by Wyborn Senna
The piece she was assigned to write was worse than expected. Jenna’s brilliant idea was for four staff writers to answer personal ads and go on dates, writing about their experiences and sharing them in the supplement due out the weekend before Valentine’s Day.
“I’m going to do it myself,” Jenna exclaimed, as a chunk of hair flopped forward onto her face. She blew upwards and smoothed it back, then jumped off the table and repositioned her micro jean skirt. “I just love romance, all that yummy stuff.”
“Fabio,” Jenna’s assistant Rhea said, Cheetos falling from her mouth.
Jenna’s other two assistants, Bree and Nibbles, giggled.
Caresse signaled that she got the message and knew what to do.
She also knew something else: she didn’t want to do it.
She was 37. She was divorced. She was a mom. She was tired.
City Editor Seth Tanner poked his head into the room. Blond and moon-faced, with round-lensed glasses, he grinned and wagged a finger at Caresse, who promptly headed over to him.
“You like Barbies, right?” he asked. He fiddled with his cell phone, brought up a news story, gave the phone to her, and studied her expression as she read the condensed newsflash. The online photo showed upstate New York crime scene investigators working around the debris of a demolished Saturn, one of them holding what looked to be a speaker cover. The headline read, “Oswego Couple Dies in Explosion,” with the subheading, “Wife’s Barbie Collection Missing.”
She scrolled down and read the summary:
An unusual connection has been made between the two beloved SUNY Oswego College employees who died as a result of a rigged car bombing and Barbie dolls. In searching the home of the late Mike and Gayle Grace, who were found dead on the scene in the back parking lot at Sheldon Hall yesterday, Gayle’s sister Megan Dailon has informed detectives that the Barbie collection Gayle coveted has been marauded.
Dailon affirms her sister’s collection was safe as recently as last week, when she dropped by to have dinner with the late couple. “Gayle and I talked about her Barbies all the time,” Dailon said. “She loved her collection and took time to look at it daily, because it was her cherished hobby. The placement of each of her dolls on each of her shelves was very important to her. She knew what she had, and she knew what she still wanted to get. We kept an inventory of every doll and outfit. What is left of her collection since the homicides does not even begin to suggest the scope of what she owned. Her best dolls, dressed in the ensembles she cherished most, are now gone. Whoever stole them knew the value of what they took and made only the poorest attempt to make the collection appear undisturbed. There is no doubt in my mind the death of my sister and her husband are directly related to the theft of her Barbies.”
Caresse looked up, stunned.
“I know,” Seth said, accepting his phone back. “Totally up your alley.”
4
P.J. went to visit her half-brother the following Tuesday. Darby lived ten miles away in Glendale, in an apartment complex that was built partially beneath the Glendale Freeway near Harvey Drive.
Darby’s best friends in the complex were a couple of married drunks who didn’t need New Year’s Eve to make it a party. The joke was that they both worked in healthcare—Bob as a transporter of medical equipment to various hospitals and Bev as a nurse at a local hospital’s maternity center. A trip down to the basement and past the laundry room brought a person to their door and into a world of hard booze and painkillers. If Darby wasn’t home, he was likely with Bob and Bev, getting stoned and watching Comedy Central courtesy of Charter Cable.
On this Tuesday evening, however, Darby was home.
Recently injured at an unlicensed construction gig when a pile of lumber fell and crushed him beneath its weight, Darby was resting his ruined back and enjoying Internet porn. After he let P.J. in, he turned to see what was on his monitor before rushing across the room to close a site showing pictures of Swedish girls vomiting into each other’s mouths.
P.J. laughed as she flopped onto the aging brown couch and put her feet up on the arm at the far end. “Have you seen that South Park episode? I’m surprised you’re not looking at Brazilian fart porn.”
Darby was glad to see his half-sister in a relaxed mood. He straightened his Lakers cap and sat down across from the couch in an overstuffed brown chair.
“So when’d you make it back?”
“Sunday. Goddamn Amtrak takes four days to go cross-country.”
