by Deb Baker
After Britt left, Nina clapped and called out. The three dogs appeared in the room. Nina pulled a pink hatbox from one of her many totes. “I’m so excited,” she said. “I could hardly wait to come in today. Wait till you see.”
Gretchen exchanged glances with her mother. Something silly was up. They could tell.
Nina danced in anticipation. “Bonnie Albright has been working on a new venture.”
“She’s been very secretive about it,” April said, dusting dolls on a shelf. “We’ve been trying to get details out of her at Curves, but for the first time in her life, she’s not talking.”
Nina jiggled the box. “She’s been creating wigs.”
Gretchen grimaced when she thought of the stiff, red wig Bonnie wore to cover a bald spot on the top of her head. She was the last person on earth Gretchen would consider qualified to create realistic wigs. Gretchen’s eyes slid to the pink box. “You bought a wig from her?”
Nina bobbed her head in glee. “I’ve always thought about this concept, and she went and did it.”
“Let’s see,” Gretchen leaned in as Nina pulled off the little round cover.
“Tutu, come here,” Nina called. The schnoodle bounded down one of the aisles, in full anticipation of another treat. Nina had her hand over the box, concealing the contents. “At first, I couldn’t decide between the two styles. Should I get the CleoPetra with bangs, or the Barky Braids?”
“Cleopetra?” April exclaimed. “For heavens sake, will you show us what you have?”
“Eventually I decided on the Barky Braids.” Nina extracted a wig and reached out for Tutu, adjusting it on the dog’s head so two braids hung down in front of Tutu’s ears.
“The wig is for your dog?” April said, failing to hold back a full-blown roar. “I thought it was for you. It’s for Tutu?”
Gretchen laughed along with April and her mother. It felt good after all the tension surrounding Charlie’s murder and her own financial problems. Leave it to Nina to lighten the moment.
Nina grinned. “It’s a perfect fit, isn’t it?”
“How does it stay on?” Caroline asked.
“Elastic.”
“I absolutely love it,” Gretchen agreed. “Tutu looks ravishing.”
“The wig is exactly the same color as Tutu’s hair,” April pointed out.
Nina preened at the compliments. “That’s right. Bonnie’s a miracle worker. I could have picked any color I wanted. She makes them to order. Nimrod and Enrico should have doggie wigs, too.”
Gretchen glanced at the tiny teacup poodle and the aggressive Chihuahua, who were playing tug of war with a knotted rope. “Enrico’s just beginning to fit in,” she said. “Let’s not traumatize him unnecessarily.”
“Enough play,” Caroline said. “Help me find the dolls that go inside the room boxes. I should have asked Britt more about them before she left.”
They rummaged around on the storage room shelves without finding anything useful. Gretchen pulled open each of Charlie’s desk drawers until she found a box filled with dolls.
“You’re not going to like this,” she said to the others after she opened the cover and peered in. “This is so sad.”
The women gathered around. Miniature dolls were arranged in a row. Six of them. Three women and three men. Two of the dolls’ skulls were bashed in, one had slash marks crisscrossing her tiny body, and two had gaping holes in their heads. The only one that appeared undamaged was a distinguished-looking male doll. Instead of holes and slashes, his face was contorted in the semblance of excruciating pain.
No one said anything for several minutes.
“Well,” Caroline finally said. “I don’t think we will be displaying the room boxes at the funeral after all.”
“Wise decision,” April said.
“We’re done then,” Gretchen said, with relief. Charlie’s obsession with death, culminating with her own, was disturbing. Gretchen closed the cover. “The police must have seen these when they investigated.”
“What would a few mutilated dolls mean to them?” Caroline said.
“It would be interesting to discuss them with the police,” Gretchen said, deciding to take the dolls along with her.
“I’ll get photos of the room boxes for Charlie’s brother,” Caroline said. “Without the dolls.”
After her mother had taken the promised photographs, Gretchen helped Nina pack up dog supplies.
