Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  “She wouldn’t sell it to you, would she?” Gretchen asked.

  April nodded. “As it turned out, the bank or somebody acting for the bank took the whole thing away from her. What would it have hurt to give me that tiny little doll?”

  “Did anyone ever find out for sure what happened to the collection?” Gretchen anticipated April’s answer, but had to ask anyway.

  “No. It vanished without a trace.”

  “There are a lot of things around here that seem to vanish without a trace,” Nina observed.

  April struggled into a sitting position. A fine line of sweat dripped down the side of her face. She wiped it away. “I better head out,” she said. “I’m late to work out. I missed my exercises all week because I was sick. I can’t miss again today, or I’ll fall behind on my new health program.”

  Nina shot a warning glance at Gretchen. Gretchen composed her face.

  “April has lost fifty pounds,” Nina said to Gretchen. “She’s working out at Curves.”

  Gretchen hadn’t noticed any poundage loss, but she had spotted April’s purse on the side table by the door and a set of keys beside it. She’d also noticed an overnight travel bag tossed carelessly on its side by the bedroom door. A cosmetic bag and a hairbrush had slid out onto the floor.

  It looked like the woman stricken with valley fever had been away from home.

  __________

  “Maybe she’s packing for a trip,” Nina said, when they returned to the car. They opened all the car doors, Nina turned on the ignition and the air conditioning, and they waited on the sidewalk while the car cooled down. April lumbered to her crumpled Buick and waved as she drove off. Nina opened the back door and helped Tutu onto the seat. Nimrod squirmed out of his purse and ran back and forth in the rear as Nina took the driver’s seat and belted up. “Maybe she’s leaving today.”

  “I think she lied about having valley fever,” Gretchen said, digging a folded piece of paper from her shorts and scanning the copy of Martha’s inventory list. She found the doll April had once coveted: “German miniature, all bisque, jointed, marked German 10 on back of head, original handmade dress, three and a half inches high”. She glanced up at the street ahead. “Can you catch up to her? Let’s see if she’s going where she said she’s going.”

  “Fun. My first tail.”

  Nina stepped on the gas. Gretchen’s head snapped back. “Take it easy. I don’t want any more trips to the hospital.”

  Several lights ahead, the back of April’s car came into view, and Gretchen watched it turn onto University Drive and head for Phoenix. Fifteen minutes later April pulled over in front of a building bearing a small overhead sign Curves.

  “Now we’ll go in and ask her if she’s leaving town,” Nina said.

  “We can’t say it just like that.” Gretchen watched April enter the building. “I’ll go in and think of some reason for following her, something we forgot to ask her before she took off. You stay here with the dogs.”

  “We can all go in.”

  “I’m sure they don’t allow dogs,” Gretchen said. “Let’s not cause a scene.” She walked into Curves.

  April was waiting for her.

  “I thought I saw Nina’s car following me,” she said, eyeing Gretchen up and down. “You could stand to lose a few pounds, and there’s no better way to do it. You want to give it a try, don’t you?”

  Gretchen gave April a weak smile. “That’s why we decided to follow you. What do I do?”

  April looked over at the front desk. “That okay with you?” she said to the woman sitting behind the desk. “That’s Ora, the manager.”

  “Hey,” Ora said to Gretchen. “April will take good care of you.”

  “You can be my guest today,” April said, pride in her voice. “Follow behind me, and I’ll show you how to use the machines. But watch that bad arm. You’ll have to skip some of the arm weights. Our workout usually takes thirty minutes, but we’ll cut it short since we’re both on the mend.”

  April jumped onto a small platform as an energetic voice called from a CD overhead, “Change stations now.” Gretchen peered out the window and caught Nina’s eye. She sent a telepathic message to let Nina know that she’d be back in twenty minutes and hoped Nina’s invisible antenna was operating at peak performance.

  A circle of women on various machines and platforms moved in unison, performing simple stretching exercises. Gretchen joined in next to April and spotted Bonnie Albright and Rita Phyller at the opposite end of the circuit. She waved. They waved back.

