Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “She left in a rush,” Nina whispered.

  “Yes,” Gretchen muttered, studying the contents of the kitchen. “She didn’t take the time to clean up, and that’s not like her.” She slipped her mother’s bracelet onto her wrist next to her own pink band. For good luck.

  Gretchen wandered through the house. Her mother’s workshop was exactly the same as she remembered it from her last visit. A perpetual work-in-progress: dolls hanging from lines, dolls scattered over workbenches, heads, bodies, repair tools. Before her mother’s move to Phoenix, Gretchen had helped with the simpler repairs such as cleaning and restringing. Gretchen smiled to herself. She had lived every little girl’s fantasy, rooms full of dolls and dresser drawers filled with doll clothing.

  Nina made iced tea while Gretchen tugged Wobbles out of his carrier. He lifted his head and emitted a feeble meow, while Tutu’s nose twitched, catching his scent. Tutu tried to climb Gretchen’s leg.

  “Call Tutu,” she said to Nina, doubting that Tutu even knew the come command. How could Nina train dogs to stay in purses when she couldn’t train Tutu in the basics? Yet her mother had insisted that Nina was the best purse dog trainer in the Valley of the Sun. Probably the only one, thought Gretchen, holding Wobbles in her arms. She’d never heard of the profession until Nina announced her new career move.

  Nina picked up Tutu. Gretchen carried Wobbles down the hall to her mother’s bedroom and wrapped him in the bedding. He seemed to smile gratefully and was fast asleep before she walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  Nina’s iced tea smelled wonderfully fruity, and Gretchen sipped it slowly at the kitchen table. Nina plopped down beside her. “Tell me everything again,” Gretchen said. “I want to hear it all.”

  “Early yesterday morning, hikers found Martha’s body at the base of a ridge on the mountain,” Nina began. “Information travels fast through the doll community, so by noon everyone knew about it, including your mother. In fact, I’m the one who told her.”

  “What did she say when she found out?” Gretchen asked.

  “Very little, small exclamations of shock, I suppose. We were all gasping at the suddenness of her death.” Nina picked up her glass with both hands and placed her elbows on the table, cradling the glass against her lips. “Then I told her the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Bonnie Albright’s son is a detective with the Phoenix Police Department. You remember Bonnie? She’s president of the local doll club, The Phoenix Dollers.”

  Gretchen remembered. Red hair shellacked into an exaggerated flip, red-smeared lips, penciled lines where eyebrows used to be. “The Kewpie doll collector.”

  Her mother had a few Kewpies in her own collection. The original ones had blue wings fanning from their necks. Gretchen liked the chubby dolls, each with a small lock of hair and cherubic grin.

  “That’s Bonnie,” Nina said. “She collects Action Kewpies. Farmers, drummers. Her son, Matt, called her right away because Martha didn’t have any identification with her, and he needed Bonnie’s help figuring out who she was.”

  Gretchen frowned. “I don’t understand. How did he know Bonnie could help?”

  “Because Martha had a doll parasol in the pocket of her shorts, and since his mother collected dolls, he thought she might know her. As it turns out, she did. Bonnie went down to the morgue, and sure enough, it was Martha Williams.”

  Nina, a solemn expression on her face, set the glass on the table. “Poor Martha.”

  “It sounds like she had a hard life,” Gretchen said.

  Nina nodded, then noticed Tutu dancing at her feet. “Let’s take Tutu outside. The little dear needs to go.”

  Tutu started yapping.

  Gretchen watched Nina dig through a pouch as big as a baby diaper bag. Out came a white folded pad.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see. Follow me.”

  Gretchen smiled inwardly. Aunt Nina was as quirky as quirky comes. Stores her shoes on top of the refrigerator so scorpions can’t climb in. Had all the silver fillings removed from her teeth so she wouldn’t get mercury poisoning. Believes she has special psychic power and can see auras emanating from people. Gretchen wouldn’t be surprised if Nina believed that space ships flew out of holes in Antarctica.