A window shopper stopped in front of the shop. Enrico the Enforcer lunged at the window, snarling and showing his teeth. The pedestrian took one look at the foaming, frothing creature and moved on.
“Poor Enrico,” Nina said.
“Poor Enrico?” April said, incredulous. “He seems to have the upper hand.”
“The poor little orphan.”
Gretchen groaned silently. She saw it coming before April did. “Enrico is looking for a new home,” Nina said as if on cue.
Her aunt couldn’t resist taking in abandoned canines. That’s how Gretchen had ended up with Nimrod. Not that she was complaining. The tiny pup was a perfect match for her. But Enrico and April?
Nina looked sadly at April, then peeked at Enrico, who still guarded the window. “His owner can’t get used to—”
An explosion drowned out Nina’s next words. Gretchen saw the shop window blow apart. One second, it was there. The next second, it was gone. Shards of glass flew everywhere. The noise was deafening.
Gretchen moved as fast as she could, but it still felt like slow motion. She lunged for the space where the tiny Chihuahua had stood a moment before and saw only emptiness. She frantically turned left and right. Nothing.
Enrico was gone.
****
Another explosion.
Gretchen dove for the floor as the display case filled with recently furnished room boxes tipped toward the women. “Get down,” she screamed. The other women crouched down behind her in a tight embrace.
Gretchen covered her head with her hands and curled into a ball. Some of the miniature doll furnishings shot across the room, others rained down on them. She stayed on the floor until the air assault ended.
She saw April’s feet, encased in white socks and sandals, move past, glass crunching underfoot. Gretchen lifted her head and wiped off loosely embedded glass from the side of her face that had been against the floor. Blood oozed from small puncture wounds on her arms.
Flames licking at the room boxes, and a line of fire also ran along the windowsill. She caught the strong odor of gasoline, and sprang up in time to see April pull off her sundress. Stripped down to panties and bra, April began to beat at the display case with her dress.
“Should we call for help?” Nina said through ragged sobs.
“Yes,” Gretchen shouted to her aunt. “I’d consider this an emergency.”
Nina looked dazed. Caroline rose from the floor.
“The dogs,” Gretchen adding, scanning the store, relieved that the women were on their feet and appeared to be unharmed. “Mom, help find Enrico.”
That did the trick for Nina. Cell phone in hand, she sprang into action, pounding on its keys as she ran along the front of the shop searching for the tiny Chihuahua. With a breaking voice, she gave their location before scurrying off into the back room to check for the animals. Caroline was right behind her.
Gretchen looked for a fire extinguisher but didn’t find one. She yanked a tablecloth from under a miniature display table and set about helping April smother the flames.
Judging from the power of the blasts, Gretchen thought all of the women should be plastered with glass shards, but she had been front and center, and the cuts on her arms appeared to be superficial, sustained mostly during her lunge for the floor. “Did a bomb go off?” Gretchen asked, beating at the fire with the tablecloth.
“That, or someone shot through the window,” April answered, winded from the physical exertion. “You shielded us from most of the debris, Superwoman. Are you all right?”
Gretchen
nodded. “We’re fanning the flames, rather than smothering them,” she said. “We better get out of the shop.”
“Help is on the way,” Nina said, hustling toward them with a bucket of water. “The emergency operator said the fire truck will be here momentarily. Stand back.” Her aim was flawless. The flames died back a little. April grabbed the empty bucket and ran for the back room.
“Don’t let the dogs out,” Nina called after her, watching the underclad woman charge away.
Gretchen tried to put out a line of fire along the windowsill with the cloth. It caught fire. She threw it on the floor ad stomped out the flame.
April returned with the bucket and flung water on the remaining flames. “We should join the fire department,” she said. “We’d be a great team.”
“Nimrod and Tutu are in the storage room,” Nina said. “I closed the door so they wouldn’t get hurt on the glass or run into the fire. But I can’t find Enrico anywhere.”
