by Deb Baker
Gretchen couldn’t read him, not his voice or his expression.
“I didn’t expect you either,” she said, turning her body so her back was against the steering wheel, as far from him as possible. “My mother’s inside the library. I’ll relay the message to her.”
“You don’t trust me, do you?”
“Of course I do,” Gretchen lied. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to help you.”
“I didn’t kill Allison. I loved her. Even if we weren’t able to work out our problems, I would have continued to support her dreams. Allison’s fantasy doll line was taking off,” he said. “She was starting to make money, finally breaking in. I wanted her to succeed.”
“I’m sure you did.” Was her tone patronizing? She hoped not. “Did Allison make an earlier trip to Arizona?”
“Yes. She was here in March, doing initial research. I wish she’d never come back here. If only I’d known.”
“What did you want to tell my mother?”
Still no one passing by the car.
“Nacho made the rounds this morning looking for a guy,” he said. “Apparently someone was in the cemetery the night that Allison was killed, who wasn’t part of the normal homeless community. But he didn’t tell the cops that.”
“The street people don’t like cops much,” Gretchen said.
Andy nodded. “For good reason, I’m finding out.”
“And this guy?”
“He’s a common crook type who runs some action on the street. Nacho found him. He told Nacho he was hired to rob me.”
“By whom?”
“He never met his contact.”
“Convenient.”
Andy nodded. “This thug was paid to pick my pocket, steal my wallet, remove the driver’s license, and replace the wallet. And it had to happen on a certain day.”
“What day?”
Andy looked pained. “The day Allison was murdered,” he said. “The person who hired him made it very clear that I wasn’t to suspect anything was missing. And it worked. The guy was smooth. I didn’t notice a thing.”
Gretchen watched Andy’s face. Was he making this up?
“The guy would get paid double for the next part of the deal.”
“Which was what?”
“He was supposed to drop my driver’s license in the cemetery at a specific time. The guy ran late getting there though, so instead he threw it in a bush by the entrance when he saw the cops pull up. After that he was trapped and taken in along with all the others that were rounded up for questioning.”
“So your driver’s license is in the cemetery.”
Andy shook his head. “The cops have it by now.”
What an unbelievable story! Gretchen had to get out of the car, get away from Andy Thomasia, and run for the safety of the building.
He grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t you see?” he said. “Someone planned the whole thing ahead of time. Allison’s death was premeditated, not some random act of violence. And I was supposed to be arrested for her murder.”
Gretchen pulled away from his grip, carefully arranging her face to convey compassion and understanding. “Then go to the guy who robbed you and make him cooperate. Turn yourself in and have him substantiate your story.”
“Nacho said the guy wouldn’t help me, and Nacho wouldn’t give me his name. And why should the guy help me? He’d be incriminating himself.”
“Andy.” Gretchen had to make her move to escape before it was too late. “How did you find us at the library so easily?” she asked. Would she have time to grab her phone from the charger? Not likely. She’d have to leave it behind.
Andy leaned back in the seat, which was what Gretchen was waiting for. “It was the strangest thing,” he said. “I told Nacho that I wanted to find Caroline. Not long afterward, he gave me your location. It’s like there’s some kind of communication system, but I don’t know how it-”
Gretchen slammed her body against the driver’s door at the same time that she released the handle. The door flew open and she was out. If Andy had a weapon besides the lock pick, she hadn’t seen it yet.
She broke into a run, aiming straight for the library, relieved that she didn’t hear him chasing her. Every muscle in her body was taut, and she was very aware of her exposed back.
She gained the steps leading into the library. Several other patrons were also entering.
The only sound Gretchen could hear was her own ragged, frightened breath.
36
A librarian tapped Gretchen on the shoulder. “We’re closing in five minutes,” she said.
Late Saturday afternoon and the Birch women had nowhere to go.
Caroline had previously downplayed her old friend’s actions. She’d wanted to believe in Andy’s innocence; she’d known him for so long as a friend, and as more. But she reluctantly sided with Gretchen after hearing about the incident in the car.
Caroline’s defense of Andy ended when she learned that his driver’s license had been dropped at the murder scene. Had it happened the way he told it or had Andy lost it after killing his wife? Anything was possible. They would no longer take chances, even when dealing with old flames.
Andy now had the backing of the homeless community thanks to their foolhardy confidence in him. They would have to find Nacho or Daisy and rectify that. Otherwise the homeless people could continue to help Andy locate them.
“Saturday night,” Gretchen said. “We’ll never find them.”
“Let it go,” Caroline said. “We don’t have any proof that Andy is a murderer. Besides, we promised to give him two days. If we don’t discover anything useful by then, we’ll turn the entire problem over to the police along with the information we have so far.”
“We can’t go back to the car,” Gretchen said. “He might be waiting.”
“Even if he’s not, Nacho and his tribal drumbeaters know what we’re driving.” Caroline gave her a weak smile. “I never thought I’d have to hide from Daisy and Nacho’s street family.”