  The sweltering late morning heat hit Gretchen with enough force that she took a step back before willing her body into forward motion. After the relief of the house’s air-conditioning, her skin felt on fire. Motion took superhuman effort. Even her breathing became labored.

  They paused next to Caroline’s swimming pool rimmed with Mexican tile and gazed up at Camelback Mountain. Gretchen could see a few die-hard hikers weaving upward among the rocks. She wondered how many of the mountain’s casualties were accidents and how many were calculated ends. What drove people over the edge? What did they think about in that final moment during the deadly plunge?

  She shivered in spite of the heat. Even Tutu paused for a moment of silence.

  “Where did she fall?”

  Nina pointed to one of the highest peaks. “She must have been standing right about there. See that ledge close to the top? Bonnie thinks they found her about there.”

  “She must have been an experienced hiker to climb that high. Summit Trail isn’t easy.”

  Summit Trail was strenuous. Not a trail for beginners. Halfway up to the peak of the mountain, the trail steps ended and the real climb began. Gretchen had climbed it many times and loved the challenge, but the majority of amateur hikers preferred to follow the gentler Bobby’s Rock Trail.

  Nina shrugged. “As far as I know, she never climbed a mountain in her life. She was afraid of heights. She couldn’t even climb a ladder.”

  “Maybe she was trying to conquer her fear.” Gretchen knew there were plenty of opportunities to overcome fear on this mountain.

  “Bonnie said Martha was wearing sandals. Who climbs a mountain in sandals?”

  Tutu began yapping again. Nina unfolded the small white pad and placed it on the ground. “Here you go, sweety. Now do your business.”

  And Tutu squatted on the pad.

  “This is the best invention ever designed,” Nina said. “I call it the wee-wee pad. See how well Tutu is trained to go on it. No more accidents in the house if you lay one of these where you want your precious pet to go. No more rushing home to let the dog out. Not that I’d ever leave you home alone, Tutu dear.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes. Nina needed an outside interest, something that didn’t include Tutu.

  “The only problem is that Tutu likes the pad so much she won’t do what she has to do outside. No grass or desert ground for her. She refuses to pee-pee without her wee-wee pad. I would spread it out in your mother’s house, but Caroline says it isn’t natural for a dog to go in the house, and she won’t allow it.”

  Nina bundled up the used pad and handed it to Gretchen.

  Holding it delicately between two fingers, Gretchen walked to the far side of her mother’s swimming pool and deposited it in a trash receptacle near the cabana.

  Instead of returning right away, Gretchen leaned against a barstool and admired the earthy Mexican tile decorating the cabana. Its open front faced the swimming pool with a circular cocktail area, and it had a small living space for guests in back. Gretchen stayed in the cabana on many visits, preferring its intimate coziness to staying in the main house.

  Nina watched her from a lounge chair in the shade of a large umbrella. “Whatever happened up on the mountain, Gretchen, I’m afraid it wasn’t an accident,”

  Gretchen sat down on a lounge chair next to Nina and stared in bewilderment at her aunt. “What do you mean?”

  “For starters, Martha didn’t have any dolls. The bank repossessed her home three years ago, and she lost her entire collection, which, I heard, was one of the finest antique collections in Phoenix.”

  “You never saw it?” Gretchen eyed up the inviting blue water of the pool.

  “No, she was
an odd woman, reserved and not particularly friendly. I didn’t know her well enough to have the opportunity. But that’s not the point. The point is – why did she have a doll parasol in her pocket when she no longer owned any dolls? Martha was homeless at the end of her life. And that’s not all. Brace yourself, Gretchen. I couldn’t tell you this on the phone.”

  Nina reached over and placed her bejeweled hand over Gretchen’s. “Bonnie told me the police found a note of sorts clenched in Martha’s fist.”

  Nina might be hopelessly melodramatic but she was pulling it off with style this time. Gretchen felt the hairs on her arm rising. “What? Tell me.”

  “The piece of paper had your mother’s name on it. It read, ‘Caroline Birch – put her away.’”

  Gretchen stared at her aunt.

