Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  Gretchen stared at passing traffic, first ahead through the windshield, then in the rearview mirror. Flickers of panic shot through her. Was someone following them this very minute, parked close by with a scoped rifle?

  “Are you sure?” Gretchen asked. Her Birch imagination was out of control.

  Caroline laughed.

  “What’s funny about our situation?”

  “I’m pretty sure Matt Albright’s behind the tail.”

  “What?”

  “He’s having us watched. See, there goes his goon.”

  A squad car passed at a turtle’s pace. The driver craned to get a good look at them.

  “He’s so obvious,” Gretchen said. “How did I miss him? How long has he been behind us?”

  “I’m not sure. I admire Matt for wanting to protect us, but how can we help Andy if we’re under police surveillance?”

  “I can lose him.”

  Gretchen pulled back into traffic as soon as she saw the police car park up the block. She made a U-turn in heavy traffic, jamming on the gas. Caroline let out a surprised squeal. Several horns blared. And they were off.

  “He’s turning around,” Caroline called. “He has his overhead lights on.”

  Gretchen took a corner, then another.

  “I think we’ve lost him,” her mother said.

  Gretchen turned one corner after another until she was satisfied that they weren’t being followed. The only option left for the cop would be to wait at the banquet hall or their home and hope to pick them up at one of their known haunts. With the museum closed to them and April handling the show, they could easily change their patterns.

  “Have you considered the possibility that Andy could have killed his wife?”

  “Yes, it crossed my mind, but I rejected it the moment I saw him again. Andy wouldn’t harm anyone for any reason.”

  “How can you be that sure? I don’t share your confidence. He doesn’t have an alibi, and he admits the relationship with his wife was tenuous. Not very reassuring.” Gretchen’s argument sounded logical, even to her troubled ears. “So you once had a casual friendship with Allison and Andy Thomasia. That doesn’t mean you have to harbor the man from criminal charges.”

  “Gretchen, calm down. I can explain.”

  “This better be really good, because I’m jeopardizing my relationship with Matt because of your blind faith in a man you haven’t seen for years.”

  “I should have told you much earlier that Andy and I were more than friends. We were high school sweethearts. He was my first love. Our senior year we went in different directions, grew apart, but we kept in touch occasionally.”

  Gretchen tried to imagine Andy and her mother together. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. She’d never imagined her mother with any man other than her father. “What about Dad?”

  “That was long before I knew your father. Come on, don’t you remember your first boyfriend?”

  She did remember her first love. She thought of him occasionally and wondered where he was and what he was doing. He held a special place in her heart and always would. But that didn’t mean she would protect him if he was accused of murder.

  “Don’t you understand how I feel?” Caroline asked. “Even a little?”

  “Knowing helps.”

  But not much.

  In her opinion, anyone was capable of murder given the right circumstances. Andy Thomasia hadn’t convinced her otherwise. Neither had her mother.

  Chapter 25

  Terry Vascar scans a stack of messages that came in through police dispatch while he was out. He kicks back, feet crossed on his desk. As a member of the Violent Crime Bureau, he collaborates closely with Phoenix PD Laboratory Services, Missing Persons Detail, and the medical examiner, among others.

  Today he is reviewing events with Matt Albright. They have collaborated on cases ever since graduating together from the academy.

  Their division has more cases to solve than they can handle. The department is short on trained personnel and they try to prioritize the cases the best they can. A recent murder takes precedence over old bones in an armoire. Not to mean they are being ignored. Only that Matt will have to count on others to assist with some of it.

  That’s where Terry comes in.

  He will let Matt know what he finds.

  “Allison Thomasia is my most important concern right now,” Matt says. “Along with substantiating evidence to support the investigation.”

  “Anthony Thomasia is on the run,” Terry says. “It’s only a matter of time before he surfaces. A man like that can’t last for long as a fugitive.”

  Matt rubs his face with both hands, as if attempting to rub away exhaustion. “The suspect and the victim were estranged,” he says, “but according to the husband, they were reconciling.”

  Rule number one, learned in the first week of the criminal justice program: assume everyone is lying.

  “The victim could have changed her mind,” Terry says. “She might have decided to move forward with the divorce. Rage, jealousy, unrequited love. All powerful motives for murder.”

  Matt nods, and Terry thinks of his friend’s problems, the former wife’s cunning, her manipulative tactics, would have been enough to make a weaker man consider murder.

  Matt’s lucky to be rid of her. Finally.

  “The suspect didn’t have an alibi,” Matt says.

  “Tough for him.”

  Usually a suspect can come up with at least one witness, even if the timing isn’t perfect. But this guy doesn’t have a single one, not a hotel desk clerk or a bartender who can establish an out for him. Never a good sign.

  And the suspect was certainly strong enough to crush Allison Thomasia’s skull, given the right weapon.

  Andy Thomasia could have had all three—motive, opportunity, and means.

  “If only they would locate the murder weapon,” Terry says.

  “They will.”