“Or from Matt,” Gretchen added. “I’d like to get my cell phone out of the car, though.”
“Really, Gretchen, you’re too attached to that thing. We have mine.”
They called a cab and gave the driver the address of the banquet hall. On the way, they contacted Nina and April and asked them to meet them there. “Leave your cars someplace else,” Gretchen advised them. “As many blocks away as you can comfortably walk. We wouldn’t want anyone to pass the building and see familiar cars parked right in front of it.”
Within an hour, the four women were sitting with an oversized Barbie doll on the edge of the stage, eating burgers picked up by the ever-ravenous April.
Tutu, Nimrod, and Enrico whizzed around the room, playing chase games and looking for mischief while Caroline and Gretchen brought Nina and April up-to-date.
“You need to get into witness protection,” April said when they were finished.
“I don’t think they have those kinds of programs anymore,” Nina replied.
Gretchen addressed her aunt. “Why don’t you use your psychic powers to help us out? It’s worked in the past. Can’t you put out a distress call?”
“Mayday, Mayday.” April giggled.
“I can’t perform on demand. Messages come in randomly, and they aren’t one hundred percent reliable.”
“Walk backward,” April suggested. “I heard it helps stimulate psychics.”
“The exercise isn’t about walking backward. I’m supposed to think backward,” Nina said. “And it isn’t appropriate for this case.”
“What if you held an object and concentrated,” Caroline said. “Would that work?”
“Like what?” Nina asked, looking doubtful.
“I know,” April said around a cheek filled with burger. “A piece of the skeleton would be good. Except I’m sure the police removed it from the house.”
“Yuck. I’m not touching any dead person’s bones.”
“It should be some
thing connected to the victims,” Caroline said.
“What about the photograph?” Gretchen said, remembering that she had a copy of it in her purse.
“I held it before and didn’t feel a thing.” Nina drained her soda and set it down on the stage floor. “But I’m pretty sure the killer is male.”
“We already suspect a man,” April said. “That isn’t useful information.”
“What’s your reason for believing it’s a man, Nina?” Gretchen wanted to hear everyone’s conclusions. Maybe something would jump out at them. Other than ghosts.
“I think a man killed Allison and the same man is after you, because I have trouble ‘reading’ men.” Nina held her fingers up in quotation marks. “When we went near that neighbor’s house, I got a powerful incoming message. And there was a reason for it. They knew something important, yet disturbing. Women are easy. Men, I can’t do.”
“In other words,” Gretchen said for clarification, which tended to be a difficult task when dealing with Nina, “when we found the bones in the wardrobe, if the corpse’s killer had been a woman, you believe that you would have known that through a feeling or a message.”
“Right. But I didn’t, so it’s a man.” She glanced around the group. “I think.”
Gretchen heard footsteps overhead.
“Mr. B.,” April said, shifting her eyes to the ceiling.
Heavy shoes banged down the stairs from the apartment above. A moment later, Mr. B. entered the room. “Thought I heard something down here,” he said. “What are you doing rehearsing on a Saturday night?”
“We’re not,” Caroline said. “We’re just going over some of the finer points.”
“Four good-looking women like you should have dates.”
After a couple minutes of polite conversation he left, banging back up the steps, leaving behind the scent of cherry pipe tobacco. Gretchen sighed. Mr. B. was right. She should be out with Matt.
What was all this drama doing to their relationship?
Did they still have one?
37
The four women reflected on the stories about Flora’s son Richard related to them by Nora and Bea Wade.
“Does mental disease run in families?” April asked when the story was over.
“Genes account for so much,” Caroline said.
“That’s right.” Nina stroked Tutu from the canine’s seat of power on her lap. “Look at our family. We’re spiritual and we have special abilities.” She glanced sharply at Gretchen. “If only we’d accept them.”
Caroline, the oldest, was the most knowledgeable about psychiatric procedures practiced in the seventies and eighties.
“Shock therapy was big,” she said. “And could be given against a patient’s will.”
“I’ve seen it in movies,” April added. “Patients were strapped down to tables with no anesthesia and all those wires attached to their bodies. Then the seizures. I can’t even think about it without feeling faint.”
Caroline nodded. “Electroshock was used to treat depression.”
Gretchen had done her Internet homework. “And schizophrenia.”
Nina chimed in. “Anybody with emotional problems in those days was labeled schizophrenic.”
“That’s correct,” Caroline said. “The label was overused. But as far as electroshock goes, we learned at the library that over a million people each year still receive it. Of course, now the procedure is voluntary.”
“Who would do that?” April said. “How creepy.”
Gretchen was overwhelmed by the amount of information they’d discovered. “I think everything we’ve discussed tonight should remain between us.”
“What happens in the banquet hall,” April said with a grin, “stays in the banquet hall.”
“Seriously,” Caroline said. “Very soon, we’ll go to the police.”
“Where do we go from here?” Nina said.
Gretchen looked over at her mother. She didn’t like the plan they had concocted on the way over in the cab. It had been her mother’s idea, and Gretchen couldn’t really see the point, but she didn’t have a better idea.