  Jogging in place, Gretchen said, “Is this the local hangout for the doll club members? I see Bonnie and Rita.”

  “It is,” April said, rowing on a machine, her elbows flapping like chicken wings. “Usually we have more than this. Where’s Nina?”

  “She didn’t want to leave the dogs alone in the car. It’s too hot without the air-conditioning running.”

  With each “Change stations now,” April and Gretchen rotated on the equipment circling the room. Gretchen had to skip at least half of the machines because of her broken wrist. She jogged in place instead.

  “Did you hear from your mother yet?” Bonnie shouted over the beat of disco music.

  Gretchen shook her head, noting the glances exchanged between the two doll collectors on the other side of the room. She wondered what they said when she wasn’t present, and whether they thought her mother had killed Martha. It made for good gossip regardless of the final outcome, and Bonnie could squeeze juicy tidbits out of a barrel cactus.

  “Now move away from your station and find your heartrate.” Every woman in the room raised her hand to the side of her neck as the prerecorded instructor called off the count.

  Gretchen heard April breathing in sharp, jagged gasps. The front of April’s shirt was soaked as though she had taken a dip in a swimming pool with all her clothes on. As a few women cleared the workout stations around April and Gretchen, Bonnie and Rita skipped ahead and joined them.

  After one time around the circuit, April sat down on a chair by the door. “I need a breather. Ten minutes is about all I have in me all at one time,” she said thickly. “You go on around again. I’ll catch up.”

  “I’m going over to South Phoenix to look at a Barbie,” Rita said. “It’s a Ponytail with a black-and-white-striped swimsuit, and in its original box. I looked at it yesterday and can’t decide if I should buy it.”

  “What’s holding you back?” Bonnie said.

  “The price,” Rita said. “They want twelve hundred dollars, and I really can’t afford it.”

  “That’s a lot of dough,” April called out from the chair.

  “That’s why I’m looking at it again,” Rita said, bending over and touching her toes. “I’m hoping they’ll come way down on the price.”

  “I haven’t been able to touch my toes since high school,” April observed wistfully.

  “Keep losing weight the way you have,” Gretchen said encouragingly, treading steadily on a machine labeled the stepper. “And you’ll be touching your toes in no time.”

  “Change stations now.”

  Everyone rotated.

  “When I went to look at the Barbie yesterday,” Rita said to Bonnie, “I saw you going into the Rescue Mission. Are you volunteering there?”

  Bonnie looked startled. “You must be mistaken,” she said. “I wasn’t anywhere near the Rescue Mission.”

  “That’s funny. I was certain it was you.”

  “No,” Bonnie said, shaking her red shellacked flip. “It wasn’t me.”

  Gretchen studied Bonnie. Flaming red hair and makeup painted on in exaggerated colors. It would be hard to mistake someone else for her.

  “Anyway, what else is new?” April rejoined the group with renewed vigor and put everything she had into the shoulder press machine.

  Gretchen, dancing on a platform, couldn’t believe how easily the conversation turned in the right direction. Without missing a beat, she asked, “Anyone plan
ning any trips?”

  __________

  Death.

  Caroline had felt its presence ever since that horrible moment when the doctor spoke the chilling words: “Breast cancer.” The disease she had feared the most had invaded without a warning battle cry, its army of killer cells waging a war for supremacy within her chest.

  She had felt death accompanying her through the ensuing surgery and the inescapable chemotherapy treatments. Death continued to whisper an incessant promise of eventual victory, and she had been on a quest ever since to find meaning in her life.

  The answer to her existence continued to elude her in the same way the doll she sought continued to slip away.

  She had cheated death once before.

  She could do it again.

  Chapter 14

  “No, April isn’t planning a trip,” Gretchen informed Nina when she returned to the car. “Not a short one or a long one, nothing in the future, nothing in the past. If she can be believed.”

  “I still think she had valley fever,” Nina said.

