Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “Pink and white? How can I hide with this?” Gretchen cast a dubious expression Nina’s way. She tossed the umbrella into the backseat and quickly jumped out into the rain. Sometimes, she thought, you have to take a deep breath and plunge in, like a dive into frigid water. The longer you wait, the harder it is to go through with it.

  She splashed through sheets of water. Her hair hung from her face in dripping strands even before she made it to the first porch step. She clomped under an overhang and flattened against the brick wall, wiping water from her face and listening to the sound of the television, muted by the pounding rain. The light through the window flickered.

  She edged over and risked a peak between the curtains. April’s enormous frame covered her sagging sofa, and in the glow from the screen, Gretchen could tell that she was fast asleep, eyes closed, mouth hanging wide open.

  She wiggled back to the front door, careful to stay under the protection of the eave, although she wasn’t sure why she bothered, since she was soaked to the skin. She tried to slide the key into the lock.

  It didn’t fit.

  In one mad rush, she lunged back to the car. Nina, encased in fogged windows, searched Gretchen’s face. “Well?” she said.

  “It isn’t April’s key.”

  “You didn’t try the back door.”

  “The back door?”

  “We have to be thorough,” Nina said.

  “We?” Gretchen was annoyed by Nina’s use of a plural possessive to describe a singular act. It wasn’t as though Nina was making a significant contribution. “We?” she said again. “Remember what you said? We are going to slink around in the rain like a rattlesnake. Your turn.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nina said, crossing her arms in protest. “You’re already wet. And rattlesnakes know better than to slink around in the rain.”

  Gretchen knelt on the seat and reached into the back for the umbrella. “April’s sleeping. I’m through slinking.”

  She made her way carefully over the AstroTurf in April’s yard and circled around the back. Lightning struck nearby, too close for comfort. Gretchen hoped her umbrella wasn’t the tallest structure in the vicinity. Not a single tree or large shrub grew near April’s yard. Aside from an antenna on top of the house, she held the only other lightning rod around. With her recent streak of bad luck, electrocution was a distinct possibility.

  She hurried to the back door and transferred the umbrella to her left hand, hooking it with her thumb, which protruded from the cast. The umbrella swayed and tipped out of her hand, falling to the ground. Abandoning it, she fumbled in her pocket for the key, retrieved it, and tried it in the lock. It didn’t fit.

  As she bent in the rain to pick up the umbrella and make a speedy exit, she heard the back door squeak open. She straightened. April’s face loomed in front of her.

  “Thought I heard something out here,” April said. “What you coming to the back door for when the front’s so much closer? And look at you, you’re soaked through. Come on in.” April held the door open.

  “I’m too wet,” Gretchen said. “I’ll come back later.”

  “Nonsense, girl, I’ll get you a towel. Well, come on.”

  While April went for the towel Gretchen stood in front of the window, hoping Nina was paying attention and had spotted her. She turned and swept her eyes over the clutter in the room. Miniature dolls scattered over the tables, empty bags of chips, a collection of soda cans on the coffee table.

  Overnight bag still on the floor with its contents thrown carelessly on top.

  Gretchen realized that the overnight bag could have been on the floor a long time. Judging from April’s non-existent housekeeping skills, her earlier assumption that the bag had been used recently could have been wrong.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked when April handed her the towel.

  “This valley fever has me feeling awful,” April said, coughing and sinking back into the sofa. She looked ashen and languid, and Gretchen couldn’t help but believe that she really was ill. April probably did suffer from Phoenix’s infamous lung infection. She hadn’t been away on some furtive mission after all.

  While toweling dry the best she could, Gretchen told April everything--about the break-in, Martha’s bag, the key, and the hung doll.

  “Hanging a doll is scary business,” April said. “You better go back to Boston until this is cleared up. You might be in danger.”

  “Someone is trying to scare me off. I can’t let them win. I need to know who else you told about Martha’s bag.”

  “Not a soul,” April said. “I’m not a blabbermouth.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, April.”