“Here’s our idea,” she said, jumping into what she was sure would be extremely hot water.
38
When the women leave the banquet hall, Jerome rises up from behind the stage curtain and stretches out his cramped muscles. Lucky for him, he heard them fumbling around with the lock and whispering. If they’d found him asleep in a stage chair, he’d have been screwed. In the nick of time, he took a dive behind the stage and didn’t move a single muscle.
They stayed long enough to worry him, his body complaining like all get-out, but he remained in a frozen position. How much longer could he do it?
As long as it takes, he said in his head more than once.
He sure heard an earful, though. Man! Craziness, he thinks, is in the eye of the beholder. It’s shifty. Who gets to decide? Other crazies?
He heard the whole thing from beginning to end, and now he’s in the driver’s seat again. He is back on track, just like the strip of lighting he installed over the stage.
For a time there, he’d lost their trail. But Jerome’s a smart guy. He knew they’d show up at the building eventually. He’s good at waiting, like when he’s after a bird. Cats are the same way, although he hates cats, for what they do to birds. But he’s an observer of behavior, and cats know how to get what they want.
It’s only a matter of who has the most patience.
He rummages through the garbage in the break room, pulling out the burger bags and eating what he can find, pieces of bun, a little hamburger meat, bits of lettuce. Finished with the scraps, he wipes his hands on the gray overalls. He decides right on the spot that he likes to wear this one-piece outfit. The pockets are wide and deep, perfect to fit a bird inside.
Weapons and birds are his fields of expertise.
Everybody’s special in some way, if you just take time to find it and accept it. You don’t have any control over some things, so go with the flow, he always says, and make use of your skills.
The women left some coffee in the pot, lukewarm, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
He pours a little for himself, using the same cup that Gretchen Birch drank from, the one with her name on it and little dolls dancing around the rim. He can smell her scent right along with the coffee smell, and it is as rich as cream.
Jerome inhales, enjoying himself immensely, satisfied with life.
He isn’t in any kind of hurry.
Because he knows exactly where they are going.
39
April and Nina, along with their canine entourage that included Nimrod, would spend the night at Brandon’s house. Under different circumstances, Gretchen would have found humor in the situation. Brandon Kline hadn’t known what he was getting into when he began dating Nina. This family came with a lot of baggage, most of it living and breathing, and Nina was throwing all her curveballs at him at once.
Her aunt drove the few blocks to World of Dolls in silence. Mentally exhausted like the rest of us, Gretchen thought. And angry. They’d had a heated debate over the wisdom of Gretchen and Caroline’s choice of accommodations and were barely speaking to each other.
Nina had continued to disagree with them even as they were leaving the banquet hall. “You’re fulfilling your destiny. You can’t seem to wait for your share of misery and disaster. Check into a hotel. I’ll pay.”
“Nina,” Gretchen had replied, “we want to stay there, so leave it alone. Join us if you’d like.”
“I’m giving up. This is so foolish,” Nina had shot back. “Like one of those old slasher movies where the woman just has to go down into the basement, knowing that the killer is in the house. How stupid is that?”
“I love scary movies,” April had said as Gretchen inserted her key into the keyhole and opened the door leading into the World of Dolls Museum.
Now, as Gretchen made her way up the spiral staircase, she wondered agai
n what they hoped to learn from the house and its ghostly occupant. A hotel would have been simpler, safer, and less nerve-wracking. Every creak in the floorboards frightened her. The small protection she carried in the form of a lipstick-shaped cylinder of pepper spray didn’t reassure her much. She wished it were a semiautomatic weapon.
Aunt Gertie, where are you when I need you?
And where was her other aunt when she needed her? It was uncharacteristic of Nina to turn down an opportunity for adventure. Nina had claimed that she refused to accompany them because of the danger of inciting wrath in a ghost whose remains had been improperly removed from its domain. “The bones might be gone from the house,” she had said, “but the ghost has been left behind, and it will be angry.”
“Ghosts must have their own personalities,” April had said. “Like people. You can’t predict their moods. You’re thinking up excuses.”
Gretchen silently agreed.
What Nina really wanted was to be with her man. Who could blame her?
Soon, if all went well, Gretchen would be wrapped in strong, manly arms of her own. Matt Albright would be all hers.
With her mother beside her, she paused to listen at the upstairs landing.
Not a sound.
The light of the moon had guided them through the lower level of the house, past the doll displays arranged in more easygoing days. It seemed so long ago. One of the dolls appeared to move, causing Gretchen’s throat to constrict and her heart to beat wildly. Then she realized it was only a cloud passing across the moon, creating patterns of dark and light inside the old house, giving inanimate objects a sense of motion.
To make matters even more difficult, they couldn’t risk any artificial lighting, not so much as the smallest flashlight beam as they found their way along the upstairs hall and into the master bedroom where the armoire had revealed its long-kept secret.
“This is it then,” Gretchen whispered. “We might as well get settled.”
“Why are we tiptoeing and whispering?” Caroline said, whispering back.
