Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  What are you doing? Stay back.

  Gretchen ignored her inner voice and moved closer. This was her chance to understand Matt’s passion. She wanted to stop feeling like she was in competition with his career. Two emergency workers partially blocked her view. They shifted positions.

  The dead woman had been wearing sandals, but they were no longer on her feet. She wore black capris, and her white halter top was stained with blood, her long blond hair matted with it.

  So much blood, puddling on the unyielding desert floor.

  Matt looked up at her. Their eyes met.

  Someone else moved. Gretchen’s eyes shifted back to the horror of the moment and locked onto the woman’s face.

  The dead woman’s eyes were wide open, unblinking and unseeing.

  This could have been your mother, your aunt, your friend. It could have been you!

  Gretchen felt her heart pounding against her rib cage. It was purely a female thing. Fear was implanted in every woman’s breast from the moment of cognitive awareness, like a pacemaker always pulsing. Be very afraid. Stay out of the dark. Don’t travel alone. Be alert to danger. Carry protection and know how to use it. Learn self-defense techniques. Run fast. Scream.

  The woman had made all the wrong moves and had paid the ultimate penalty.

  “Gretchen,” she heard behind her as she turned and fled.

  She made it to the tree next to Matt’s car. She leaned against the palm tree for support, fighting back waves of nausea, feeling helpless and weak against the monster that had done this to one of her kind.

  When Matt reached her, she welcomed his arms, wrapped herself against his chest and never wanted to let go.

  Chapter 3

  Detective Terry Vascar arrives at the crime scene and parks behind a line of vehicles. Two women are greeting each other next to the car parked ahead of him. He recognizes one of them, even in the dark. It’s the woman his pal Matt Albright has been dating. Gretchen Birch.

  Terry swings his head and spots Matt talking to a forensics team. When he looks back, the women are moving in the opposite direction.

  Terry follows, staying in the shadows, curious. They stop at a headstone, not even noticing him.

  Three words appear on the marble when the younger woman shines a flashlight beam on it.

  Die, Dolly, Die.

  “It’s not blood.” Gretchen is breathing fast, rushing her words as she speaks. “It’s lipstick.”

  A cop walks toward them, with Matt trailing behind. Terry steps in beside Matt, who nods so slightly Terry almost misses the greeting.

  “Caroline,” Matt says, moving forward to shake the older woman’s hand. “Thanks for coming to get Gretchen.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “None of us do. Listen, we found a doll. Would the two of you take a look?”

  “Of course,” both women respond.

  Terry watches his buddy slide away, stopping a good distance from where an officer holds up a clear bag containing a doll.

  What’s up with him?

  The flashlight in Gretchen Birch’s hand illuminates the content for a moment, then swings wild, erratic. Terry takes the flashlight from her. She doesn’t resist, instead giving him a look of gratitude. He shines it on the object with a steady hand.

  The doll’s face is exquisitely chiseled. She has long copper hair that falls to her waist. Ivy snakes up a perfectly formed leg.

  A second bag contains gold wings. In the murky light, the wings sparkle like gemstone dust.

  “A fantasy doll,” Gretchen whispers. “Her wings have broken off.”

  “Yes,” Caroline agrees.

  “Have you seen this doll before?” Matt asks from outside the small group. “Or one like it?”

  “No.” Caroline says, but Terry catches something in her voice, in the startled expression on her face. Matt senses it, too, because he glances sharply at Terry.

  “Thank you again, Caroline, for coming” Matt says after a pause. Terry waits while Matt escorts the women back to their car, opening car doors for them and muttering reassurances. The women drive away.

  “Gretchen’s mother?” Terry asks.

  “Yes.”

  “She recognized the doll.”

  “Maybe. I’ll talk to her again.”

  Terry gestures toward the body, covered and strapped to a gurney. Strobe lights everywhere. “What’s going on?”

  “A murdered woman.”

  “Name?”

  “No purse and no identification.”

  “But we have a doll.”

  “Just my luck,” Matt says.

