Dolled Up for Murder (3 page)

Gretchen sat on a lounge chair next to Nina and stared in bewilderment at her aunt. “What do you mean?”

“For starters, Martha didn’t have any dolls. The bank repossessed her home three years ago, and she lost her entire collection, which, I heard, was one of the finest antique collections in Phoenix.”

“You never saw it?” Gretchen eyed up the inviting blue water of the pool.

“No, she was an odd woman, reserved and not particularly friendly. I didn’t know her well enough to have the opportunity. But that’s not the point. The point is—why did she have a doll parasol in her pocket when she no longer owned any dolls? Martha was homeless at the end of her life. And that’s not all. Brace yourself, Gretchen. I couldn’t tell you this on the phone.”

Nina reached over and placed her bejeweled hand over Gretchen’s. “Bonnie told me the police found a note of sorts clenched in Martha’s fist.”

Nina might be hopelessly melodramatic, but she was pulling it off with style this time. Gretchen felt the hairs on her arm rising. “What? Tell me.”

“The piece of paper had your mother’s name on it. It read, ‘Caroline Birch—put her away
.
’”

Gretchen stared at her aunt.

“My psychic ability is a curse sometimes,” Nina continued, leaning back on the lounge chair and crossing her arms. “I sense something dark happened up there. Martha Williams was pushed from Camelback Mountain and, I’m afraid, your mother is involved.”

“Impossible,” Gretchen said with conviction.

“That’s when your mother vanished. Right after I called her and told her what the authorities found.” Nina snapped her fingers, her voice urgent. “Poof. Like smoke, she was gone.”

Nina roared away in her red Chevy to pick up her latest purse dog trainee, leaving Gretchen with time to herself. She made a peanut butter sandwich and a salad using slightly wilted lettuce from her mother’s refrigerator. While she ate at the kitchen table, she adjusted her watch for the three-hour time difference between Boston and Phoenix, turning the hands back. Noon instead of three, a mere twelve hours since she’d given in to Nina’s demands.

Instead of unpacking, she laced up her hiking boots and slipped her cell phone in her pocket. She rubbed sunscreen on her exposed flesh, hung her binoculars around her neck, and selected a bottle of water from a well-stocked supply in the refrigerator.

As an afterthought, she checked her mother’s closet. Then she opened the hall closet. Her mother’s set of luggage lay empty on the floor. A more thorough search produced a toothbrush in the bathroom. As far as Gretchen could tell, Caroline hadn’t taken anything other than the car.

She braced herself for the explosion of afternoon heat and set off, leaving palm trees and bougainvillea behind. She walked up the hill toward Echo Canyon, where the trailhead to Camelback Mountain began.

Hikers, mostly sightseers and casual walkers, tramped up and down the footpath between the trailhead and a large boulder, where they perched like flocks of birds to admire the view of Phoenix in the valley below and to drink from lukewarm water bottles.

The serious hikers, many training for longer hikes, continued moving up where the footpath ended and the handrails began. Gretchen could see the dry washes below and cacti sprouting from impossibly sheer cliff ledges. Birds flitted through the sparse shrubbery, calling to each other.

Gretchen felt light-headed as she trudged upward. Nina’s words played over in her mind. Her mother. Vanished. A dead woman. Her mother’s name in the woman’s pocket.
“Put her away.”

What could it mean?

A message? A warning? An accusation?

The timing of Martha’s death and Caroline’s disappearance wasn’t coincidental, and she knew it. She felt a quick flash of anger at her mother for leaving without notifying anyone. The anger dissipated and steamed into fear. Was her mother safe? Why hadn’t she called Nina? Twenty-four hours and counting since Nina had spoken with her sister, the time slowing to an agonizing pace.

Gretchen paused in her sweaty climb to admire the desert scenery. Her mother had taught her the names of the plants growing along the trails: saguaros, ocotillos, barrel cacti, and palo verdes. Rattlesnakes, scorpions, and gila monsters also liked the mountain environment, three poisonous reasons to wear hiking boots and to stay on the designated trails.

Gretchen didn’t think she could handle an encounter with any of these three creatures. But spiders were her worst nightmare. A black widow would provide a perfectly good reason to jump off a cliff. It was a good thing they liked dark, remote holes and rarely ventured near humans.

Cautiously she moved over the rocks, well above the cluster of tourists milling around on the boulder below. She forged ahead, picking her way up, using the binoculars to scan the cliffs, remembering with each step the warnings about lizards and snakes. Sweat soaked her shirt and glistened on her face. Gretchen stopped to catch her breath and get her bearings. She could see the top of her mother’s house in the valley below. Using the ledge that Nina had pointed out as a guide, Gretchen calculated that Martha had fallen from a ridge directly above her.

