Gretchen Birch Boxed Set (Books 1-4)

by Deb Baker

  Gretchen picked up one of the dolls she planned to repair and read the note next to it. It was a Chatty Cathy, and her mother had managed to make the doll speak again but hadn’t had time to repair the pencil-post bed that came with it or to stitch up rips in the pajamas it wore.

  Gretchen’s job was easy. Her mother had done the hard part, making the silent doll talk.

  The Chatty Cathy had side-glancing eyes, dark freckles, and buckteeth. Gretchen tugged the pull string and the doll spoke. “I love you,” it said. She lifted the doll’s pajama top and examined its back. There was the mark—copyright date of 1960 and the name of the doll, Chatty Cathy.

  Running a finger over the raised mark reminded her of words written in the color of blood on the tombstone.

  The dead woman hadn’t been small, around Gretchen’s own height of five eight and with a normal weight, not thin, not heavy. How much bigger and stronger than Allison would her attacker have had to be? For sure, a man would have the force necessary, although a woman might have done the horrible deed with a heavy weapon and the advantage of surprise.

  While preparing the materials she needed to repair Chatty Cathy’s accessories, Gretchen’s eyes swept past the metal head. They would have to tell Matt about it, give it up to the investigation.

  Dolls should be about love, and cherishing the things that were important. Not cold-blooded murder.

  To reaffirm that, Gretchen pulled on the string.

  “I love you,” Chatty Cathy said.

  Chapter 23

  “April, you’re a natural people person,” Gretchen said, amazed at the progress on the stage. She sat beside her friend, watching the rehearsal. “You could find a position in management or in human resources. The curtain for Ding Dong Dead is going to go up as planned. Last week I didn’t think it was possible. I’d almost given up hope.”

  “Did you really have doubts?” April had her feet propped up on the director’s table, her lap piled with pink fabric. She was sewing and directing at the same time.

  “Doubts? Yes.” Gretchen laughed. “When I was in charge? You bet.”

  “Any more news about the skeleton in the museum?” April said quietly, so as not to disturb the actors. “That sounds like a good name for a movie, doesn’t it? The Skeleton in the Museum.”

  “More like Horror in the Closet.” Gretchen told her what they had discovered—about the orb Nina insisted was a ghostly spirit, about what Matt had said concerning the time required to identify the remains, and that Flora Swilling had disappeared almost thirty years ago.

  April whistled at that last piece of news. “I bet she was murdered and stuffed in the closet. No wonder her ghost is haunting the place. Nina thought the most important thing was to reunite the doll head with its owner, and she was close. She didn’t even know about the missing human head when she said that.”

  The stage became noticeably quiet as the cast members dropped lines and listened to them instead. “Did they find the skeleton’s skull?” Bonnie said. Standing next to the six-foot Barbie, she looked like a mustached dwarf.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Gretchen said. Bonnie would be on the phone at the first opportunity, pumping her son for information, which was perfectly fine with Gretchen. “If you hear anything, let us know.”

  Bonnie wouldn’t ever keep good gossip to herself. “I will,” she said.

  “We have the metal doll head at home,” “Gretchen said, going on to related the events leading up to finding the head inside Caroline’s shopping bag.

  “Caroline had it all this time and didn’t realize it?” Julie said.

  “She’s been preoccupied with her work and the accident,” April said. “Can we see it?”

  “I should turn it over to the police,” Gretchen said. “In case it’s important.”

  “It’s time to go back to work,” April called, putting down thread and needle and swinging her feet off the desk. “Let’s try it from the top with all the bells and whistles.”

  Jerome walked past and acknowledged Gretchen with a stiff nod. He adjusted a light along the stage, realigning its angle. Then he flipped off the overhead lights from a switch by the entrance, casting the room into total blackness.

  “Lights, camera, action,” April called. The stage lights popped on, and the mystery play began with the ringing of a doorbell.

  For almost an hour, Gretchen sat transfixed, laughing at the antics of the characters. Her mother should write more plays. This one was going to be a hit. Caroline’s script was perfect for the luncheon—a campy, funny mystery with a surprise twist at the end.

  When the women on stage got to the part where they were considering what to do with Craig’s philandering body, she saw a stab of light, and Mr. B., the owner of the building, took a seat behind them. Again, she thought of his generosity. They should do something special for him.

