Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  Gretchen tugged on her arm. “Come on. We’ll tie him up, and then call the cops.”

  “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “Me, too. But we don’t have a choice. He’ll recover and get away if we give him a chance. He has to be stopped.”

  “I agree. But what was that sound we heard? We didn’t meet anyone when we went down the hall. What if there are two of them inside?”

  “He’s alone,” Gretchen said. “The ghost must have alerted us.”

  Now she was sounding like Nina, who would have said that was the only explanation.

  Caroline stared at her for a second.

  “I’ll deny ever saying that,” Gretchen said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” her mother said.

  Jerome sat on the same step, cupping his hands over his eyes. Gretchen gave him another blast for good measure while Caroline ran behind the counter to get the toolboxes filled with doll repair supplies.

  “He has a knife,” Gretchen said, spotting the weapon. It was open, and close enough for him to reach it once he could see again. She pushed it away with her foot, careful to avoid the blade. “A switchblade.”

  He moaned before reaching out to grab her ankle. She backed up. “Stay still, unless you want more of the same.”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” he said, beginning to cough.

  “You aren’t in any position to make threats.”

  Caroline came back with strips of leather, remnants left over from repairing a doll’s kid-leather body. “I hate to waste it on him,” she said ruefully.

  Jerome tried to protest, but his eyes were clamped shut and he was overcome with uncontrollable coughing.

  “I think I saw this man at the accident scene,” Caroline said. “I remember the gray overalls. He was talking to a group of homeless people.”

  “More evidence against him.”

  “At least I think it’s the same man.” Caroline handed a piece of leather to Gretchen.

  Within minutes they had Jerome trussed up like a turkey ready for the oven.

  “Catching bad guys,” Gretchen said, standing back and admiring their work, “is kind of fun.”

  Chapter 40

  Gretchen stood next to the World of Dolls museum sign. She glanced curiously at the old house’s windows while her mother called to report the captured stalker.

  Was he a murderer? Had he killed Allison Thomasia?

  Gretchen shuddered at the thought. He had inserted himself into their group. He could have struck at any moment. Any of them might have been his next victim.

  Jerome, if that was even his real name, wasn’t going anyplace at the moment other than jail. Houdini wouldn’t be able to get out of the knots they’d tied. Their repair expertise was paying off in more ways than one.

  She wondered how long the effects of the pepper spray would last. Thirty minutes to an hour at least. Gretchen was amazed at how well it had worked, dropping him almost instantly.

  Early Sunday morning and they had vindicated Allison’s husband, Andy. He could come out of hiding. Gretchen was sure he’d be thrilled about that. Living with the homeless for a few days must have been quite the experience, and not one he’d be likely to want to repeat.

  The early morning traffic was light since most of the downtown establishments wouldn’t open until later. Gretchen glanced at her watch. Five a.m. She wished she could greet the dawn properly. If she was at the top of Camelback Mountain, she would be able to see the reddish orange glow of the sun rising from the east. In front of the museum, surrounded by buildings, the earth remained dark, except for the artificial illumination of the city’s streetlights.

  “The police are on their way,” Caroline said, slipping her phone into a pocket, where it promptly rang again. “I shouldn’t answer it,” she said, digging it out, and reading the information on the screen. “It’s low on power.”

  “Who’s calling?” Gretchen asked.

  “I don’t recognize the number.”

  “Better answer it.”

  Caroline looked tired as she clicked the Talk button. “It’s Julie,” she said to Gretchen after listening for a moment. “She’s been doing research of her own and says she has important information.”

  After another few minutes, Caroline said, “Can’t you tell me on the phone?” Gretchen could hear the frustration in her voice. “We’re at the museum and a little busy at the moment. We caught someone breaking in...we have the kill…all right, yes, fine.”

  Caroline disconnected. “Julie sounds excited and wants to meet right now. I tried to explain that we have the man who killed Allison, but she cut me off.”

  “She wants to meet at five in the morning? She must have worked all night. She won’t come here?”

  “No. She refuses to come to the Swilling house, especially with police on the way. I don’t blame her.”

  “I’d like to run away myself,” Gretchen said. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “She says she thinks she knows who killed Allison Thomasia. She found concrete evidence against someone and wants to compare it to what we’ve learned. If we decide that it’s important and if we agree with her, then she will come forward.” Caroline looked both ways down the street. “The police should arrive momentarily. We have to stay until our statements have been recorded. She wants to meet at the banquet hall. She’s on her way there and says she’ll wait as long as it takes.”

  Gretchen heard sirens in the distance. She wasn’t ready to face Matt. “I’ll meet Julie. You take care of Jerome, or Richard, or whatever his name is, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “You’re ducking out so you don’t want to have to explain to your boyfriend why you tied up another man in the middle of the night.” Even exhausted, her mother had enough energy to lighten the situation.

  “He’d understand.” Sure, yah, right.

  “I’m sure he would.”

  “Sarcasm will get you nowhere. Besides, with any luck, Matt’s off duty tonight.”

  “You’re overly optimistic. Want to bet he shows up?”

