by Wyborn Senna
She struck gold when she entered the first room off the hallway on the right. An assault of calico drapery and bedding reinforced the image P.J. had of Hailey being born for prudish prairie life. A personal computer sat on the desk, along with student papers exhibiting youngsters’ evolving penmanship as they practiced writing the alphabet.
A curtained window in the room faced the backyard, where there was a large kidney-shaped pool and lounge chairs. It was the same pool seen in the photo Hailey shared online with friends. With hands still gloved, P.J. opened the window and a light breeze blew in, slamming the bedroom door with a loud bang—
* * *
Whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa whaa…
P.J. jolted awake and put her hand against her racing heart. The alarm clock beside the bed was flashing “8:00,” which looked like BOO, BOO, BOO, BOO in the darkened room.
She was home.
She had slept through the night.
The door had never slammed at the Raphael house in Tucson. The light breeze, instead, had been refreshing as P.J., who had been sweating copiously, started to calm down and assess Hailey’s collection.
Midge and bubble-cut Barbies, most of them dressed in 900-series outfits, lined plywood shelves along two walls. There were plenty of unparalleled Midge dolls, including an assortment without freckles, some with side-glance eyes, some with teeth, and some high-color. There were at least a dozen bendable leg Midge dolls with bobbed hairdos. There were five NRFB Wigs Wardrobe Midge ensembles. There were three straight-leg Midge dolls that wore two-piece swimsuits appropriate for their differing hair colors.
“Midge Hadley, you’re coming with me,” P.J. said, sweeping the shelves of all the Midge dolls, leaving the bubble-cuts behind.
“What about Barbie?” Midge cried out in a high-pitched, silly voice.
“Believe me, I’ll have plenty of them by the time I’m done, and I’ve got to leave some dolls behind, or it will be obvious someone was here for you.”
“But she’s our best friend,” Midge wailed, sounding like she’d inhaled helium.
P.J. threw loudmouthed Midge in the duffel, zipping it when it was packed full.
Six Midge dolls were left behind, but they were in duplicate 900-series dresses and inferior to the ones she’d culled.
She blended the shelves so the dolls were evenly and meticulously spread out, with a Midge in the middle of each lineup on the upper three shelves on both four-shelved walls.
Less than fifteen minutes later, she was back in the rented Sebring, flying down dusty North Sabino Canyon Road, on her way back to the hotel to pack for home.
13
The last Thursday in January, Caresse noticed a change in mood as soon as she logged on to the Best Barbie Board on her home computer. Collectors were buzzing, but not about Gayle Grace, who was yesterday’s news. Surprisingly, Gayle had been one-upped by a MMS—Murder More Sensational. Hailey Raphael, a collector from Tucson who virtually lived on the BBB, had been found dead Sunday night by her parents, who had just returned home from their weekly game of bridge with friends.
This time, no car explosions were involved. Hailey’s skull had been bashed in with a tack hammer, according to Hailey’s friend Beth, who lived in Phoenix.
Beth’s postage stamp-sized avatar was of a saguaro cactus instead of her face, so most BBB members didn’t know what she looked like. What they did know, however, was that she was generally helpful and kind.
DESERTLIFE: Hi, everyone. As you know by now, we’ve lost my dear friend Hailey Raphael. News reports that she was found bludgeoned to death are accurate. Or, to put it more graphically, her head was bashed in with a tack hammer taken from her parents’ garage. That’s all I know at this point. I’ve read a lot of gossip here about Hailey’s “many” boyfriends. The insinuations that she was skillful at playing them off each other–well, you can just drive that truck in a different direction. Those of you who are so quick to jump to the conclusion she was killed by an unsavory suitor who couldn’t handle her game-playing anymore didn’t know her very well. No offense, but I know who she was dating, who she was no longer dating, and everything was fine in that department. Yes, we wrote to each other every day, so I know what I’m talking about. Now on to what you all really want to know. Gayle’s sister Megan was first to introduce the doll theft angle, and that hasn’t been ruled out as a motive in Hailey’s case. Investigators want to see Hailey’s room to determine if any dolls are missing. This is all happening tomorrow morning, super early, so I’ll let you know what’s up as soon as I’m back online. Ciao for now, and quit your gossip! Hailey was awesome, and I’m going to miss her more than I can say.