  “My psychic ability is a curse sometimes,” Nina continued, leaning back on the lounge chair and crossing her arms. “I sense something dark happened up there. Martha Williams was pushed from Camelback Mountain and, I’m afraid your mother is involved.”

  “Impossible,” Gretchen said with conviction.

  “That’s when your mother vanished. Right after I called her and told her what the authorities found.” Nina snapped her fingers, her voice urgent. “Poof. Like smoke, she was gone.”

  __________

  Nina roared away in her red Chevy to pick up her latest purse dog trainee, leaving Gretchen with time to herself. She made a peanut butter sandwich and a salad using slightly wilted lettuce from her mother’s refrigerator. While she ate at the kitchen table, she adjusted her watch for the three-hour time difference between Boston and Phoenix, turning the hands back. Noon instead of three, a mere twelve hours since she’d given in to Nina’s demands.

  Instead of unpacking, she laced up her hiking boots and slipped her cell phone in her pocket. She rubbed sunscreen on her exposed flesh, hung her binoculars around her neck, and selected a bottle of water from a well-stocked supply in the refrigerator.

  As an afterthought, she checked her mother’s closet. Then she opened the hall closet. Her mother’s set of luggage lay empty on the floor. A more thorough search produced a toothbrush in the bathroom. As far as Gretchen could tell, Caroline hadn’t taken anything other than the car.

  She braced herself for the explosion of afternoon heat and set off, leaving palm trees and bougainvillea behind. She walked up the hill toward Echo Canyon, where the trailhead to Camelback Mountain began.

  Hikers, mostly sightseers and casual walkers, tramped up and down the footpath between the trailhead and a large boulder, where they perched like flocks of birds to admire the view of Phoenix in the valley below and to drink from lukewarm water bottles.

  The serious hikers, many training for longer hikes, continued moving up where the footpath ended and the handrails began. Gretchen could see the dry washes below and cacti sprouting from impossibly sheer cliff ledges. Birds flitted through the sparse shrubbery, calling to each other.

  Gretchen felt light-headed as she trudged upward. Nina’s words played over in her mind. Her mother. Vanished. A dead woman. Her mother’s name in the woman’s pocket. Put her away.

  What could it mean?

  A message? A warning? An accusation?

  The timing of Martha’s death and Caroline’s disappearance wasn’t coincidental, and she knew it. She felt a quick flash of anger at her mother for leaving without notifying anyone. The anger dissipated and steamed into fear. Was her mother safe? Why hadn’t she called Nina? Twenty-four hours and counting since Nina had spoken with her sister, the time slowing to an agonizing pace.

  Gretchen paused in her sweaty climb to admire the desert scenery. Her mother had taught her the names of the plants growing along the trails: saguaros, ocotillos, barrel cacti, and palo verdes. Rattlesnakes, scorpions, and gila monsters also liked the mountain environment, three poisonous reasons to wear hiking boots and to stay on the designated trails.

  Gretchen didn’t think she could handle an encounter with any of these three creatures. But spiders were her worst nightmare. A black widow would provide a perfectly good reason to jump off a cliff. It was a good thing they liked dark, remote holes and rarely ventured near humans.

  Cautiously she moved over the rocks, well above the cluster of tourists milling around on the boulder below. She forged ahead, picking her way up, using the binoculars to scan the cliffs, remembering with each step the warnings about lizards and snakes. Sweat soaked her shirt and glistened on her face. Gretchen stopped to catch her breath and get her bearings. She could see the top of her mother’s house in the valley below. Using the ledge that Nina had pointed out as a guide, Gretchen calculated that Martha had fallen from a ridge directly above her.

  Gretchen’s heart pounded against her chest cavity, and her throat felt tight and dry. She looked down at her feet, searching for signs that she stood where the woman’s body had been discovered, but all she saw were clumps of red rock and a few straggly desert plants.

  What if her mother lay injured somewhere up here? Could she be crumpled in the shadows beneath a rock outcropping? Gretchen continued climbing upward, sweeping the binoculars along the far reaches of Camelback until she was satisfied that she’d thoroughly covered the climbable part of the mountain.

