Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “Permission for what?” Bonnie asked.

  April stood up slowly. “We’re going to restore Charlie’s room boxes. Hopefully, they will be ready in time to display at her funeral.” To Gretchen, she said, “I’ll see you at Mini Maize at ten.”

  She was almost out the door when she turned. “I almost forgot the most important part of my story. Charlie was convinced that Sara had been killed, because Sara always had a big supply of epinephrine on hand in case she had an emergency attack. She had prefilled injections that she could give herself. But when she died at home, all alone, there wasn’t a single epi dose in the whole house.”

  “My,” Bonnie said, eyes shining with the possibilities.

  And…,” April paused for dramatic effect, “the police never discovered where the deadly banana bread came from.”

  ****

  Gretchen parked in front of Charlie’s miniature doll shop at nine thirty and sat in the car waiting for Officer Kline who, after conferring with Charlie’s brother, had volunteered to meet her with a key to the store. She had asked Nina and April to meet her at Mini Maize at ten o’clock to begin their restoration work. Gretchen wanted to talk to the officer, settle in, and make a few quiet observations before her band of merry women arrived with all their accompanying bells and whistles.

  While she waited, she gazed at Nimrod, asleep on the seat next to her. She couldn’t imagine life without him. Her opinion of dogs had changed for the better over time, thanks to Nina, who had pressured her into taking Nimrod when his former owner abandoned him. And the feline Wobbles tolerated the fur ball, which was uncharacteristic of the sinewy tomcat.

  A blue Chevy pulled up behind Gretchen’s car, and she groaned when she looked through her rear view mirror and saw who it was.

  Just great.

  She’d been avoiding Matt Albright lately for several very good reasons. Aside from her own mixed-up feelings for him, Matt’s wacko, estranged wife Kayla was capable of just about anything.

  And here they were, together, out in the open.

  Gretchen stuffed a groggy Nimrod in her purse and got out of the car.

  She peered around for signs of The Wife.

  This guy comes with way too much baggage. Keep telling yourself that.

  She didn’t see Kayla’s black Jetta anywhere on the street, but that didn’t mean anything.

  What could he possibly be doing in Scottsdale right outside of Charlie Maize’s miniature doll shop? This had all the signs of big trouble.

  Matt hadn’t closed his car door before he was flashing his dazzling smile. “What are you doing here?” he asked, beating her to the question of the day. He didn’t look at all like a cop. Sandals, shorts, T-shirt, body builder’s physique. Undercover and armed, she was sure. Making him even more mysterious and sexy.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Gretchen said.

  “I’m meeting…” He stopped mid-sentence and laughed. “I should have known.”

  “What?”

  “That it was you.”

  “What?” Gretchen’s heart did a little backflip.

  He grinned wolfishly. “I’m meeting a doll repairer here at the doll shop at…” he checked his watch. “Nine thirty.”

  Gretchen stared at him. “Where’s Officer Kline.”

  “Busy. And he really isn’t a street cop. He’s a detective, too.”

  “He fooled me—parade work, uniform, the squad car.” That explained his air of command.

  “That’s what our superiors do to us when we cross them. They give us traffic.”

  “I thought that was only in the movies.”

  “There’s a thin line between fact and fiction.” Matt moved closer.

  She could smell his Chrome cologne. Her favorite male scent.

  He grinned, wide and exceptionally friendly. “The departments are collaborating on the cases.”

  “Why? Wait…” Gretchen paused. “Did you say cases? Plural?”

  “Charlie’s sister died last year in my jurisdiction, and we’re taking another look at the circumstances surrounding her death.”

  “I heard she died from an allergic reaction.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Charlie had a heart attack?”

  “I’d like to tell you more, but you’re friends with my mother. If she gets wind of it, the entire state of Arizona will be alerted to classified information. I won’t look too good.”

  “You know you can trust me. Come on.”