  Chapter 4

  The man - known to his friends as Nacho, formerly called Theodore Brummer in a life he barely remembers - watches the car leave the cemetery. He thought about moving away from the group, greeting his friends Gretchen and Caroline before they drove off, but that would have called even more attention his way. The police already think he is some kind of ringleader.

  Police! He hates them and their superior, suspicious attitudes.

  “Vagrants,” says a cop, who pretends he is doing good deeds while actually satisfying a sadist tendency to manipulate and destroy those who are weaker. He’s the same one who rounded them up, flashing a club to prove his power. Make my day. Make a move so I have an excuse to pound you into the ground.

  All Nacho wanted was a quiet place to bed down away from the dopers downtown, the addicts who will kill for a buck, for the possibility of a high. That’s all any of them wanted, peace and quiet. Not this.

  How could Gretchen get involved with a cop?

  Here he comes, striding over like he owns the world. The one his friend Gretchen is so fond of. Albright. Nacho wants to give him the benefit of the doubt for her sake. But a cop? More benefit for him in doubt.

  “Hey, Detective Albright,” Nacho says. “They want to haul the lot of us in.” That’s what the cop had called them. The lot, like they aren’t human. Maybe Gretchen’s cop friend can help him and Daisy.

  The detective nods in recognition. Good. He remembers. Nacho glances back and sees Daisy pushing forward and addressing the detective, too. “Hi,” she says, friendly-like. That’s Daisy, no prejudices there, even when they pick her up off the street for no good reason.

  The detective honors her with another nod before consulting with the coppers, not bothering with Nacho’s concern with incarceration.

  Nacho doesn’t want to spend the night in jail, although sleeping in a bed would be a treat. A square meal and sheets. How long has it been? He’s used to passing the night in a ripped-up sleeping bag thrown down on hard desert dirt, a cover over his head if he’s lucky. Black plastic sheets work when it rains. But the cops have confiscated all their possessions—Daisy’s shopping cart filled with supplies, their backpacks.

  Who called in the cops without warning them to leave the cemetery first? Usually Nacho is the first to know of these situations. When you live on the street, you hear it all, see it all, and you vamoose before the heat arrives. It wasn’t one of theirs who made the call. That’s obvious.

  Too late this time. They should have gone when the going was good, when they heard the disturbance, little ripples of conflict, on the other side of the cemetery.

  Detective Albright starts interrogating the clump of frightened people, asking the same questions already asked by the other cop. Who are you? What are you doing here? What did you see go down?

  No one wants to say anything. Who would? Speak at all and they run you in and book you on some trumped up charge. None of them admits to hearing the disturbance, two people, the mutter of voices, rising, then falling, quiet after that.

  Nacho doesn’t recognize everyone in the group. One among them doesn’t belong to his community, but he isn’t saying a word. He doesn’t get involved in other people’s business.

  The streets of Phoenix are beginning to swell with more homeless people that ever before. The old-timers are forced to share more and more, make due with
less all the time. No one will leave them alone. They’ve lost their tent city, the services they used to count on are closing up, laws are tightening, some of his acquaintances missing by morning, rounded up and dropped off at the border. Get out, that’s the message he hears the most. Go someplace else.

  If he could control his drinking, he’d consider a different lifestyle. That’s what Daisy hints at. A real home.

  Albright gets around to the one who looks like them, but doesn’t smell right. After a while, you know who fits and who doesn’t. This one doesn’t.

  “Who are you?” Albright asks, but Nacho doesn’t hear the answer because Daisy is on her cell phone. People sometimes laugh when they find out about her phone. What’s a homeless person doing with a cell phone? But Daisy is amazingly secretive about her past.

  Most of them don’t even remember having a past. Nacho doesn’t.

  “We’re in the cemetery,” Daisy says into the phone, then listens. “…I don’t know why…Didn’t want to make trouble for you...Taking us in for questioning…Not yet. I’ll let you know. Thanks.”

  Nacho thinks how cute she looks since she changed her style to that red hat thing. Daisy is wearing a floppy hat with her favorite purple dress. The rest of her wardrobe is in police custody along with everything else she owns.