Smoke still rose from the display case, but the flames along the window had been completely extinguished. Gretchen saw a thick, black substance where the fire had died away. April took another swipe at the display case with her dress.
“We’ll have company soon. You better put on your dress,” Gretchen advised her. The street was already filled with people. Gretchen heard a siren approaching, a few blocks away.
April flung the dress over her head, lumbered to the open window, and spread her legs in a no-nonsense stance. Her sundress, covered with black soot and burn holes, wasn’t white anymore. “Everybody stay put right where you are until we figure out what happened in here. Did anybody see anything?”
A kid with a red ball cap raised his hand. “I did. I heard a blast and glass flew all over the street.”
“Some guy threw something,” another observer said. “He was wearing a do-rag on his head.”
Ryan! Gretchen thought with dismay.
“Anybody out there hurt?” April called, sliding a knowing glance at Gretchen. She had thought of Ryan, too. No one spoke up. “Okay, then. I’m taking that as a ‘no’. Anybody see a little brown dog?”
Gretchen stiffened, expecting someone to find Enrico’s mangled body lying on the pavement. The glass shards would have acted like shrapnel, piercing the tiny dog’s hairless body. And the fire! Had he burned alive?
A few people on the street shook their head. Enrico must have been swept up in the force of the explosion and flung away. The poor thing. Nothing that small would have survived.
Nina cried into a tissue. Caroline wrapped her arms around her sister. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said.
“We have to find Enrico. He has to be here somewhere.”
“We will,” Gretchen assured her. “He could have jumped out the window and ran away.” She didn’t believe her own reassurance for one second.
A fire truck pulled to a stop outside, and the siren died away. Several police officers arrived at the same time. Brandon Kline was one those who responded. Nina and April told the tale, while Gretchen barely listened to the officer’s questions and the women’s responses.
The professionals went about their business. Gretchen stared at the window, or what was left of the window. All their work ruined. But did it matter anymore? The whole point of the exercise was to prepare the room boxes for display at Charlie’s funeral, and they had already abandoned that idea after finding the macabre dolls.
Why attack the shop window and destroy the display?
What if the answer was inside the room boxes? Not in the intricate details they had so lovingly constructed, but in the simplicity of one of the boxes—the unfurnished kitchen. What if the kitchen and the miniature peanut butter jar held the solution to Charlie and Sara’s deaths?
Gretchen felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see a look of concern on Detective Kline’s face.
“Detective,” Gretchen said. “We meet again.”
“I’d like to inquire into your health. It appears to be in constant jeopardy.”
Gretchen gave him a weak smile and introduced him to Nina.
Other emergency workers converged on the window. Gretchen looked at the opening.
The detective followed her gaze, and his face hardened. “Not a rifle shot from the street,” he observed.
“No.” Gretchen had already deducted as much. Whatever had blown through the shop window cast a wider path of destruction than a rifle would. She studied the ruin that had once been a display case. Burned up. The room boxes were charred beyond recognition.
“A jar of gasoline?” she asked. “Or two. There were two explosions.”
“We’ll find out.”
Red tape, yellow tape, crime scene experts, reports, interviews. The next hour was lost in speculation and repeating details of the blast.
Matt arrived, striding quickly through the debris. “Did anyone call for an ambulance?” he asked the technicians working the scene.
“We aren’t injured,” Gretchen answered for them, hiding the cuts on her arms by crossing them.
“I want to make sure,” he insisted. “You should be examined.”
April grinned widely behind him, smudges of soot on her round face. Gretchen could almost hear her offering to go first, but she remained silent. In a less stressful situation, she wouldn’t have missed that opportunity.
“I’ll refuse to get into the ambulance,” Gretchen said, firmly. “I really am fine.”
“How about everyone else?”
“We’re fine,” Gretchen insisted. The other women nodded.
Matt opened his mouth to argue but must have decided it was a hopeless cause, because he walked away to confer with the firefighters instead. He avoided looking directly at any of the doll cases.
