Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  He must have wanted her house vacant tonight when Lilly Beth’s prying eyes wouldn’t be able to see him. He would have parked the truck down the road and crept in under cover of night.

  Would he wear his police uniform?

  Probably.

  He’d want to fall back on his image of authority if any of the neighbors became suspicious.

  What was inside the house that he wanted, if not her? The only thing she could think of were the Kewpie dolls that had been sent through the mail. They, along with the messages she had found inside, were in the workshop in plain view.

  Gretchen picked up her cell phone to call the police again, wondering why Matt hadn’t returned her call yet. She would ask the dispatcher to send a squad to meet her at her home. Gretchen tromped on the accelerator and, with one eye on the road as she steered, she searched through her recently called numbers for the right one.

  At the stop sign, she signaled to turn left and hit the Send key on her cell phone.

  As soon as she turned the corner, another vehicle came up rapidly behind her. It must have been parked close to the intersection and had started up when she passed by.

  The car was following close behind her, too close.

  Her cell phone flew from her hand at the first impact.

  If she hadn’t grabbed Nimrod to protect him, she would have had both hands on the steering wheel and might have stayed on the road. Instead, when the second blow struck the driver’s side of the car somewhere close behind the front seat, the Echo careened into a shallow ditch that separated the street from the airport on-ramp.

  It happened so quickly that she didn’t see the vehicle until it appeared in front of her after striking her the second time. Now it forced her car away from the street and toward the fence.

  A green truck.

  She slammed on the brakes and came to a stop, with the pickup truck wedging her next to a concrete pylon. Before she could throw the car into reverse and make a run for it, she saw the blur of a uniform.

  And a gun.

  And a familiar face.

  FORTY

  Duanne Wilson of the bushy eyebrows and gleeful bidding tried to wrench the car door open. The jolliness was gone.

  “Unlock the door,” he snarled, the barrel of the gun up against the glass.

  Gretchen had never looked into a gun barrel before, and if she survived tonight, she hoped it would be the last time.

  She’d never thought of herself as a particularly brave person, and she wasn’t out to win any medals right now.

  Brave and smart weren’t the same things.

  You could be brave and foolish and dead.

  Not having a lot of options to choose from, she chose to go with cowardly, alive, and still foolish.

  Gretchen unlocked the door while scanning the seat and floor for the cell phone that had flown out of her hand.

  No such luck.

  “Moonlighting as a Phoenix Police Officer?” she said as he opened the door. The badge on his uniform seemed to mock her. The Phoenix bird adorned it. The mythical bird that could never die. “Halloween is still a few weeks away,” she said.

  What a card she was.

  “Move over. NOW.” The threat in his voice was enough to make her spring across to the passenger seat and wedge Nimrod into her purse.

  Gretchen gulped air through an obstruction in her throat the size of a Gila monster.

  Maybe he didn’t kill woman. That would be good news for her. He’d take what he came for and leave.

  Gretchen didn’t believe that for a minute.

  Duanne took the wheel. The car lurched backward and sprung from the ditch.

  “Finally, I’ve got you,” he said, slamming the gears into drive. “Captured.”

  Captured? Like a flag?

  It’s strange what goes through your head when you’re paralyzed with fear, Gretchen thought.

  “Where are we going? To the farewell party?”

  “Not even close.”

  Gretchen slid her hand closer to the door. Next light, and she’d make her escape. She’d take her chances that Duanne wasn’t a sharp shooter. She’d risk a bullet in her back.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “Try it and I’ll make a point of eliminating every single thing you value, starting with that ragged, floppy mutt and ending with your devoted aunt.”

  He’d established enough motivation to keep her inside the car.

  Gretchen felt Nimrod shudder inside her purse, She reached in and gave him a reassuring pat.

  The airport lights dimmed behind them as they sped toward Camelback Mountain.

  Gretchen’s cell phone rang from someplace on the floor, and she automatically stooped to retrieve it from under the seat.

