Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  And all the time away from the repair shop had Gretchen worried. She loved the partnership with her mother, the finely tuned team they had become. But dolls in need of attention were piling up daily, especially now that they finally had access to the marvelous Spanish Colonial Revival with its complex blend of Mexican and Spanish influences. The house was structurally sound, but needed a thorough cleaning after years of standing empty. And cataloging and organizing the displays would take more time than they originally had thought. Her mother had been working long hours there for the last few days. No one was in the workshop.

  Two weeks and life will return to normal, she reminded herself.

  “We have several hundred guests registered for the luncheon and the theater presentation.” Nina sat down beside her. “And more ticket requests coming in every day.”

  “Good work. Our dream is coming true.”

  Nina gave her a doubtful look. “At first I thought it was wonderful that the club had been offered the opportunity to renovate the house and open it as a doll museum, but my radar is telling me that something is wrong. Your last tarot reading isn’t reassuring me either.”

  The cast began wandering back into the banquet hall dressed in their street clothes, their purses slung over their shoulders. “We had a meeting in the break room,” Bonnie said. “We’re on strike.”

  “I didn’t get a vote,” Nina said.

  “You’re the reason we’re striking,” Bonnie said to Nina.

  “It’s been stressful,” Julie said, lagging behind the rebellion. “We’ve been working hard. Let’s take the rest of the day off to rejuvenate and try again tomorrow.”

  The other members of the play didn’t look as though they agreed with Julie.

  As the cast filed out, all Gretchen could do was hope they’d come back.

  Nina came out of the break room with two cups of coffee. “After what you went through last night, you should be the one taking the day off. How awful for that poor woman.”

  They sat down in upholstered chairs on the stage.

  “Right now I’m extremely worried about Nacho and Daisy,” Gretchen said. “Why didn’t Daisy signal to me when I was at the cemetery?”

  “How did they ever manage before they met you?”

  The two homeless people had been a source of frustration for Gretchen ever since she’d met and become friends with them, shortly after her move to Arizona. She wanted to help them, but she assumed that meant they had to change. She was learning fast that her method wasn’t working.

  Still, she didn’t want to give up.

  “I called the police station without finding out anything. Daisy isn’t answering her cell. I don’t want to bother Matt until later. I’m sure he worked through the night.”

  “Nacho and Daisy will be fine. It’s this project and your safety that I’m worried about. Everything’s off-kilter. Auras are wrong. Everything.”

  Her aunt was different than most people, but her views weren’t without merit. She saw life through a different colored lens, and though she didn’t like to admit it, Gretchen understood much of Nina’s madness.

  “If I’d had a vote,” her aunt continued. “I would have voted no to taking this on.”

  “Why?” For someone on the opposing side, Nina had certainly waded in to take over control of the play.

  “We don’t know anything about the owner. Caroline went down and looked at the deed. It’s titled to something called The Smart Investment Trust. That doesn’t tell us anything.”

  The arrangement was unusual, but also a good deal for the club. According to the terms of the agreement, the club would have several fundraisers to help with refurbishing and operating costs, and they would convert the home into a museum. In return, the owner would allow them to remodel as they wished and then use any revenues generated to keep the museum open and running.

  Nina scowled. “That wormy little attorney who is representing the owner, what’s his name?”

  “Dean McNalty.”

  “Him. There’s not one good reason why he can’t tell us who owns the house. I’d like to get answers out of him if it means wringing his scrawny little neck.”

  “Such violence from a proclaimed pacifist.”

  “I’m feeling a bit stressed,” Nina admitted.

  “Not only do we have a beautiful old building to work with, but the original owners were avid collectors. The house is filled with boxes of dolls.”

  With what they hoped to find inside the house and with the dolls the members had eagerly offered to donate, they might have opened the first floor to visitors by the end of the month. If only the paperwork hadn’t taken so long. She and her mother had received keys and had taken their first walk-through only three days ago.

  Gretchen sipped her coffee and looked around the empty room. “There isn’t anything more we can do here. Let me show you the museum. We have our work cut out for us, but the possibilities are limitless.”

  Chapter 6

  Gretchen and Nina walked the three short blocks from the rehearsal hall to the museum, led by Tutu. Caroline came out of the house while they were standing on the sidewalk admiring the architecture. Gretchen loved the Spanish Colonial Revival. It had a low-pitched red-tile roof, arched windows, and an asymmetrical design that Gretchen found intriguing. And it was right in the heart of one of the few remaining historic districts in the downtown area.

  To complete the perfect picture, a small balcony overlooking the street, and behind the house stood a tiny caretaker’s cottage. La casita in Spanish.

  “The home is owned by an eccentric, hermitlike woman, according to the owner’s attorney,” Caroline said, standing next to them. “No one has lived here for many years.”

  The entire doll club had been present for the inspection so Gretchen already knew that the home had been neglected for a very long time. At least most of the dolls had been boxed up and stored away from the damaging effects of dust and sunlight. And what a massive collection it was turning out to be! Generations of this family’s members must have been avid collectors.

  “Come in and see the progress we’ve made,” Caroline said.

