Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  He has dressed carefully to come here, curbing his appetite for attention. He’s wearing all brown. Different shades. The same khaki pants from earlier today, a shirt the color of Phoenix gravel, brown sandals. His propensity for loudness is what got him into this mess. Those big, look-at-me colors. Here I come, he likes to say without words.

  You can’t help what you are.

  Stop with the excuses. Isn’t that part of recovery? No more excuses?

  The clothes didn’t do it. You did. Six months without a drink and now this.

  Joseph hears a murmur of voices outside the lobby, near the meeting room. Carl will stay behind to make sure the room is in the same condition he found it in before the meeting. He will turn off the lights and lock up for the group. Responsible Carl. Solid, perfect, example-setting Carl.

  Believe in the power of God. Sit quietly when in doubt.

  Joseph reviews the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. The twelve steps.

  But his mind wanders, and he tries to remember the night before Charlie died. He wants a cigarette so bad his entire body is trembling. He can’t remember. More minutes of his life unaccounted for.

  Wasn’t it the blackouts that finally scared him enough to seek help for his drinking problem? He could live with the morning-after sickness, but not remembering…

  The massive church doors open and close several times, and the voices die away.

  He has the list in his pocket, one of the steps. It contains every person he has harmed with his actions.

  One more to add.

  But there will be no making amends this time. The woman is dead.

  Joseph rises slowly and moves back up the aisle like an old man.

  Carl turns from the meeting room door, and their eyes meet.

  Joseph thinks his sponsor can see right into his very soul. Carl’s face is a sea of tranquility and, for a moment, Joseph hates him for it. “Joseph.” Carl acknowledges his existence, then waits.

  Joseph almost breaks and runs. Sweat seeps into his shirt. He’s come this far, might as well finish what he started.

  “Help me,” he says. “I’m in trouble.”

  Chapter 18

  Gretchen took a deep breath, savoring the fresh, early morning desert air. She wore hiking boots, a baseball cap, and binoculars strapped around her neck. She had already added many of Phoenix’s local birds to her list: rock wrens, roadrunners, black-throated sparrows, and the elusive Gila woodpecker that builds its nest in saguaro cactus holes. She wanted to burn off her tension with a rigorous climb up Camelback Mountain. If she discovered a new bird, it would be a bonus.

  The morning was still too chilly for snakes to be slithering about, and that suited Gretchen just fine. Bugs and snakes creeped her out, especially the poisonous kind that dwelled in the Sonoran Desert.

  She strode along the footpath to the trailhead, past a creosote bush in full yellow bloom and a thicket of teddy bear cholla dominating a rocky slope. The teddy bear cholla looked furry and cuddly, but Gretchen had learned the hard way that it wasn’t as huggable as it appeared. She had been careless and brushed against one of these silvery, tall cacti. Its spikes had reminded her that only those with very developed defense systems survived the harshness of the Sonoma Desert. It was always best to admire desert beauty from a safe distance.

  February was a marvelous month in Phoenix, she decided, veering to the left and following the path to Summit Trail. Spring rain showers had cleansed the desert dust away, blossoms sprouted from the tips of the different varieties of cacti, and the sun hadn’t yet baked the earth hard and brittle.

  She lost track of time as she began to maneuver over slippery rocks. The incline became steeper, and she dug in. At last she stood at the summit, looking off over the awakening city. This was the top of the world for Gretchen, a place to hide and think.

  She sat down and studied the sheer, red cliffs, vegetation cropping out in the most unlikely places.

  Her thoughts turned to Charlie Maize’s death and the people involved in the doll shop owner’s life. Why had Joseph lied about attending the parade? What was the story with Charlie’s druggie son, Ryan? Did the craggy old man, Bernard, have designs on Charlie’s shop? And Britt? What about her? Something about that woman seemed weird.

