Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding

by Lea Wait

  “Have you seen her working on them?” asked Gussie.

  “She keeps the door to her room closed. But I’ve peeked when she was out walking,” Diana admitted. “She has a workbench in there, with half-finished naked dolls all over it.”

  Gussie laughed.

  “Gussie, I’m with Diana. That’s strange. Roasting dolls? If she has doll parts maybe she’s making or repairing dolls. Okay. But cooking them in the oven? What’s that? Voodoo?” Maggie shivered. “I don’t see what’s funny.”

  “No, no, no. I’ve always wondered how Cordelia makes a living, since she stays in that house by herself all the time. Now I think I know. I’ll bet she’s making OOAK reborns. The best get pretty high prices nowadays.”

  Diana and Maggie looked bewildered.

  “English, please? OOAK? Reborns?” Maggie shook her head. “Whatever that means, it sounds awful. Educate us who clearly have no clue.”

  “It’s not awful.” Gussie smiled. “They’re dolls, like Diana said. OOAK means One of a Kind. Reborns are dolls that look like newborns or preemies. People make them by hand. Someone, like maybe Cordelia, takes expensive manufactured baby dolls apart, removes the factory paint, cleans them, and then repaints them, adding real hair, eyes, eyelashes, and fillers to make the doll feel like a real baby. Then they dress the doll, often in real preemie or baby clothes. ­Every OOAK is different. They can be made to look like any race. At several steps along the way the doll has to be baked to set the paint or glue. Making them isn’t simple. It takes patience and time, and only someone who’s really talented artistically can do it successfully.”

  “It sounds horrible,” said Maggie.

  “Not to a lot of people. A reborn isn’t the kind of doll most children would play with. It’s a baby doll that can sometimes be mistaken for a real infant. People collect them. Some women with emotional issues, especially those who’ve lost an infant, find taking care of them is relaxing. I’ve heard of women who can’t have children who ‘adopt’ an OOAK as a substitute.” Gussie shot a sideways glance at Maggie, who pointedly ignored her.

  “Taking care of them?” Diana looked askance. “You mean people act like they’re real babies? Weird!”

  “I’ve seen women with reborns in strollers at doll shows. The best are very realistic. One of the artists, as their makers are called, told me she had a customer arrested for child abuse for leaving hers in a car seat in a parked car. Of course, all charges were dropped when the policeman saw her ‘baby’ was really a doll.”

  “Talk about embarrassing moments!” said Maggie. “I’ll bet the other cops teased him about that for months.”

  “How much do the dolls sell for?” asked Diana.

  “At the doll shows they can go over a couple of thousand dollars. If you want a custom-made one, perhaps with the facial features of a specific child, maybe even higher. The last time I looked on eBay they were up to sixteen hundred. It depends. Different styles and races are popular at different times.”

  “You don’t have any, do you?” asked Diana, glancing around as though one might pop out of one of Gussie’s cartons.

  “No,” said Gussie. “They’re not my sort of doll. I specialize in toys made before 1950, and most of my inventory is nineteenth-century. Reborns are brand new, or made within the last ten years. The collectible doll industry is a diverse one. It’s like teddy bears. Thousands of different teddy bears are made each year, and lots of people collect them. The only teddies I have in my shop are from the early twentieth century, when a stuffed bear was a cute way of remembering that Teddy Roosevelt spared the life of a baby black bear when he was hunting. A couple in Brooklyn created a stuffed bear in his honor in 1903. Then the Steiff Toy Company in Germany introduced a stuffed bear the same year, and most of them sold to the United States. In 1904 President Roosevelt used the teddy bear as one of his campaign mascots.”

  “Wasn’t there a Titanic connection with teddy bears?” Maggie asked.

  “There was. After the Titanic sank in 1912 the Steiff company made five hundred black teddy bears and advertised them as presents to give to those in mourning.”

  Diana made a face. “Gross. And depressing.”

  “There were happier teddies. Like the one A.A. Milne gave to his son Christopher on his first birthday. That teddy was the model for Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926.”