  “All I can say right now is that we are looking into it,” Matt said, the grin not quite as wide. “I seem to get every one of these types of cases.” His eyes went to the doll shop window.

  Gretchen knew Matt’s secret: he had pediophobia, a fear of dolls. The big, hunky specimen of a man was afraid of dolls.

  “Yes, I can see why this case would be hard for you.” Gretchen’s lips quivered, and a chuckle escaped.

  “See,” he said, good-naturedly. “You find my soft spot and what do you do? You make fun of me. Do you think I want to be this way?”

  Gretchen rearranged her face to show concern. “Of course not. I’m sorry I laughed.”

  Matt looked toward the doll shop. “These are itty-bitty dolls, not enormous killer dolls. I’ll be fine.”

  “I have confidence in you.”

  “We should go inside,” Matt said, droplets of manly moisture appearing on his brow.

  “When was the shop released from police custody?” Gretchen asked to confirm Britt’s permission to be in the shop last night.

  “We finished up yesterday. It’s all yours.” Matt handed her the key. “You first.”

  “After you.”

  “I’m being polite. Ladies first.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” someone called from down the street.

  Gretchen turned to see Nina hustling down the street from the north, Tutu in the lead. The dog wore a large ruffled pink collar and matching bows clipped to her ears. When Nina drew closer, Gretchen could hear Enrico, the ornery Chihuahua, snarling from a Mexican tapestry purse slung across her aunt’s shoulder.

  “Yoo-hoo,” she heard from the opposite direction. April thundered at her from the south.

  They all converged in front of Mini Maize as Gretchen unlocked the door.

  Chapter 5

  “Why is that hot and sexy detective still outside?” April said, waving at Matt from inside Mini Maize. “I thought he was over his doll problem.”

  “Apparently not,” Nina said, roaming through the shop, picking up one item after another. She glanced at the floor. “What a mess. This place looks like Gretchen’s workshop.”

  Gretchen slid Nina a look before finding several empty containers in the back room and distributing them to her crew. She picked up a five-inch porcelain ballerina doll from the counter top, encircled it with bubble wrap, and put it inside one of the containers. “Help me pack these up,” she said to the two women. “He won’t come into the shop until the dolls are out of sight.”

  “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” April said, rushing to help. “Let’s not keep him waiting any longer than we have to.”

  Enrico watched from his purse hanging on a doorknob, slyly waiting for just the right opportunity to escape. Nina held up a finger in warning as if she could read his thoughts. “Stay,” she said in her dog-training, authoritarian voice. Then she turned to Gretchen. “You don’t really think you can put away the entire room of dolls, do you?” she said.

  “Just these on the counter and nearest the door.”

  April was really moving.

  “Okay,” Gretchen called out the door a few minutes later. “Coast is clear. Just don’t look inside the display cases around the counter. I don’t have time to put away every one of them. After all, this is a doll shop.”

  Matt’s head popped around the corner, his even tan a few shades lighter. He had a cheesy grin on his face. “I’ve been called away,” he stammered. “I’ll check back later and see how it’s going.”


  Gretchen watched him scramble for his unmarked car. “Coward,” she muttered under her breath.

  April was on her hands and knees, examining miniature furniture pieces. Nina, casting around for something to do other than actual physical labor, chose to entertain the canines with a walk around the block. She came back with new and improved managerial skills.

  “April,” she said, “You need to sort the pieces and do groupings based on the type of furnishings.”

  “I know that.”

  “Gretchen,” Nina said, “where are the mini dolls that go into the room boxes?”

  “Haven’t found any yet.”

  “April—” Nina began.

  “Stop,” April said, raising her arm to Nina, palm out like a cop stopping traffic. “You don’t have to manage me. I’m capable of handling this without supervision.”

  “Some sort of order would help. And we know Gretchen can’t do it.”

