by Deb Baker
Her mother stood next to Nina.
“You scared me almost to death!” Gretchen’s heart pounded at full throttle.
“We came to find you.” Nina was admiring the armoire. “Antique and in perfect condition. Some of the really old ones had secret compartments built into them.”
“To hide an illicit lover?” Gretchen’s petrified imagination was going strong tonight.
“Exactly. Let’s check it out.”
“I was over by the door when I heard a sound from this direction,” Gretchen said. “It must have been a mouse running along the wall behind the armoire.”
“I’ll take a look,” Caroline said.
Gretchen stepped inside the armoire and tapped the back wall of the enormous walk-in wardrobe. Her curiosity over the possibility of a secret place was stronger than her fear. Besides, she wasn’t alone anymore. She tapped the back panel again. “It sounds hollow, doesn’t it?”
“Do it one more time.” Nina came closer and put her ear against the panel. Gretchen tapped with her knuckles again, staring at her aunt, waiting for her opinion. Nina’s eyes grew wide and she nodded.
“No sign of rodent droppings back there,” Caroline said, coming around. “I’ll call an exterminator tomorrow to be on the safe side.”
“Come inside,” Nina called out. “Gretchen’s found a real honest-to-goodness secret room.”
“How does the door open up?” Gretchen ran her hand over the wood, feeling for a latch or release.
“How would I know?” Nina answered. “I’ve never been inside one before. But hurry. Maybe it leads into the secret world of Narnia.”
Gretchen couldn’t help chuckling. “Why am I not surprised that you believe in fantasy worlds?” she said.
Her fingers felt something, a patch of felt, followed by the cold touch of metal. She felt it give and heard the lock release. The secret door moved ever so slightly, allowing her to get her fingers between it and the wall of the armoire.
“Ready for another universe, Nina?”
The secret door swung open. Gretchen backed up, trying to remember where she’d left her flashlight. She bumped into Nina, who moved sideways and swung her own flashlight beam into the gaping cavern of darkness they had uncovered. Her light flicked along the top of the armoire compartment then swept lower along the rich wood panel. Nina worked the light downward until it lit up something near the floor.
Gretchen felt the room spin.
Nina gasped and dropped the flashlight. Her aunt screamed.
Caroline grabbed at Gretchen’s arm, trying to pull her out of the armoire.
She felt paralyzed, too shocked to move, riveted in place.
The skeletal remains of a human being were crumpled on the floor of the secret compartment.
Gretchen turned and ran with her mother and her aunt, but not before she’d seen the rest.
On the wardrobe’s floor, beside the fleshless bones, lay a small cloth body.
The doll’s head was nowhere in sight.
Neither was the skeleton’s.
20
He gazes curiously up the street, not that he can see the house from where he stands. He’d have to walk two blocks, then over one more if he wants to stand right in front of it.
His cherry pipe tobacco, the first bowl of the day, catches the flame from the matchstick. Smoke swirls upward on this gray morning, the first overcast sky in weeks. Let it rain for a change, really come down in buckets. He likes when the earth can’t take the load and water runs in streams, flooding streets. Weather reporters in Phoenix have a mundane job. The same old, same old. Pollen counts aren’t interesting for long. But rain, that’s something to start a conversation.
Traffic-cars and pedestrians-hurries along. Already, early this morning, he has waved to some, called out to others, listened patiently while neighbors griped about this and that, pollution, smog, neighborhood pets, you name it.
All the while his thoughts bubble like a shaken can of soda, ready to explode. Especially now, with what he’s just heard.
“Mr. B.,” she says, calling him back from wherever his mind has wandered. “Want one?” Cramming Dunkin’ Donuts into her piehole. Offering friendship. He waves it away without transferring his eyes from up the street. Nice try, but no thanks.
He hears a growl from inside a bag on her shoulder. Ratlike thing with beady eyes stares out at him. Growls again. They exchange glares. The dog looks away first.
She’s finished with the tale, but he has questions. “Skeleton in the closet, you say? Imagine that.” Everybody has ’em, only this isn’t what she means. These are real bones. He wonders what they look like. “Anybody get a picture?”
A vigorous shake from her, whole body a big negative. “No,” she says. “My friend? You know the one who dresses to match her dog? She had a camera, but she didn’t pull herself together in time after the shock. It isn’t every day you find a skeleton.”
“Too bad. Convenient that she had a camera with her, though.”
“They were trying to get photographs of a ghost.” She has crumbs on her lower lip. Brushes them away. “Instead they found a dead body. The place is haunted, you know?”
“I can see why.”
What’s her name again? Starts with an A. After a month. August? April? That’s it. “You sure have the details, April.” She’s been spewing them at him, along with donut crumbs, one after another, like she knows what she’s talking about. Wasn’t even there. If he hadn’t volunteered the use of his building for their event, he’d miss out on all this action. Living right upstairs helps, too, makes him feel part of things.
“They found a headless doll body in the closet, too, with the headless skeleton.”
“How old do you think the bones are? Did anyone say?” The house has been vacant for what? A decade? Two? What a perfect place to stash a body. In a house nobody wants.