Every few minutes Nina checked on Tutu and Nimrod, then nervously paced on the sidewalk outside the shop. “Enrico!” she shouted. “Come to Momma.”
Detective Kline walked over to the open window where Gretchen was standing. “You can go now,” he said. “We’ll let you know what we find.”
“You must have suspicions,” Gretchen said. “What caused this?”
He ran a finger over the black substance on the windowsill Gretchen noticed earlier. “Poor man’s hand grenades.” When he saw the questioning look on her face, he explained. “This is tar, one of the ingredients sometimes used in a Molotov cocktail. Tar causes the gasoline to stick to whatever it hits. Then the effect is broader when it ignites. Someone filled bottles with gasoline and tar, made crude wicks out of rags, lit them, and threw them at the window.”
“Have you talked to other witnesses?” Gretchen remembered the discussion on the street. The bomber had worn a do-rag on his head.
He nodded. “And I have a potential suspect in mind.”
“You work fast.”
“Just doing my job as quickly as possible.”
She watched him approach a weeping Nina, place a hand on her shoulder, and lean in to listen. Matt was consulting with the other professionals on the scene, seeming to have forgotten her for the moment.
She went in search of her purse.
Now where did I leave it?
“I think I saw it near one of the dollhouse displays,” April said when Gretchen asked her to join in the search. “Not near that freakish Victorian. Look by the English Tudor. You need to keep better track of your things, girl.”
Gretchen spotted her white cotton bag under a table, leaned down, and pulled it out.
Nina was still moping. “Do you think Enrico is dead?” she sniffed. “We can’t leave without knowing what happened to him.”
Gretchen straightened up and checked the contents of her purse. She felt tears forming in her eyes, the first since the attack. “I know for a fact the little devil is just fine.”
A warning snarl erupted from the depths of her purse.
Chapter 20
Once home, Caroline clattered over Gretchen like a mother roadrunner, as though just recovering from the shock of the explosio
ns. She brushed shards of glass from Gretchen’s hair.
Gretchen picked up a six-inch naked porcelain doll and noted the doll’s painted black hair and white body. “A Frozen Charlotte,” she said.
According to the legend, a beautiful young woman and her lover set out on a sleigh to attend a ball miles away from home. Her mother warned her to wrap up in a blanket for it was a bitterly cold night. But the young woman refused the cover and away they went. During their journey, Charlotte complained only once about the extreme cold. Then she fell silent. When the sleigh arrived at the ball, her lover held out his hand to help her down. But all that was left of Charlotte was a frozen corpse.
“Poor vain Charlotte. If only she’d listened to her mother’s warning and wrapped herself in the blanket.” Caroline examined Gretchen’s shoulders and arms.
“If you’re comparing me to Charlotte,” Gretchen said. “I’d like to remind you whose idea this was in the first place.”
“I know. I regret ever suggesting that we restore Charlie’s display. Do you think her son threw the bomb?” Caroline’s face was a study in sorrow.
“Stranger things have happened.” Gretchen remembered Ryan’s remote eyes and the way he struck out at her.
“Into the shower with you,” her mother said, breaking into her thoughts.
Every bone in Gretchen’s body ached. She stood under the hot water for a long time. “You have a visitor,” her mother said when she came out of the bathroom toweling her hair. “He’s on the patio. I set out two glasses and a bottle of wine.”
Wine?
Gretchen peeked through the window. Matt Albright sat by the pool with Nimrod on his lap. Dusk settled over the desert. Camelback Mountain was a dark outline in the sky. The lights around the patio lit up.
“I hope you don’t mind that I let him stay,” Caroline said, whisking away without waiting for a response.
Gretchen stroked Wobbles, who sat on the window ledge next to her. “What do you think?” she said to the tomcat. “Is this business or pleasure?” Wobbles rumbled a deep purr and licked her finger. Gretchen pressed her head against his side to listen to his soothing inner machinery, keeping one eye on the unaware detective. “We think alike,” she told Wobbles. “I agree. It’s business.”