  A roadrunner watched boldly from a few yards away. When Gretchen remained motionless, it went back to its task of hunting lizards. The answers to her questions didn’t come to her on the top of the mountain, as she thought they might, not even a whisper to calm the disquiet she felt.

  Gretchen hiked back down the red clay mountain and joined Nimrod and Wobbles for breakfast, opening cans of dog and cat food for them, toasting a bagel and pouring coffee for herself.

  Then she went to work on a client’s antique doll. Gretchen fished through a drawer and found a white leather glove. After studying the doll’s kid body, she set about preserving the doll’s original body as closely as possible: stuffing sawdust into the doll’s ripped torso, carefully cutting a piece of the glove into an oval and gluing it on.

  She was putting away the repair supplies when she heard her mother call out a greeting.

  “Hey,” Gretchen raised her voice. “I’m in the workshop.”

  “You’re up early.” Caroline plopped down on a stool. “It’s good to be home. I’m staying put, no more book tours for awhile.” She picked up the doll Gretchen had just finished. “Nice job on the kid body.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Evie Rosemont called yesterday. She wanted to know how the room boxes were coming along.”

  “Do I know Evie Rosemont?” Gretchen asked, trying to place her.

  Caroline laughed. “You’d remember if you did. She’s a hoot. Never stops talking. Wears enormous hats. She must have hundreds of them, all displayed on her walls. And antique shoes everywhere. Rooms of hats and shoes, a massive collection. Want me to take you over? It’s worth seeing.”

  “Yes, I’d like to meet her.” Gretchen remembered a woman outside of Charlie’s shop the day of the parade, the day Charlie died. The woman had worn a big straw hat and had been the first one to speak to Bernard about unlocking the door. He had called her Evie.

  Gretchen retrieved the street signs from her purse, which was on the floor with Nimrod cuddled inside. “Joseph knew the location of the Second Street sign,” she said, relating the details.

  “Charlie was really acting out her frustration with her sister’s death,” Caroline said. “Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the most brutal double murder of all times. The crime was never solved. Did you know that?”

  “No. I thought she killed them.”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “That’s exactly what Joseph said when I wondered why Charlie would put together such an awful scene.”

  “Let’s find the dolls that go with the room boxes today and finish up. I’m taking a camera along for the after pictures. Your camera phone takes okay pictures, but the colors aren’t as vivid as they could be.”

  Right, Gretchen thought. Make sure you can see all the blood splatters.

  She watched her mother head for the kitchen, trailed by the pint-sized puppy and Wobbles, who was trying to remain aloof but failing. Gretchen was sure her mother fed table scraps to the pets when she wasn’t looking. Why else the intense devotion?

  Gretchen took a quick shower and was drying her hair when her cell phone rang. The caller introduced himself as the manager from Gretchen’s bank. “A courtesy call really,” he said. “We aren’t required to do this, but your mother is a good customer and we realize you are new to our banking services.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You’re account is overdrawn.”

  “Impossible!”

  “By quite a lot.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “I’m afraid it’s correct.”

  “Well, how much?”

  When he gave her the amount, she almost dropped the phone.

  “Would you like t
o transfer funds from your savings account?”

  “Yes, please,” she said, weakly. She’d have nothing left to her name after that transaction.

  “Maybe you’d like to stop in and go over your account. You were fine until you wrote a substantial check recently.”

  “Who did I make it out to?”

  The bank manager gave her a name. A name she knew. She’d get her money back if she had to beat it out of him dollar by dollar.

  And she knew exactly where to find him.

  ****

  Gretchen stomped across the street, dodging traffic, intent on the building ahead. She heard a wolf whistle behind her, but refused to turn and look. Men! Sex-starved animals, chasing anyone in a halter top. She wasn’t in the mood.

  “Gretchen,” she heard coming from the same general vicinity as the whistle. She flung around. Matt Albright bounded toward her with a big flashy white smile. Even in her anger, she appreciated his devilish good looks and replaced her scowl with a small smile. He was just the man to help her.