April chews a chunk of donut.
“Could be only a few months, I think,” she says, like she knows her corpse decomposition facts.
April bounces away from the street corner and disappears inside the banquet hall. Pretty soon more of them will show up. He’s still exchanging greetings when the shakes start. Like ground tremors along a fault line, his body begins to tremble and all the self-will in the world can’t control it.
A group of women in the cast walk toward him, crossing the street against the light, oblivious to traffic. A car honks and they step it up. One of them looks directly at him, right into his eyes.
He’s almost sick on the sidewalk.
When will she stop tormenting him?
Every last one of them looks exactly like her.
21
Gretchen’s hiking boots dug into the red rocks of Camelback Mountain. She’d learned the hard way that early morning climbs were less dangerous than those made later in the day. As an expert climber, she wasn’t worried about proper dress and ways to prevent dehydration. It was the creatures of the desert that bothered her the most. One too many encounters with rattlesnakes and poisonous bugs and she’d rapidly adapted to this exotic land.
The colder the temperature, the better. Not only did she have the popular mountain all to herself, without the influx of tourists and sightseers, but the rattlers were paralyzed by the cool air. Later in the day when the temperature rose, they would be lying on the rocks, sunning themselves. That is, if the sun managed to come out today.
The snakes could appear deceptively immobile, but if warm enough to respond, they could strike like a bolt of lightning.
She shuddered at the thought of thick-skinned, deadly reptiles as she reached the summit and greeted the day. Clouds hovered over her head, giving her the impression she could reach out and touch them. She wore a lightweight waterproof jacket just in case the angrier clouds in the distance reached her before she descended.
How did so many species survive in this hostile environment? Squirrels, birds of every kind, coyotes, bobcats, jackrabbits, wild pigs, all seemed com
fortable and at home in the desert.
Gretchen sat and breathed in the fresh air, absorbing the quiet.
Then she climbed back down to the halfway point where an enormous boulder overlooked the city.
Matt was already waiting for her with travel mugs.
“Coffee?” He flashed the smile that had charmed her from the very moment she met him. And he wore the Chrome cologne that she loved so much.
She took the cup he offered and sat down on the boulder beside him.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I have to work twenty-four hours a day to keep you out of trouble. Every time I arrive at a crime scene, there you are.”
“Are you blaming me for all your problems?”
“Absolutely. But you’re worth keeping in spite of the extra effort.”
“Thanks.”
They watched the Phoenix morning unfold below them and sipped coffee. Their relationship had reached a new level. They could be in each other’s company without feeling like they had to talk every minute. Gretchen found it comforting.
She also felt a drop of water.
“It’s starting to rain,” Matt observed, but he didn’t move from beside her.
“You’re in the right field of work, Sherlock,” Gretchen said, teasing, “But you still haven’t learned how to dress to climb mountains. Where’s your rain gear?”
Matt wore khaki shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. “Rain gear in Phoenix?” he said. “We rarely need foul-weather gear.”
“Right.” Gretchen raised her face into the soft rain. “Have you found out anything about the skeleton?”
“The victim was a woman, probably about sixty years old. Dental records aren’t going to be helpful since we don’t have a head to work with, which also rules out our ability to forensically reconstruct the victim’s facial features. Identifying the remains is going to be tricky. Our team worked through the night querying missing person databases and lining up forensics experts. The department doesn’t have its own internal resources to handle the complexity of identifying the corpse without requesting additional assistance. What we really need first is a forensic anthropologist to date the remains.”
“Sounds more complicated than I imagined,” Gretchen said.
“The days of pounding the pavement for information are almost over. I spend most of my time at a keyboard. It’s raining harder by the way.”
Gretchen didn’t move. This moment alone with him on the mountain was too precious to give up willingly. “Finding the skeletal remains of a human didn’t really bother me as much as I thought it would. I’ve seen enough cadavers in textbooks, and I took anatomy in college, so I can even identify most of the bones in a human body.”
“The missing head did it, right?”
Gretchen snuggled a little closer on the boulder. “The lack of a head, yes. And the headless doll body disturbed me as much as the actual headless skeleton.”
She shivered. “It has to be Flora Swilling’s body. Did you see the photograph of the girl holding a doll? It’s the same cloth doll body. I’m sure of it.”
“It could be, but we can’t work from intuition like you do. I have to prove it with concrete facts. Flora Swilling married a man named Berringer. The husband died in the sixties of heart failure. I went through old missing person reports and found something interesting: In 1981, almost twenty years after her husband died, Flora Berringer disappeared. She was never heard from again.”
Gretchen jumped up, excited. Nina had been right all along about the identification of their ghost. “You know we’ve found her!”
“We still need to make a proper identification, but for now, yes, I think you stumbled across what’s left of Flora Berringer.”
Gretchen felt as though she’d accomplished something big, something really worthwhile. She’d put together one more piece of a puzzle, as grisly as it was. Now the police would study Flora’s history, search her background, and catch her killer after all these years.
“I want to help,” Gretchen said as they started down the mountain. “I felt a connection to her from the moment I saw that old photograph.”