  “I never thought about toys having history,” said Diana.

  “Don’t get her started; she hasn’t even mentioned Smokey the Bear,” Maggie pointed out.

  “And don’t forget Paddington!” said Gussie. “That’s why I love children’s books and toys. They’re a part of our lives.”

  “By the way, Gussie, if you ever want to do an exhibit of special Roosevelt items, like teddy bears, and maybe Theodore Roosevelt games or cards, we could also include prints and political cartoons related to him. And perhaps Franklin Roosevelt, too. Did you know FDR was a major collector of American prints? He started collecting when he was governor of New York State, looking for views of the Hudson River between Hyde Park, where he lived, and Albany. Then when he was Secretary of the Navy he collected American navy prints to decorate his New York City home. Both his collections went with him when he moved to the White House. Today they’re all in his library at Hyde Park.”

  “Interesting, Maggie. But right now I’m not focused on history. I’m focused on getting into my new house before my wedding. If we’re going to get everything packed up, we need to start,” said Gussie.

  “Got it. Sorry,“ said Maggie. “I get carried away when I’m thinking about history and prints. Where do you want us to begin?”

  “Most of my stock is down here in the shop area. It’s already in boxes. I only need to add bubble wrap, find tops for the boxes, and label them,” said Gussie. “I can do that myself because everything’s at a level I can reach. You ladies go on upstairs and start on the closets. Just pack everything.” She sighed. “I’ll go through things when I unpack. Cartons and packing materials are in the living room. Maggie, you can show Diana.”

  “Will do, boss,” said Maggie, saluting Gussie. “Come on, Diana. Let’s see how fast we can get this done.”

  They started on the two hall closets. “It’s amazing how much can be crammed into closets, isn’t it?” said Maggie. “These seem to be full of Christmas decorations and china. Why don’t you stand on the ladder and hand the china and boxes down to me? I’ll sort, and then we’ll both wrap and box so we don’t mix up the Santas with Gussie’s demitasse set.”

  Within minutes they’d finished the top shelves of both closets. “I wish Gussie hadn’t emptied her kitchen first,” Maggie commented, failing miserably to separate tangled Christmas tree lights. “If we had plastic kitchen bags I’d try to put the strings of lights in separate bags.”

  “Those are so tangled we’d be here all afternoon trying to separate them,” Diana commented. “I did those sorts of things at my house in Colorado when I had to clean it out.”

  “Did the house sell?” Maggie asked.

  “Not yet. I left a few boxes in the garage, and some furniture in the rooms. The real estate lady said it would be easier to sell if it looked like a home. It didn’t feel like my home anymore, though. If it sells while I’m away she’s going to have a few things, like the Christmas ornaments I want to keep, put in storage for me. The rest will go to Goodwill if the new owners don’t want it.”

  “It must have been hard, going through everything alone.”

  “It was hellish. Everything there reminded me of my mother, or my father, or of what my life would have been like if they hadn’t died.”

  “What did your dad do in Colorado?”

  “I don’t exactly know. He had an ordinary, boring job. He worked for a bank. He didn’t talk much about it, and I didn’t ask.”

  “And then one day he just disappeared?”

  “Oh, no! Nothing like that! He died, or at least everyone thought he’d died, in an awful accident. It was a sno
wy night. He was on his way home from a business meeting on a slippery road in the mountains. His car went off the road and burst into flames.”

  “And there was no doubt?”

  “That he died? No! It was his car, and people at the meeting saw him get into it. The car completely burned up. There was nothing left. A policeman knocked on my dorm room door at college and told me.” Diana’s eyes filled up. “There was a death certificate. Someone at the bank helped me plan the funeral. No one ever questioned that he was dead.”

  “When did all that happen?”

  Diana blew her nose, and then wrapped the last of a group of fragile Christmas ornaments. “A little over two years ago. Somehow I finished the semester and then I took a leave of absence. I had too much to do, and I wasn’t ready to go back to a dorm and focus on books.”

  “And you haven’t been back to school since.”