  “Just so you know,” Nina said. “I’m firmly against what you are doing.”

  “Oh, really?” Caroline said. “Then you should go shopping. Come on, Gretchen.”

  The last thing her aunt could stand was being excluded. “I’ll stay,” she said. “Someone has to protect you two from your own actions.”

  Gretchen paused on the sidewalk to admire a large sign, finding herself once again in awe of her mother’s ability to negotiate. World of Dolls Museum, the sign read. A smaller sign hung beneath it announcing that it would open soon. “I like it. You convinced the new owner to name the museum after your doll book. A smart move.”

  Caroline beamed. “I had to work through the attorney,” she said. “He had to carry the request and subsequent questions and answers back and forth.”

  “Any luck getting the name of our generous benefactor while you were being so clever?”

  “None. We’ll have to tie the attorney down and torture it out of him.”

  Gretchen couldn’t imagine a worse idea that being trapped with the little man who had approached them with the offer. She’d be the one under torture. “Let’s see what’s happening inside,” she said, opening the museum door and stepping into the World of Dolls.

  No one was working in the front of the museum, but Gretchen could hear singing coming from the back of the house.

  Caroline set her purse on a counter. “April and I have been working nonstop the last two days. What you see here is all we’ve managed to organize so far.”

  “I love it already,” Gretchen said.

  Fabulous displays began at the entryway. The minute she entered Gretchen felt like she was on an exciting Disney ride. Smiling dolls with colorful clothing were placed in settings that would draw visitors further into the museum. The displays were like scrumptious appetizers, a promise to the di
ner that every course would be as flavorful as the first.

  I have a few calls to make,” Caroline said. “Look around. You have such a good eye for design, Nina. Come back in, oh, about fifteen minutes and tell me what you think would be the best layout.”

  Gretchen and Nina followed the melody down the hall and into a room on the left where fellow club member and good friend, April, was humming away while she arranged dolls. She had a rich, well-projected voice.

  April was the doll club’s appraiser. She had a keen eye for detail and a natural talent that Gretchen envied. April could touch a piece of doll clothing and tell you exactly where it came from and when. She was also Gretchen’s best friend along with Nina. April was about Gretchen’s own age but looked much older than Nina (who, at twelve years younger than Caroline, was almost closer to Gretchen’s age then her own sister’s). April was a big-boned woman who wore muumuus and colored socks with her sandals, and she absolutely adored a tiny Chihuahua named Enrico, another of Nina’s successful adoption placements.

  Gretchen and her aunt stood in the doorway and listened to the melody until April noticed them.

  “Hey, What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be directing?” she asked.

  “We gave the cast the day off,” Nina said as if it had been her idea.

  “Oh, good. Julie offered to help us after rehearsal,” April said. “That means she might come early.”

  “Look at this!” Gretchen exclaimed, stunned by the wonderful collectibles spread out on a metal worktable. “Wow!”

  “I’m going to do a walk-through,” Nina said. “My expertise is needed elsewhere.”

  “Go and create,” April said.

  April was thrilled to show Gretchen the display she was working on. She had almost completed a collection of Robert Tonner dolls—sixteen-inch Tyler Wentworth dolls with their ultramodern hair fashions and up-to-date casual wear. Fleece, peasant tops, jean jackets, accessories. Gretchen also admired a collection of Seventeen dolls by Ashton-Drake, wearing hip teenage fashions.

  “But some of these are new dolls,” Gretchen said, dazzled but puzzled. “They aren’t old enough to be part of the original collection, are they?”

  April smiled. “One of the ladies who is coming to our luncheon donated them after I solicited for a contribution. Can you believe it?”

  Gretchen shook her head in wonder, feeling very emotional. The doll collectors of Phoenix were some of the most generous, loving people she had ever met. This collection went far beyond her wildest expectations. If this, Gretchen’s first room of dolls, could make her tear up, what else was in store for her?

  “I’ve been so busy trying to shape the play and the players that I forgot about our actual cause, this museum.” Gretchen wiped away a tear of joy.

  “And this is only the beginning.” April stood back from the display with a critical eye. “Wait until after the fundraiser, when we have more money. Eventually we’ll open the upstairs rooms, too.” She picked up one of the dolls from the table and smoothed the hair. “This is one of the original owner’s dolls. Remember Starr?”

  How could Gretchen forget the teenager dolls? “And Starr’s friends, Tracy and Kelley,” she said.

  April held up two more 1980s dolls. “We don’t have a Shaun doll, but I’m on the lookout. He’s my favorite. He was the guy everybody wanted to date.”

  “He’s a doll, April,” Gretchen said, laughing. “Not a real guy.”

  “Not like your hunk,” April said. “If Matt were a doll, he’d be Shaun. Hot, sexy, smart, fun.”

  “He is all that.”

  “Starr and her doll friends went to Springfield High,” April said. “They came with schoolbooks, tambourines for their band, yearbooks, and all the latest fashions from the eighties.”

  “Those were the days,” Gretchen said. “Roller-skating, pep rallies, wholesome fun.”

