by Deb Baker
"It looks like a big washtub," Nina said.
"Like an old-fashioned washing machine," April agreed. Nina made a move to lift the cover.
Britt grabbed her wrist, striking out swiftly, as though she'd anticipated Nina's intent. "I have pieces cooling inside. If you open it, they might crack."
"Cool air meeting hot air," April said, picking up a pair of safety goggles with green lenses and trying them on.
"Basic physics."
Britt's daughter Melany appeared in the doorway. "I'm going now," she said, staring at her mother, seemingly unaware that she had company. Britt hurried over and gave her a hug. Melany stiffened. She didn't move to return the embrace.
Britt's fingers fluttered to her French twist, nervously feeling for renegade locks.
Again, Gretchen noticed the contrast in the two women. Melany went for the no-makeup, rumpled look, almost in direct opposition to her mother's organized, proper appearance. Was she acting out? Was it a passive-aggressive stance?
Once Melany was gone, Britt moved her guests to another table. "These are some of my work in progress. I go through six stages of painting and firing. See these? The initial firing makes the porcelain pink, but not a fleshcolored pink like I want. I keep adding colors. They become richer and more natural looking with every firing."
"What if I make a mistake?" April asked.
"Then you use paint thinner to start over." Britt's voice had become tutorial. "Over here I'm cutting out eye sockets, and over here I've just cut out the crown of this doll's head."
"And you made earring holes," April exclaimed, beside herself with joy. So much for a working crime partner. One of Charlie's Angels had gone to heaven.
While Britt preened under the rays of April's worship, Gretchen studied Britt's dollmaking tools. Gretchen didn't feel the same warmth for the doll maker as April did. What if Britt and Bernard were accomplices?
Gretchen felt a twinge of conscience for being meanspirited. While Bernard had stolen from her, and she had a good reason to distrust him, Britt hadn't done anything remotely suspicious. She'd try harder to like her, after she got a good look at Britt's kitchen. She'd make more of an effort. That was, if the wallpaper didn't match. Some of Britt's tools were familiar to Gretchen: stringing clamps, body paint to give a doll body's an antique look, hooks, and pliers. The studio was also well-stocked with supplies different from Gretchen's: modeling clays and a variety of molds.
When Gretchen needed to replace a part, she had to find an original from the same time period. Too bad she couldn't just whip up a copy in Britt's kiln. Her serious antique collectors would know instantly that she had cheated.
"That's an incising tool," Britt said, appearing next to her. "It's used to mark the creator's name on the doll. We have to be very careful that a reproduction isn't mistaken for an original."
Gretchen held up a scalpel. Nina, she suddenly noticed, was missing from the room. The bathroom door was open, so she wasn't in there. Her stealthy aunt had vanished into the interior of the house.
"I have all different sizes in the drawer below it," Britt said.
Taking that as permission, Gretchen opened the drawer. It was filled with scalpels and syringes. She reminded herself that Britt was a doll maker and that scalpels and syringes were important tools of her trade. She opened the next drawer. More knives. "Quite a collection." She held up a knife. The handle bore the steel image of a feather.
"That's a Native American feather knife. It belonged to my grandfather."
Gretchen used the contents of the drawers as a distraction to cover for Nina. "What do you use this one for?"
Where was Nina?
Finally she caught a flash of pink behind Britt. Nina's jeweled fingers reached in and closed a drawer.
"We should be going," Nina said.
"Thank you for stopping by." Britt said, showing them out a back door. "April, I'll call you as soon as I have enough students signed up for a class. And Nina, call me."
"Well?" Gretchen said when they were in the car. "Was it the kitchen?"
"Same general colors as the room box wallpaper, but the border isn't teapots, its grapes."
"Good work, partner," Gretchen said. "Another elimination."
"Check that Maize kid's house," April advised. "I'm sure he did it."
"The drug house is next on our list of kitchen stops,"
Nina said.
"Ryan Maize didn't kill his mother," Gretchen insisted.