As far as Caresse remembered, Hailey’s collection focused on Midge rather than American Girls, the dolls of choice in the first homicide/theft. Maybe this was a crime of passion, as the violent MO suggested. She would just have to wait and see what Beth had to share after she met with detectives in Tucson.
With the beginnings of a headache, Caresse turned her thoughts to her next assignment for Barbie International magazine—an interview with collector Nancy Roth. After that, she needed to go on her next date for the Valentine’s feature.
Her date’s name was Bill, and they’d arranged to meet at Brubeck’s downtown at seven-thirty. Bill and Brubeck’s, two Bs, easy to remember. No need to change out of her jeans. She was set to go.
Nancy had left a message earlier in the day that she would be able to email pictures of her vinyl goodies, sufficiently nixing the extra hundred Caresse would have made if Nancy had shipped her some stuff and Caresse had gotten photo credit.
She sat on her couch with her back toward her window and glanced over at the PC facing the mirrored wall, across from the ledge beneath the window with her wilting plants and narrow wicker basket, stuffed to the brim with unpaid bills.
Her old-school radio was blaring loud music. She turned down the volume and slid the window shut. The tree-lined street below was devoid of traffic, with most people home preparing and eating dinner. She wondered what her son Chaz would be having that night and hoped her ex, Brian, would serve some green vegetables or a salad with the inevitable frozen dinner or fried chicken.
She dialed Nancy’s number in Walnut Creek, in San Francisco’s East Bay. Her home phone had a small black suction cup fitted to the top of the phone receiver, with a cord that jacked into her small micro-cassette recorder. Instead of pacing while she did interviews, she pressed the suction cup against the receiver until the tip of her finger was white, allowing it to become the focal point of her stress. She’d once made the mistake early on of not doing this, and the cup popped off during her interview with a company that made Barbie party and paper goods. She’d missed recording more than half the interview, and it showed in the results. Yes, it was an outdated system, but Caresse hated phones and couldn’t bring herself to get a cell or even update her outdated landline.
“How do you like this for an opening?” she asked, once she had Nancy on the line.
“Let’s hear it,” Nancy said. Her voice was husky. Caresse concluded she was either a muscle-bound bodybuilder or had a bad cold.
“Collector Nancy Roth owns so many Barbie cases, trunks, travel pals, and hat boxes, her initials should be changed to SPP, one of the manufacturers of Barbie’s vinyl products.”
Nancy laughed hard and coughed. She rustled around and then blew her nose.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Bad cold?”
“The worst. Probably caught it at work. My boss is really sick right now.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a paralegal. I have to lug home five hundred pounds of paperwork each weekend.”
“Even more sorry.”
Nancy laughed. “It pays for the vinyl.”
“So let’s get on with it. How does your husband deal with your collecting obsession?”
“Oh, Ward? Ward is great.”
“Ward? As in Cleaver?”
�
��That’s about as far as the connection goes. My Ward is short, fat, Jewish, and sells used cars.”
“Okay.” She could feel Nancy warming up to the idea of chatting and she knew how it would go. Talk about the thicker vinyl Barbie cases that latched on the side and opened to reveal two deep-sided compartments—often called trunks—and she’d start to hear a lilt in Nancy’s voice. Go a step further and bring up trunk artwork, and she’d hit Nancy’s sweet spot dead center.
14
After Michael the TV writer had left the parking garage that day, P.J. was rattled. Nevertheless, she stayed to inspect the rest of her American Girls and put away her new Midge dolls. When Darby still hadn’t arrived via scooter by the time she was done, she went into his apartment and grabbed an old blue sheet she found near his bed.