  “I need you,” Gretchen said. “Right now.”

  “Really?” he sounded surprised and hopeful. “I thought you were an Amazon woman, treading fearlessly through this wild jungle called life. But you need me?” He puffed his chest like a he-man.

  “Not like that, Tarzan.”

  “We hardly know each other,” he feigned shock. “But if you insist, we can go to my place.”

  “This is a criminal problem. You have to arrest someone.”

  “Oh,” he pretended to deflate with disappointment. “Who are we arresting?”

  “Follow me.”

  She spun through the revolving doors of St. Joseph’s Hospital, inquired about a room number at the front desk, found the elevator, and punched the Up button.

  “Are you going to clue me in?” Matt said when she finally came to a stop while waiting for the elevator.

  “I dropped my checkbook at Mini Maize the day Charlie died. A horrible old…” Gretchen could hardly speak she was so upset.

  “Take a deep breath. Relax.”

  “A horrible old man found it and returned it to me.”

  “Horrible? He sounds like a good Samaritan.”

  “He returned it after he wrote himself a big, fat check. My bank actually paid it, even though the transaction overdrew my account. I had to use my savings to cover the overdraft. Why didn’t they let it bounce? Now I’ve lost everything.” Gretchen should have told the manager that the check had been forged. Wasn’t that the right thing to do? Yet, she hesitated. Forgery was a serious offense, and he was so old. All she wanted was her money back. Turning him in would be a last resort.

  Matt scowled. “I still don’t quite understand. The guy’s in the hospital?”

  The elevator arrived. Gretchen, still in the lead, pushed the floor number. “He deserved everything he got,” she said, hands on hips.

  “He deserved what? Please don’t tell me you put him in here?”

  Gretchen gave the detective a narrow-eyed look. “Of course not. He was concocting something called bug juice, and it blew up in his face.”

  “I see.”

  She could tell he didn’t see at all. “Follow me,” she said.

  “Don’t I always?”

  That gave Gretchen pause. Maybe he was always following her.

  When they found the hospital room, Bernard looked like an extra from the movie The Mummy.” His face was completely swathed in bandages. Gretchen knew it was him by the visible mop of white hair, though his mustache was hidden by the bandages. His name on the chart at the foot of the bed helped, too.

  “He’s sleeping,” Matt said, still sounding puzzled. “I’m really lacking enough background information to handle this properly.”

  “Not for long.” Gretchen thumped the patient’s shoulder.

  Bernard’s eyes flew open.

  “You stole my money, you old buzzard.” It took all her control to keep her hands off his neck. “I want it back.”

  “You said you never use your account.”

  That’s not exactly what she had said to him when he dropped off her checkbook. She had meant that she hadn’t missed the checkbook because there was so little money in the account. “So you thought you’d keep it active for me?” she screeched.

  “Hold on.” Matt said, trying to step between them.

  “She called the cops?” Bernard’s eyes grew wide when he saw Matt. “I only borrowed the money. Honest. I was going to return it long before she even knew it was gone.”

  “Surprise, I checked.” Gretchen said. “And I want it back. Right now.”

  “Sir,” Matt said, managing to squeeze between them. “Is that correct? Did you forge her name and remove funds from her account?”

  “He sure did.”

  “I’m asking him, Gretchen.”

  Gretchen watched the old man’s eyes. He wanted to deny it, she could tell, but he’d already admitted it. “I thought I deserved a reward,” he said. “You know, for finding the checkbook and returning it to its rightful owner.”

  “Read him his rights,” Gretchen demanded. “Arrest him.”

  “Where’s the money?” Matt asked Bernard with a cold, hard stare. Gretchen never wanted to be on the receiving end of that look.

  Bernard’s eyes slid to a metal cabinet next to the bed. “In there. In my wallet. You can have it back.”

  Gretchen lunged for the cabinet, found the wallet, and counted out a large wad of bills. “All here,” she said with a huge sigh of relief. It was all the money she had in the world, and she had almost lost it.