  “Get up,” Duanne screamed, digging the gun into her side. “Sit up. NOW.”

  She eased back into the seat, careful not to startle him, and listened as the phone rang several more times before stopping.

  Was it Matt finally calling her back? Like every other man in her life, he offered too little, too late. This seemed to be a recurring theme.

  She glanced down between her feet but didn’t see the phone.

  Help as close as the floor mat yet as far away as one of earth’s stars.

  A few minutes later they pulled into her carport. Duanne turned off the car and, waving the gun, motioned her out.

  _______________

  Tied to a leg of the doll workbench, Gretchen contemplated life.

  It was extraordinarily complex, with unexpected plot twists. Her situation at the moment was a perfect example.

  She strained to lift the bench to free her hands, even though she knew it was built into the wall. She couldn’t feel so much as a millimeter of movement.

  She had managed to slip the cell phone into her pocket, a feat she was proud of at first, but what good was it doing her now?

  With her hands behind her back, she couldn’t reach her pocket, let alone bring the phone to her ear. And with her legs bound together with her own doll restringing elastic, she wasn’t going anywhere soon.

  She could hear Duanne ripping through the house, pulling out drawers and overturning furniture. Wobbles, true to form, was nowhere in sight. Nimrod, wisely sensing random chaos within his domain, remained inside her purse. It lay next to a bin filled with dolls’ underpants.

  Once Duanne left the room, Nimrod boldly ran over to Gretchen, crawling over her bound body hunched on the floor.

  “Hide,” she commanded him after a moment of intense puppy love. He rushed back across the room and burrowed inside the purse.

  More banging, and Duanne came around the corner and entered the workshop.

  “Where is it?” he said, enraged, his face the same color as the red clay from the darkening mountain framed in the window.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The box. Where is it?”

  “It’s in the trunk of the Echo.” She should have told him where the Kewpies were stashed earlier, but she’d been frozen with fear.

  Duanne smiled, a cruel tilt to his lips.

  “If that idiot auction creep hadn’t pulled a fast one,” he said, “none of this would have happened.”

  Gretchen tried to stretch out a cramped leg but only made her position on the floor more uncomfortable. “You mean Brett?”

  Without answering, he stomped away. She heard the door leading to the carport close. Then it opened again, and he reappeared with the box of broken Kewpies in his arms.

  He dumped the contents on the floor and kicked shards at Gretchen, stomping on the larger pieces. Bits of porcelain flew in the air, and powdery silt fell over Gretchen’s legs.

  “Wrong box, silly girl.” He clenched both fists.

  “It’s the only box I have.”

  “You’re as obstinate as Florence. She wouldn’t help me, either.” He continued to slam through rooms, and Gretchen shifted her body and stretched her fingers toward her pocket. She felt fabric with
her fingertips and continued to stretch, straining as far as she could.

  She felt the edge of the cell phone and adjusted her body again. Picking at the pocket and shifting her shoulders and legs, she finally managed to palm it.

  The easy task was over. She flipped it open. Stage two, keying in a number without being able to see the phone, was underway when she heard Duanne’s footsteps.

  She jerked into her former position, the phone behind her back.

  Duanne had a cardboard box in his arms and a sneer on his face.

  “Bingo,” he said, gently placing it on the floor and squatting over it. “Let’s see what we have here. If my calculations are correct, my quest is over.”

  He held up a Ginny doll, and Gretchen’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Where…did…you find that box?” she stammered.

  “You think you’re so cute,” he said. “Still playing dumb. But you’re smart. Smart enough to hide it in all that junk, and the smell in that room…”

  Daisy.

  All along Daisy had the box of Ginny dolls in the spare room she occasionally called home?

  Gretchen remembered the day Nina had arrived with Daisy and the contents of her shopping cart. She and April had been preoccupied in the doll repair room and hadn’t noticed. Daisy must have carried in the box of Ginnys right in front of an oblivious Nina.