  Police have searched the hotel room. Nothing there, but Terry isn’t surprised.

  “Blunt force trauma to the back of the head,” Matt says. “Lacerations suggesting an object such as a hammer. But also sharp cuts, three deep incisional wounds. I called the ME. Not a claw hammer, she says. It isn’t sharp enough.”

  Terry and Matt go through the different types—sledge, club, ball, brick.

  Matt comes up with the brick hammer idea. “It’s designed for breaking brick,” he explains. “It has a blunt end, but it also has a sharp end. It’s a possibility as a murder weapon.”

  “Is your suspect a bricklayer?” Terry asks.

  “No. He’s a mechanic engineer.”

  “A handyman type?”

  “No idea. Can you put someone on it and start checking hardware stores?”

  “At your service,” Terry says.

  The Thomasia had woman crawled from one gravestone to another. The perpetrator had attempted to drag her away. Why had he stopped? Fear of discover? More likely the trail of blood that followed behind the victim canceled out his efforts to move her to a different grave site.

  The sharp blows that finished her off were delivered at the second headstone.

  No defensive marks on the victim’s knuckles or under her fingernails. The attack was unexpected, but the perpetrator wasn’t. She knew the killer.

  Matt’s phone rings.

  “They found Anthony Thomasia’s California drivers license,” he says when he disconnects, already rising from his chair.

  “Where?”

  “Under a bush at the entrance to Eternal View Cemetery.”

  “That takes care of it then.”

  “Maybe.”

  Rule number two: Assume the possibility that evidence has been planted.

  “Something is out of whack,” Matt says.

  He doesn’t stick around to explain, but Terry agrees.

  Chapter 26

  Andy Thomasia was waiting near the coffee shop at the arranged time. He rode in the backseat while he listened carefull
y to the impromptu plan that Caroline and Gretchen had implemented on his behalf. The original idea to stash him away in their home was no longer feasible, given the police protection that seemed to be in place.

  Two days, Gretchen reminded the former sweethearts. The deadline was Sunday at three in the afternoon. If they didn’t have a killer in their sights with enough information to go to the police, Andy would turn himself in.

  “Why was Allison’s doll at the cemetery?” he wanted to know.

  “That’s what I want to ask you,” Caroline said.

  “I have no idea at all, although she did bring a few dolls along on the trip to give as gifts if she found any relatives. It makes me think she was meeting someone.”

  “Are you sure you were staying with Allison?” Gretchen said, dispersing with social etiquette and cutting right to the chase. “You don’t have a clue what her plans were. You can’t tell us who she met, where she went, or what she was doing.”

  “Research, I told you. Genealogy study of her family history.”

  “You must have more than that,” Caroline said. “A name, an address, something to help us.”

  “I don’t care about things like who her third cousin twice removed might be. Come on, give me a break. All those charts and tree branches, who cares?”

  Charts? Gretchen thought. Of course!

  Gretchen almost slammed into the car ahead of her when it stopped at a light. She looked at Caroline, then glanced quickly back at Andy. “Were those charts computerized?” she asked.

  “She had a printout in her purse,” he said. “But the police told me that she didn’t have her purse when they found her. She used a computer program to record her genealogy research, and while we were in Phoenix, she carried a notebook. That’s gone, too. It would have been inside her purse.”

  “Did she bring her laptop?”

  Andy shook his head.

  “Can we access her home computer records?”

  “Without going back to LA, I don’t see how.”

  Gretchen stopped the car in front of a central Phoenix soup kitchen. Daisy had been quick to agree to their plan. Nacho, on the other hand, had reservations, but had acquiesced with a little prompting from his fiancée.

  “We’re leaving you with some friends,” Caroline explained to him. “Trust them. They won’t turn you in. What they will do is give you different clothes to wear and show you how to fit in. Follow their example. Watch how they act and follow suit. No one will look for you here. You’ll be in good hands.”

  Andy nodded.

  Gretchen gave her mother’s old friend a hard look to convey her feelings of distrust. “We won’t make contact with you until we have something to go on. Word will come to you through those who are helping.”

  “I understand.”

  While Caroline was inside getting Andy settled in his new environment with their homeless friends, Gretchen contemplated her next move. She couldn’t access Allison Thomasia’s computer, but she knew who could.

  “Detective Albright,” she said when he answered his phone. “I have information for you.”

  “Ms. Birch. So pleased to hear from you.”

  “Were you worried?”

  “Should I be?”

  The man liked to answer her questions with his own. She knew he had to be concerned, because their tail would have informed him that he’d lost the Birch car. Too bad.

  “You sound excited,” he said with a playful, amusement in his tone she could tell was forced. “What is this intriguing information? A new doll collection purchased by your lovely mother that will make you a rich woman? A newly opened restaurant to which you are about to invite me?”

  He was going to be so angry with her in a few more minutes. Gretchen almost hung up.

  “We have a bad connection,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”

  “I can hear you perfectly fine.”

  Great.

