Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “I think you saw Matt last night,” Nina said slyly, pouring a coffee refill for herself.

  “Mom told you.”

  “She did not.”

  Gretchen’s thought of their intimate scene on the patio. She remembered every last detail. “He’s a great kisser,” she said, unable to contain herself any longer.

  Nina squealed impulsively, then quickly lowered her voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “I knew it. Today my antennas are receiving at peak performance. I have to confess, my aura abilities have been misfiring lately, but I’m back on track.” She squealed again. “I just knew it.”

  “Don’t get too excited. It was only one little kiss.” Gretchen smiled at Nina. “Or maybe two.”

  “I won’t tell a soul,” Nina promised. “My advice is to lay claim to that man as soon as possible. Other women look at him like hungry she-cats. Look what he does to April!”

  “Is it a mistake to get involved with him?” Gretchen chewed the inside of her cheek. “He’s still married.”

  “You have the color of love surrounding you. You’re positively pink. See what love does?”

  “Whoa. Back off. You’re moving way too fast. Are you listening to anything I just said?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m tickled as pink as you are.”

  Gretchen appraised Tickled Pink, who actually was wearing pink silk pants and a matching pink top.

  Nina sat down next to Gretchen at the kitchen table. “Thanks for telling me about Matt.” She gave Gretchen a shy look.

  Her aunt had given her the perfect opening. “You know, Nina, I really like April. She offered her friendship to me when I moved to Phoenix, when I didn’t know anybody other than you. She made me feel welcome.”

  “That’s right. She did. But then she took over, and all of a sudden, there she was, all the time. I think you prefer her company over mine.”

  “That isn’t true at all. I love you.”

  “As a relative.” Nina managed to make her voice sound dejected.

  “No! I love you as a friend. You are absolutely my very best friend.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Gretchen assured her. “What about Britt? You seem to have found a new friend in her.”

  “She’s really nice. Don’t be mad, but I started out being friendly with her to make you jealous.”

  Gretchen knew exactly what to say next. “Well, it worked. I thought you’d abandoned me.”

  “Never, dear. We’re adults, and I like Britt. You and I should be able to handle other people in other lives without letting it affect our friendship.”

  Gretchen nodded. Finally! Great words of wisdom.

  “There you are.” Caroline led Britt into the kitchen and offered her a seat and a cup of coffee. Britt held the box of dolls in her hands. “We were talking about the dolls, Caroline said, pouring coffee, “and thought you’d like to be part of the conversation.”

  Britt’s face was flushed when she said, “I don’t understand who would do this to my dolls. Surely not Charlie.”

  “She created the room boxes,” Gretchen replied. “And at least two of them are murder scenes, the one we’ve identified as Lizzie Borden’s home and another one of a backyard where there’s blood on the ground and on the steps leading into the building.

  “Tell Gretchen what you told me,” Caroline said.

  Britt inhaled, a ragged breath, and blew it out. “Charlie was very specific about the dolls she wanted. I remember her instructions to the letter. One male: tall, thin, white haired, middle-aged; one female: same age, short, slightly obese.”

  Gretchen and Caroline exchanged looks. “The Borden’s,” Caroline said.

  “And the other dolls?” Gretchen asked.

  “She gave me more leeway. A male with the dignity of the clergy, a woman who would pass as a woman of the street, a choir girl, and the last one.”

  She glanced up at her waiting audience. “The last one would be male, well-heeled, powerful. And he must, she insisted, have a look of extreme anguish on his face. Other than that, I could sculpt him however I wished.”

  “A look of anguish?” Nina said, perplexed. “Why?”

  “I asked her that. She said it was a surprise.” Britt’s fingers skimmed across the damage to her dolls. “I wanted to get these back as mementos of my last work for Charlie. But why would I want them like this? This is the only one that is still intact and look at him!”

  Britt held up the male doll she had created for her friend. The excruciating pain on his face was unmistakable.