"He's the most obvious suspect," April said from the front seat. "He was stoned out of his mind on drugs, he's violent-I saw him hit you-he threw a Mali-something cocktail and almost blew us up."
Gretchen scooted to the middle of the backseat and leaned forward. "If you had evidence that your son had killed your sister, would you make a room box and accuse him at an unveiling with a room filled with complete strangers? What kind of mother would expose her child that way?"
April humphed. "What kind of kid would kill his mother or his aunt?"
"Exactly!"
"Let's check him out anyway," Nina said diplomatically.
"We should rule him out together. A unanimous decision, since we are a t-e-a-m."
"Go team," April said. "I could hardly drink the coffee after our discussion of Arsenic Anna and rat poison."
"Britt and I are becoming close friends," Nina said. "I shouldn't even be suspecting her."
"The coffee was fine," Gretchen said. "It came out of one carafe."
"That was smart thinking," April said.
"There's so much to learn about detecting," Nina said.
"Live and learn," April said.
"I think you mean," Gretchen said, "learn and live."
32
They should have saved the mission to Ryan's house for another day. "Look at the commotion," April said.
"Keep going right past," Gretchen said to Nina from the backseat. From now on, she was going to drive herself. She felt trapped in her aunt's car.
A police officer tried impatiently to wave them past when Nina slowed down. "I said, keep going," Gretchen repeated, raising her voice. Matt Albright's unmarked blue car was parked at the curb. She saw Detective Brandon Kline standing on the broken-down porch talking to a cop. Brandon turned and shouted something to the officer near their car. The cop gave way, and motioned them to pull over.
Nina followed his direction. Gretchen moaned.
"The cops are searching Ryan's pad," April said, breaking into her version of street talk. "Look at all those strungout crackheads." She pointed to a pathetic group of five huddled at the corner of the house. They were in varying degrees of undress. Only one wore a shirt, all were barefoot, and if the others hadn't been bare-chested, Gretchen wouldn't have been able to figure out which were males. The one wearing the shirt was still an unknown as far as sexual persuasion went.
Gretchen slunk down in the backseat and crawled onto her stomach. The dogs, always ready for a ripping good time, used her as a runway. Tiny, sharp claws raked her back as they ran back and forth.
"What are you doing?" Nina said with more than a hint of disbelief in her tone.
"Hiding."
"I can see that. But from whom?"
"I vowed never to have anything to do with that womanizer again. If you had driven by when I asked you to, I wouldn't be flat on the seat with little nails piercing my skin. I'll be able to wear studs in the holes by the time they're done with me."
Okay. Gretchen was pretty sure she was acting immature. That's precisely what the detective did to her and why she was avoiding him. When was the last time she hid out in a car? She remembered exactly when-fourteen years ago-her sophomore year in high school, right before Eddie Bremen caught her with another guy. She'd tried to break it off, but he wouldn't take no for an answer, so she had ducked down to protect her date. It hadn't worked. Eddie Bremen had really clobbered her date. Slinking was justified that time, and it was justified this time. Hopefully, she'd have better luck than last time.
>
"What brings the pleasure of your company?" she heard Matt say right next to the car door. "And why is Gretchen hiding in the backseat?"
April giggled.
Gretchen shot up. "I wasn't hiding. I was looking for my. . uh. . contact. It jumped out of my eye."
She didn't even wear contacts, but he couldn't possibly know that.
"I'll help you." Matt opened the back door and carefully edged in, his eyes on her instead of on the floor. "I lose mine every once in awhile. It's a real pain."
"I found it!" Gretchen exclaimed, pretending to cup the lens between her hands. "Give me some room, and I'll plunk it back in. You have more important things to do."
Brandon Kline came up behind them. "We haven't found a thing. Not so much as a roach clip or dope pipe. The place is squeaky clean."
Matt shook his head. "Impossible."
"They insist this is a rehab house. Junior over there. ."
He pointed at the ragged group, "claims he's the sponsor."