  Bernard watched through slits in the bandages.

  “What exactly happened to you?” Matt asked him.

  “Explosion. Someone’s trying to kill me.” He nodded in Gretchen’s direction. “Might be her, for all I know. Did you ever see anybody that mad before? I think she has an anger management problem.”

  Gretchen wanted to shake the scrawny weasel.

  Matt glanced at Gretchen. Now that the confrontation was over, he had a hint of sparkle back in his eyes.

  “You screwed the cover on too tight,” Gretchen told him. She looked at the quizzical expression on Matt’s face. “Britt Gleeland told me about it.”

  “I can’t stand that woman,” Bernard said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “At least she came and visited you.” Gretchen thought Britt must be the only one in Phoenix who liked the man well enough to care. What a disagreeable personality.

  “That woman better not show up here.”

  “But I thought—“

  “I know better than to close the lid tight,” Bernard said, interrupting. “I left it loose. I’ve been making juice for years, and I know I didn’t do it wrong. Someone added in another chemical to give it more power.”

  “Why would anyone try to kill you?” Matt asked.

  “Because. That’s why. Just because.” Through the white wrapping, Gretchen could see his lips tighten down. Bernard wasn’t talking to them anymore.

  “What’s going on in here?” a nurse said from the doorway.

  “This police officer and young lady are bullying me around. I want them to leave.”

  Nimrod chose that moment to peek out of Gretchen’s purse. The nurse glared. “I’m calling security if you aren’t gone in thirty seconds.”

  Matt didn’t even challenge the nurse. He apologized for the intrusion and escorted Gretchen out of the room.

  “Don’t you outrank a nurse?” Gretchen wanted to know on the way down the elevator.

  Matt chuckled. “No one on the police force would think of tangling with a head nurse. And I lost my advantage when the mutt made his appearance.”

  “Bernard Waites should be on your list of suspects.”

  “He seems to think someone’s trying to kill him.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “He took quite a hit. I checked his medical records earlier. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  Gretchen st
ared at Matt. “You knew he was here all along.”

  “I knew about his condition, not about the theft.”

  “Were you following me?”

  “I was leaving the hospital when you came up. I thought you were following me.” Matt grinned at her.

  “Did you interrogate him?”

  “I questioned him right after Charlie died.”

  “That’s how he knew you were a cop.”

  “He lied in the original report he gave Brandon Kline. He said he hadn’t seen Charlie since the day before, but he had. Several witnesses saw him at the shop very early that morning.”

  “Aha!”

  “Another witness saw Charlie alive and well afterwards.”

  “Oh.”

  “Bernard’s in worse shape than you seem to think.”

  Was that true? Had she really bullied a severely injured old man? But look what he had done. “Why didn’t you stop me if he’s so sick?”

  “And risk my own life? No thanks.”

  Gretchen cracked a weak smile. “I was awful, wasn’t I?”

  “Out of control.”

  “I’m pressing charges.”

  “You should.”

  “Does that mean he’s on the top of your list of suspects?”

  “Everyone’s on my list.”

  “Even me?”

  Matt grinned. “Especially you.”

  Chapter 19

  When Gretchen and Caroline arrived at Mini Maize with Nimrod, April was waiting in her car. She wore a loose, white sundress covered with yellow sunflowers and really did look thinner.

  Nina and Britt swooped in right behind them with Tutu and Enrico. All the dogs ran off playing. Gretchen picked up the crude, unfinished room box they had original rejected and added it to the others in the display.

  “It doesn’t exactly fit,” Britt remarked. “I’d throw it away.”

  “Nina thinks it’s an important component. We’ll see what we can do with it.”

  “I’m off,” Britt announced, hugging Nina. “Any word yet on Charlie’s funeral.”

  Caroline answered her. “The police are still holding her body. They haven’t said when they will release it.”