She left a note perfectly centered on his computer screen, saying she’d be back on Thursday and then went outside to tack up the sheet on the inside of the gate to the storage stall.
As promised, she returned that Thursday with two Starbucks coffees and a new set of twin bed sheets from a local department store. She explained what had happened with Michael and that she had hung the sheet to impede looky-loos and avoid future chats with nosy neighbors.
That morning, P.J. had emailed Darby a picture from home that she wanted him to see. It was another Christmas photo card, this one from Time Taylor, who lived up in Oak Harbor, Washington. Time was online at least ten hours a day and posted responses to newbies’ queries on the Best Barbie Board as if she was the world’s top doll expert. Her BBB avatar showed a grossly overweight woman with stringy, blond hair dressed in baggy clothes. Her one close BBB pal, Sally, was the only one to back Time up in any online argument, and many on the boards assumed they were more than friends.
“She’s definitely the biggest,” P.J. said, as she showed Darby the card and the avatar and then moved on to Time’s Flikr photo albums. “She weighs what? 320? 340?”
He clicked through photos that showed the inside and outside of her home, her poodles, the Burger King where she worked, and some fellow tubbies in over-sized shirts and baggy jeans. “Yikes.”
“Not passing judgment,” P.J. said sarcastically.
She leaned over Darby’s shoulder as he sat there, so close he could smell her Oscar de la Renta perfume. It was sweet and heady.
“Why do women smell so much better than men?” he asked. He turned to look at her and caught a glimpse of her arching an eyebrow, batting her eyelashes, gently mocking.
“Pheromones? Hormones? Who knows? Just pay attention. I want to get into her home, but she’s having construction done. They’re adding an enclosed porch, so the back is blocked off. She’s been complaining online that the only way into her home until March is going to be via the front door, and she hates having to lug her groceries all the way up the front walk when she’s used to pulling into the driveway, pulling around back, and being right at her rear door.”
“I see,” Darby said.
“So the problem is, the front door has one of those locked screens, and it’s impossible to slide a card into one because there’s a metal lip where you would slide it.”
“So pick it,” he said. “I’ve shown you how.”
She sighed. “I’m not comfortable with that. Sometimes I can get it, sometimes I can’t, and it takes me too long.”
Darby clicked through Flickr until he found an album dedicated solely to exterior shots of Time’s home.
P.J. was snide. “She’s a parentless pothead, for Christ’s sake. Her alcoholic mother and deranged father were both gone for different reasons six months after her eighteenth birthday three years ago, but Daddy did one thing right. After Mom died of liver cancer, he wrote a will giving his only daughter the house her mother had loved, as well as piles of dirty money stashed in every room, left over from two decades of drug deals. Daddy went to prison, got in a fight, and ended up dead. She got the house, complete with cubby-holed cash. Now she spends all her time eating and complaining about her life to e-quaintances online.”
“What does she have to complain about?”
“Most days she consciously tries to forget about her preposterously abusive childhood—ignored, neglected, and battered by her mother and virtually abandoned by her daddy, who liked the weather in South America so much better than rainy Washington State.”
“She shared this on a public message board?” Darby, always the private soul who wouldn’t even keep a journal for fear someone would find it and read it, was appalled.
“Some women use the board for therapy. Some are so lonely, their only friends are chat board people they’ll never meet.”
“Why is she named Time, anyway?” he asked.
P.J. rolled her eyes. “Oh, it’s the stupidest story. I guess when her mom and dad were discussing names, her mom’s water broke, and her mom said, ‘It’s time,’ and her dad said, ‘Time? Time Taylor? I love that for a name!’ So it stuck.”
“Should have been Time-To-Get-Some-Exercise Taylor,” Darby said maliciously.
“Ooh. You can be as mean as I am.”
“And why’d she piss you off?”