  A direct shot at Gretchen’s lack of organization skills. Wait until Nina found out that Gretchen had locked her keys in her car. She’d discovered the lockout when she tried to get in to retrieve her toolbox. Peering through the tinted window, she had seen her keys dangling in the ignition. If there was any way of keeping Gretchen’s mistake from her aunt, she’d try it. At least they had all arrived in separate cars.

  “Why don’t you take the dogs for another walk?” April suggested to Nina from the floor.

  “I just got back. Why would I…Wait a minute… Is that sarcasm I hear in your voice?”

  “If you can’t find anything to do, go outside and practice your hocus-pocus,” April retorted. “Why stick around if you aren’t going to help?”

  “I’m giving valuable advice.”

  “Will you two quit crabbing at each other,” Gretchen said, taking Nina by the arm and leading her to the counter. “See all these accessories and accents?”

  Nina looked at the things Gretchen had scooped from the floor: tiny lamps, pictures, and knickknacks.

  “You’re our interior decorator,” Gretchen said. “You’re job is to help figure out which ones go together in the same room boxes.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “We’re partners, remember? Your skill, you said, was in decorating and deciding where all the pieces should go.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “I recall it as though it just sprang from your perky lips.”

  “I thought I’d take care of the dogs while you worked.”

  Gretchen frowned at her aunt. Why did Nina offer to come if she wasn’t going to pitch in? Ah…she got it. Gretchen’s cunning, calculating aunt didn’t want her spending time alone with April. Gretchen had to find a way to stop this childish rivalry. “See what you can do,” she said, leaving Nina alone at the counter.

  “There are some creepy miniatures scatter—,” April began to say.

  “Here comes Caroline,” Nina announced, cutting her off.

  Gretchen’s mother walked in wearing sunglasses. When she didn’t remove them, Gretchen guessed she was hiding red-rimmed eyes behind the shades. Throughout the night, Gretchen had heard her mother crying over the loss of her friend.

  “Just in time,” Gretchen said, giving her a hug. “You’re the expert. We await your orders.”

  “First, we’ll pick up all the scattered pieces.” Caroline said digging right in by walking to one corner of the shop and searching the floor.

  Gretchen retrieved an empty room box, admiring its tiny painted walls. A rendition of a church loomed in the background. Charlie had captured the essence of it in her painting: the stonework, stained glass, and a slender tower with a cross at the top.

  Gretchen slid the room box into a display case partition along with the one she had placed there when she met Britt Gleeland. This one must be a bedroom, she guessed, based on the floral pattern of the wallpaper.

  Gretchen’s practiced eye scanned the boxes. A standard one-inch scale equaled one real foot, so she estimated the room it represented at about fourteen feet by twelve feet.

  She bent down to pick up another box that had landed facedown. Gretchen turned it over and gasped.

  “What happened?” April sprung from the floor.

  “I’m not sure what this scene is supposed to represent, but that looks like blood all over the ground,” Gretchen said, picking up the room box in her arms and turning it so April and Nina could see it. A wooden structure towered behind a high wooden fence, Charlie’s brushstrokes barely visible. The base of the room box was painted brown with small worn tufts of grass jutting along the sides of the fence. “Not real blood, of course, but I’m sure that’s what it’s meant to be.”

  “A courtyard?” April said. “Covered with blood?”

  “Some courtyard,” Nina said. “It looks slummy to me.”

  Caroline joined them and studied the box. “Well, I think it’s a backyard.”

  “Here’s a street sign,” April said, shuffling through a pile of items. The little green street sign mounted on a green post reminded Gretchen of a signpost from the Department 56 Dickens Village she and her mother assembled every Christmas.

  “Hanbury Street,” Gretchen read.

  Caroline placed the room box on the counter. She squinted to read the small numbers Charlie had painted on the street sign. “Twenty-nine Hanburg Street.”

  Gretchen searched through the growing pile of miniature furniture and accents on the counter. “I saw a bloody miniature axe on the floor right after we found Charlie. I wonder where it went.”

  “What?” Nina said. “An axe?”

