Dolled Up for Murder (2 page)

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Casual collectors collect dolls for sentimental reasons—they owned a certain kind of doll as a child, or they are adding to a collection that has been in the family for years. The serious collector enjoys the hunt, the taste of triumph, the sweet scent of success. Many serious collectors are dealers and are motivated by the monetary aspects rather than sentimentality.

—From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch

The July heat scorched the desert landscape. Gretchen could feel its heavy grip weighing on her body. She could smell the dust. Nina had picked her up at baggage and now drove through Phoenix traffic, weaving in and out of lanes in her red vintage Chevy Impala. Wobbles was stowed in his carrier on the floor in the backseat, relatively calm thanks to the continuing effect of a tranquilizer. Nina’s dog, Tutu, was wrestling with Gretchen for the front seat while keeping one beady eye on the travel carrier.

“Tell me about Tutu,” Gretchen said.

“A rescue dog. I saw her picture on the Internet and couldn’t resist. She’s absolutely perfectly behaved. I can’t imagine what sort of person would abandon such a wonderful pet.”

Gretchen tried to pry herself free from Perfectly Behaved without success.

“How’s Steve?” Nina asked, ramming through gears like a NASCAR driver. “Has he proposed yet?”

Gretchen, unwilling to ponder Nina’s question, dug sunglasses out of her purse, quite a feat with the miniature schnoodle jumping on her lap. She locked eyes with the comical experiment in dog breed crossings. Schnauzer and poodle, minis at that. What would inventive breeders think of next? Pitt bulls and corgis could be called piggis or pit-tis or corbulls or . . .

Gretchen stomped on her imaginary brake as Nina raced up to a red light, slowing at the last moment.

“Well,” Nina insisted. “Has he popped the question?”

“We’ve discussed it,” Gretchen said evasively.

“Discussed it?” Nina shrieked. “It’s been seven years. One of you has a commitment problem. Or maybe both of you do. Living together yet?”

“No. We’re comfortable the way things are.” Talking about Steve and their stalled forward progress made Gretchen uncomfortable. Lately she’d been hearing her internal clock ticking louder than it once had. Ticking clocks, even those firmly attached to the wall, made her nervous.

The desperation she’d been feeling recently didn’t thrill her either. She hated paging through the wedding announcements in the
Boston Globe.
Pages and pages ad nauseam.

One month and three days until she turned thirty. Chances of wearing an engagement ring were growing slim since her latest discovery.

“Humph,” Nina snorted. “I’d give him an ultimatum in spite of his good looks. Pop the question or hit the road. That tactic works, you know. At least there would be some kind of action.”

Gretchen couldn’t imagine Steve’s reaction to that sort of pressure. His imported Italian shoes would curl up at the toes.

Nina turned right onto Lincoln and sped toward Camelback Mountain, its prominent humps towering over the city. Caroline’s home, their destination, nestled at its base.

Gretchen felt a familiar sense of wonder as she absorbed the mass of the mountain and the scope of the city. The dry, enormous clumps of reddish rock were visible throughout Phoenix and the surrounding suburbs of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.

For all Phoenix’s exotic beauty and its reputation as a haven in the winter months, it turned forbidding and hostile in July.

She had dozed fitfully on the plane. Thoughts of her mother had been disjointed and intrusive, allowing her only a light, uneasy sleep. Now she bounced new ideas off Nina. “Maybe she heard about a great estate sale and she’s on a doll-buying spree.”

“Must be in Timbuktu,” Nina replied, refusing to catch the ball. “She would be back by now.”

“Maybe she’s mixing business and pleasure. She’s probably sightseeing at the same time. No car in the carport, you said. Right?”

“Right.”

“So we know she has it with her. And does this dog have to be on my lap?” Gretchen was annoyed with the schnoodle digging her sharp back nails into Gretchen’s legs while planting groomed front paws on the side window, her nose leaving gooey streaks on the glass. Tutu wore a red lacy collar the size of a neck brace. Having sensed competition for Nina’s attention the moment Gretchen opened the car door, the schnoodle insisted on the seat of command, which is exactly where Gretchen thought she should sit.

“You’re in her spot,” Nina said, sliding into Caroline’s driveway and turning off the ignition. “You have to learn to share. See how nicely Tutu shares. Good Tutu.”

Tutu wagged her tail and barked, a shrill, nerve-piercing sound.