  “Well, you’ll have to look someplace else.” April blew her nose. “I have something to tell you that might help, though. I finally got a look at that doll the police found in your mother’s workshop. I’m proud of my appraisal skills and consider myself one of the best around. I base most of my analysis on market research like actual sales from shops and shows and on what’s hot at the moment. Right now its all-bisque dolls, but that parian, even though it’s not on the hot list, is so rare, I took awhile to estimate its worth.”

  Gretchen gently dabbed the towel on her wet arms and legs. “What did you decide?”

  “The doll has a unique hairdo, for starters. Real elaborate. And it has flowers and jewels molded in the bisque. Pierced ears, too. The other appraiser said three thousand, but my guess is it’s worth an easy five thousand and might even sell for a lot more. And I’m being conservative. One fine doll, that one.”

  “Because of her repair business, my mother works on rare and valuable dolls all the time.” Gretchen folded the towel over a chair and returned to the window. “That’s how she makes her living. She isn’t a thief.”

  “Nobody said she was.” April coughed. “Martha’s the one I’d peg as a thief.”

  “Martha was an enigma,” Gretchen said. “From what people tell me she kept everyone at a distance. She had few confidantes, if any. No one really knew her.”

  April grunted. “A nasty woman. She used to call me Chubby Checker. Hey, Chubby, she’d call out every time she saw me, and then she’d laugh. She had nicknames for all of us. Bonnie was Pippi Longstocking because of her stiff hair. She called your mother Cruella De Vil from that Dalmation movie, because of her silver hair. Right to our faces, too.”

  “Alcoholism is a disease,” Gretchen said, remembering Julia’s own complaints about Martha’s name-calling. The Tasmanian Devil was Martha’s term for Julia, she’d said, sounding hurt. “She probably couldn’t help herself.”

  “There’s no excuse for cruelty.”

  “Are you feeling well enough to work out tomorrow?” Gretchen asked.

  “Doctor says I should get a little exercise as long as I go slow and don’t overdo.”

  “Good. I’ll see you at Curves.”

  April shifted her weight and slung a leg onto the coffee table. “Speaking of Curves. It’s a social event for our little group. We’ve been working out together for the last year or so, and we touch on a lot of subjects while we try to shed some fat.” She patted her midsection and sighed. “I suppose I’d lose some weight if I’d watch what I eat, but I work up a real appetite after all that exercise. They have a diet plan I’m going to look into.”

  “You’d feel better,” Gretchen agreed.

  “What I’m trying to say and taking the long way to say it is that Bonnie’s been dropping hints about Martha’s dolls. She knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “What kind of hints?”

  “She says things like, what if Martha stashed her collection someplace. Or, what if some of the Phoenix Dollers were hiding Martha’s dolls for her. Bonnie’s the club gossip, and she has a secret she can’t hardly keep. Give her a little shove, and she’ll spill.”

  April’s face turned rosy red when she realized what she had said, and she lifted a pudgy hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. After
what happened to Martha I shouldn’t be telling you to give her a little shove.” April reached for a box of tissues. “Bonnie’s always up real late. She won’t mind if you stop by right now. Just don’t call her before noon. She’s a late sleeper.”

  Gretchen lifted the umbrella and worked it through the front door. “Thanks for the information, April.”

  “Let me know what you find out,” April called out. “And say hi to Nina out in the car.”

  __________

  Caroline wondered if she had made a mistake by placing an early bid and alerting other bidders to her presence. Web traffic through the doll listing was extremely heavy. As antique dolls became more difficult to find, their worth increased by volumes, and the bidding for the French Jumeau Bébé proved it.

  The bidding war that Caroline had hoped to avoid had begun. The current bid flashed across the screen for the doll with the unique eyebrows designed by the world-famous French designer: $12,000.

  Every doll collector yearned for at least one Jumeau, but few could afford to purchase a doll selling for thousands. At this price, how many different collectors were actually bidding? Two? Four? Certainly no more than ten.