Darby went back to the computer desk that faced a porch overlooking a garden bed, the complex garage entrance, and the street below. He Googled “SUNY” plus “Oswego” plus “car” plus “explosion” and came up with the front-page news. Photos of Gayle and Mike, cropped to equal height and width, were embedded in the lead paragraph of the article that began in larger font on the left-hand side of the screen. No longer were they two thickly-bundled strangers whose faces were hidden in parka hoods. Gayle was a chubby-cheeked brunette with blond highlights in her hair. She wore a strand of pearls; a conservative, high-collared blouse; and simple gold button earrings. Mike’s dark hair, gray at the temples and cut short, was parted on the right. His charcoal suit was accessorized with a wide orange and blue striped tie held in place with a diamond tack.
To balance the photos on the left, the right-hand side of the layout was devoted to the investigation. Darby read quietly for a few minutes while P.J. alternated between resting her eyes and gazing at the back of his full head of light brown hair, poorly cut but tucked neatly inside his purple and gold cap. Her half-brother’s hair was darker than hers; he had inherited his melanin-rich coloring from his dad’s side of the family. Their eyes, however, were their mother’s ice-flecked blue.
When Darby was satisfied, he turned around. “Looks like you listened to the master.” He was younger than P.J., but he never lost an opportunity to remind her that when shove came to thrust, he could be smarter, swifter, and shiftier.
“Yep, so what’s next?” She smoothed down the front of her pale blue blouse and used the toe of one loafer to peel down the back of her other shoe. It clunked on the floor and the second one followed.
“Are you losing weight?” Darby rubbed the bridge of his nose. She looked great—in fact, quite a bit like the classic Barbies she collected—and he found himself wondering for the thousandth time if she would have dated him if they weren’t related, but the odds were against him. She was miles above him socially and was married to a successful entrepreneur with two degrees and a great job. She was smart and had her own business. She was beautiful. She was a bitch. She needed him, but she oftentimes found him pathetic.
While Darby fantasized about P.J., P.J. analyzed Darby and gave him a failing grade in the looks department. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like the Unabomber?” P.J.’s face was screwed up when she said this, so he couldn’t tell whether she was serious or laughing at him. “Finish growing a mustache and grab yourself some old Aviator frame sunglasses and you’ll be all set.”
The similarities were indeed there—and not just any facial features he might share with Ted Kaczynski. Given the opportunity to blow something up or burn it down, Darby chose explosions every time.
“I was thinking about that,” Darby said, clearing his throat and sloughing off P.J.’s rude remark. He walked across the room and returned to his chair.
He looked around at the walls plastered with metal signs from bottling companies and gas stations. Some were reproductions and some were originals. His gaze stopped as he focused on an old Coca-Cola sign above the door. He examined the lettering, advertising “Ice Cold Coca-Cola Sold Here!” in white, green, and red.
Darby lost his train of thought.
P.J. got up and walked to Darby’s fridge. There was nothing edible in the stone-age white Frigidaire aside from a half-full jar of Vlasic pickles, a half-gallon of Alta Dena Milk, and a grimy jar of Peter Pan creamy peanut butter. A loaf of potato bread, wedged far in the back, was
now grayish-green with mold. On the lowest shelf above the crisper bin slots, there were dried orange blobs that had fallen from a nearly empty, uncovered bowl of tangerine Jell-O. There wasn’t much she could do except continue to supplement Darby’s $998 monthly disability checks that arrived every month on or near the sixteenth. The apartment, which he insisted on keeping to himself and not sharing, ate up $650 of that. The rest went to Internet service, cable TV, food, and cigarettes. Sometimes he took an odd job or helped out friends and came home with a spare bill or two, but it was all P.J. could do to keep from worrying about whether or not he could survive without her.
She walked back into the living room, feeling the snagged and tattered holes in the steel gray carpet beneath her toes.
She stared at her half-brother. He had fallen asleep, his Lakers cap now floating around his thick light brown hair like a halo pinned against the back of the chair. Yes, he had their mother’s eyes, but his mouth was thinner lipped and his chin was much more prominent. Of the two of them, she had lucked out with the looks.