  “The newest development concerns Bonnie. Rita says she saw her go into the Rescue Mission yesterday, but Bonnie denies it. Why would she be hanging around that area?”

  “You’ve been there twice looking for Nacho. Maybe she is, too.”

  “That’s what bothers me.”

  “Where next,” Nina asked.

  Gretchen unfolded a piece of paper with names and addresses she’d copied from the telephone directory. “Let’s visit Martha’s relative,” she said. “I really want to know why he hid their family connection.”

  It was a short hop from the city of Tempe over to Mesa, which was known as a Mormon town. With more than twenty golf courses, it touted itself as an affordable and ideal retirement community.

  They pulled into a drive-through restaurant, ordered at the window, and sat in the car eating green chile burgers and French fries. Nina hand-fed pieces of hamburger to Tutu and Nimrod after picking off most of the green chiles. A wee-wee stop afterwards completed the fine dining experience for the two dogs.

  Exhibiting extreme willpower, Gretchen refused an order of fries, remembering April’s comment about Gretchen’s weight.

  “Do you think I need to lose a few pounds, Aunt Nina?”

  “No,” Nina said, laughing. “You need to develop a life.”

  “You’re terrible. Cruel and inhuman.”

  “I have an idea for you.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Why don’t you come and work for me? We can train purse dogs together.” Nina nibbled on a French fry, and Gretchen watched with envy. “I’ve been turning away clients because I don’t have enough time. You’d be good.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyeballs to the ceiling of the car, then glanced at Tutu and Nimrod in the backseat. Nimrod had mustard on his face from the burger. The canine profession suited Nina perfectly, as did doll restoration for her mother.

  Gretchen, alas, still searched for her own niche. Dog training was decidedly not it.

  “I don’t think I have the patience,” Gretchen said. “And Wobbles wouldn’t approve. Besides, I’m going back to Boston soon, back to Steve and back to the search for a ‘real’ job.

  “Are you implying that purse dog training isn’t a real job?” Nina said.

  Gretchen gave in to temptation and snitched one of Nina’s fries while she searched for a quick response to cover having blurted out the truth. “It demands a certain amount of connection with different energy sources, uh…a special ability to read auras must be important in training puppies. I bet only a few people have what it takes.”

  “You could be a cat trainer.” Nina’s eyes lit up at the idea. “Are cats trainable?”

  Gretchen chuckled at the thought of any cat taking orders from a human being. She tried to picture Wobbles traveling in a purse and snorted out loud. “No,” she said. “They really aren’t.”

  “What about that guy in Key West? Cat Man,” Nina said. “He makes cats jump through hoops.”

  “I’d love to see that some time. But right now, let’s go talk to Joseph Reiner.”

  Joseph’s Dream Dolls was located on Southern Avenue and was appropriately named. The shop cabinets and countertops brimmed with fabulous dolls arranged in groupings. Rare collectibles were locked into a large cabinet where Gretchen stood admiring a Kestner boy doll through the glass. Joseph rushed to the front of the store to greet them.

  “Hey, you two,” he said, noticing the dogs for the first time. “I’m closing up. It’s five o’clock. I’ll just lock the door. You two stay put.” He rolled a finger across the top of Nimrod’s head, then bent to give Tutu equal attention.

  “I’m showing Gretchen around town,” Nina said. “We thought we’d stop by.”

  “Look around. Enjoy yourself, but keep a good eye on your dogs. The teacup poodle in the purse is priceless.” He breezed away to lock up.

  What a delight, Gretchen thought, reveling in the combination of old and new – a Door of Hope Mission doll from China, several Queen Annes, and a large selection of contemporary artist dolls. She admired a Dy-Dee Baby and two celebrity dolls, Marie Osmond and Annette Funicello. The collection of dolls was endless, and for a time, as she wandered through the shop, she escaped into a make-believe world of color and glamour and beauty.

  Joseph cleared his throat, bringing her back from her welcome escape from reality. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, pulling at the diamond stud in his left ear.