  “Vagrancy?” one of the cops asks the detective.

  Albright replies loud enough to interrupt Nacho’s eavesdropping, but that’s okay, Daisy has disconnected from the call. “Book them,” he hears from this man Gretchen thinks so highly of. She should be here to see how they’re treated.

  Nothing like joining the homeless community to realize how rotten people can be on both sides of the law.

  Chapter 5

  The gun blast frightened all of them. Someone screamed.

  Gretchen watched with a mixture of frustration and disbelief as Bonnie dove for the floor, landing on her padded stomach. The man’s black synthetic wig she wore on her head slid sideways, and the fake handlebar mustache skidded across the floor.

  Bonnie’s body seized. Then her eyes stared sightlessly.

  Julie Wicker dropped the weapon on the floor and covered her face with both hands. “I didn’t mean to fire it,” she said after clearing a space between her pinky fingers for better articulation. “It was an accident. I’m so sorry.”

  “Cut,” Nina shouted, recovering slightly faster than Gretchen had from the unexpected explosion. Nina stomped up to the stage to glare at the cast members. She maintained a commanding presence even while dwarfed by a six-foot Barbie mannequin dressed in a cheerleader’s outfit.

  “Take five,” Nina ordered. “Then come back and try to do the scene the way it was written. And why did the mustache come off?”

  Gretchen had been the one who had applied the mustache, another one of the many responsibilities she was trying to juggle. “Who’s got the glue?” Nina continued when no one answered. “Where’s makeup?”

  “We do our own makeup,” Bonnie said. “You know that.”

  Another glare from Nina. “Use super glue next time. I want that mustache to adhere so well it never comes off.”

  Bonnie Albright, president of the Phoenix Dollers Club and mother of the man Gretchen was dating, could have pointed an accusing finger at Gretchen, but she didn’t, which raised Gretchen’s esteem for the woman several notches.

  Bonnie rolled to her side, pushed up into a sitting position, and readjusted the wig.

  “We’ve been at this for hours,” she griped. “We need more than a five-minute break.”

  The other cast members agreed.

  Gretchen sighed and followed her aunt onto the stage, picking up the blank-firing revolver on the way. Not only was the cast totally inept, forgetting their lines and firing weapons at all the wrong times, but Nina, who had volunteered to help out so she could keep an eye on Gretchen after the unfortunate tarot reading, seemed determined to horn in on Gretchen’s directorial turf. Nina apparently didn’t understand the role of assistant director.

  Gretchen fervently wished she hadn’t mentioned the high school stage production she’d had a minor role in years ago. Suddenly she was the director of Ding Dong Dead, the certified expert on play production. Certifiable, was more like it. She had to be nuts to have agreed to take this on. The title of director didn’t suit her, as she was quickly finding out. She didn’t have the necessary air of authority. But Nina didn’t have the people skills, judging by the pleading expressions on the cast’s faces.

  “A few more minutes before we start up again would be appreciated,” Julie said.

  They looked expectantly toward Gretchen, waiting to see if she’d challenge Nina’s bid for power. She really should say something that would reestablish her status as commander of this listing ship. But after last night’s trip to the cemetery, Gretchen hadn’t slept well. Nightmares weren’t anything new, but her usually dreams had morphed into something different—monsters she couldn’t see, screams she couldn’t scream, cliffs, falling, and a dead woman’s sightless stare.

  Gretchen managed a nod to indicate her agreement with the cast.

  Nina rolled her eyes.

  Bonnie, who played Craig Bitters in the production, flipped off the cheap male wig, exposing a tight wig cap underneath. Beneath the cap, crushed against her scalp, was Bonnie’s own red wig, which she wore every day to conceal a large bald spot on her crown.

  “I’m proud of our stage setting,” Gretchen said to distract them from further dissent. The play, which had been written by her mother, Caroline, took place inside a doll collector’s home, in a room devoted entirely to Barbie dolls and teddy bears. They had found a damaged pink Barbie house and had converted it into display cases, filling it with dolls and bears. The six-foot Barbie had been donated by one of the club members. The overall effect was perfect. At times, Gretchen could suspend belief and actually imagine that she was in one of the club member’s homes.