P.J. took a moment to quietly head upstairs. Darby’s mattress lay on the floor, covered by one baby blue blanket, sticky yellowed sheets, and a flat pillow. She stared out the window at the 2 North. Cars were zipping onto the Glendale Freeway, heading up to Montrose and points beyond. Maybe she should work on the next murder by herself. She could think of countless women who deserved to die. For starters, there was Hailey Raphael in Tucson, Time Taylor in Oak Harbor, and Zivia Uzamba in Las Vegas—and those were just the names at the top of her list.
P.J. smoothed back her blond hair and pressed her nose against Darby’s cool windowpane. When she grew tired of watching traffic, she headed downstairs, grabbed a piece of paper from the top drawer of Darby’s desk and yanked a pencil stub out of a cup. After writing, “Bro, I love you!” in her spidery scrawl, she peeled a scrap of masking tape from the corner of the desk and stuck the note to his monitor.
She stood back to admire it. It was centered perfectly.
Time to retrieve her loafers and put them on.
She left, her half-brother comatose in his favorite ratty chair.
5
The next day at work, Caresse headed to the Best Barbie Board to investigate the death of Gayle Grace. There was no better place online to chat with fellow diehard Barbie doll collectors and fans. There was a search function, so she entered the word “Grace” and found what appeared to be the first mention of Gayle’s death.
The first note, posted hours after the initial news reports, came from Ilene Lynch, who also lived in Oswego and belonged to the same Barbie club Gayle had helped start five years earlier. Her user name was COLORMAGIC, a nod to the 1966 Barbies with hair that could change from Golden Blonde to Scarlet Flame or Midnight to Ruby Red, thanks to packets of color-changing solution.
The Best Barbie Board gave members the option to post either a photo of themselves or an avatar. The postage stamp-sized picture Ilene provided was a headshot of her favorite Color Magic Barbie, a Midnight beauty, splendid against the lavender backdrop of her original plastic case.
COLORMAGIC: Just heard word of a shocking tragedy. Gayle Grace and her husband are gone. A car bombing, they say. At SUNY Oswego, of all places. They were just leaving work and their Saturn blew up right there in the parking lot. Inside word is, the car was rigged. It doesn’t make any sense. I am in shock.
Sabeana Moss, moderator of the BBB and a pretty, thirty-something strawberry blond according to her tiny online photo, was first to reply.
SMOSS: Ilene, I am so sorry to hear Gayle is gone. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? If you hear any more from the locals, please keep us posted. And if you talk to Megan, please give her our best.
Ilene had not replied.
Caresse did a search for follow-up conversations. It was long past lunchtime, when the office was usually calm, but she couldn’t shut out the fact that her boss Seth was red-faced and pacing between the head copy desk and his own. By the time his moon-shaped glasses started to fog, she realized there must be a last-minute change to the afternoon edition in the works.
Ann explained that they were set to run a sports feature that day, singing the praises of an eighteen-year-old seven-footer from Minneapolis who, courtesy of a full basketball scholarship, was ready to make waves at Cal Poly in the fall. But a few hours earlier, the kid was arrested in Wisconsin for driving the getaway vehicle for his sixteen-year-old accomplice, who entered a bank with a sawed-off shotgun and quietly told a teller to hand over all the money in her drawer.
The young man’s high school coach, the Cal Poly Mustangs’ coach Kevin Bromley, and Cal Poly Media Relations Director Brian Thurmond were reeling. The typical comments about him being a nice kid, a quiet kid, a kid with a solid background did nothing but salt the wounds of those who had held such high hopes for his college career.
“Can’t run a fluff piece about how fabulous he is if he’s gonna be in court instead of on the court this fall,” Ann quipped.
Seth slammed down his phone. “Caresse,” he screamed. “Go back, locate Skip, and find out if D section has run. We’re going to yank it.”