  Chapter 23

  Britt and Nina went off together, leaving Gretchen and her mother alone in the workshop. “I have an idea,” Gretchen said, arranging the street signs in a row next to the computer they used for their doll repair business. “Let’s search the other signs and see what comes up.”

  She keyed in one of the addresses. “Twenty-nine Hanbury Street. A London address.” The search engine gave her a list of possibilities. She clicked on the first one, while Caroline looked over her shoulder.

  “Jack the Ripper’s second victim was killed at that address,” Gretchen said, not sure whether to be proud of her sleuthing abilities or saddened by Charlie’s obsession. “Look! The dilapidated backyard.”

  Without a word of explanation, Caroline hurried from the room. Gretchen was about to go after her to see if she had broken down in tears and needed comforting, but she returned as quickly as she left. And she had Britt’s dolls in her hands. “This must be the one.” She selected the slashed woman. “And the bloody knife must be part of that display.”

  Gretchen keyed in another address, the one on Elm Street. “Arsenic Anna.”

  “I’m not familiar with that murder,” Caroline said. “Although I’ve heard the name.”

  Gretchen read aloud. “In the 1930s, a woman named Anna Marie Hahn posed as a nurse as a way to care for wealthy, elderly men, who had no living relatives. Each of them died from arsenic poisoning. Four in all before she was captured and convicted.”

  “That’s horrible,” Caroline said. “And explains the facial features on the male doll. Death by poison.”

  Again Gretchen entered a street name. De Russey’s Lane.

  “The Hall-Mills murders,” Caroline read over Gretchen’s shoulder. “An Episcopal priest and a choir girl were found dead under a crab apple tree. Both had been shot in the head. Torn-up letters were found between them.”

  “The ripped pieces of paper we put in the unknown pile,” Gretchen said.

  Caroline held up two more dolls while she read the victims’ descriptions. Eleanor Mills wore a blue dress with red polka dots and black stockings.”

  The doll was dressed exactly as the description of the poor murdered girl.

  “A blue velvet hat lay beside her.”

  “Another unknown piece placed.” Gretchen remembered the little hat.

  Charlie created four room boxes to represent famous murder scenes. Why would she do that? What did she hope to accomplish by inviting guests to view such horror?

  “What do these murders have in common?” Caroline asked, puzzled. “How did she pick her settings? Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden are very famous murders. Arsenic Anna not quite as well known, and I’ve never heard of the Hall-Mills murders.”

  “Let me check each one again.” Gretchen did additional searches to read the cases more thoroughly. Caroline worked on a cracked bisque doll at the worktable. Nimrod dozed on the floor, while Wobbles graced them with his presence for a few minutes, licking his coat.

  “I’ve got it!” Gretchen shouted, startling both animals. “Charlie chose unsolved murders—Lizzie Borden was acquitted, Jack the Ripper was never identified, and the priest and choir girl’s murderer was never found.”

  “And Arsenic Anna?” Caroline asked.

  “Was electrocuted for her crimes. But she was the only one who used poison. Maybe Nina’s right,” Gretchen said. “She thought the kitchen was very important.”

&n
bsp; It was time to take a peek at a few kitchens. But Gretchen didn’t say it out loud.

  ****

  Bernard Waites lived on Twelfth Street in a brick ranch with white wood trim.

  “That’s his truck in the carport,” Gretchen said. “He was driving it the day he came to return my checkbook.” She noted that the sun was rapidly setting and checked her watch. A little after five o’clock.

  Nina stopped the car across the street. “Why did he steal a check, then cash it and return the checkbook? Wouldn’t he have been better off just keeping your checkbook or throwing it away?”

  “He claimed he was borrowing the money and was going to return it to my account before I noticed.”

  “He decided to take out a loan?” Nina shook her head. “Is the entire world crazy?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What if he’s home from the hospital?”

  “He isn’t. I called the hospital. He’s still there.”

  Nina swung her head toward the house. “What’s the plan?”

  “I thought you might have one.”