  When the rehearsal was over, Gretchen noticed she’d missed several calls on her cell phone, all from her mother. She hadn’t heard the rings over the sounds coming from the stage. So many calls from the same person suggested urgency. She promptly called back.

  “I’m at This Great Coffee Place,” Caroline said. “You need to hurry over here. Don’t bring anyone with you.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just come. Now.”

  ***

  The coffee shop was crowded with after-lunch coffee drinkers getting their last shot of afternoon caffeine. Caroline sat at a table near the door next to a man wearing dark sunglasses and an Arizona Cardinals ball cap pulled low over his forehead.

  “Get a coffee,” Caroline said. “Then join us.”

  While Gretchen waited in line, greeting some of the regulars, she kept glancing at the guy sitting at the table. He had both hands cupped around his coffee as though he was cold and trying to keep warm. He glanced nervously toward the door every few seconds. Caroline kept up a steady stream of conversation while he listened. Several times, Caroline rubbed her neck, an indication that it still bothered her. Gretchen wondered if she’d made a doctor’s appointment.

  Gretchen’s turn came. She ordered a latte. Cup in hand, she went to the table and sat down.

  “I’d like to introduce you,” her mother said in a hushed tone, “to Andy Thomasia.”

  The man watched her face carefully as though he expected a negative reaction from her. Gretchen masked her surprise at meeting the dead woman’s husband. “Hi,” was all she could manage.

  “Relax, Andy.” Caroline covered his cupped hands with her own. “She’s not going to do anything to hurt you. You can trust her.” Then to Gretchen she said, “Right before my car accident I was rushing home to meet a very demanding customer who refused to wait his turn to see me. I found out a little while ago who that customer really was.”

  “I couldn’t give my real name,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me.”

  “Never, Andy.”

  “When you didn’t show up, I thought you had blown me off.”

  Gretchen noticed that her mother hadn’t removed her hands. They still cupped his. He hadn’t moved either.

  “Where’s Nina?” Gretchen hadn’t seen her aunt’s car outside. “Weren’t you with her?”

  “Andy followed us to the caterer’s and approached me before we went inside. Nina offered to handle the menu selections to give us time to catch up.”

  “I’m in serious trouble,” he said. “And I’m asking your mother for help. No, I’m begging for help.”

  Caroline removed her hands from his. “Tell Gretchen what you told me.”

  “Allison and I were separated, but we were talking about getting back together,” he said. “She wanted to come to Phoenix and asked me if I wanted to join her. Of course I did! I was madly in love with her. I’d jump at any opportunity to spend time with her. That’s all I wanted, to be with her.” His voice broke and he paused to collect himself.

  Gretchen looked away, feeling some of his pain. She’d lost her father, had almost los
t her mother and that had hurt immensely. But to lose a loved one to a senseless act of violent was unimaginable.

  “When she didn’t come back to the hotel,” he continued. “I thought she may have changed her mind, flown back to LA without telling me. That wasn’t her style, but still, I thought that’s what happened. The next morning while I was packing, I saw the news. A dead woman in a cemetery. No name. What if that woman was Allison?”

  “That’s when Andy went to the police.” Caroline said.

  “They treated me like their prime suspect after I identified her body. God, I can’t go through this again.” He hung his head.

  “Let me explain the rest,” Caroline said, taking up his story. “The police told him about the words on the gravestone and about the fantasy doll. Andy, of course, recognized her doll, and also felt it was further evidence that the authorities would use against him. He had remained in his room the night she disappeared, so he didn’t have anyone to vouch for his whereabouts.”

  Convenient, Gretchen thought.

  “Allison was studying her family history,” Caroline continued. “It sounds to me, from what Andy shared, that she became obsessed with tracing her family tree as far back as she could. She had located relatives across the country, shared her findings with other family members who were as interested as she was, and visited genealogy databases online.”

  “Last year she flew to New York specifically to visit Ellis Island,” Andy said. “Through all this research she discovered she had relatives who’d lived in Phoenix, so she decided to come here and learn what she could.”

  “Which is why she was in the cemetery,” Gretchen said. “How did she get there? Do you know?”

  “The police said a cab driver let her out at the cemetery entrance with the understanding that he would return in an hour. He came back and waited fifteen minutes for her to show. When she didn’t, he drove off.”