Caresse jumped out of her seat and ran toward the back of the building. In her wake, she heard Seth screaming at Bo in Sports to find something on the wire to replace the pulled feature.
The machinery in the pressroom roared like King Kong.
Caresse looked around wildly. Finally, she spotted Skip.
“Stop!” she screamed.
Skip peered at her through his dense goggles and frowned.
“Stop!” she repeated.
Skip was talking to a man whose back was toward her, but she could tell even from his backside that A, he was a stranger to the pressroom, and B, he was ridiculously handsome. She ran up to Skip and dragged him to the open garage, pulling him down the ramp, away from the noise. Less than a minute later, he flew back inside and threw the switch that halted the run.
Her job now done, Caresse had a chance to scope out the stranger. He looked just like Andy Childs. He could be Andy Childs’ brother, so close was the resemblance.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied, walking over to him. She was 5′10″ and still only came up to his shoulders. His blond hair was lighter than his beard, and he wore a t-shirt underneath a classic striped button-down with jeans.
Returning to her computer to read more about the Barbie murder was now temporarily on the back burner. If she had to go on dates for the Valentine feature anyway, she’d found a great excuse to ask this hottie out.
6
P.J. grabbed her suitcase and her empty duffel and got off the Sunset Limited at the Tucson, Arizona Amtrak Station on East Toole shortly after noon the last Sunday in January.
She wandered around the station building for a moment to get her bearings. It had been renovated in recent years and had white tile floors in the ticketing and waiting areas that gleamed beneath inset fluorescent lights. Outside the pillared building, on the platform side, the name of the city was spelled out in capital letters.
P.J. sighed with pleasure as the sixty-degree midday winter warmth surrounded her. This was so much better than the journey to Oswego that she could scarcely compare the two. She had decided to alternate her killing technique between Darby’s ideas, which mostly involved complicated wiring, rigging, and explosive devices, and her own hands-on approach.
Hailey Raphael had earned P.J.’s enmity the year before when P.J. shared pictures of her blond, freckle-less Midge on the Barbie boards and Hailey accused her of having removed the doll’s freckles with nail polish remover.
P.J. remembered the exchange vividly.
HR: Thanks for sharing your pictures, P.J., but that isn’t an authentic freckle-less Midge. If it were, her hair would be longer. Are you sure someone didn’t apply a little nail polish remover to her face? ;-)
PJ-RULEZ: Thanks for your note, Hailey. This is an authentic freckle-less Midge. I have had her since chi
ldhood. In fact, she was my first and favorite doll, given to me by my Aunt Liz. I am aware some people try to pass off dolls with removed freckles as the real deal, but this is not the case with me.
HR: It’s not that I’m calling you a liar, P.J., but something smells fishy. If she was your favorite doll, are you sure the freckles didn’t just get rubbed off from constant play? Maybe you were playing next to a bottle of open nail polish remover?
PJ-RULEZ: LOL. Not funny.
HR: You say you got your Midge from your Aunt Liz? Maybe she removed the freckles?
PJ-RULEZ: Not likely. As I’ve told everybody here before, my Aunt Liz worked for Mattel in the Sixties and brought home something from the employee store in El Segundo nearly every week. This Midge was in her box, with stand AND booklet AND wrist tag intact, wearing her two-piece blue swimsuit and white heels.
HR: Hmm. I think your Aunt Liz was having a little fun with you.
After that last note, P.J. was too angry to respond. After her silence, everyone thought she had let it go. Instead, Hailey ended up on P.J.’s list—and now she was here to kill her.
Standing outside the station, P.J. realized she must have had a scowl on her face because a concerned-looking, clean-cut man about her age approached and asked if she needed help with her bags. She politely declined and tried to smile, admitting to herself that if she hadn’t wanted to attract attention, she shouldn’t have worn a sheer dress and heels.
After she said no to the man, he moved a few respectful steps away and lit a Camel he’d retrieved from a pack deep in his right front pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, she studied him. He was dressed in navy and was compact and cleft-chinned, with a brush cut. Military or just made that way?