renewed camaraderie. More likely, she hoped for an earful of tantalizing new gossip.
“Where did you and Julia originally live?” Gretchen asked. “Everyone in the Phoenix area seems to be a transplant from another state, mainly from the Midwest. I have yet to meet a native Arizonian in Phoenix or Scottsdale.”
“We’re both from Cleveland,” he said, laughing. He wore sunglasses to hide his facial tic, and Gretchen wondered how he could see through them in the dark of night. If she didn’t remove her sunglasses before entering any type of building, she couldn’t see a thing.
“Ah, you started out here as snowbirds.” Permanent Arizonians, Gretchen knew, weren’t particularly fond of Northerners who fled their home states every winter to bask for a few months in the sun. When the cherry and apple trees began to blossom, the snowbirds returned home.
“Didn’t we all?” he asked.
The coyote’s howl was joined by other howls, and a choir of yipp yipp calls sounded across the desert.
“Thank you for your help with the repair projects,” Gretchen said.
“My pleasure. Julia doesn’t let me work on restorations much anymore. She wants me out buying and selling. I forgot how much I enjoy it.”
“It’s relaxing,” Gretchen acknowledged, recalling the many times she had assisted her mother, immersing herself in a doll project, forgetting about the passage of time and life’s pressing responsibilities. “Repairing a doll is one of the few times I actually live in the moment,” she said. “There’s something very Zen about it.”
Larry agreed. “I’m making a wig for one of Caroline’s customers. It’s time-consuming but gratifying. Working on it gives me that same sense of timelessness.”
“Really? You’re making a wig?” Gretchen was surprised. Her mother saved wigs from dolls that were beyond repair and used them to replace damaged wigs. “That’s well beyond the call of duty. The workshop has bins brimming with supplies. You could look there for a wig that would work.”
“I enjoy the challenge. Wig making is one of my specialties.”
“What material are you using? Mohair? A kit?”
“Kits are for amateurs, you know that. I’m using human hair. It’s going to be an extraordinary wig when I’m finished.”
“Is a local salon saving hair for you?” Gretchen had found several human hairpieces stored in the repair shop, but she knew her mother avoided making them unless a customer couldn’t be satisfied in any other way and if the price was right.
“I can’t give out my secrets,” Larry said crisply. “Your mother might move into my territory.”
Gretchen eyed him. “I think it’s the other way around. But seriously, I appreciate your help, and I’m sure she will, too, when she gets back.” She didn’t add that her mother would have more problems than she could deal with when she resurfaced without worrying about her customers’ needs.
“Maybe I can pitch in soon and help you out,” she added.
“No rush.”
Julia, her bulldog jaw leading the way, whirled out in a flurry of activity, and the Gerneys waved from the car windows as they drove off.
“He’s still out there?” Nina asked, joining her and peering into the night.
Gretchen nodded and glanced down the street where the detective sat in his car. “Does he really think I’m going to lead him to my mother?”
“That tells me he’s out of ideas. He’s hoping you come up with something.”
“He and I are in agreement on that,” Gretchen said wearily. “But I don’t know what to do next.”
“We can start with that disgusting dirty journal you swiped from Nacho.”
“I completely forgot about it.” The painkiller seemed to be affecting her mental alertness, but at the moment she didn’t care. The pill had done its magic, and her wrist didn’t hurt.
With one last look at the detective’s car, Gretchen returned to the house, fished through her purse, and extracted the worn notebook. Nina carefully drew the curtains, and the two of them settled at the kitchen table.
“He wouldn’t creep around and look in the windows, would he?” Gretchen asked, carefully removing the rubber bands encircling the notebook.
Nina shrugged. “Who knows what he will do? We should have brought a few of Caroline’s dolls over to post at the windows and doors as guards.” She watched Gretchen open the thick wad of paper with disgust. “What a mess.”
Without the rubber bands to hold the notebook together, bits and pieces of paper slipped out onto the table. A few fell to the floor. Gretchen bent down and retrieved them. “He must have saved every receipt he ever received.” She picked through a variety of purchase receipts from fast-food restaurants and liquor stores. “He drinks a lot of wine,” she noted.
“I’m not at all surprised.” Nina gingerly sorted through a stack on the table. “Here’s a gas receipt.”
Gretchen glanced over at the paper in Nina’s hand. “A gas receipt? He has a car?”
“Of course not. He must have picked it up from the street.” Nina squinted at the fine print.
Gretchen took the receipt. “The gas was purchased yesterday with a credit card.”
“Who knows why he has it,” Nina said, dismissing it. “Keep going.”
Gretchen put it aside and unfolded a piece of paper that had been folded multiple times, one of many stuffed into the notebook. “Phone numbers, random scribbles, pages ripped out and stuffed back in. I can barely make out his handwriting. Sorting through this mess is going to take time.”
“Spend the night here,” Nina suggested. “I’ll make some herbal tea, and we’ll get it done, however long it takes. Every hour counts.”
“Let’s get to it then,” Gretchen said. “And make us something stronger than herbal tea. Give me something with caffeine. Coffee, if you have it.”
Several hours later and after multiple cups of coffee, Gretchen and Nina were nearing the back of the notebook and the last few pages.
Gretchen turned a page and almost spewed coffee across the scattered papers on the table. “Look at this.”
She held up a crumpled sheet of paper.
Nina gasped.
It was a copy of the picture of the French fashion doll reposing serenely in her wooden trunk. The exact same photograph Gretchen had found on the mountain that now was held as evidence by the Phoenix police.
“We should have started at the back of the notebook. Doesn’t it figure?”
Gretchen stared at the copy of the valuable doll, then turned the paper over. “There’s a message on the back,” she said, reading aloud.“‘I have the doll, but the trunk is too large. Hide it for me.’” She glanced quickly up and handed it to Nina. “The handwriting is different from the rest of this notebook. It’s not Nacho’s, but I know that handwriting from somewhere.”
“You should know it,” Nina said. “It’s Caroline’s.”
Caroline studied Rudolph Timms and wondered about the best approach.
“Were you aware when you purchased the doll,” she said, “that it had been extensively repaired.”
Timms uncrossed his long legs and stood up. “Impossible,” he said. “This doll is in mint condition.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.” Caroline shone the light on the doll’s head. “Porcelain is translucent. Repair materials are not. See the streaks?”
Timms leaned forward. “Yes. I see them.”
“The streaks indicate repaired cracks. If we removed the doll’s head, I could demonstrate more effectively.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Timms said weakly. “I’ll have to see about a refund, I suppose. I don’t mind purchasing a repaired doll, but the price must be right. What I paid for this particular doll was obscene.”
Obscene by his standards? Caroline’s eyes scanned her opulent surroundings.
If Timms had been an experienced collector he would have thoroughly examined the doll before agreeing to the price. Caroline wondered, in the end, if Timms’s pride would prevent him from pursuing the dishonest seller.
Perhaps the seller, in a hurry to unload the doll, hadn’t known that the doll had been restored. Caroline wasn’t about to admit that she, herself, performed the repairs. It hadn’t been her intention at the time to deceive a potential buyer.
“Please tell me who sold you the doll.” Caroline contained her anticipation. The name. She needed the name of the seller. “The doll community is very tightly knit. We dislike those who give our industry a bad name.”