  She slowly began her descent, pausing again where she thought Martha had fallen.

  When she raised the binoculars and spotted a small patch of color in the rocks above her, she thought she’d stumbled across her first sighting of a gila monster. Her mother had shown her pictures of the venomous reptiles: massive heads and small beady eyes, with orange, pink, or yellow blotches covering their bodies. She knew they moved sluggishly and couldn’t chase her down the mountain, but she was nervous nevertheless as she edged closer for a better look. And closer. Until she stood a few yards away.

  The orange coloring wasn’t the scaly back of a lizard.

  She was looking at a French fashion doll’s paisley shawl.

  __________

  Despite adrenalin pumping through her veins, Caroline fell asleep, a dreamless and heavy retreat from the world. The flight attendant gently placed a hand on her shoulder, startling her awake. “Please return your seat to its original position,” she said, quietly. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”

  Groggy and disoriented, Caroline adjusted the seat and noticed for the first time that her bracelet was missing. Her lucky bracelet. Where could it be? She fought back the feeling of panic threatening to overcome her and forced a weak smile. It’s only a bracelet, she thought. You’re getting superstitious in your old age, like Nina.

  She wondered what was happening at home right now. Were they hunting for her? Had they searched the house yet? She smiled to herself, feeling stronger and more confident.

  No one could match her ability for concealing things. Thanks to her daughter’s inherited competitive nature, their games had been played at a highly skilled level. Scavenger hunts. The traditional Easter basket searches. The challenge, each time, to be better than the last time.

  Caroline grinned at the memories.

  Let them look. They would never find it.

  Chapter 3

  “Ohh, isn’t it cute,” Nina cooed, holding up the multicolored cotton shawl. It was about the size of a baby’s terry washcloth.

  “I wonder what this is worth?” Gretchen said in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s in perfect condition except for a tiny bit of ground-in dirt where it must have hit the rocks and settled in. It’s a miracle I found it.”

  Nina looked up from admiring the shawl. “A miracle? No. This is a sign. You know that most of my psychic predictions come to me in dreams. Well, last night I dreamed about this very thing.” Nina frowned. “In my dream your mother was the size of a doll and wore the shawl over her shoulders with a dress from this exact historical period. I wonder what the dream means.”

  “The problem with your dreams,” Gretchen said, “is that you can’t interpret them. You should tak
e a class on dream analysis.” Preferably one that doesn’t allow dogs in the classroom, Gretchen thought with a watchful eye on Tutu.

  Nina scanned a creased photograph lying on the table. “You found this next to the shawl?”

  “The shawl must have been in this bag,” Gretchen said, holding up a brown paper lunch bag. “It was lucky that it had fallen out so that the colors caught my eye. The picture was inside the bag, and I almost missed finding it because the bag blended so well with the rocks.”

  Gretchen gazed at the photograph. A French fashion doll with startling blue eyes, wearing a green silk gown, smiled serenely up at her from a compartment inside an open doll trunk. A straw hat with a green ribbon and white flowers rested in her arms, and she wore glistening black earrings.

  She noted the trunk’s domed shape, its brass-headed tacks, and brass handle.

  Nina sat fingering the doll shawl, surrounded by her entourage – Tutu and her latest purse dog trainee. The trainee, a white fluff ball puppy named Rosebud, peered out from a large cloth purse slung over the workshop doorknob. Occasionally the little thing emitted a shrill bark.

  “Maltese like this one are so easy to train,” Nina said, leaving the table to give Rosebud a little attention. “Especially little females.” The tone of Nina’s voice curved upward. “Don’t feel jealous, little Tutu. You’re smarter than all of them put together.”

  Nina looked at Gretchen. “Everyone thinks they can just buy a little dog and stick it in a purse. They don’t realize it has to be trained to stay there. That’s where I come in. Most of my clients are easy to work with, but Chihuahuas?” Nina shuddered for emphasis. “They’re more like vicious little purse attack dogs. I charge extra for them.”