Gretchen’s heart pounded against her chest cavity, and her throat felt tight and dry. She looked down at her feet, searching for signs that she stood where the woman’s body had been discovered, but all she saw were clumps of red rock and a few straggly desert plants.

What if her mother lay injured somewhere up here? Could she be crumpled in the shadows beneath a rock outcropping? Gretchen continued climbing upward, sweeping the binoculars along the far reaches of Camelback until she was satisfied that she’d thoroughly covered the climbable part of the mountain.

She slowly began her descent, pausing again where she thought Martha had fallen.

When she raised the binoculars and spotted a small patch of color in the rocks above her, she thought she’d stumbled across her first sighting of a Gila monster. Her mother had shown her pictures of the venomous reptiles: massive heads and small, beady eyes, with orange, pink, or yellow blotches covering their bodies. She knew they moved sluggishly and couldn’t chase her down the mountain, but she was nervous nevertheless as she edged closer for a better look. And closer. Until she stood a few yards away.

The orange coloring wasn’t the scaly back of a lizard.

She was looking at a French fashion doll’s paisley shawl.

Despite adrenaline pumping through her veins, Caroline fell asleep, a dreamless and heavy retreat from the world. The flight attendant gently placed a hand on her shoulder, startling her awake. “Please return your seat to its original position,” she said quietly. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”

Groggy and disoriented, Caroline adjusted the seat and noticed for the first time that her bracelet was missing. Her lucky bracelet. Where could it be? She fought back the feeling of panic threatening to overcome her and forced a weak smile.
It’s only a bracelet,
she thought.
You’re getting superstitious in your old age, like Nina.

She wondered what was happening at home right now. Were they hunting for her? Had they searched the house yet? She smiled to herself, feeling stronger and more confident.

No one could match her ability for concealing things. Thanks to her daughter’s inherited competitive nature, their games had been played at a highly skilled level. Scavenger hunts. The traditional Easter basket searches. The challenge, each time, to be better than the last time.

Caroline grinned at the memories.

Let them look. They would never find it.

3

Paris was the birthplace of the first fashion doll. The doll’s attire imitated the leading dress styles of the time. Since middle- and upper-class Parisiennes changed their outfits throughout the day, some fashion dolls came with trunks filled with gowns, ankle boots, tortoiseshell dressing sets, and other accessories.

Because little French girls played with these miniature versions of their mothers, few dolls survived in good condition. Most of the trunks and accessories were lost or destroyed.

A French Bru fashion doll in mint condition, with no cracks or repairs and in original costume, sold on eBay sans trunk. Starting bid: $24,950. An original trunk would have made the doll worth much, much more.

—From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch

“Ohh, isn’t it cute,” Nina cooed, holding up the multicolored cotton shawl. It was about the size of a baby’s terry washcloth.

“I wonder what this is worth?” Gretchen said in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s in perfect condition except for a tiny bit of ground-in dirt where it must have hit the rocks and settled in. It’s a miracle I found it.”

Nina looked up from admiring the shawl. “A miracle? No. This is a sign. You know that most of my psychic predictions come to me in dreams. Well, last night I dreamed about this very thing.” Nina frowned. “In my dream your mother was the size of a doll and wore the shawl over her shoulders with a dress from this exact historical period. I wonder what the dream means.”

“The problem with your dreams,” Gretchen said, “is that you can’t interpret them. You should take a class on dream analysis.”
Preferably one that doesn’t allow dogs in the classroom,
Gretchen thought with a watchful eye on Tutu.

Nina scanned a creased photograph lying on the table. “You found this next to the shawl?”

“The shawl must have been in this bag,” Gretchen said, holding up a brown paper lunch bag. “It was lucky that it had fallen out so that the colors caught my eye. The picture was inside the bag, and I almost missed finding it because the bag blended so well with the rocks.”

Gretchen gazed at the photograph. A French fashion doll with startling blue eyes, wearing a green silk gown, smiled serenely up at her from a compartment inside an open doll trunk. A straw hat with a green ribbon and white flowers rested in her arms, and she wore glistening black earrings.

She noted the trunk’s domed shape, its brass-headed tacks, and brass handle.

Nina sat fingering the doll shawl, surrounded by her entourage, Tutu and her latest purse dog trainee. The trainee, a white fluff ball puppy named Rosebud, peered out from a large cloth purse slung over the workshop doorknob. Occasionally it emitted a shrill bark.

“Maltese like this one are so easy to train,” Nina said, leaving the table to give Rosebud a little attention. “Especially little females.” The tone of Nina’s voice curved upward. “Don’t feel jealous, little Tutu. You’re smarter than all of them put together.”

Nina looked at Gretchen. “Everyone thinks they can just buy a little dog and stick it in a purse. They don’t realize it has to be trained to stay there. That’s where I come in. Most of my clients are easy to work with, but Chihuahuas?” Nina shuddered for emphasis. “They’re more like vicious little purse attack dogs. I charge extra for them.”