"Let's make him prove ownership," Matt said.
Brandon's gaze settled on Nina. He smiled.
Nina batted her eyes. "I should do a reading for you as soon as you wrap up this case," she said. Gretchen would have to teach Nina the finer points of conversing with the opposite sex. I should do a reading? What an awful pickup line.
"I'd like that," he said, sounding like he meant it. Nina eyed up his back end as he moved through the police officers, barking orders. Matt winked at Gretchen.
She ignored him, glancing at the so-called homeowner and the pink stucco house. What if it was true? What if the house really was used for drug rehabilitation and not drug deals? "Ryan's bizarre behavior could have been completely due to the epinephrine," she said, thinking out loud.
"He certainly was full of the stuff," Matt said. "Heavy usage for at least a week, maybe longer, according to the physicians. He's lucky to still be alive. He must have a death wish."
"Did they find any other drugs in his system?" Gretchen asked, trying to overlook her personal issues with the detective. Act grown-up. Drop the inner pout and move on.
"That was the surprising thing," Matt said. "Not a trace of any street drugs."
"What does he say to explain his condition?"
"He's disoriented and lethargic. Says a goddess was serving him, according to the medical staff. I don't know when, if ever, he'll be lucid enough to give answers that make sense. His physician hasn't cleared him for questioning yet."
He looked over at the house. "I better get back inside."
"We want to look at the kitchen," Nina said. "We're studying crimes and the effects on kitchens."
April giggled, which was all she seemed to be able to do when she was too close to Matt. Did Gretchen act that dopey around him? She hoped not.
"You can look through the window from the outside of the house," Matt answered, wearing a look of amused confusion. "But stay away from the tenants. By the way, Gretchen, you don't wear contacts."
"Busted," April said. "What tipped you off?"
Gretchen wished April would go back to giggling. So what if he caught her lying? Gretchen leveled Matt with a steely glare just in case he thought his approval mattered to her.
"A true contact wearer," he said, "holds a contact like this." He pressed his fingers together. "We don't cup them in our palms. And the terminology isn't 'plunk' it in. It's
'pop' it in. They don't jump out of our eyes, either." He grinned. "But I still like you, even if you aren't one of us."
"I'm a contact wearer," April giggled.
Gretchen marched behind him toward the house with Nina and April taking up the rear and, oh no, all the dogs.
"Potty stop," Nina said when Gretchen scowled at her. "As good a place as any." Nina glanced at the trash in the weedy yard. "I won't have to clean up any doggie do. It'll blend right in." Nimrod and Tutu trotted with Nina. Enrico ran alongside his new owner, with his lip pulled up on one side to show his back teeth. He had a nasty gleam in his beady little eyes.
Matt shook a thumb over his right shoulder and addressed one of the officers. "They want to look in the window. Let them."
He entered the house with Brandon. A band of police officers maintained a circle around the motley bunch of tenants. The cops remained a respectable distance away, trying to appear casual and unconcerned. But they kept a sharp eye out.
Judging by the group's state of undress, no one was carrying a weapon. The most that could happen would be that one could run away. "Who owns the house?" Gretchen asked them when she was close enough. She kept her voice low.
"We don't have anything to say," said one with a shaved head. "We want an attorney."
"Have you been arrested?"
"No. But we aren't talking to any cops."
"Do I look like a police officer?" Gretchen said, suspecting that the bald one was the homeowner. She pointed at Nina and April. "Do they look like cops?"
"She's right," another one chortled. "What kind of cops would have dogs like that?"
Good reasoning. This one, at least, wasn't all drugged out. Up close, Gretchen could tell that they were all men, even the shirt person. "I'm a friend of Ryan's," she said.
"I'm trying to help him."
"You're too late, he's totally whacked out. We should have thrown him out as soon as we found out he was doing drugs again," Baldy said. "We knew he was messing up. Now look what's happened, man."
"Nina and April, why don't you check out the kitchen?"
