Hazel did a quick estimation. “At least three hundred, I would think, not counting the Barbies.” She inched her way around the room, scanning the faces with pink-painted cheeks, rosebud lips, and glass eyes. Most of the dolls seemed to be from Margaret Diane’s era. She spotted Raggedy Ann, Chatty Cathy, and Baby Tender Love, and memories of Christmases past washed over her.
She tipped back her head to view those on the highest shelf, and she began to tremble. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and hit the floor. She covered her mouth with her fingers and whispered, “Oh, my…”
June 16, 1943
Cumpton, Arkansas
“Oh, Burl, what were you thinkin’?” Mama shook her head at Daddy. “She’s too little for a doll like that. You should’ve saved it for Hazel Mae’s birthday.”
Hazel stared at the beautiful doll clutched in Maggie’s chubby arms. Hazel’s doll had a molded head and a cloth body. She’d longed for one with hair she could comb and style, one with jointed arms and legs so it could sit up on its own for tea parties. But Daddy’d given her dream doll to Maggie.
His grin never faded. He pointed at Maggie’s doll. “That thing’s the spittin’ image of Maggie. Look at its golden curls an’ blue eyes. When I saw it in the catalog, I knew it had to be hers.” He chucked Hazel on the shoulder. “You’ve already got a doll, Hazel Mae. You don’t need another one, do you?”
Hazel hung her head so Daddy wouldn’t see the jealousy in her eyes. Envy was a sin.
Maggie held the doll aloft and announced, “Her Minnie.”
Hazel snagged up the box the doll had come in. “This says her name is Cynthia.” Cynthia…such a pretty name. Hazel’s heart nearly twisted into a pretzel with longing to claim that doll as her own.
Maggie shook her head until her blond curls bounced. “Her Minnie. Not Sinfee-uh.”
Hazel jabbed her finger on the box. “But—”
Mama snapped her fingers. “It’s Maggie’s doll, Hazel Mae. She can name it whatever she wants to.”
Hazel shrunk back and clamped her lips shut. How could anybody choose the plain name Minnie over a beautiful one like Cynthia? If she ever got a doll so pretty and sweet, she’d name it Cynthia.
Present Day
Las Vegas, Nevada
Meghan hurried to her side, the tips of her crutches squeaking on the tile floor. “What’s wrong?”
Hazel raised her arm and pointed to a doll half hidden between two slouching baby dolls. “It’s her.”
“Who?” Meghan stood so close her breath brushed Hazel’s jaw.
“Minnie…” The name wheezed from Hazel’s lips. Her legs trembled so badly she feared they would collapse. She planted both palms over her pounding heart. “I need to sit down.”
Meghan bolted to the doorway in two swings on her crutches. “Mom! Bring Grandma a chair!” Her voice reverberated from the dropped tiles of the ceiling.
In less than a minute, Margaret Diane and another woman with streaky red and brown hair—probably a store worker—burst into the small room. The worker pushed a stool, similar in style to the one Daddy had used when milking their cows, behind Hazel. Hazel sank onto the round seat and hung her head.
Margaret Diane crouched next to her. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“I’ll be all right. I’m just a little light headed.” She pulled in several deep, slow breaths while Margaret Diane stared intently into her face. Slowly her pulse calmed, and the fuzzy feeling faded. She patted her daughter’s hand. “You needn’t hover, dear. I’m fine now.”
Margaret Diane straightened, but she remained next to the stool, her brow forming deep lines of either concern or consternation. Hazel was never sure how to read her daughter’s expressions.
She shifted her gaze to the store worker, who stood nearby wringing her hands and chewing on her lip. “Young woman, could you retrieve a doll from the top shelf for me? That one.” She pointed at the doll with fuzzy sausage curls and blue glass eyes lined with thick lashes.
“I need to get a stepladder. I’ll be right back.” The woman hurried out of the room, her flip-flops slapping against her bare heels.
Meghan stumped around to Hazel’s opposite side, her face aimed at the top shelf. “That’s an old doll. Did you have one like it?” Her deliberately light tone didn’t fool Hazel—the girl was worried.