  Caroline wondered how long the seller would risk exposure. A stolen doll. A murdered collector. The seller must be motivated by uncontrollable greed or bold arrogance. Or desperation.

  Using both hands she pulled her silver hair away from her face and neck and twirled it on her head. She gazed outside. Soon the planes overhead would cease flying for the night, only to start up again a few hours later at sunrise. Orange lighting from the parking lot shone into the drab room, and she could hear a television playing in the room next to hers.

  Caroline rose and closed the heavy, smoke-laden drapes. She felt a small shiver of excitement, tasted the thrill of the auction on her tongue. She welcomed these new emotions, which until now had been masked under her own sense of desperation. Refreshing after days of extended panic. Pretend you’re in Vegas, she thought, where time is meaningless. Where light and dark merge into an insignificant gray.

  Good and evil. Light and dark. Were these and concepts such as justice and retribution subjective in nature? Caroline had always been able to see both sides of an issue, empathize with each point of view, rarely taking a firm stance. Everything a hazy shade of melded colors. Until now.

  “Play to win,” she whispered aloud. “At closing time, you have to be the highest bidder.”

  The motel phone rang shrilly, the harsh and unexpected sound startling her, and, after a pause to still her pounding heart, she picked up the receiver.

  A voice spoke soothingly to her in flawless French. She smiled.

  “You know I don’t speak French,” she said.

  “Take a small break and eat something, cherie. What can I do for you?”

  “Stall,” Caroline said. “I need more time.”

  Chapter 22

  Bonnie Albright sat at her kitchen table combing out her red wig and looking nothing like the presiding president of the Phoenix Dollers Club. The small table overflowed with hair rollers in various sizes, bobby pins, a pile of brushes and combs, and a can of heavy-duty hair spray.

  Gretchen tried not to stare at the mass of tangled red hair sitting on its wig stand, or at the tight red wig cap covering Bonnie’s head. She tried not to stare at Bonnie’s eyebrows, or rather lack of eyebrows, since the penciled lines had been scrubbed away.

  Nina’s mouth hung open. “I never guessed you wore a wig. All these years…” Her voice trailed off.

  “You should have called first,” Bonnie said, annoyed, tufts of steel gray poking out from the wig cap, lips thin and pale without lipstick.

  She spritzed the inside of the wig with Lysol. Gretchen looked away.

  Kewpie dolls lined a shelf in the dining room. Classic Kewpies, Action Kewpies waving and crawling, one of Kewpie’s companion dogs--Doodle Dog-- a Kewpie bank, and two Kewpie Thinker paperweights.

  Teddy bears in every imaginable pose overflowed from bookcases in the adjacent living room. Nina had been right about teddy bear collectors. The bears resembled Bonnie with their big red bows and colorful faces.

  “We were in the neighborhood and need to talk to you,” Nina said, struggling to compose her facial expression and avoid hurting Bonnie’s feelings. “We had a break-in tonight, and someone hung one of Caroline’s Shirley Temple dolls with a noose and poured red paint over it to look like blood.”

  “Oh my,” Bonnie said, her hand slowing as it worked the rat-tail comb through the wig, picking out tangles.

  “We need to know who else knew that we had Martha’s bag,” Gretchen said. “The burglar took it.”

  “I didn’t tell a soul,” Bonnie said, her knuckles white around the comb.

  Nina pulled a chair out and sat down. She leaned across the table. “I’ve known you a long time, Bonnie, and you don’t keep secrets well. You must have called someone, told someone.”

  Bonnie continued combing, looking down at the wig. “Do you know why I wear a wig? Because I’m practically bald on top of my head, that’s why. Just like a man. You know how embarrassing that has been for me. And wearing a wig requires special attention. I have to watch out for rotating fans and revolving doors. I live in constant fear that my wig will fly off and expose me for what I really am.”

  Nina rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Gretchen waited patiently beside her.

  “I’m sure it’s been hard for you,” Nina said, sliding her eyes back to Bonnie. “But we are talking about breaking and entering and destruction of property, and we need answers.”