  “I’m okay.” Gretchen laughed lightly. “We came by for several reasons, to see your shop, of course, but I also wanted to show you this picture again when all the club members weren’t present.”

  “I thought that detective took this picture as evidence,” Joseph said when she handed it to him.

  “This is a copy.” Gretchen wasn’t about to tell him of the second picture or about her mother’s message on the back of it. She had stashed that one safely away after making a copy of the picture of the doll. “I know you saw the picture yesterday at Bonnie’s, but take another look. Have you ever seen this French fashion doll before?”

  “No,” he said. “But I want to. It’s amazing.” He handed the copy back to Gretchen and rubbed his goatee with two fingers. “Why do you ask?”

  “You know my mother is missing. And you have to know the police suspect her in Martha’s death.” Gretchen watched Joseph carefully. He seemed unnaturally nervous, as he had at the meeting at Nina’s house.

  Joseph nodded. “I’m not passing judgment on Caroline. She’s innocent until proven guilty as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that. This doll might have something to do with her disappearance, or it might not. I think the picture is worth showing around in case someone recognizes it.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you.”

  “Maybe you still can,” Gretchen said. “It’s my understanding that Martha was your aunt. Am I correct?”

  “Who told you that?” Joseph spoke a little too loudly, a little too defensively.

  “Was she your aunt?”

  Joseph rubbed his face with his hands as though he were rubbing away a bad dream. “Embarrassing to admit, but yes, she was my aunt. I’m related to that pathetic, homeless drunk. Or was. We weren’t close, and I didn’t mention it to the club members because I had no desire to share my ancestry with them.”

  “She apparently didn’t go out of her way to cultivate alliances,” Gretchen said.

  Joseph nodded. “She led a self-absorbed life, at least after the alcohol took control. The ability to look beyond her personal self-interests drowned in a pool of stale booze, a common symptom of alcoholism.”

  Gretchen remembered what Nina had said about Joseph’s own problems with alcohol and his resolve to beat the disease.

  “Did she have any other family other than you?”

  “A sister in Florida, but they hadn’t spoken for years. She’s in a nursing home in the final stages of Alzhei
mer’s. She wouldn’t understand that Martha is dead or that she even had a sister.”

  “How about friends?”

  Joseph laughed bitterly. “Aunt Martha didn’t have any real friends left. I suppose you could count those down-and-out characters she roamed the streets with as friends.”

  Gretchen heard Nina’s cell phone from somewhere in the shop playing the Star Wars theme. “Hello,” she heard Nina say.

  “Martha had an expensive collection of dolls at one time,” Gretchen said to Joseph. “Can you tell me what happened to it?”

  “I’ve had this shop for seventeen years,” Joseph said. “She bought her first doll from me, at a discount, of course. After that, she became very secretive about what she purchased and where she bought it. She hid dolls around her house, worrying constantly that someone would steal them. She became distrustful of everyone. What’s the point of having a collection if you can’t have fun with it?”

  “Then?” Gretchen said, encouraging him to continue. She heard Nina’s voice drifting from across the room.

  “I offered to take the collection on consignment when I found out she faced bankruptcy, but she refused. She had a pernicious personality. Her fingers were caustic, destroying everything she touched. And she never let go. I don’t know what happened to her collection. I have to assume she acted with her typical irrationally behavior, and the collection is lost forever.”

  “You hesitated before answering. You don’t believe it, do you?”

  Joseph shrugged. “She cared about those dolls in a way she never cared about any living person. She would have died for them before she’d let anyone take them.”

  Maybe she did die for them.

  “Last I saw her, she was hopelessly lost in one of many bouts of what I called schizophrenic paranoia. She showed up here at the shop. Someone was always out to get her. Nations plotted to overthrow her. This time the secret agent stalking her was someone she called ‘the Inspector.’ I assumed she meant the state of Arizona was finally going to force her into a rehab program. Too bad they didn’t move a little quicker.”