  “I didn’t know the Ginnys were here.”

  Duanne shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I have them now.” His face darkened. “It was that derelict sitting on the curb. He made off with them when I wasn’t looking.”

  Duanne began to empty the box, throwing the dolls onto the floor.

  Gretchen cringed at his harsh handling of them and was glad that each came in its own small box. Hopefully the damage would be minimal.

  She must be a certified nutcase or a full-fledged rabid doll collector to be thinking of doll preservation at a time like this.

  He dug down to the bottom of the cardboard box and extracted a small white rectangular box, quite different from the others.

  Gretchen intuitively knew what was inside.

  Duanne rubbed the white box lovingly between his hands.

  “This whole thing has been a series of missteps,” he said. “One mistake after another. But this…” he held up the box. “This is what it was all about.”

  He opened the box and removed a Blunderboo Kewpie doll. The genuine article, Gretchen noticed. Not one of Chiggy’s reproductions, but a fine example of Rosie O’Neill’s early work.

  Blunderboo, always the clumsy, tumbling, laughing Kewpie.

  Duanne rummaged through the doll tools on the workbench, almost stepping on Gretchen in his rush. She heard the doll break open.

  The room was silent while Duanne looked over his treasure.

  Then Gretchen’s cell phone rang.

  She stabbed at the key pad, blindly searching for the one that would connect the call. The ringing stopped when Duanne kicked her hands.

  The pain was excruciating, and she struggled not to cry out as the phone skidded across the room and hit the wall.

  Gretchen let out a frustrated gasp and closed her fingers together, ignoring the throbbing.

  “You stupid…” Duanne backed away from the table and glared at her. The top of Blunderboo’s head was missing, and, by the tender way he held the doll, Gretchen knew he had found what he was looking for.

  “Diamonds?” she asked. “Did you find diamonds?”

  He held up a large, sparkling stone. “The finest there is. My cousin Percy would be alive today if he had shared with me. Instead, he was greedy. Too greedy for his own good.”

  “You killed Percy and then you killed Brett and Ronny?”

  “Couldn’t be helped, now could it?” He fondled the diamond and returned it to the Kewpie. “People are exceedingly stupid.”

  “You make it sound like they deserved to die.” Gretchen stared at Duanne, searching for any sign of compassion, but finding cold, lifeless eyes staring back at her instead.

  “If Chiggy had given the Kewpie up…but no, the sentimental fool insisted it was the last gift she’d ever receive from her brother. She even tried to trick me with those ridiculous Kewpie reproductions. She never guessed what she really had.”

  “Ronny Beam was writing a story,” Gretchen said, all the time working her fingers through the nylon that bound her hands. Her captor was insane.

  “Ronny Beam was a parasite. Too bad his newest fantasy was a little too close to the truth.”

  Nimrod chose that moment to forget his “hide” command, and he bolted out of the purse and ran to Gretchen. No, no, no, she wanted to scream.

  Duanne’s face registered cunning. “Ah, the mutt with multiple lives. I had forgotten all about you. Did you like the scorpion?”

  “Why would you try to harm a little dog?”

  “You stole what was mine.”

  “This is so ridiculous,” Gretchen blurted. “Take the diamonds and go. Leave us alone.”

  Duanne grinned. “You have to pay for what you’ve done. Let’s start with the dog.”

  He came toward her, and she knew he was going to reach down and grab Nimrod.

  Gretchen could have killed him with her bare hands if they were free. She struggled to loosen the string wound around her legs to give him a good solid kick, but all the mental strength in the world couldn’t budge the cords.

  “Nimrod,” she called loudly as Duanne bent over to pick him up, keeping her voice as firm as she could, hiding the fear. “Nimrod, parade!”

  The tiny dog turned abruptly and bolted for the kitchen doggy door, his toenails making clipping sounds on the tile floor. He skidded around the corner, and Gretchen heard the sound of the doggy door flapping open.