  “Search his house and take a look at the kitchen.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Nina tipped her head toward the backseat. “I’m the puppy sitter. You’re the investigator.”

  “You’re making this up as you go.”

  “You bet.”

  “Mom will kill me if she finds out what we’re doing.”

  “I’m not going to tell her.”

  There wasn’t any sign of activity at the house. Bernard had taken an ambulance ride after the bug juice blew up, which accounted for the parked truck. All Gretchen had to do was slip around to the back of the house and peek through the kitchen window. How hard could that be? “Okay,” she said. “I’m not breaking and entering, but I’ll look in the window. That’s all.”

  Nina nodded in approval. “How hard can it be?” she said, echoing what Gretchen was thinking. Her aunt was starting to scare her. Maybe there really was something to all her quirky psychic beliefs. No. Impossible.

  Gretchen opened the car door, eased it closed, and trotted across the street.

  She had temporarily forgotten about Phoenix’s passion for privacy walls. No one in the enormous desert community wanted snoopy neighbor spying on them, so they built walls to keep them out. Walls also kept unwanted guests like snakes and wild animals from appearing on doorsteps.

  Bernard’s property wasn’t any different than the rest of the populace. His privacy wall was made of concrete. Gretchen trotted back to the Impala. “I can’t get over the wall. You’ll have to give me a boost.”

  Nina rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “The things I have to do to in the name of family and friendship.”

  “How am I going to get out once I’m in?”

  “There must be a gate on the other side,” Nina said. “Every backyard has a gate.”

  They crept along the outside of the wall. Gretchen stuck a foot in Nina’s cupped hands, scaled up the side of the wall, and peered over the top. The coast was clear. She swung a leg up, scooted on her belly, and carefully edged the other leg over. She dropped to the ground on the other side.

  The back yard looked like a lumber yard, only not as tidy. Piles of wood and cast-off remnants of lumber were scattered along the side of the wall where Gretchen crouched. Near the house, she saw a small wrought iron table and four chairs. A vase filled with mixed flowers was in the middle of the table.

  Gretchen mustered up her courage and strode boldly to a window on the right side of the table. She peered inside, shading her eyes with her hand for a better view.

  And came nose to nose with a face on the other side of the glass. A woman.

  Gretchen yelped.

  The woman let out a bone-chilling scream. It sounded more like a war cry than surprise or fear.

  The vase of flowers on the outdoor table should have clued Gretchen in. How careless could she be? Bernard Waites, the cranky thief, had a wife.

  Since Gretchen was already in position, she took a moment to look past the woman and get a good look at the kitchen. She strained to make out the kitchen walls.

  The woman on the other side of the glass got Gretchen’s total attention when she waved something above her head. It looked like a meat cleaver. Looking solidly determined, the woman marched for the back door.

  Gretchen quickly revamped her hastily laid plan to present herself at the back door and apologize. She broke for the wall, realizing halfway there that she couldn’t get over without Nina’s help.

  There must be another way out. She turned in a circle looking for an exit. Where was the gate? There wasn’t one. It was either over the wall or through the house.

  “I’ll just let myself out,” Gretchen called, whirling. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Bernard’s wife snorted like a bull. “I belong to the neighborhood watch,” she said, stalking toward Gretchen with the cleaver clenched in her fist. “The rest of the committee will be here any second, and we’ll take care of you. Yes, we’ll take care of you but good.”

  Gretchen saw that she meant it. Bernard’s wife might not be Gretchen’s physical match, but she had a look in her eyes that put the fear of death into Gretchen.

  The woman waved the cleaver with menace.

  “We’re coming as fast as we can.” Someone shouted from a nearby house.

  Would Gretchen be hacked to death by a gang of block-watchers? She eyed up one of the tallest woodpiles. If she could get a running start, she might make it.

  Bernard’s wife marched at her, raising the cleaver.

  Gretchen took off as fast as she could and ran up the pile. A loose board underfoot almost tripped her up, but she maintained her balance and hurtled at the wall, digging her fingers into the top of it. Raising herself up through sheer desperation and fear, she launched over the wall to freedom.