“Can’t you take time off from dog training?” Gretchen asked. “Considering the circumstances.”

Nina gasped. “I’d lose my clients. I’m in the early, most important stage of my new career. If I started canceling training sessions, word would get around, and no one would come to me anymore. That would be the kiss of death.”

Wobbles, wide-awake after his long nap, was cautiously exploring every corner of the house. He made a brief appearance at the workshop door. Tutu’s ears perked up.

“Watch Tutu,” Gretchen warned Nina, reaching down and hooking a finger through Tutu’s red collar to restrain her. “She’s mesmerized by Wobbles, and she’s licking her lips.”

“Tutu won’t hurt your kitty.”

Gretchen shrugged knowingly. “I’m not worried about Wobbles. He could eat Tutu for lunch. It’s Tutu I’m worried about. I’m not sure that Wobbles has had much experience with dogs.” She smiled. Wobbles wasn’t paying attention to either dog. Arrogant indifference suited him. He cared much more about his own investigation in progress and the new smells around him. After one smug glance at the dog hanging from a doorknob, he turned and stalked off.

“He’s remarkably agile on three legs,” Nina observed.

The doorbell chimed. Gretchen released Tutu and watched her race for the front door, yapping loudly. The purse trainee trembled, full-body tremors created by the sight of the three-legged stalking tiger and the ensuing commotion.

“That must be April.” Nina rose from the table. “I forgot to tell you in all the excitement. I called her right after you called me. We should make sure the shawl is authentic. You remember April?”

Without waiting for an answer, Nina followed Tutu’s lead and headed for the door. Gretchen lifted the Maltese out of the purse, holding her close and stroking her. In spite of her feelings about canines, she couldn’t stand to see any animal in a state of fear or in pain. Rosebud, fitting easily into her palm, licked her little lips nervously, but the tremors began to ease away.

Gretchen remembered meeting April Lehman briefly on one of her visits to Phoenix, but she didn’t need a doll appraiser to examine the shawl. She sensed that it was the real thing. According to her mother, who was a well-respected doll expert and published author, doll heads were much easier to replicate than period clothing. The shawl couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than an intricate, antique doll accessory.

It was the picture of the doll that interested Gretchen the most.

April lumbered into the workshop wearing a muumuu the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. White crew socks and beige sandals completed her ensemble. “Hey, Gretchen,” she called and heaved herself onto a stool.

“April can tell a fake doll from the real thing at twenty paces,” Nina said, following April.

Gretchen knew that swindlers roamed the doll world waiting to dupe unsuspecting beginners. A good appraiser could tell an original by the number of eyelashes or the slant of an eyebrow or a marking in just the right spot. April and her kind were the backbone of the doll collecting community.

“What ya got here?” April adjusted her reading glasses and bent over the table to study the doll shawl. “My, my. Where’d you find this?”

“Hiking on the mountain. I found it in the rocks.”

April peered at her over the top of her glasses. “You don’t say.”

Then she went to work. The silence beat across the room while they waited for a verdict. Gretchen continued to stroke Rosebud, who snuggled closer and closed her eyes. After a few minutes, Nina began drumming her fingers on the table. April gave her a stern look, and Nina crossed her arms to still her impatient fingers.

Gretchen gently returned Rosebud to the purse, where she curled contently into a tiny ball.

Finally, April sat back, moved her reading glasses from the end of her nose to the top of her head, and sighed with pleasure.

“It’s a wonderful example of a mid-eighteenth-century French fashion doll accessory,” she said. “No question about it.”

“I’m assuming it fell from the ridge with Martha,” Gretchen said. “Is that a safe assumption?”

April nodded.

“My exact thought,” Nina agreed.

“Bonnie’s son, that police officer,” April said. “What’s his name? Matt? He asked me to appraise the parasol they found in Martha’s pocket. Same historical period, same size. From the same doll, I’d be willing to bet.”

Gretchen held out the photograph she saved for last. “I found this at the same time.”

April whistled when she saw the picture.

“The tray is removable, and her trousseau is stored under it,” April said, running her finger over the image of the trunk with something approaching reverence. “See how the tray is lined with striped fabric? Wow.”

“I’m pretty sure the doll is a Bru,” Gretchen said.

April nodded. “A classic smiley Bru. She’s worth a ton of money.”

“How much?” Nina asked.

April thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t want to venture a guess without examining the doll,” she said. “What I can say with surety is that the doll is about seventeen inches high. I can base that estimate on the size of the shawl. The trunk would be about twenty inches long and fifteen inches high.”

“That’s a large trunk,” Nina said, reminding Gretchen how little Nina knew about dolls.

“Most fashion dolls were designed to fit right inside the trunks like this one does.”