Hazel took her hand. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, but I haven’t seen Minnie in so long. The sight, the remembrance…” She released a low, rueful chuckle. “It overwhelmed me.”
The worker returned with a folding ladder. She set it up and climbed the rungs. She put her hand on the doll’s neck and glanced at Hazel. “This one?”
Hazel nodded.
The woman handed it to Margaret Diane, and Hazel held out her arms.
Margaret Diane hesitated. “This seems to be porcelain, Mother. And…” She frowned at the attached price tag. “If you break it, you’ll have to buy it.”
“I intend to buy it anyway, so please give it to me.”
Twenty-One
Diane
The worker had descended the ladder, and she stood close and watched Diane place the doll in Mother’s waiting hands.
“That’s a Vogue doll,” the woman said, “and it’s composition rather than porcelain, but it’s still fragile.”
“In other words, we need to be careful with it.” Diane slipped her hand under the doll’s head. As shaky as Mother appeared, she may not have the strength to hang on to the doll.
The woman linked her fingers, her bold blue fingernail polish flashing in the fluorescent lights. “The box got ruined when a water pipe burst in the storage room, but I can tell you it’s a Cynthia doll from 1940. You’ll find her name stamped on the sole of her shoe.”
Mother turned the doll upside down and peeked at the bottoms of the leather shoes. She nodded, smiling. “Yes. Cynthia.”
“She has a mohair wig, and she’s wearing her original dress, socks, and shoes. There are only spiderweb cracks in the composition on her legs and arms, something fairly common in dolls of that era, but there are no chips or curling. If it wasn’t for the missing box, we could advertise this one as mint.” She took another step closer, her gaze locked on the doll. “Cynthia was sold individually and also as part of a three-doll collection—the My Sister and Me set—with Linda and Toddles. Linda is a good-sized doll, twenty inches tall. Toddles, sometimes called Toodles, was the smallest at only eight inches tall, and Cynthia was in between.”
Meghan shot a puzzled frown at the worker. “You know an awful lot about the merchandise in here.”
The woman let out a soft laugh. “If you’d picked up something from any other booth in the shop, I’d be clueless, but this is my mom’s booth. She collected dolls her whole life, and whether I wanted to or not, I learned about them.”
Diane understood the “whether I wanted to or not” comment.
The worker gestured to the highest shelves. “When she consented to selling them, she insisted that we put the oldest, most valuable dolls up high so children can’t get to them. She never even let me play with the oldest dolls, and she certainly didn’t want strangers’ children putting their hands on them.”
Diane stifled a snort. Mother and the worker’s mom had a few things in common. Did Mother still have the little flowered tea set Diane had never been allowed to touch? She glanced to see if her mother was listening, but Mother was smoothing the lace on the doll’s faded yellow dress, a faraway look in her eyes. She probably hadn’t heard a word. Diane turned to the woman. “Why’d your mother decide to part with her collection?”
The woman sighed. “Mom moved into assisted living last year after falling and breaking her hip. The facility is a lot more expensive than we thought it would be. She needed extra money, so I brought her dolls in to sell on consignment.”
Diane caught the hint. There’d be no negotiating on price. She hoped Mother wouldn’t be foolish enough to pay what they were asking. Eventually she’d b
e in a rest home, too, and squandering money now wouldn’t help her then. She held out her hands for the doll. “Let’s put it back, Mother.”
Mother cradled the doll against her shoulder the way Diane used to hold Meghan to burp her. “I’m not putting her back. I had to burn Minnie even though I didn’t want to. Now I’ll have her back again, and I can give her to Maggie.”
The worker gaped at Mother as if she’d lost her mind. Small wonder, considering the cryptic comments. Even Diane had a hard time following her, and she knew about Maggie’s lost birthday doll.
She leaned down and spoke near Mother’s ear. “They’re asking over one hundred fifty dollars for this doll. You don’t even know that we’ll find Maggie. It would be foolish to spend that much money on a maybe.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed. Her dark irises sparked. “I am buying Maggie’s Minnie.” Still gripping the doll to her shoulder, she struggled to rise. Meghan took her elbow and helped. Mother wobbled for a few seconds and then seemed to find her balance. Her chin high, she thrust the doll at the worker. “Box her up, please.”
