Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “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’ 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. “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 said, 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 lights rays penetrated through layers of transparent porcelain.

  Caroline’s gasp of relief caught in her throat.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  She had the doll right in her lap.

  Chapter 10

  Gretchen stood outside. She heard coyotes howling 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 Larry. “Everyone in the Phoenix area seems to be transplanted 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. 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 coyotes’ howls were joined by others, 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 when 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 nearly as much as it did.

  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’ 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.”

  Timms looked embarrassed, a tinge of pink spreading from his neck and creeping toward his widow’s peak. “My secretary arranged the transaction for me. I believe an escrow service was involved.”

  “She must have a name. At the very least she should have the name of the service.”

  “Of course. She handles all my affairs very efficiently. There’s a small problem, however.”

  “Yes?” Caroline asked, impatiently. “A name shouldn’t be complicated.”

  “My secretary is away at the moment. Somewhere in the Amazon on a small boat or something equally remote. I’m afraid I’m helpless without her.”

  He gazed longingly at the doll. “Such a waste. Perhaps I’ll keep the doll after all but at a reduced price, of course. My secretary will return next week, and she will handle the transaction.”

  Caroline stared at Rudolph Timms in dismay. A week would be too late. The muffled voice on the phone had been clear about that. She’d be dead by then.

  Chapter 11

  Gretchen greeted Sunday morning with a moan. It took her a few minutes to realize she was in Nina’s extra bedroom. She hated mornings, and she hated energetic, bubbly morning people who thought watching the sunrise gave them special powers. At the moment, she hated Nina.

  “It’s already nine o’clock, sleepyhead.” Nina popped into the room and sat down on the bed with a bounce. “Two things. First, you left your cell phone in the kitchen, and Steve called this morning. I told him you’d return his call when you got up.”

  Gretchen managed to sit up with the support of her one good arm behind her. She cracked an eye.

  “I’m going to my meditation center,” Nina said. “If I clear my head of all this stuff floating around, maybe I’ll get a reading on your mother.”

  Nina’s methods of handling emergency situations differed drastically from Gretchen’s.

  “Take the dogs with you. Please,” Gretchen said.

  “I can’t very well take Tutu along. How would I watch her? Nimrod could stay in his purse, but he’d be a distraction. Anyway, he’d much rather stay here with you.” Nina patted Gretchen’s leg. “I’ll stop at Caroline’s and check on Wobbles.”

  “Feed him.”

  “I will. I won’t be gone long. Have some coffee, it’s fresh, and call Steve back. What’s the plan for the day?”

  Gretchen managed to remain sitting upright without the leverage of her arm. She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t think straight. I need coffee first.”

  “I’m off then.” Nina fluttered around gathering her things, kissed Tutu goodbye, and left.

  Gretchen slipped into a borrowed robe, pink with green satin trim at the knee-length hem, and shuffled into the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter, sipping it. Everything seemed to move in slow motion without the use of her left hand, but she was grateful that it didn’t hurt much this morning.

  After she poured the second cup, she returned Steve’s call and related the events of the past two days. For once, Steve heard her all the way through without interrupting.

  “You need to come home,” he said when she finished. “This is nuts. You don’t want to involve yourself in something illegal. This is murder we’re talking about.”

  “I can’t leave now. Nina needs me.”

  “I need you, too. Doesn’t that factor in at all?”

  “Of course it does.” Gretchen felt a flash of guilt. She really hadn’t given much thought to Steve recently. But why should she? Couldn’
t Steve get by for a few days without her? “But I have to find my mother,” she insisted.

  “And what have been the results of your search so far?” he demanded.

  Gretchen didn’t say anything.

  “She’ll show up when she shows up,” Steve continued. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Arizona or Massachusetts. I have my career to think about. We can’t have any scandal, especially right now when the firm’s partners are deciding my future. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

  Ah, Gretchen thought, the truth comes out. He wasn’t concerned about her well-being at all. His request that she come home was a precautionary career move.

  “I’m going to see what happens today,” she said. “I’ll call you tonight.”

  “I’ll expect to hear from you by eight. Boston time. You’d think one broken bone would be enough for you.”

  Gretchen closed the phone and threw it in her purse. For seven years she had hoped her relationship with Steve would evolve into something permanent. That dream was fading as fast as a drop of moisture in the desert.

  Would she end up in spinsterhood like Nina? She already had the stereotypical cat.

  Was the cost of marriage to Steve worth the price she’d have to pay? She had already lost the ability to refuse his increasing demands, her inability to say no more pronounced when dealing with him. She rarely crossed him for any reason. Had she subconsciously dimmed her own personality to accommodate his?

  Could she move past his recent indiscretion and forget, as well as forgive?

  Worry about that later, she scolded. Focus on today and the task at hand.

  Tutu caught Gretchen’s attention when she trotted down the hall and whined at the front door. Nimrod trailed at a distance.

  “Okay,” Gretchen said in a surly tone. “I’m coming. But be quick about it.”

  She opened the door, and Tutu ran out. The dog didn’t stop in the yard to sniff around and find the perfect spot, and if Gretchen had been more awake, she would have remembered that Tutu preferred wee-wee pad over normal dog behavior.