“That fat old sow,” P.J. muttered so low Darby almost didn’t hear her.
It was hard for her to remember the chat board exchange and not punch a wall.
TT: P.J., thanks for sharing pictures of your new number three ponytail, but she isn’t worth $1,175. For one thing, she doesn’t have her gold hoops, and for another thing, her eyeliner is brown.
PJ-RULEZ: Thanks for your opinion, Time, but I prefer brown eyeliner to blue, even if the blue is more rare.
TT: You still got ripped off. I wouldn’t have paid more than $300 for that piece of shit.
PJ-RULEZ: You’re kidding, right?
TT: God, look at her! It’s so obvious she has new bands and a new bottom hard curl. Why would you pay for something that needed to be restored?
PJ-RULEZ: You know, I shouldn’t have bothered telling you all what I paid for her, but you all saw the auction on eBay so you would have known what I paid anyway. But even without your input, I would buy her all over again for every penny I spent because I love her.
TT: Hmm. Maybe you’d like some things from my collection for three times what I paid for them too?
P.J. grimaced and struggled to control herself.
“Did you say something, P.J.?”
“No,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“It’s a doll thing?” He turned to look at her and saw her eyes were wet. He wanted to show concern and make her feel better.
He got up from his desk chair and went over and held her. She was trembling.
“It’s a doll thing?” he repeated softly.
P.J. pushed her half-brother away. “Yes.”
Darby studied her and realized she’d only be okay once she was on her way to Washington. He sat back down at the computer and went through Time’s Flickr albums until he located a photo of the front step area.
“Perfect,” he said. “You see how she’s got about an eight by eight raised concrete entrance outside her front doorway that’s kind of arched over?”
P.J. didn’t answer. When he turned around, she stood up from the couch where she had gone to lay down. “What?”
“I think I solved your problem. Her front archway looks like stucco to me, which is just what we want. I’ll explain what you’ll need to do and we can even practice here if you want before you leave. But I promise, you’re gonna love it.”
“But what about getting inside if the screen door is locked?”
“You’re gonna have to go over there in the middle of the night your first night in town and fill the keyhole in the screen doorknob with Loctite. The next day, when she leaves for work, she won’t be able to get her key in the knob to flip the inside lock behind her. She’ll opt to leave the screen door open and lock the inner door instead, which you can card open.”
At that moment, the sun broke through the cloudy sky outs
ide the apartment and shafts of sunlight poured through the vertical blinds facing Chevy Chase Drive.
Mother Nature herself sanctioned the solution.
15
The headache that might have ruined Caresse’s evening departed as she threw herself fully into the interview. Better than two Tylenol, Barbie talk was once again cheering her up.
She continued to bear down on small black suction cup fitted to the top of the phone receiver, afraid to lessen the pressure lest she lose the call and ruin the rapport that was building. “So Ward is supportive?”
“Not only that. He takes pictures of my pieces, and if I’m not happy with them, he retakes them until I am happy. We want to do an identification guide of all my vinyl cases, trunks, and other vintage Barbie vinyl pieces, so good pics are essential.”
“Sounds great. Whom do you buy from?”
“Debbye Bascom always has lots of lovely things for sale. She’s the only dealer who’s ever had a nice vinyl collection and advertises it in her subscription. Every time her list comes out, about ten to twenty items are choice.”
“Did you have Barbies when you were younger?”
Nancy grew quiet. “No. My mom didn’t encourage it. She’s not a doll person. I wanted them, but I kind of dropped the issue. I got other toys instead.”
Caresse leaned back into the couch. Nancy was just about ready to fully open up. In a way, asking leading questions was akin to therapy.
Nancy explained that she had more than made up for her mother’s unwillingness to give her dolls. In 1992, she was stricken with Barbie fever. Her friend Margaret, in San Francisco, started collecting Barbies first. Nancy was visiting her in the Bay Area when they went to a flea market, where Margaret spotted some Barbies.