Diane rolled her eyes. “Mother…”
“And that one, too.” She pointed to a doll with its straight brown hair tied in pigtails and its cheeks dotted with freckles. She turned a sheepish look on Diane. “Your dad and I bought you a Chatty Cathy like this one for Christmas when you were four. Although warned to be gentle, you yanked the string so hard you broke the speech mechanism within a week, and your dad punished you by throwing the doll away. I’ve always felt bad about that. You were so young, and you could have still played with the doll even if it didn’t talk.” Her lips quivered into a hesitant smile. “So now you’ll have another one.”
The story was sweet, and deep inside herself Diane was touched by her mother’s regret even though she couldn’t remember having a doll like the one on the shelf. She pulled in a breath, intending to thank her, but other words tumbled out. “And by buying a doll for me, you can justify buying that other one.”
Mother’s face fell.
Meghan gasped. “Mom! That was a terrible thing to say!”
It was. Why had she said it? Maybe the talk about the cost of rest homes and Mother’s frivolous spending had inspired the comment. She should apologize.
“I’ll wrap both of these.” The woman carried both dolls and inched toward the door. “They’ll be at the register whenever you’re done shopping.” She hurried out.
Meghan put her hand on Mother’s shoulder. “Do you want to browse the rest of the booths, Grandma?”
Mother shook her head. “No. I’ve spent my allowance. Let’s go back to the house.”
“But we’ll get lemonade first, right?” Meghan, ever the peacemaker, bounced a hopeful look from Mother to Diane and back. “With strawberries in it?”
Diane answered before Mother could. “Yes. My treat.” It was a small gesture, but maybe Mother would see it as the apology she wasn’t able to say.
Kendrickson, Nevada
Meghan
Early Wednesday morning, Meghan’s cell phone growled a short Mah Nà Mah Nà from the old Muppets program—her text-message notification. The dogs whined and shifted in their crates, and she instinctively intoned, “Shhh.” No sense in waking Mom, who still slept soundly on the opposite side of the bed.
She rolled over and pawed at the nightstand until she located the phone and squinted at it, yawning. The time showed five till six. She grunted under her breath. Who would text her at such a ridiculous hour? She pulled up her text messages and glanced at the sender, then the message. Her heart fired into her throat. All sleepiness fled. She shot straight up.
The mattress springs popped, and Mom came awake. “Meghan? Good grief, lie still.” She flopped over to her other side, bouncing the mattress worse than Meghan had, and burrowed into her pillow.
Meghan grimaced. “Sorry,” she whispered. With the room cloaked in total darkness, she had a hard time locating her crutches, which she’d left leaning against the wall beside the nightstand. She managed to snag them, tucked them under her arms, and made her way around the bed and out the door. Grandma always left a lamp glowing in the living room, and she followed the thin ribbon of yellow to Grandma’s chair.
She flopped into the soft cushions, laid her crutches across the ottoman, and read the message again.
Wanted you to know I found no reports of unidentified remains, but I located the names of missing children from Benton County. Eight in all between 1937 and 1946. Also found a report about one-year-old twins who disappeared from Delaware County in Oklahoma during the same time period. Seems suspicious. One other detail has me troubled, too. Would like to chat with you and Mrs. DeFord. Call me this evening, please.
Meghan shook her head. Eight children inexplicably missing in a single decade. Ten if the two from across the border in Oklahoma were woven into the mystery. When Grandma mentioned two others besides Maggie, the count had seemed high. But ten? Suspicious was an understatement. The number was unbelievable. What else could be troubling Sean besides the high count? Her finger twitched with eagerness to call Sean right away, but he’d be at the office already. She couldn’t bother him during work hours.
Still, she tapped a quick reply.
Will tell Grandma what you discovered. Will call later today. Thanks.
She slapped the phone into her lap and stared across the dimly lit room. The house was quiet. The grandfather clock gently ticktocked a soothing rhythm. She should go back to bed, but she doubted she could sleep. There were questions to answer, and she wanted to find the answers now. The most pressing question echoed through her mind. Disregarding the twins from Oklahoma, how could so many children from a rural county in Arkansas simply disappear?