“Now you sound like your aunt.”
“If what I saw last night is all that remains of that woman, I want to help catch the person responsible.”
“That’s my job.”
“We can solve a cold case together.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fun.”
“I knew that’s what you’d say.”
They had reached the trailhead. Matt’s car was the only one in the parking area. They ducked into it just as the sky gave way. Rain beat on the windshield. Matt didn’t make any attempt to start the car.
“Are you keeping quiet about the words on the headstone?” Gretchen asked.
“Yes, didn’t Caroline tell you?”
“No, she must have forgotten.”
So her mother wouldn’t have told anyone. And Gretchen hadn’t, which meant that the note on her windshield hadn’t been left as a bad practical joke because no one knew about it.
“About the museum, Gretchen. You can’t go back to it,” Matt said.
“Of course I can.”
“Let me rephrase that. The house has been officially sealed until we go through every box in the place and I’m satisfied that there’s nothing left to find.”
“When will you be finished?”
“In a few days. We’re going to move quickly on this one. In the meantime, please be careful. Stay close to your family. Stay out of dark places. Make sure you’re locked in securely at night.”
There the warnings were again. All the rules that women were forced to live by. What must it be like to be a man, to be able to live without all the fear?
“I mean it, Gretchen,” Matt said. “Put the project on hold. Stay home and work on your business.”
He’d never leave her alone if he knew about the note. He’d only worry more. And what could he do about it? But she had to tell him.
Matt reached into the backseat. “I almost forgot. I fished this out of your mother’s car before it was towed. You’ll give it to her?”
Gretchen took the shopping bag and peeked inside. She withdrew a white plastic bag and started to open it.
“Whoa,” Matt said. “You aren’t going to open that, are you? What if it’s, you know?”
“Oh, right.” Gretchen put the plastic bag back inside. “Doll stuff.” He wouldn’t like that.
“So,” she said after a moment, “we aren’t going to be partners?”
Matt grinned and reached for her. “It depends on what kind of partners you’re suggesting.”
She had no intention of sitting on the sidelines like a good little cheerleader, but the man was irresistible!
A few minutes later, the car’s windows were completely steamed over. And the nasty note was the last thing on Gretchen’s mind.
22
Chatty Cathy was one of the most popular dolls of the sixties, coming in a close second after Barbie. Both were produced by Mattel. Chatty Cathy, who was twenty inches tall and composed of vinyl, was soon followed by Chatty Baby, Tiny Chatty Baby, and several other offshoots designed to be nurtured by eager children. Chatty Cathy’s innovation was that she could “speak.” Her early phrases included “Please play with me” and “Please brush my hair.” With her protruding little tummy and slightly bucked teeth, Chatty Cathy was the typical, lovable child of her time.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
Gretchen, Caroline, and Nina crowded around the computer in the doll repair studio. Doll parts were sorted neatly inside stacked white bins, each labeled with their contents. The “basket cases,” those dolls needing extra attention, were wrapped and placed carefully in bins near the worktable. Projects with approaching deadlines were also placed close to the workstations.
“See it!” Nina leaned toward the computer screen and pointed excitedly with a long, red fingernail. “It’s an orb!”
“It’s
a smudge on the lens,” Caroline said.
“It’s our ghost,” Nina insisted, clicking her nail on the screen.
Gretchen leaned forward and squinted at the monitor. What had she expected to find? The smoky outline of a human body? All she saw was a spot.
“Ghosts can appear as mist or sparkles,” Nina said. “Orbs are most common. I’d stake my future on it: that glowing circular object is an orb.”
“You’re sure it isn’t dirt on the lens?” Gretchen was doubtful.
Nina picked up her camera and presented the lens side to her sister and to Gretchen. “Not a single speck. It’s as clean as Nimrod’s teeth.”
Gretchen laughed. “That clean?”
“I didn’t tell you I had all the pooches’ teeth cleaned. Nimrod, where are you?” Nina, decked out in black mourning as she decided was fitting after the discovery in the armoire, called out to the puppy.
Gretchen heard her tiny poodle running through the house. He barreled into the workshop, his little black ears flapping. Nimrod almost overran the spot where Nina wanted him to perform. He skidded to a stop and waited impatiently for the next command.
“Smile,” Nina said to him.
Nimrod pulled back his lips, exposing his teeth and producing more of a grimace than a grin.
“My,” Caroline said, laughing. “Those are clean teeth.”
“Take a bow, Nimrod,” Nina said using her training voice.
The poodle tipped his head in a perfect bow.
Gretchen saw a transaction between the trainer and the puppy, a treat passed so discreetly that a casual observer would have missed it.
Everyone clapped. Tutu watched aloofly from afar, miffed that she wasn’t the center of attention.
Caroline held the copy of the old sepia photograph. It was the first time she had seen it.
“I’m amazed,” she said, “that you found this picture.”
“It’s what started us on the path,” Nina said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have recognized the doll body.”
“Oh my gosh!” Caroline said. “I completely forgot. I found a metal doll head in one of the boxes and had it in my car when I crashed. Matt pulled out the things from my car.”