  “When that gun went off, I almost peed in my pants,” Bonnie said.

  Julie giggled. Cast as Craig’s long-suffering wife, Doris, Julie came to rehearsal each day dressed for her part. Although Gretchen had insisted that she was perfect already, Julie had dyed her brown hair black and styled it in a messy updo. Heavy makeup and a red cotton sweater with embroidered teddy bears completed the package.

  Gretchen felt the tension break as the group of doll collectors took turns stepping down from the stage, all talking at once. Gretchen watched them head for the break area in the next room.

  Gretchen went over the play notes her mother had left for her. Without them, she’d be lost. Her spirit brightened as she read. The play was a modern farce with great lines for all the characters. Doris, played by Julie, would accidentally shoot her husband and the women of the doll club would form a conspiratorial bond in a humorous attempt to cover up the murder.

  After working with Bonnie in Craig’s role, Gretchen felt that the end for her, or rather for him, couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Oh, no!” Nina rushed toward the stage, where her pampered schnoodle Tutu chomped down on to a prop, one of Bonnie’s beloved teddy bears, which she had reluctantly contributed to the stage setting after extracting a solemn promise from all the members that her treasures would return to her private collection without so much as a smudge or wrinkle.

  Not a chance of fulfilling that promise with Her Highness running wild.

  Tutu leapt off the stage with the bear firmly planted between her canine incisors and circled the large banquet room with Nina in hot pursuit. She finally trapped the pooch in a corner and coaxed her into releasing the stuffed animal.

  “Tutu just demonstrated one of the main reasons why we decided to ban pets from rehearsals,” Gretchen reminded her aunt.

  “I wasn’t part of that decision,” Nina said, wiping Bonnie’s teddy bear on the hem of her red and white polka-dot sundress. Tutu, always accessorized to complement Nina’s flamboyant attire, had large red and white bows attached to each ear.<
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  “You aren’t a voting member of the club,” Gretchen said. “If you’d ante up and pay your dues like the rest of us, you would have more say.”

  Aunt Nina didn’t ‘do’ dolls, but her unique personality had made her a welcome addition to the club. That was, until recently when her tyrannical behavior indicated that she was on borrowed club time.

  Aside from her New Age endeavors, Nina owned a specialty business that catered to those club members who had furry little pets. She’d talked many of them into adopting what she called purse dogs, three- to five-pound miniature dogs. Then she offered training courses to teach the little things to stay put inside their travel purses - and to hide whenever their owners entered no-pet zones like restaurants or supermarkets.

  Nina had succeeded in her mission to place pups with as many club members as possible, and she was very good at training them—both the canines and their humans. What she hadn’t done well was train her own dog, Tutu, a miniature diva she had rescued from the animal control center when no one came forward to claim her. Tutu was self-absorbed and completely unteachable. Gretchen didn’t know what Nina saw in the critter.

  Nina had even convinced Gretchen herself to adopt Nimrod, a curly coated black teacup poodle.

  “Nimrod’s at doggie day care,” Gretchen said, reflecting on her tiny companion, always surprised at how much she missed him when he wasn’t at her side. “That’s where Tutu should be right now.”

  The schnoodle stared at Gretchen as though she understood English perfectly. They were at war, the beady eyes told her, and Tutu planned on winning every battle.

  “We have important issues to discuss,” Nina said, waving a ring-studded hand. “The luncheon is coming up fast, only two weeks away and so much to do. We still have to meet with the caterer, pick out table arrangements, prepare the silent auction, and whip this bunch into shape. The entire event is turning into a disaster.”

  “It’ll be fine.” Gretchen sat down on the edge of the stage, not believing her own words. They hadn’t anticipated the amount of work involved in presenting a play with a cast completely devoid of talent or any innate ability to follow simple directions or remember lines. “Everything will come together.”