  April snorted. “Wholesome fun! We also watched all those teenage slaughter movies. Remember those? Remember Friday the 13th with Adrienne King and Kevin Bacon? What a hunk that Kevin was. We’d be glued to the screen, chomping on popcorn, watching those poor camp counselor kids get chased around and killed by a psychopath.” She snorted again. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a wholesome time, but it sure was fun.”

  “Where’s Enrico?” Gretchen asked.

  April motioned to a Mexican tapestry purse hanging on the back of a chair. “Sleeping.”

  “What are you—”

  Gretchen next question was interrupted by a glass-shattering scream coming from above, someplace on the second floor of the massive house.

  She knew that voice.

  “Nina!” she shouted, rushing down the hall.

  Another scream.

  She reached the circular staircase and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time.

  Nina screamed for the third time.

  Chapter 7

  Gretchen reached the top of the stairs with her mother right behind her. They stopped at the landing and listened. Caroline, her breath ragged, grasped the dark wood banister on the landing for support.

  “Are you okay?” Gretchen asked her mother, worried.

  Caroline nodded. “I’ll be all right. Where do you think she is? Nina!”

  There was no response.

  “You go that way,” Gretchen said, pointing to a hall on the left before turning to the one to the right.

  She listened to her mother’s footsteps on the tile floor, heard her open a door and call out her sister’s name.

  Gretchen did the same. As she approached the second room, she heard a tiny, muffled voice. “I’m in here.”

  Gretchen followed Nina’s voice into a room had been converted into a large storage closet. Every bit of space was filled with boxes of dolls that hadn’t been catalogued yet. Stacks and stacks of them with little room to enter.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  “I found her,” Gretchen called loud enough for her mother to hear. Then she squeezed down a narrow aisle between the boxes until she found her aunt on the floor.

  Nina was a sight to behold. All that was visible were two red high heels and bare calves sticking out from underneath a display case piled high with boxes. “Help,” Nina croaked, her voice muffled under the case.

  “What are you doing down there?” Wasn’t this exactly in character for her aunt? Nina wasn’t happy unless she was the center of attention. What better way then to worm under a piece of furniture and start screaming.

  Her aunt wiggled her legs, almost stabbing Gretchen with a spiky heel.

  Caroline appeared in the doorway and accurately read Gretchen’s annoyed expression.

  “Nina’s physically okay,” her mother called down the steps to April. “It’s her mental state we’re concerned with.” She squeezed into the room. “What was all the screaming about?”

  “I’m stuck,” Nina cried. “Help me get out.”

  Gretchen lifted and moved several boxes, stacking piles even higher to make more room to work. Nina’s heels continued to swing wildly. “Quit kicking or we’ll leave you to get out by yourself.” Her aunt lowered her feet.

  Gretchen cleared enough space to get on one side of the case while Caroline got on the other. They tipped it back to release a discombobulated Nina. She was a mess. Mascara was smudged under her eyes and her hair stood straight up, smashed into a Mohawk.

  “How did you get under there in the first place?” Caroline said, holding onto her sister’s arm to steady her as she rose. “Why would you crawl under a display case? Look at your dress. It’s filthy.”

  Nina acted like she didn’t hear them, focusing instead on the floor. “Tutu, darling, come to momma. Baby dolly, pooh bear, come, come.”

  Whimpering came from behind another stack of boxes. Nina edged though and extracted the schnoodle, giving her a big bear hug. “I was so worried.”

  “What is going on?” Caroline said. “You screamed like you were about to be murdered.”


  “It was terrible.” Nina said, her lip quivering. “But it’s gone now.”

  “What’s gone?” Gretchen scanned the room for poisonous critters. A black widow spider would have her leaping from the room, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.

  Her aunt didn’t even hear her.

  “Give me Tutu,” Caroline said, “before you drop her. And pull yourself together. You frightened us badly.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  While Caroline attempted to get an answer from Nina, Gretchen wandered the narrow pathways. A small wooden container about the size of a shoebox was propped open on top of one of the stacks.

  “That’s it,” Nina said, pointing at the little box with a trembling finger. “It came out of there.”

  Gretchen edged away. “What? A spider?”

  “No,” Nina said. “Nothing like that.”

  Cautiously, Gretchen made her way over and picked up the wooden container. “What a beautiful doll trunk!” Old-fashioned travel stickers were pasted on the trunk in random fashion. Flowered paper lined the inside of the trunk, and it had a tiny drawer on one side where accessories could be stored. “It’s old but in very good shape,” Gretchen said, bringing it back with her.

  “It’s also empty,” Caroline noted, glaring at her sister before saying to Gretchen, “Travelers used to apply stickers to their travel trunks. These are faded with age, and they are certainly authentic. Even the hinges are antiques. A lucky doll must have toured the world inside of it.”

  “This one is from Cairo.” Gretchen had to squint to make out the lettering on the worn stickers. “Another from London.”

  She glanced at her aunt. Nina was pale and leaned against the display case. “What came out of the trunk?” she said to her. “A bat?”

  “No, not even close.” She patted her hair down with both hands and eyed the trunk suspiciously. “You’re going to laugh at me.”