  It wasn’t on the counter. Gretchen bent down, peering around the area where she had seen the axe when she had left the shop. An object had been shoved under a display case. She knelt down and pulled it out. “Here it is.”

  “One item now in its proper home,” Nina said, taking the tiny axe and placing it next to the painted blood in the backyard scene.

  “Creepy,” April said. “Why would Charlie create a gruesome room box? There’s nothing cute about the background scenery, nothing charming about an axe with red paint all over the blade. What was wrong with her?”

  “It’s probably my fault.” Caroline leaned against the counter, removed her sunglasses, and rubbed teary eyes. “Charlie was totally obsessed with Sara’s death. She talked about it incessantly. I suggested creating a display of room boxes to give her something to do besides grieve for her sister. I never imagined this.”

  “The other room boxes are fine,” Gretchen said. “One is set in a meadow with a church in the background. And this one…” Gretchen lifted another room box. “…is a Victorian dressing room or something like that. Maybe Charlie had a bad week or two and decided to express herself in a more base way with the axe scene.”

  Nina picked up the last room box. “This one looks unfinished,” she announced. “It can’t be part of the same grouping. But, no blood.”

  The room box Nina held was shabby next to the others, like it had been constructed hastily. The sides didn’t fit together properly and the walls were bare except for an uneven piece of full-sized wallpaper glued to the back of it and a rough sketch that resembled a sink.

  “Am I doing the right thing,” Caroline said, “by insisting we restore Charlie’s last project?”

  “Absolutely,” Gretchen said, realizing her mother needed to do this.

  “We’re wasting time standing around hypothesizing,” April said. “Each of us needs to go to a corner of the shop and work outward. Let’s gather every single item before we start guessing what Charlie had in mind.”

  ****

  The team paused for a lunch of submarine sandwiches, which April insisted was the answer to her years of obesity. She remained convinced that her new diet plan would transform her into a sexy, curvy shell of her present self. Nina refused to cooperate, stomping down the street in search of “real food.” She returned with a salad.

  “Detective Albright should be bac
k soon,” April said, munching on a foot-long sandwich while she looked out the window.

  “Fat chance,” Gretchen replied.

  “I completely understand his phobia.” April placed a few tiny articles of doll clothing into one of the bins. “I have my own fears, you know.”

  “We know,” Nina said with a hint of distaste. “Clowns.”

  “Half the world’s population is afraid of clowns,” April said, defending herself. “And you know it.”

  “Yes,” Nina agreed. “The half that’s under four years old.”

  Gretchen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It wasn’t like Nina to be so spiteful. “Isn’t it potty time for the dogs?” Gretchen said to break up the next round of pointed barbs before one of them was fatally stabbed.

  Nina checked her watch, then stuffed pups in carrying totes. She slung Enrico over one shoulder and Nimrod over the other, ignoring Enrico’s throaty growl. She clipped the pink leash to Tutu’s collar and disappeared down the street.

  “What’s with her?” Caroline said. “I’ve never seen her behave like that before.”

  “I’m not sure what her problem is. April, just ignore it, if you can.” Gretchen sat down, removed her flip-flops, and wiggled her feet.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Caroline said. “Maybe it will perk me up.”

  Gretchen watched her classy mom walk down the street in the same direction her aunt had chosen and wished she had inherited more of her features. Beautiful shoulder-length silver hair, delicate nose, green thoughtful eyes, and a slim body even at twenty-six years older than Gretchen.

  “I found something interesting,” April said, digging in her pocket. “I thought I’d wait until we were alone to show you.” She held up a miniature dagger. The tip had been dipped in red paint.

  “Terrific. Another piece for the backyard scene.”

  “And…,” April paused. “There’s a smudge of red on the floor of the Victorian bedroom, but I’ll try to clean it off if you think it will upset Caroline.”

  “Let’s leave everything as it is for the moment,” Gretchen answered. “You don’t seem upset by all these flashes of blood.”