Gretchen’s opinion of dogs—groveling, dependent creatures with lofty attitudes and bad manners—hadn’t changed upon meeting Tutu. Wobbles, like most cats, had a superiority complex, but at least he could clean himself. And he was quiet. Yapping dogs drove her crazy.

Nina produced a key to the door of Caroline’s adobe-style home and stood back with Tutu to allow Gretchen to enter. “After you,” she said with a sweeping gesture.

Standing in the doorway holding Wobbles’s carrier, Gretchen felt like an intruder. The house was too quiet, disconcertingly vacant. It smelled, not fragrant and earthy like her mother, but like a closed-up, abandoned space. Her mother’s spirit, which usually infused a room, was gone.

Dishes from a morning breakfast were scattered on the counter, and a newspaper lay open on the table. A box of maple buckwheat flakes had fallen next to the paper, the top left open. A few pieces of cereal had spilled from the box.

Her mother, in spite of her lack of organizational skills, was meticulous about keeping her kitchen clean, fanatical almost. She wouldn’t have left the table like this unless something unforeseen had happened.

For the first time since Nina began calling yesterday, Gretchen believed it might be possible that her mother really was missing.

“See her bracelet.” Nina pointed to a pink band lying on the counter. “She always wears it.”

Gretchen picked up the bracelet designed to support cancer research and fingered the engraving, Share Beauty Spread Hope. The bracelet matched the one on her own wrist. Their common bond was her mother’s triumph over breast cancer, her mother, a five-year survivor: sickened by chemotherapy, bald, her once dark brown hair growing back a monochromatic silver. Their bond continued to strengthen through her long, frightening recovery and the sudden death of Gretchen’s father in an automobile accident. Then came her mother’s compelling need for a new life, ripping out established roots, the move to Phoenix to be near her sister, abandoning her life in Boston. And Gretchen.

“She left in a rush,” Nina whispered.

“Yes,” Gretchen muttered, studying the contents of the kitchen. “She didn’t take the time to clean up, and that’s not like her.” She slipped her mother’s bracelet onto her wrist next to her own pink band. For good luck.

Gretchen wandered through the house. Her mother’s workshop was exactly the same as she remembered it from her last visit. A perpetual work in progress: dolls hanging from lines, dolls scattered over workbenches, heads, bodies, repair tools. Gretchen had helped her mother with the simpler repairs such as cleaning and restringing before the move to Phoenix. Gretchen smiled to herself. She had lived every little girl’s fantasy, rooms full of dolls and dresser drawers filled with doll clothing.

Nina made iced tea while Gretchen tugged Wobbles out of his carrier. He lifted his head and emitted a feeble meow, while Tutu’s nose twitched, catching his scent. Tutu tried to climb Gretchen’s leg.

“Call Tutu,” she said to Nina, doubting that Tutu even knew the
come
command. How could Nina train dogs to stay in purses when she couldn’t train Tutu in the basics? Yet her mother had insisted that Nina was the best purse dog trainer in the Valley of the Sun. Probably the only one, thought Gretchen, holding Wobbles in both arms. She’d never heard of the profession until Nina announced her new career move.

Nina picked up Tutu. Gretchen carried Wobbles down the hall to her mother’s bedroom and wrapped him in the bedding. He seemed to smile gratefully and was fast asleep before she walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Nina’s iced tea smelled wonderfully fruity, and Gretchen sipped it slowly at the kitchen table. Nina plopped down beside her. “Tell me everything again,” Gretchen said. “I want to hear it all.”

“Early yesterday morning, hikers found Martha’s body at the base of a ridge on the mountain,” Nina began. “Information travels fast through the doll community, and by noon everyone knew about it, including your mother. In fact, I’m the one who told her.”

“What did she say when she found out?” Gretchen asked.

“Very little, small exclamations of shock, I suppose. We were all gasping at the suddenness of her death.” Nina picked up her glass with both hands and placed her elbows on the table, cradling the glass against her lips. “Then I told her the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Bonnie Albright’s son is a detective with the Phoenix Police Department. You remember Bonnie? She’s president of the local doll club, the Phoenix Dollers.”

Gretchen remembered. Red hair shellacked into an exaggerated flip, red-smeared lips, penciled lines where eyebrows used to be. “The Kewpie doll collector.”

