Ding Dong Dead (15 page)

“It’s time,” April called, putting down thread and needle and swinging her feet off the desk. “Let’s try it from the top with all the bells and whistles.”

Jerome walked past and acknowledged Gretchen with a stiff nod. He adjusted a light along the stage, realigning its angle. Then he flipped off the overhead lights from a switch by the entrance, casting the room into total blackness.

“Lights, camera, action,” April called. The stage lights popped on, and the mystery play began with the ringing of a doorbell.

For almost an hour, Gretchen sat transfixed, laughing at the antics of the characters. Her mother should write more plays. This one was going to be a hit. Caroline’s script was perfect for the luncheon—a campy, funny mystery with a surprise twist at the end.

When the women on stage got to the part where they were considering what to do with philandering Craig’s body, she saw a stab of light, and Mr. B., the owner of the building, took a seat behind them. Again, she thought of his generosity. They should do something special for him.

When the rehearsal was over, Gretchen noticed that she’d missed several calls on her cell phone, all from her mother. She hadn’t heard the rings over the sounds coming from the stage. So many calls from the same person suggested urgency. She promptly called back.

“I’m at This Great Coffee Place,” Caroline said. “You need to hurry over here. Don’t bring anyone with you.”

“Are you all right?”

“Just come. Now.”

 

The coffee shop was crowded with after-lunch coffee drinkers getting their last shot of afternoon caffeine. Caroline sat at a table near the door next to a man wearing dark sunglasses and an Arizona Cardinals ball cap pulled low over his forehead.

“Get a coffee,” Caroline said. “Then join us.”

While Gretchen waited in line, greeting some of the regulars, she kept glancing at the guy sitting at the table. He had both hands cupped around his coffee as though he was cold and was trying to keep warm. He glanced nervously toward the door every few seconds. Caroline kept up a steady stream of conversation while he listened. Several times, Caroline rubbed her neck, an indication that it still bothered her. Gretchen wondered if she’d made a doctor’s appointment.

Gretchen’s turn came. She ordered a latte. Coffee in hand, she went to the table and sat down.

“I’d like to introduce you,” her mother said in a hushed tone, “to Andy Thomasia.”

The man watched her face carefully as though he expected a negative reaction from her. Gretchen masked her surprise at meeting the dead woman’s husband. “Hi,” was all she could manage.

“Relax, Andy.” Caroline covered his cupped hands with her own. “She’s not going to do anything to hurt you. You can trust her.” Then to Gretchen she said, “Right before my car accident I was rushing home to meet a very demanding customer who refused to wait his turn to see me. I found out a little while ago who that customer really was.”

“I couldn’t give my real name,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me.”

“Never, Andy.”

“When you didn’t show up, I thought you had blown me off.”

Gretchen noticed that her mother hadn’t removed her hands. They still cupped his. He hadn’t moved either.

“Where’s Nina?” Gretchen hadn’t seen her aunt’s car outside. “Weren’t you with her?”

“Andy followed us to the caterer’s and approached me before we went inside. Nina offered to handle the menu selections to give us time to catch up.”

“I’m in serious trouble,” he said. “And I’m asking your mother for help. No, I’m begging for help.”

Caroline removed her hands from his. “Tell Gretchen what you told me.”

“Allison and I were separated, but we were talking about getting back together,” he said. “She wanted to come to Phoenix and asked me if I wanted to join her. Of course I did! I was madly in love with her. I’d jump at any opportunity to spend time with her. That’s all I wanted, to be with her.” His voice broke and he paused to collect himself.

Gretchen looked away, feeling some of his pain. She’d lost her father, had almost lost her mother, and that had hurt immensely. But to lose a loved one to a senseless act of violence was unimaginable.

“When she didn’t come back to the hotel,” he continued, “I thought that she might have changed her mind, flown back to LA without telling me. That wasn’t her style, but still, I thought that’s what happened. The next morning while I was packing, I saw the news. A dead woman in a cemetery. No name. What if that woman was Allison?”