  “What I have to say is important.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “Allison Thomasia was related to our skeleton. I mean to the Swilling family. She was in Phoenix researching her family tree.”

  “Yes. I know.” A harder tone.

  Jeez.

  “Check her computer. She kept computerized records of her findings. You might find something useful in them.”

  Heavy, heavy sigh on the other end. “I’ve already done that. Where are you?”

  “Uh, running errands.”

  “You’re hiding from me, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not. I can’t believe you think that. Why would I hide?”

  She could have told him that the Birch women were busy trying to keep from getting killed and that to accomplish that goal they were aiding and abetting his primary suspect.

  He’d read her rights to her if she said that.

  “Are you any closer to finding out who tried to kill my mother?”

  “She told you about that?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re making progress. Where are you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Get to work and catch bad guys.”

  “We’re doing the best we can.”

  Not good enough!

  “I appreciate your concern over my safety,” Gretchen said. “The police protection was thoughtful and sweet, but we need to do this our way, not yours.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “My mother’s with me.”

  Since he was already worked up, Gretchen decided to tell him about the note on her windshield.

  “I need to see it,” he said.

  “It’s missing.”

  “I’m putting out an APB.” He was really, really mad, if she was any judge of male voice tones. “And how do you know about the victim’s computerized family history? And what do you think you’re doing outrunning an officer of the law. Gretchen?”

  She ended the call.

  Was he serious about the APB? Could he have her picked up? She doubted it. What was he going to do? Have her arrested every time she did something he didn’t approve of?

  Gretchen sensed a tiny glitch in their previously harmonic relationship. They had had another disagreement.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t be their last.

  Chapter 27

  Caroline and Gretchen spent the next hour parked in the crowded lot of the Biltmore Fashion Plaza making phone calls and warning their other club friends to be on the alert. No one knew why Caroline and Gretchen had been targeted, but all the Phoenix Dollers agreed that the Birch women must have crossed someone, someway, somehow.

  Gretchen and Caroline had been the driving force in negotiating the terms of the agreement regarding the museum; they had been singled out to represent the club by the attorney and had handled most of the transaction. They were the only members with keys to the house, a stipulation required by their benefactor.

  The other club members debated whether they too were in danger; it was a possibility they couldn’t ignore.

  April had a theory.

  “The most active members of the doll club are in big trouble,” she said when she answered her cell and learned of the day’s events. She considered herself in that group, along with Bonnie and Julie. The women would spend the night with friends and stay close together during rehearsals. They were armed with lipstick-size pepper spray, gifts from Nina to all the club members last holiday season.

  “It’s the pattern of threes,” April said. “Everything, including murder, comes in threes. Sets. For example, we eat three meals a day.”

  Gretchen had heard this before.

  “Three cheers,” the doll appraiser continued. “More sets of three—Hip, hip, hooray. Small, medium, and large. Three again. And then abbreviations. ABC, AAA, PTA, TNT,VIP. Before, during, and after. More threes.”

  April was building steam. “How about jokes? The minister, priest, and rabbi. The blonde, brunette, and redhead. Tom, Dick and Harry. All threes.”

  “Third time’s the charm,” Gret
chen added when April paused for breath. “Gotta go.”

  Nina offered to make sure Wobbles was well fed. She’d also pick up Nimrod from their house immediately and keep him with her. Nina, in case she was also on their adversary’s bad side, had her own safety plan.

  “I’m staying with Brandon for a few days,” she said coyly, turning the situation to her advantage. “It’ll give me a chance to see if he’s strong relationship material. No sense getting too involved if we aren’t cohabitatively compatible.”

  Gretchen hadn’t thought of asking Matt for help. Instead of arguing with him should she have moved in under his protection?

  Not that he’d offered.

  Not that she would have taken him up on it. She wasn’t the type of woman to play the helpless card. If they were going to make it for the long term, he needed to understand that she wasn’t going to walk two steps behind him.

  Gretchen felt better after talking to her friends. For now, everyone was safely off the streets and holed up in various hideouts.

  Thinking of being holed up in hideouts reminded Gretchen of her father’s sister, Gertie Johnson, who ran her own investigative business in the backwoods of the Michigan Upper Peninsula. She’d given Gretchen advice in the past that had helped her get out of some tight places.

  It was too bad that Gertie and Nina didn’t get along. The two women weren’t related by blood, but Gretchen’s aunts were very much alike—eccentric, opinionated, and stubborn—which was a major contributing factor in their inability to see life through the same type of lenses.

  Gretchen could use some of her Midwest aunt’s home-spun solutions. If only she didn’t live across the country.

  While Caroline sat next to her in the car talking to Bonnie on her cell, Gretchen called Aunt Gertie. She answered right away.

  It took a long time to relate the entire situation from the very beginning, but Gertie was a good listener, rarely interrupting, although she produced several vocal sounds, ranging from snorts to tongue clicks.

  Caroline hung up from her call and leaned back in the seat with her eyes closed as Gretchen continued on.