  Gretchen ran in a crouch to the side of the house, staying behind the straggly Arizona shrubbery. Two women stomped past, headed for Bernard’s front door. Each carried a baseball bat. For the first time, Gretchen noticed a warning sign with an enormous watchful eye posted in Bernard’s yard.

  When the two gang members disappeared through the front door, Gretchen ran to the car. “Get down. Now,” she croaked, gasping for breath. Several houses ahead of the Impala, another woman carrying a baseball bat hiked across the street. Gretchen could see the lines of determination in her face, and the excitement. This group had been waiting for an opportunity like this to wield their clubs of justice.

  “Was it the room box kitchen?” Nina asked, ducking low.

  Gretchen chanced a glance at the house from her slunk down position in the seat. “No, it’s not the one,” she answered. “But please get this car moving.”

  Nina pulled out more slowly than Gretchen would have liked. She watched Bernard’s house, expecting the women to rush out and attack Nina’s car at any moment.

  “See,” her aunt said, not the least bit ruffled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Chapter 24

  Early Saturday morning, long before the tourists and snowbirds descended on the popular hiking mountain, Gretchen climbed Camelback Mountain.

  It had been over a week since the Scottsdale parade and the death of the miniature doll shop owner. Gretchen had very little to show for all her efforts and misadventures: a bombed out doll shop and a tiny lead on a kitchen, which might not even be a real connection.

  She climbed easily to an enormous boulder overlooking Phoenix to watch the sun rise over the Valley of the Sun. Later in the day, tourists would be perched on this same boulder with cameras and binoculars but for now she had it all to herself. She sat down, tucked her feet against her body, and cradled her legs between her arms, thinking of her growing obsession with the case of the dead doll maker and the seemingly endless lineup of potential suspects.

  Charlie’s drugged-out, missing son was as good a place to start as any. An alleged bomber, suspected of trying t
o blow up his mother’s shop while people were inside where they could have been seriously injured, if not killed. What was his motive? Drug-induced psychosis? Gretchen still couldn’t imagine he would’ve killed his own mother.

  Next suspect: Charlie’s thieving business associate. Bernard’s cleaver-crazy wife was as disagreeable as her husband and had probably tampered with his bug juice after a domestic argument. The woman was a militant vigilante with a bad temper. And to think, she’d mistaken Gretchen for…um…for an intruder. Okay, not really a mistake on her part, but her reaction was definitely excessive.

  What could have been Bernard Waite’s motive for murdering a business associate? Did he want Charlie’s store desperately enough to kill for it?

  Gretchen stood up on the boulder, hopped down, and began the steepest part of the ascent to the mountain’s peak. The trail fell away. She gripped red boulders and continued up, keeping a sharp eye out for a new bird to add to her life list.

  What was Joseph’s story? He was a flamboyant alcoholic who claimed that he couldn’t remember anything about the night preceding Charlie’s death, or anything about the next morning when Gretchen spotted him at the parade. Was he telling the truth? Or was he hiding a sinister secret?

  She grabbed a firm hold in the rocks and continued her climb. Birds chattered around her, and she saw several cactus wrens in a mesquite bush.

  One of the main reasons Gretchen chose early mornings to hike her favorite mountain was to avoid rattlesnakes and other poisonous creatures. She’d had enough uncomfortable encounters with creatures in the past. The February air at this time of day was cool enough to keep them in their holes.

  Arizona’s list of creepy crawlers was endless: snakes, scorpions, Gila monsters, black widows, tarantulas, lizards. And the larger varieties: coyotes, mountain lions, and javelinas, the wild pigs with razor-sharp tusks.

  Gretchen paused to catch her breath and take in the scenery. A chipmunk munched on the buds of a barrel cactus below and to her right. She’d heard that barrel cacti always leaned to the southwest, something to remember if she was ever lost in the desert.