“That’s when Andy went to the police,” Caroline said.

“They treated me like their prime suspect after I identified her body. God, I can’t go through this again.” He hung his head.

“Let me explain the rest,” Caroline said, taking up his story. “The police told him about the words on the gravestone and about the fantasy doll. Andy, of course, recognized her doll and also felt that it was further evidence that the authorities would use against him. He had remained in his room the night she disappeared, so he didn’t have anyone to vouch for his whereabouts.”

Convenient
, Gretchen thought.

“Allison was studying her family history,” Caroline continued. “It sounds to me, from what Andy shared, that she had become obsessed with tracing her family tree as far back as she could. She had located relatives across the country, shared her findings with other family members who were as interested as she was, and visited genealogy databases online.”

“Last year she flew to New York specifically to visit Ellis Island,” Andy said. “Through all this research she discovered that she had relatives who’d lived in Phoenix, so she decided to come here and learn what she could.”

“Which is why she was in the cemetery,” Gretchen said. “How did she get there? Do you know?”

“The police said that a cab driver let her out at the cemetery entrance with the understanding that he would return in an hour. He came back and waited fifteen minutes for her to show. When she didn’t, he drove off.”

“Was she meeting someone?” Gretchen asked.

“If she was, she didn’t tell me,” he said. “I wish I’d paid more attention to what she was doing, but I wasn’t very interested in family trees. I could have cared less that she was researching second or third cousins.”

Gretchen looked at her mother. “Flora Swilling,” she said.

“Yes!” Andy said. “That’s one of the names she mentioned. How did you know?”

“It’s complicated,” Caroline said.

“Oh God, I can’t believe she’s gone.”

Andy’s sunglasses were hiding more than his identity. He seemed distraught over Allison’s murder to the point of near collapse. Or else he was a very good actor. Gretchen saw a tear slide down the side of his face.

Caroline looked around the coffee shop, furtive and worried. Gretchen thought they were acting suspiciously guilty of something and would call attention to themselves if they kept it up. But no one seemed to notice but her.

“You two need to appear just slightly less flipped out,” Gretchen suggested.

Caroline had her hands over Andy’s again. What was going on with those two? “They allowed Andy to go back to the hotel late last night,” she said. “But . . .”

It was the “but” part that Gretchen found the most disturbing.

After returning to the hotel, Andy hadn’t gone back to his room. “I couldn’t bear to stay in the room we’d shared. I stayed in the lobby all night. I found a small alcove where I could be alone, and I stared out the window the entire night.”

“Andy was there,” Caroline said, “when two squad cars pulled up outside the hotel and approached the desk clerk.”

“I heard my name, they headed for the elevator, and I walked out on the street and kept going. I have to find Allison’s killer before they catch up with me,” Andy said. “Because every clue they have points right at me.”

“Words on a gravestone implicate you?” Gretchen couldn’t see how.

“You didn’t see how they treated me.”

“We have to help him hide,” Caroline said.

“I’m sure that if you turn yourself in,” Gretchen said, “and if you are completely truthful, nothing will happen to you. The police will believe you.”

“No,” Caroline said. “They most certainly will not. Innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit all the time. Don’t you watch the news? Gretchen, we already know much of what happened. We were at the cemetery, along with Nacho and Daisy. They must know something that would help Andy.”

Gretchen put her hands over her ears. “No! I don’t want to hear any of this. I’m dating a cop! I can’t do this. Aiding and abetting is a crime!”

But she knew that she would help, if for no other reason than because her mother had asked her to. Caroline believed in her old friend’s innocence, and she was clearly going to help him whether or not Gretchen went along with their plan.

“Give us a few days,” her mother appealed to her. “We’ll find out what we can in the next three days. In the meantime, we’ll see that Andy is taken care of.”

“Caroline, this means so much to me,” Andy said.