  “No bet.”

  “Call me when you find out what’s going on with Julie.”

  “I don’t have a phone. You made me leave it in the car.”

  “Take mine. I don’t need it. And be careful.”

  “There isn’t anything to be afraid of anymore,” Gretchen said. “We have the killer. Hopefully Julie will have more evidence to use against him. It’s over.”

  “Be careful anyway.”

  Gretchen took the cell phone and hurried down the street.

  Chapter 41

  Terry lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s his day off. He should sleep the morning away and spend the rest of the afternoon reading the Sunday paper and watching old movies, but he does his best problem solving through the night. This one has been no exception. He’s wide awake when his cell phone rings.

  “We have a break in the case,” Matt Albright says from the other end. “Evidence recovered by the ME, found at the trauma site around Allison Thomasia’s head wound. Minute traces of anthropomorphized rock.” His friend is speaking in choppy sentences. He’s excited.

  “What’s that?” Terry asks. Matt is relaying the medical examiner’s fancy words. She’ll never learn to bring her information down to human level.

  “It’s residue from a rock indigenous to Israel. Now I have a pretty good idea what killed Allison Thomasia. It was the same weapon that probably killed Flora Berringer, too. A geologist’s hammer.”

  A geologist’s hammer. Or a rock pick, to be exact. When Terry was a kid, he had a brief fascination with rocks. He knows about this particular tool. The square hitting end is used to break open rock samples, to look for fossils inside. The other end of the tool, used on hard rock, is shaped like a pick for maximum striking pressure.

  Matt keeps talking. “A heavy hammer like that could crush a skull without much force behind it. In the case of our killer? Lots of force was
exerted, much more than required.

  “Signifying uncontrolled rage,” Terry says.

  “Who knows what goes on inside the mind of a killer?”

  Matt is like an efficient machine, narrowing down the playing field. His woman has been threatened and that has inspired and enflamed him. They are eliminating suspects as quickly as possible, moving others to the top of the list.

  “It should be easy from here on in,” Terry says, knowing it won’t be.

  “Right. All we have to do is find a geologist with a motive, the rock pick that was used to kill two women, and a few missing men.”

  “Easy,” Terry says.

  “Right,” Matt agrees.

  Chapter 42

  The world is like a big picture window. You can watch people and events from the inside while remain totally invisible to those on the outside. It’s like being on the observation side of a one-way mirror: hearing, seeing, waiting.

  The time for waiting is over. He almost didn’t recognize her. She’d changed her appearance. The hair, the clothes, the added pounds. Something in the way she walked gave her away.

  Now he knows for sure, what he suspected all along.

  The evil witch isn’t dead. He’ll never be rid of her.

  She won’t let up until she destroys him. Playing games, twisting the truth so he’ll get the blame. He hates her with an intensity that leaves him shaking. Wicked, Insane.

  Memories explode randomly like they always do when something sets him off.

  Then comes the rage.

  Chapter 43

  Gretchen let herself into the hall, flipped on a light in the break room, sat down in the overstuffed chair on the stage, and dozed off. She awoke to the sound of her mother’s cell phone ringing and fumbled to answer it, struggling to shake off the inertia that had come with exhaustion.

  “Daisy,” she said when she recognized the homeless woman’s voice. “Why are you calling now? It’s -” she checked her watch. Nine a.m.- “early for you.” Not as early as Gretchen, thought.

  Had she really been asleep for several hours? Where was Julie? After all the drama, the woman hadn’t shown up. Gretchen needed to get back to the museum. Yet she was so tired.

  “Word on the street,” Daisy said sounding upset, a rarity from the Red Hat Lady, “is Jerome has been arrested.”

  “Yes.” Gretchen’s mind was still fuzzy, but clearing quickly. “How do you know him?” Or about him?

  “He’s one of us.”

  “Sorry to hear he’s a friend of yours,” Gretchen said. “He’s in deep trouble.”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “He broke into the museum and attacked us with a switchblade. And he may have killed two women already.”

  “No! He didn’t kill anybody. He was watching over you.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  To what extent would the homeless go to protect one another? As far as they had to?

  “It’s true. I sent him when I heard that you needed someone to work the stage lights. It was a perfect excuse to get someone inside to take care of you.”

  Gretchen stood up, began pacing the stage. “Why would I need protection?”

  “Nina told me some of it, about your future. You have to get some street smarts, Gretchen.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You are going to get yourself killed if you aren’t more careful. You blew it with Jerome. That was a bad call. Now the cops are going to stop looking and concentrate on making him confess.” The homeless woman, usually unflappable, sounded distressed.

  Why should Gretchen assume that the man creeping up the stairs with a switchblade was on her side? It couldn’t possibly be true.

  No. She didn’t buy into the bodyguard idea. Maybe gullible Daisy believed in Jerome, but Gretchen didn’t. He’d scared her from the very beginning with his sneaky ways and cold eyes.

  “The cops have your mother,” Daisy said.

  “She’s the main witness.”

  “They took her in.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My friends keep me informed. I’ll get back to you when I know more. In the meantime, be careful.”