  “No.” Diana looked guilty. “Mr. Dryden said you’re a professor, right?”

  “I teach at a community college in New Jersey.”

  “You probably think I was stupid to drop out.”

  Got that right, Maggie thought. “People go back to college at all ages. It’s up to you. You have to decide what you want to do. But college can help you do that,” she said. “Have you thought about your future?”

  “Not really. That’s one of the reasons I left Colorado. I decided to just drive. See America. So far I haven’t seen much. I decided to start in Winslow, so I drove straight through. I thought maybe since my family had come from the Cape, I’d feel at home here.”

  “But?”

  “I found Dad. But he wasn’t happy to see me. He was angry, and I was angry, and then he disappeared, and now he really is dead. I guess I should have stayed in Colorado. I feel worse now than I did there. And instead of answering questions, now I have more of them. My dad and I had a second chance to get to know each other, and we blew it. Big time. The little time we had together we argued. I wanted to know what happened? Why he made me go through all that? Why he was here in Winslow using another name?”

  Maggie finished folding a stack of holiday napkins and handed them to Diana to fill the carton where she’d stacked boxes of Christmas balls. “What did he say?”

  “He never answered anything. He kept saying what he’d done was best for everyone. And that I shouldn’t have come to Winslow.”

  “Did Cordelia say anything?”

  “She doesn’t talk! Freaked me out when I first met her, but now I’m getting used to it.”

  “I mean, how did she react when you arrived?”

  “Okay, I guess. I was curious about her, but Dad didn’t tell me much about her. He’d never told me I had a cousin to begin with. He always said we didn’t have any family; it was just us. I thought I was the only one in the family alive. He could sign to her, like you can, though, so I figured he’d known her a long time. It’s all so new, and so strange. He was a different person here. He even looked different. But he was still my dad.”

  Diana paused.

  “It’s all happened so fast. I drove across the country, feeling free and independent, maybe for the first time in my life. Then suddenly to see Dad again and know he was still alive, but somehow had turned into someone else, someone I didn’t know, and I had a relative, but I couldn’t ask her all the questions I had, and now, zap! Dad’s gone again. And here I am, cleaning out the closet of someone I don’t even know, and talking to you about it all.” She looked at Maggie. “I feel as though I’m in a movie or something. As though maybe the last week never happened, and I just arrived from Colorado. Maybe Dad was never here. Maybe I imagined it all.”

  “That would make it a lot easier to understand, for sure,” Maggie agreed.

  “I don’t know what I should do, now,” said Diana. “Dad didn’t want me to tell anyone I was his daughter, but when he disappeared I figured it wouldn’t make any difference. Now I’m wondering. Do you think maybe it does? People here knew him as Dan Jeffrey. Maybe that’s who he should be.”

  “I don’t know, Diana.”

  “I want to know why he left me. Why didn’t he think he could trust me enough to tell me about it? And what was he doing here? The first time, I accepted that he’d died in an accident in Colorado. But people don’t kill other people by accident. He must have been in trouble here.”

  “That’s the job of the police. Chief Irons and his detectives will find out what happened.”

  “I hope so. But Cordelia doesn’t think they’ll be able to find out who did it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She doesn’t talk, but she writes notes to me. After Chief Irons was at the house the first time, to tell us Dad was dead, Cordelia looked sad. But she wasn’t surprised. She wrote, ‘Dangerous friends’ on a piece of paper, and shook her head. So when the chief came back and said Dad had been murdered, it wasn’t really a shock. I think we were both expecting it.”

  “But why don’t you think the police will find the killer?”

  “Because I said what you did. I wrote that Chief Irons would find whoever killed Dad. And Cordelia wrote, ‘The Cape has many harbors.’ And she’s right. Dad was on the beach. He’d been in the water. Who could tell where he went in the water? There are lots of towns and harbors on the Cape. How can one little police department know what’s happening everywhere?”

  “I’m sure Chief Irons has contacts in other departments, and with the state police,” said Maggie. “Although you’re right that your dad could have been on a boat out in Cape Cod Bay, and his body washed ashore. He wasn’t necessarily killed here in Winslow.”