“Why would Martha have an antique doll shawl and a photograph of a priceless Bru with her?” Gretchen wondered aloud. “Did she steal the shawl and the parasol?”

“Logical conclusion.” April’s voice was cold. “Personally, I never cared for the woman. Shifty, I thought, and unscrupulous. She certainly could have stolen it. But I’m not aware that any of the club members around here own an original Bru with accompanying trunk.”

“She had only a picture and a few accessories,” Nina said. “That doesn’t mean she’s a thief. Let’s not snap to any rash conclusions.”

Gretchen picked up the photo of the fashion doll and turned it over. On the back, she read the date that the film had been processed. Four years ago.

“Gretchen, is it possible Martha was at your mother’s house the night she died?” April asked, ignoring Nina’s defense of the dead woman.

Gretchen was surprised. “Why would you think that?”

“Camelback Mountain is right in Caroline’s backyard. I’m simply exploring the possibility.” She arched a brow. “The police won’t overlook that, you know.”

Gretchen shrugged. “I have no way of knowing for sure. But my mother never mentioned Martha to me.” She turned to Nina. “Did Martha ever come here for repair work?”

“Caroline never mentioned it to me,” Nina said. “But everyone knew Martha. She used to be a member of the Phoenix Dollers.”

April shifted on the stool, her large form completely hiding the seat. “The next obvious question is . . . Where is the doll? And why did Martha have a picture of it?”

“That,” Gretchen replied, “is the prizewinning question.”

A find like this would be of great interest to her mother, and some of that curiosity had rubbed off on Gretchen. She’d love to see an antique doll of such quality with its own personal trunk of original clothes.

“We don’t have to notify the police, do we?” Nina said, scrunching her nose in distaste at the idea.

April swung around to look at Nina. “Martha’s death was an accident or a suicide, regardless of a few doll accessories and an old picture,” she said. “The investigation is routine. Bonnie’s son is the only one working it, and I’ll mention the shawl next time I see him, but it won’t change anything. In the meantime we should keep this our little secret. What will we accomplish by exposing Martha as a thief after her death?”

“The note found with Martha was rather mysterious.” Nina said.

Gretchen, standing slightly behind April, shook her head at Nina. Nina wrinkled her brow in confusion. The last thing Gretchen wanted was the contents of the message found in Martha’s hand known by the entire doll community.

“Yes, the note,” April agreed. “It does beg an explanation.”

“Does everyone know about the note?” Gretchen demanded.

“News travels fast when it’s riding Bonnie’s lips,” Nina said.

“That’s the truth,” April said.

Gretchen checked her watch and left the two women chatting in the workshop. Six o’clock in Boston. Steve would probably still be at the office, even though it was Friday and most Bostonians would be on their way to happy hour.

From her mother’s bedroom, she dialed his business number. While the phone rang, she studied a Shirley Temple doll posed on the nightstand and ran her fingers across its white taffeta skirt. A receptionist answered and mechanically informed her that Steve was in a meeting and unavailable. Her harried voice reminded Gretchen that Steve’s commitment to the firm took other prisoners as well, some not nearly as well compensated.

“Would you like to leave a message?” the receptionist asked.

“No. No message.” Gretchen hung up and tried his cell phone. No answer. She left a voice message saying she had arrived safely, her mother was still missing, and she would call later.

The bed looked inviting, but Gretchen knew she’d have trouble getting up again if she gave in to its beckoning comfort. She must look a fright by this time. Long ago, a few doll collectors had compared her features to the Shirley Temple doll next to her. Right now she was sure she looked more like a freaky Chucky doll.

Nina appeared behind her.

“Let’s go,” Nina said. “The day’s still young.”

Gretchen wondered at her aunt’s stamina. Neither of them had gotten much sleep the night before, thanks to Nina’s persistence. Gretchen felt weary, her body still on Boston time. She ran her hands through her unruly brown hair in a futile attempt to restore order.

“Food,” Nina said. “You need some fuel. Let’s go out and get something to eat. April can follow in her car, and we’ll drop off my purse trainee on the way.”

“Where is the doll shawl? We can’t just leave it on the workbench.”

“I’ve wrapped it up in a wee-wee pad along with the picture, and I’ll stow it in the trunk of my car until we find out who owns them. The Impala trunk is more secure than a safe-deposit box.” She laughed. “You’d need more than a crowbar to break into it.”

Nina had wrapped it in a wee-wee pad?

“I can find something more appropriate,” Gretchen said, heading for the workshop. She transferred the shawl and photograph to a long sheet of bubble wrap and rolled it up, securing it with packing tape and placing it inside a small box.

“Ready?” Her aunt said, and Gretchen picked up the box and nodded.

Nina drove like a woman possessed by flying demons. April’s white Buick, which was noticeably dented on both the front and back bumper, fell behind and disappeared altogether when Nina gunned the Impala through a yellow light.