Ding Dong Dead (23 page)

“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. 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.

The world is like a big picture window. You can watch people and events from the inside and 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.

—From
World of Dolls
by Caroline Birch

 

 

 

Gretchen let herself into the banquet 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 had thought, though.

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 that 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 that 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 showed that the phone 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 had come 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.

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 had mentioned it or he wouldn’t have known where to look next.

The museum is off-limits if the 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 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.

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 and the newest trust beneficiary: Dean McNalty and Trudy Fernwich. But Gretchen had few observations 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.

If Dean McNalty wanted to eliminate the Swilling trust beneficiaries, he would have killed Trudy Fernwich, not Allison Thomasia.

Trudy Fernwich might have killed Allison, but Caroline had also been attacked. Would the Fernwich woman have offered the doll club the opportunity to convert the house only to turn around and try to kill them? Not likely.

She crossed off McNalty and Fernwich.

Jerome had a switchblade and a bad attitude. He was her first pick. But Daisy didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, and Daisy wasn’t easily fooled. She also had that unexplained networking thing going on. Could their drums beat out the name of the real killer if the homeless community needed to know? Gretchen wouldn’t be surprised.

Then she remembered her mother’s comment about Jerome. She had seen him at the accident, speaking with the homeless. His presence established evidence against him, suggesting that he was following Caroline. It could also be the basis for his innocence, if Daisy was correct about his role as protector.

Next, Gretchen wrote down the names of the doll club members, but she quickly eliminated them. After all, they were her friends. They were working hard to make the fundraiser a success.

Her pen wavered above Julie’s name. Julie Wicker was the peacemaker of the group, running interference between the director and the cast, always having a kind word to say. So why hadn’t Julie met her as she said she would? What did she know? Gretchen prayed that Julie hadn’t been murdered for what she knew. She didn’t want the reason to take Julie’s name off of the list to be because she’d been killed.

What about Andy? He didn’t have an alibi, and he’d left identification at the cemetery like a calling card. And he and his wife were estranged when she died.

Andy and Jerome were tied for first place.

But Andy hadn’t attacked her with a weapon as Jerome had. Thinking back on the encounter, Jerome hadn’t exactly attacked them. He hadn’t even put up much resistance. Gretchen’s adrenaline had been pumping hard at the time. Now she wondered if her mother and she had initiated the assault.

The more she thought, the more confused she became.

While she was at it, she might as well add the ghost to the murder tree she was creating. What if the apparition held a grudge against the family and would haunt them forever, killing descendants in bloody revenge? Gretchen didn’t write that down. It was too far out in Ninaland for her.

Gretchen left the coffee pot to work its magic brew and returned to the comfort of the stage chair.

That’s when she heard a soft click coming from down the hall.

Gretchen ducked into the break room and pressed her body up behind the door, one eye staring out from the crack. Heavy footsteps slowly approached.

A cold blast of intuition had propelled Gretchen out of the chair and off the stage, telling her to seek shelter.
Hurry
. She reacted to the perceived threat and ran, now feeling slightly foolish for hiding behind a door.

She’d lost all perspective. She was running scared instead of standing and fighting. Yet she wasn’t about to come out without knowing who was inside the room.