  “Maggie? Diana? How’re you ladies doing up there?” Gussie called from downstairs.

  “We’ve almost finished two closets.” Maggie answered. “Do you need help downstairs?”

  “I was thinking it might be time for a tea or cola break. Sound good to you?”

  “Fine with me,” said Maggie.

  Diana glanced at her watch. “Oops! I didn’t realize it was this late! I planned to stop and get a bottle of port for Cordelia on my way home. She likes a glass after dinner. We have tons of what she calls ‘funeral food’ at home, but no port. I should get back to be with her.”

  “Thank you for helping, Diana. And I know Gussie’s planning to pay you a little for your time.”

  “That would be great. But it was fun. Thank you for listening…” Diana hesitated.

  “Why don’t we exchange telephone numbers,” said Maggie. “I’m sure we could use your help with other things during the next week, and if you want to get in touch with me for any reason, don’t hesitate to call. Even just to talk.”

  The two exchanged cell phones, and entered their numbers.

  “We’re officially on each other’s speed dials now,” said Diana. “Thank you, so much. I’ll say good-bye to Gussie downstairs.”

  “Tell her to come on upstairs and we’ll have that tea and soda,” said Maggie. “I’m ready for a sit-down, too.”

  Chapter 13

  Tower Rock, Garden of the Gods. Wood Engraving by Thomas Moran for Volume 2 of Picturesque America, two volumes describing and picturing the scenery of the United States. Published monthly and then in bound volumes in 1872 and 1874, they were the first attempt to picture all of America. The two volumes, edited by poet William Cullen Bryant, contained over nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings. Their publication increased tourism, encouraged population growth in the West, and contributed to the call for preservation of state and national park lands. The Garden of the Gods, which Picturesque America says is five miles northwest of Colorado Springs, was later given to that city by the children of General William Jackson Perkins. Black and white; L-shaped. 6.25 x 8.50 inches if it were a complete rectangle. Price: $45.

  “Sorry to be a party pooper,” said Gussie. “But I need to lie down a while.”

  Maggie was immediately on alert. “Is your Post-Polio Syndrome getting worse? What can I do to help?”

&nb
sp; “You’re helping by being here,” said Gussie. “And of course it’s getting worse. That’s what it does. Besides: what rational person moves their home and their business and gets married within a two-week period? Anyone would be tired! You must be tired, too; you drove up from Jersey yesterday, and we’ve been on the go since then. I just need a short nap; I’ll be fine.”

  “Do you still have Wi-Fi here?” asked Maggie. “If so, I think I’ll have that cola you mentioned and check my email and do some research on-line.”

  “My personal computer’s still here so I haven’t discontinued the service yet. Make yourself at home. If I’m not up by six o’clock, wake me,” said Gussie, as she headed for her bedroom.

  Maggie took a Diet Pepsi from the supply in the refrigerator and opened her laptop.

  Diana either wasn’t telling the whole story about what had happened in Colorado Springs, or she didn’t know it. It didn’t make sense that a loving father would disappear for no reason and not tell his daughter. Or that a man would be declared dead if there were no body, even if there was an accident.

  Maggie searched for “Roger Hopkins Colorado” and immediately there were hits.

  Everything Diana had said checked out. Roger Hopkins was a loan officer for the Rocky Mountain Savings and Loan in Colorado Springs. Two years ago he was on his way home from visiting homeowners who were behind in their mortgage payments. (Read: telling them they’d be foreclosed on if they didn’t pay up. Nasty job.) His car swerved coming down a steep, icy road and plunged into a ravine, where the gas tank caught fire. Flames could be seen for miles. Fire and police departments were on the scene as soon as they could, but nothing could be done.

  Roger Hopkins, widower, had left one daughter, Diana Emily, a sophomore at the University of Colorado.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Eighteen months before the accident Roger Hopkins had made the Colorado Springs Gazette for another reason. His name was mentioned in a small story with the dateline Cripple Creek.