Meghan chewed her lip. If it had happened more recently, she’d suspect a pedophilia ring. Sex trafficking was far too common in today’s world. Not that pedophiles hadn’t existed in the thirties and forties—of course they had—but people back then were less likely to act on those kinds of urges because of the social ramifications. In all likelihood a pedophile would build a relationship, albeit a sick one, with a single child and nurture it over time. Even if a pedophile had taken these children and killed them, authorities would have found skeletal remains at some point.
Grandma was convinced Gypsies had taken Maggie, but the group of nomads would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Would they dare to return to an area that many times? Curiosity writhed through her. Had one person or a group of people taken the children? For what purpose? Why had they never been recovered? A shiver rattled her frame. What kind of evil had haunted the idyllic community tucked into the Ozark Mountains?
At six thirty Grandma wandered into the living room, wearing robin’s-egg-blue seersucker pajamas and a matching robe. She gave a start when she spotted Meghan. “What are you doing up so early?”
Meghan held up her phone, ready to share the text, but an internal voice cautioned her to wait. She shrugged. “Woke up and didn’t want to bother Mom, so I came out here. Can I help you with breakfast?”
“You can keep me company while I make…make…” Her forehead pinched.
Meghan tipped her head. “Coffee?”
Grandma sighed. “Yes, coffee. Maybe I need some before I talk to anybody. Then I’ll make more socks.” She shook her head. “Sense!”
Meghan giggled and pushed herself to her feet. She positioned her crutches and followed Grandma to the kitchen. She leaned against the counter and observed Grandma moving around the neat room, opening cupboards and frowning into the spaces. An uneasy feeling crept across her scalp. “Grandma, are you okay?”
Her mouth slightly open, Grandma glanced at her. “What? Oh.” She laughed. “Yes, I’m fine. Just groggy yet. Some days it’s a little harder to wake up than others. Will you want cream and sugar?”
Meghan had taken cream and sugar every morning since her arrival five days ago. She started to say so but decided against it. She nodded. “Please.”
&nbs
p; Grandma closed the cupboard doors without removing the coffee canister and stepped past Meghan to the refrigerator. She rummaged inside and emerged with a little carton of cream. She scowled into the fridge. “Where did I leave the sugar?”
“Grandma…” Meghan gestured to the ceramic sugar bowl with its silver spoon sticking up. “It’s right here.”
Grandma turned and frowned at the bowl as if she’d never seen it before.
Meghan cupped her grandmother’s arm and gently squeezed. “Did you not sleep well last night? It’s okay if you want to go back to bed. There’s no law that says you have to have coffee ready by six forty-five every morning.”
Tears welled in Grandma’s dark eyes. Her chin quivered. “I…” She licked her lips. A single tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek.
Concern made Meghan’s chest go tight. “What’s wrong?”
She pulled in a shuddering breath. “I’m very confused.”
Fear chased away concern in the space of one heartbeat. Meghan forced herself to smile. She hoped it would give her grandmother some reassurance. “You’re just tired. Mom and I have kept you hopping since we got here. You aren’t used to so many people, not to mention animals, underfoot. How about I fix the coffee and you go back to bed for a while?”
Grandma sniffled and hung her head. “I’m a very poor hosiery.”
Meghan quirked her brow. “You mean hostess?”
Grandma nodded.
Meghan slung her arm around Grandma’s shoulders. “We’re family. You don’t have to play hostess for us. Come on, Grandma, you know Mom won’t get up for at least another hour. I bet you’ll feel more like yourself when you wake up.”
Grandma continued to sniff, her pose so dejected Meghan wanted to cry. Finally she sighed. “All right. If you’re sure you don’t mind, I will go lie down. I am…tired.”
Meghan delivered a kiss on her grandmother’s soft cheek. “Then rest is the best thing for you. I’ll make the coffee. And breakfast, too. You’ve been spoiling Mom and me. Let me spoil you back.”
Bringing Maggie Home Page 17