  Daisy disconnected, leaving Gretchen confused about many things. Daisy might sound more lucid these days, but she was clearly still paranoid and delusional.

  Then she remembered Andy. She had forgotten to warn Daisy to stay away from him, to stop assisting him. Not that it mattered any longer.

  The police must have needed Caroline’s statement at the police station. She’d be working her way through bureaucratic red tape, trying to explain the entire story front to back. But why hadn’t Caroline called Gretchen to let her know?

  Maybe her mother hadn’t wanted to put her through hours of tedium at the police station. Or Matt had arrived on the scene and had lost his sense of humor. Or she wanted to give Gretchen enough time to interview Julie without a battalion of law enforcement officers arriving and scaring the cop-phobic woman away.

  But Julie hadn’t held up her end. Where was she? Why hadn’t she called?

  A quick glance at the phone told her why.

  Oh, jeez.

  A quick glance at the phone showed that it was now dead.

  Gretchen was stranded at the banquet hall without a phone or transportation.

  What if, a big if, Daisy was correct about Jerome? Impossible. He came inside the museum with a knife, and he would have killed them if he’d been given the chance.

  No, they couldn’t have been wrong about Jerome.

  She had time right now to think about the killings, to go over everything that had transpired. She selected one of Bonnie’s teddy bears from the stage display. It had button-shaped eyes, plush faux fur, and a white crocheted collar with a pink bow. Gretchen made herself comfortable in the stage chair with the teddy bear in her lap and stared at the large Barbie doll.

  Good thing she had locked the front door.

  At least she’d done something right.

  Eventually they would come looking for her. She’d stay right where she was until that happened.

  Chapter 44

  Andy Thomasia is attempting to learn the ways of the street people, trying to blend in, to be cautious of blind alleys, and suspicious of everyone he meets. He has turned his hours of wakefulness around, sleeping through the day in one of Nacho’s safe places, roaming the streets at night. He only has to do this for two days, he repeatedly tells himself.

  Time’s almost up.

  After Gretchen left him sitting in her car in the parking lot, running away as though she had something to hide, he’d searched the car. He took her cell phone, turning it off to save on power. He scooped up quarters from the ashtray and put them in his pocket to use for bus tickets. He couldn’t follow the women once they drove away in the cab, but he would use the Phoenix transportation system to search some of the places they may have gone.

  He wants information from them, whatever they might have. Why would Gretchen run unless someone has turned them against him, convinced the Birches that he is guilty? Were they judging him on old evidence or on new?

  He takes a bus toward the coffee shop where he first met Caroline, thinking about the woman from his past. The only thing different about Caroline since he saw her years ago is the color of her hair. And the distrustful daughter. The bus continues past the museum, where he observes a police officer getting into a squad car. What’s going on there?

  A few blocks later, Andy steps down from the bus. He strolls along the crosswalk toward the banquet hall. Good thing Caroline mentioned it or he wouldn’t know where to look next.

  The museum is off-limits if cops are hanging around, that’s obvious. He wonders what might have occurred there, but he doesn’t dwell on it for long.

  Andy leans against the entrance door and peers inside through a door pane. A tiny bit of light shines down the hall, which could be anybody or nobody. But Caroline and Gretchen might be inside.

  If they aren
’t, he’ll pass the morning off the street, waiting for them. Sunday, Gretchen had said. She would turn him in on Sunday. He’ll stay inside and call Caroline’s cell from the one he took from Gretchen’s car. When the time is right.

  If they are inside, he’ll deal with them.

  Locks. Andy shakes his head. Not good for squat. A lock is guaranteed to give you a false sense of security. All he needs for this one is a paper clip and a screwdriver, but he has the whole lock-picking shebang. He might as well use them, get in the fastest way. He removes a tool from his pocket and does a visual sweep up and down the sidewalk and street. No one notices the bum by the door.

  Andy rakes the lock by inserting a pick into the keyhole. Then he pulls it out quickly, hearing the click of the pins. Next he turns the plug with a tension wrench and grins with satisfaction.

  That’s all it takes. He’s inside.

  Chapter 45

  Gretchen finished off another cup of coffee and started a fresh pot. Nothing like caffeine to get her mind working in full throttle. She’d gone over the past week’s events, recalling as many little nuances as possible, noting anything and everything unusual, which turned out to be most of it. Her Aunt Gertie had been wise with her advice. Any time her instincts had set off an alarm in her head, any time she thought connections weren’t logical, she made another mental note.

  She wanted to prove without a doubt that Jerome was a killer. Could she work through events and verify it by eliminating some of the other suspects?

  But the task got too large. Her head couldn’t hold it all, especially after the long sleepless night. She went to pen and paper, using her newly acquired family tree building skills to form branches for murder suspects.

  She began one limb of the tree by writing in names of the attorney – Dean McNalty - and the newest trust beneficiary - Trudy Fernwich. But Gretchen had few facts to work with. A woman she’d never met who wanted to remain anonymous had hired an attorney to keep her identity secret and to make the museum happen.