  Duanne was right behind him. Then Gretchen heard Nimrod barking sharply as he raced around the perimeter of the fence, as Nina had taught him to do. The kitchen door slammed.

  Alone in the workshop, Gretchen struggled to break free, using the resources she had learned in her doll repair business. Didn’t she work with restringing cord all day long? Untangling and unknotting should be second nature to her. Her agile fingers worked on the tiniest of knots every day.

  She felt the binding loosen slightly. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the task, working without sight and at an awkward angle.

  Nimrod stopped barking just as her hands came free. She pulled herself up to the worktable, grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut the cord binding her legs.

  Her eyes fell on the headless Kewpie with the hidden treasure of diamonds. In his haste, Duanne had left it behind.

  She grabbed it and raced out the door.

  Duanne had Nimrod backed into a corner of the privacy fence on the far side of the pool. Nimrod was growling, and his tiny teeth were bared. Duanne heard her coming and turned.

  She raced directly at him and threw the Kewpie toward the pool. His eyes left her and he watched it fly, diamonds exploding in the air and dropping like scattered pebbles into the blue water.

  His momentary distraction gave her the seconds she needed, and she lunged onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck, tightening as she searched for a tender spot on his neck, hoping to shut down his air flow.

  Duanne bucked like a bronco, and Gretchen knew it was only a matter of moments before he found the gun in his pocket and used it.

  She squeezed hard and held on.

  Gretchen felt him pitch sideways and lose his footing. They were falling backwards. Water closed in around her as they sank into the pool.

  She instinctively let go and kicked away from him, and they each came up sputtering.

  Nimrod leapt from the edge of the pool and swam toward her.

  Duanne turned to her with a menacing grimace, but before he could say or do anything, a voice called out from behind them.

  “Look at that,” Howie Howard said in his big Texan accent. “We were worried about her, and all along she’s having a pool party
.”

  “Nobody invited me,” April said.

  “Me, either,” Nina added.

  But Matt Albright, Gretchen was relieved to see, had a steady bead on Duanne.

  FORTY-ONE

  “I got your message,” Howie said after Matt escorted Duanne to the nearest squad car and deposited him in the back seat. “Didn’t know anything about a service going on for Brett. The whole thing smelled of rotten garbage to me, so when the detective came over to ask me some more questions, I mentioned it to him.”

  “We came here,” Matt said. “But you weren’t home. I knew about the party going on for the Boston group and went over there looking for you.”

  “I helped out, too,” April said. “I told him the service was over on MacDowell.”

  “Right then,” Matt said, “we knew something was really wrong. That’s a rough neighborhood. So I called your cell. When you didn’t answer, I kept trying and the four of us drove up and down MacDowell looking for your car.”

  “No luck,” Howie added. “But we found an abandoned truck with stolen plates.”

  Gretchen sat poolside wrapped in a towel, attempting to control her shaking limbs.

  “She’s freezing,” Nina exclaimed. “Let’s get her inside.”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Nina. Just a little shook up.” Gretchen burrowed into the towel. “I tried to call for help but Duanne found out I had the phone and kicked it away.”

  “Yes, but the call connected before he did that,” Matt said. “I could hear him talking to you.”

  “You heard him admit that he killed Brett and Ronny? And that Brett had been helping him?”

  Matt nodded, somberly. “But we needed to know where you were. We’d already been here to your house. He could have been holding you anywhere.”

  “Then,” Howie said, “you yelled ‘parade’ to Nimrod.”

  Nina grinned. “No place else that would work except right here where you have that doggy door.”

  “Nimrod saved you,” April said. “Just like Lassie. I loved Lassie.”

  “So where are the diamonds?” Matt asked.

  Gretchen gazed at the pool.

  “I think it’s a fine night for a pool party,” she said. “Anyone for a dip?”