Her mother had a few Kewpies in her own collection. The original ones had blue wings fanning from their necks. Gretchen liked the chubby dolls, each with a small lock of hair and cherubic grin.

“That’s Bonnie,” Nina said. “She collects Action Kewpies. Farmers, drummers. Her son, Matt, called her right away because Martha didn’t have any identification with her, and he needed Bonnie’s help figuring out who she was.”

Gretchen frowned. “I don’t understand. How did he know Bonnie could help?”

“Because Martha had a doll parasol in the pocket of her shorts, and since his mother collected dolls, he thought she might know her. As it turns out, she did. Bonnie went down to the morgue, and sure enough, it was Martha Williams.”

Nina, a solemn expression on her face, set the glass on the table. “Poor Martha.”

“It sounds like she had a hard life,” Gretchen said.

Nina nodded, then noticed Tutu dancing at her feet. “Let’s take Tutu outside. The little dear needs to go.”

Tutu started yapping.

Gretchen watched Nina dig through a pouch as big as a baby diaper bag. Out came a white folded pad.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see. Follow me.”

Gretchen smiled inwardly. Aunt Nina was as quirky as quirky comes. Stores her shoes on top of the refrigerator so scorpions can’t climb in. Had all the silver fillings removed from her teeth so she wouldn’t get mercury poisoning. Believes she has special psychic power and can see auras emanating from people. Gretchen wouldn’t be surprised if Nina believed that space ships flew out of holes in Antarctica.

The sweltering late morning heat hit Gretchen with enough force that she took a step back before willing her body into forward motion. After the relief of the house’s air-conditioning, her skin felt on fire. Motion took superhuman effort. Even her breathing became labored.

They paused next to Caroline’s swimming pool rimmed with Mexican tile and gazed up at Camelback Mountain. Gretchen could see a few die-hard hikers weaving upward among the rocks. She wondered how many of the mountain’s casualties were accidents and how many were calculated ends. What drove people over the edge? What did they think about in that final moment during the deadly plunge?

She shivered in spite of the heat. Even Tutu paused for a moment of silence.

“Where did she fall?”

Nina pointed to one of the highest peaks. “She must have been standing right about there. See that ledge close to the top? Bonnie thinks they found her about there.”

“She must have been an experienced hiker to climb that high. Summit Trail isn’t easy.”

Summit Trail was strenuous. Not a trail for beginners. Halfway up to the peak of the mountain, the trail steps ended, and the real climb began. Gretchen had climbed it many times and loved the challenge, but the majority of amateur hikers preferred to follow the gentler Bobby’s Rock Trail.

Nina shrugged. “As far as I know, she never climbed a mountain in her life. She was afraid of heights. She couldn’t even climb a ladder.”

“Maybe she was trying to conquer her fear.” Gretchen knew there were plenty of opportunities to overcome fear on this mountain.

“Bonnie said Martha was wearing sandals. Who climbs a mountain in sandals?”

Tutu began yapping again. Nina unfolded the small white pad and placed it on the ground. “Here you go, sweetie. Now do your business.”

And Tutu squatted on the pad.

“This is the best invention ever designed,” Nina said. “I call it the wee-wee pad. See how well Tutu is trained to go on it. No more accidents in the house if you lay one of these where you want your precious pet to go. No more rushing home to let the dog out. Not that I’d ever leave you home alone, Tutu dear.”

Gretchen rolled her eyes. Nina needed an outside interest, something that didn’t include Tutu.

“The only problem is that Tutu likes the pad so much she won’t do what she has to do outside. No grass or desert ground for her. She refuses to pee-pee without her wee-wee pad. I would spread it out in the house, but Caroline says it isn’t natural for a dog to go in the house, and she won’t allow it.”

Nina bundled up the used pad and handed it to Gretchen.

Holding it delicately between two fingers, Gretchen walked to the far side of her mother’s swimming pool and deposited it in a trash receptacle outside of the cabana.

Instead of returning right away, Gretchen leaned against a barstool and admired the earthy Mexican tile decorating the cabana. Its open front faced the swimming pool with a circular cocktail area, and it had a small living space for guests in back. Gretchen stayed in the cabana on many visits, preferring its intimate coziness to staying in the main house.

Nina watched her from a lounge chair in the shade of a large umbrella. “Whatever happened up on the mountain, Gretchen, I’m afraid it wasn’t an accident.”