Gretchen said. Her eyes scanned the group, then she asked,
"Which window is the kitchen?" No one answered, but a few eyes shifted to a window. "Try that one there." She pointed. The two women hustled over to the house. They grabbed the bottom of the windowsill and tipped up onto their toes to peer in. "It's too high," April announced. "I can't see in."
"Boost Nina up," Gretchen called before scooting to the opposite side of the huddle. She didn't want to see what was going to happen next. Right before she turned her back, she saw April plant her solid legs and lace her fingers together.
"Hold the dogs," Nina said behind her.
"How can I hold them and boost you?"
"How can I go up with them? Put the leashes around your wrist, like that. Ready?"
"Ryan was doing drugs," Gretchen said to the tenants, a statement rather than a question. "But you still wanted to help him?"
"He dried out while he was here," one with dreadlocks said. "No alcohol, no drugs, but he slipped back. We hoped it was temporary."
"Don't talk to her," Shirt Guy said.
"She's a friend of Ryan's. How's he doing anyway?"
"He's alive," Gretchen said. "But barely. And he's hallucinating."
"He was doing good, and then all of a sudden, he was all screwed up. Nobody could talk to him. Everything that came out of his mouth was total garbage."
Gretchen tapped a piece of paper trash on the ground with her foot, thinking. "He talked about a goddess."
"We got that shtick, too. He claimed some fairy chick visited his bedroom at night."
"We never saw her."
"That's cuz she didn't exist."
"Duh."
"He said she flew in the window."
"He said a lot of dumb things. When was the last time you saw a fairy flying?"
"When was the last time you saw a fairy standing around?"
Gretchen heard a commotion behind her, then a shriek, then a thud. She tried to block it out. "Bad news, man,"
Shirt Man said, referring to Ryan. Or so Gretchen thought. Shirt Man was facing the kitchen investigators. She hoped the comment wasn't about Nina and April.
"Watch where you're falling," April wailed. "You could have killed Enrico."
"You dropped me," Nina screamed.
"I released you. There's a difference."
"Can you intervene for us?" the bald one asked Gretchen.
"We really are running a rehab program."
Gretchen believed him. He and
the other occupants were as much on the fringes of society as the homeless people she knew. But druggies? When she looked into their eyes, they were clean and bright, without the hopeless, empty gaze associated with drug addicts. They didn't have that hunted, haunted fear she'd seen in Ryan's eyes or the wasted away, thin bodies.
Nina stomped past carrying Tutu. April heaved off from the side of the house and made for the car with the other two miniature dogs.
"We're going to the hospital to see how Ryan's doing,"
Gretchen said to the bald one.
"Say hi. We hope he makes it."
Gretchen hustled after April. She peeked in the entrance to the house as she passed but didn't see the two detectives. Why was she even checking? She didn't care. Nope. Not one teeny, tiny bit.
33
"Ryan did it," April insisted, pounding a plump fist on the dashboard to stress her point. "He killed his mother. I don't care about wallpaper. We're getting too wrapped up in kitchens. Forget the room box. He's the one."
"His kitchen was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," Nina said, darting through traffic. She had recovered quickly from her graceless fall. "Crud everywhere. Men shouldn't be allowed to live in large groups. They're pigs. I can't even imagine how awful the bathroom would be."
She shivered for effect.
"All I saw was your rear end," April said. "And then that lizard darted across the wall right next to us. He stopped and stared me right in the eye. Sorry I dropped you."
"Forgiven," Nina chirped. Their friendship had come a long way. A few weeks ago, Nina would have held a grudge against April much, much longer. This one was over within minutes.
The safest thing to do was to get them back on task before one of them had a chance to say the wrong thing and start another disagreement.
"The ICU staff wouldn't give me any details about Ryan's condition," Gretchen said. "They gave me the patient privacy protection speech. All they'll say is that he's on that hospital floor."
April shook her head. "You'll never get inside."
"We'll never get inside," Nina corrected her. "We are a t-e-a-m."