  “I kept my wig a secret, and I kept Martha’s bag a secret, too.”

  “We never asked you to keep it a secret,” Gretchen said, gently. “You can tell anyone you want to tell. Why did you think it was a secret?”

  Bonnie jabbed the wig on her head, roughly adjusting it, the hair still matted like a Barbie doll’s crown of knots after making the rounds through a group of toddlers. A trapped look formed in Bonnie’s eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone because Martha had my key and I’ve been trying to get it back and I thought it might be in that bag and I didn’t want anyone else to know. There. Are you happy?” The words came fast, spilling over each other in one long breath.

  Gretchen gaped at Bonnie, wondering if she had heard correctly. Detective Albright’s mother? What surprised Gretchen the most was the ease with which they had forced the truth from her. Bonnie crumbled with little resistance. Detective work might be easier than she originally thought.

  Nina found her voice first. “You broke in, stole the bag, and hung Caroline’s doll?”

  Bonnie held her hands up in protest. “No, of course not. I don’t know why anyone would do that. I wanted to get my key back before it surfaced, before I became a suspect, too. Matty would be so angry. But I never went to Caroline’s house. You have to believe me.”

  “I do,” Nina said, and Gretchen wondered if Nina’s aura analysis skills were working again. She also wondered what color Bonnie’s aura would be. Red, she guessed, to match her hair and teddy bears’ bows. “The key was in the bag, Bonnie. But why would anyone else steal it?” Nina asked.

  No one said anything.

  An idea dawned on Gretchen, making her want to thump her head with her cast. What little mind she had left could be sold inside the French fashion doll’s beaded purse. Dense. Dense. Dense. “We didn’t tell anyone what we found in the bag,” she said. “So maybe the thief expected to find something else. The strangled doll might have been an angry afterthought.”

  Bonnie nodded her snarled head in agreement. “That makes sense.”

  “It’s possible,” Nina said.

  “Tell us what happened, Bonnie,” Gretchen said. “Why did Martha have a key to your house?”

  “If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “We promise,” Nina said.

  Bonnie looked at Gretchen. “You, too?”

  “Me, too.”

 
“About a week before Martha died,” Bonnie began, “she came to my house, disheveled and agitated. At first, I thought she’d been drinking, and I had reservations about even letting her in, much less doing her a favor. But Martha insisted repeatedly that someone was stealing from her and that she needed a safe place to store something that meant a lot to her.”

  “She wouldn’t tell you what it was?” Gretchen asked.

  “She said she would tell me when she brought it over. That she had to find it first. She said she needed several hiding spots, not just one, because one hadn’t worked before. I felt sorry for her. She cried and carried on like her closest family member had died, and in a weak moment, I told her where I keep a spare key in case she came back when I was gone. Behind that little Hummel picture inside the screen porch, I told her. That’s where I keep it. Or kept it.”

  “What happened?” Nina asked.

  “A few days later, the key disappeared. I didn’t find anything hidden in the house, but she was the only person I ever told about the key, so I know she took it. Then after she died, I forgot all about it until Matty started saying he thought she had been murdered, and by the time I remembered, the opportunity to tell him about it seemed to have passed. You know how sometimes you put off telling someone something important, and the longer you wait, the harder it gets until you don’t tell them at all?” Bonnie sniffed, and tears formed around the rims of her eyes.

  “That’s why you went to the Rescue Mission?” Gretchen asked. “To find Martha’s friends and to retrieve your key?”

  Bonnie wrung her hands. “No one there would help me. It scared me to think that some homeless people might have a key to my house. And I didn’t want Matty to know how foolish I’d been.”

  Nina cupped Bonnie’s hands in her own. “You have to tell your son what you just told us.”

  “I did. I told him all about it. Well, except for the key. But I told him everything Martha said to me about her dolls.” Bonnie glanced sharply at Gretchen. “It certainly doesn’t clear Caroline. In fact, it casts more suspicion on her.”