Gretchen groaned. “I can’t ruin my relationship with Matt.”

“You won’t. If, after three days, we don’t find anything to prove Andy’s innocence or someone else’s guilt, he’ll turn himself in. Right, Andy? Do you accept those terms?”

Andy nodded. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

Repay us with your innocence
, Gretchen thought.

“What do you say, Gretchen?” her mother asked. “Are you willing to give it a try? To give it three days?”

“Two days.” She heard the words coming out of her mouth and couldn’t stop them. “Two days of investigating. That’s it.”

“I knew you’d help,” Caroline said. “We’ll come back and pick up Andy here at the coffee shop around dusk. Can you stay out of sight until then?” she asked Andy.

“Sure. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of hiding until now.” He downed the rest of his coffee and slipped out the door.

Gretchen watched him through the window until he was out of sight.

Had Andy murdered Allison? What if she had tried to leave him again and he’d killed her in a jealous rage?

Gretchen turned from the window to find her mother had been doing the same thing, watching the man disappear.

How could they be certain that Andy Thomasia was innocent of murder?

Gretchen felt chilled, and it had nothing to do with ghosts or cold spots.

“If you and I are going to pull this off,” Caroline said from the passenger seat in Gretchen’s car, “I have to come clean.”

“Okay?”

Gretchen didn’t want to hear more bad news. She’d had an epiphany. She wasn’t the problem. Her family was. Caroline and Nina were like trouble magnets, drawing Gretchen in against her will, making her a magnet, too. All she wanted was to put on a fundraiser, decorate a doll museum, and finish lassoing her hot man.

Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Now she was up to her neck in murders, bones, and hauntings, doing everything possible to destroy the fledgling relationship with Matt Albright.

“Someone in a white van tried to hurt me,” Caroline said. “It wasn’t driver’s error that made me lose control of my car. Another driver rammed into the side of my car twice. The first time I was able to correct my direction and escape injury. The second time the driver was much more determined and I was forced into oncoming traffic.”

Gretchen slowed and pulled over to the side of the street. She put the car in park. Information was coming at her too fast and none of it was good news.

Silence hung heavy inside the car as Caroline let Gretchen absorb what she had learned. Finally, Gretchen said, “Then the driver was trying to kill you.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far.” Caroline saw Gretchen’s incredulous stare. “All right. It’s possible, yes, that the driver intended to kill me.”

“He didn’t count on your amazing resilience.”

“It was dumb luck that I survived.”

“Someone
was
killed, though. That van driver obviously didn’t care how many innocent people were killed. That’s unbelievably ruthless.” Gretchen was horrified at what had occurred. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“Why would someone leave a threatening note on your windshield?”

“How do you know about that?”

“April mentioned it. She thought that it was a suggestion for a new title for the play. She knew I’d be interested.” Caroline narrowed her eyes, in mother-bear mode. “Come on, Gretchen, after a murder in a cemetery with those exact words written on a tombstone and a skeleton in a house we happen to be converting into a doll museum, do you really think
Die, Dolly, Die
could be something that innocent?”

“I wanted to block it out,” she admitted. “I really wanted to believe it was a bad joke.”

“You didn’t want to face the truth.”

“And what is the truth?”

Caroline didn’t answer. Gretchen pondered the possibilities. They all led back to Allison’s death in the cemetery and the bones in the museum. “Up until this point in time,” Gretchen said, “we worked on the luncheon without anyone threatening us or trying to kill us.”

“But after Allison was murdered, someone attempted to kill me and you found the note,” her mother said.

“Someone wants us to do what? Abandon the show? Close the museum?” They weren’t dealing with idle threats. They were targets. “We’re in the way?”

“What’s changed?”

“You began working in the house,” Gretchen said.

“And you were at the murder scene.”

“We’re the only ones with keys to the museum. Is that important?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now what?”

“More bad news, I’m afraid. The reason I didn’t want to leave the coffee shop with Andy is because we’re being followed.”