  “Was she meeting someone?” Gretchen asked.

  “If she was, she didn’t tell me,” he said. “I wish I’d paid more attention to what she was doing, but I wasn’t very interested in family trees. I could have cared less that she was researching second or third cousins.”

  Gretchen looked at her mother. “Flora Swilling,” she said.

  “Yes!” Andy said. “That’s one of the names she mentioned. How did you know?”

  “It’s complicated,” Caroline said.

  “Oh God, I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Andy’s sunglasses were hiding more than his identity. He seemed distraught over Allison’s murder to the point of near collapse. Or else he was a very good actor. Gretchen saw a tear slide down the side of his face.

  Caroline looked around the coffee shop, furtive and worried. Gretchen thought they were acting suspiciously guilty of something and would call attention to themselves if they kept it up. But no one seemed to notice.

  “You two need to appear just slightly less flipped out,” Gretchen suggested.

  Caroline had her hands over Andy’s again. What was going on with those two? “They allowed Andy to go back to the hotel late last night,” she said. “But…”

  It was the “but” part that Gretchen found the most disturbing.

  After returning to the hotel, Andy hadn’t gone back to his room. “I couldn’t bear to stay in the room we’d shared. I stayed in the lobby all night. I found a small alcove where I could be alone, and I stared out the window the entire night.”

  “Andy was there,” Caroline said, “when two squad cars pulled up outside the hotel and approached the desk clerk.”

  “I heard my name, they headed for the elevator, and I walked out on the street and kept going. I have to find Allison’s killer before they catch up with me,” Andy said. “Because every clue they have points right at me.”

  “Words on a gravestone implicate you?” Gretchen couldn’t see how.

  “You didn’t see how they treated me.”

  “We have to help him hide,” Caroline said.

  “I’m sure if you turn yourself in,” Gretchen said. “And if you are completely truthful, nothing will happen to you. The police will believe you.”

  “No,” Caroline said. “They most certainly will not. Innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit all the time. Don’t you watch the news? Gretchen, we already know much of what happened. We were at the cemetery, along with Nacho and Daisy. They must know something that would help Andy.”

  Gretchen put her hands over her ears. “No! I don’t want to hear any of this. I’m dating a cop! I can’t do this. Aiding and abetting is a crime!”

  But she knew she would help, if for no other reason than because her mother had asked her to. Caroline believed in her old friend’s innocence, and she was clearly going to help him whether or not Gretchen went along with their plan.

  “Give us a few days,” her mother appealed to her. “We’ll find out what we can in the next three days. In the meantime, we’ll see that Andy is taken care of.”

  “Caroline, this means so much to me,” Andy said.

  Gretchen groaned. “I can’t ruin my relationship with Matt.”

  “You won’t. If, after three days, we don’t find anything to prove Andy’s innocence or someone else’s guilt, he’ll turn himself in. Right, Andy? Do you accept those terms?”

  Andy nodded. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

  Repay us with your innocence, Gretchen thought.

  “What do you say, Gretchen?” her mother asked. “Are you willing to give it a try? To give it three days?”

  “Two days.” She heard the words coming out of her mouth and couldn’t stop them. “Two days of investigating. That’s it.”

  “I knew you’d help.” Caroline said. “We’ll come back and pick up Andy here at the coffee shop around dusk. Can you stay out of sight until then?” she asked Andy.

  “Sure. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of hiding until now.” He downed the rest of his coffee and slipped out the door.

  Gretchen watched him through the window until he was out of sight.

  Had Andy murdered Allison? What if she had tried to leave him again and he’d killed her in a jealous rage?

  Gretchen turned from the window to find her mother had been doing the same thing, watching the man disappear.

  How could they be certain Anthony Thomasia was innocent of murder?

  Gretchen felt chilled, and it had nothing to do with ghosts or cold spots.

  Chapter 24

  “If you and I are going to pull this off,” Caroline said from the passenger seat in Gretchen’s car. “I have to come clean.”

  “Okay?”

  Gretchen didn’t want to hear more bad news. She’d had an epiphany driving along. She wasn’t the problem. Her family was. Caroline and Nina were like trouble magnets, drawing Gretchen in against her will, making her a magnet, too. All she wanted was to put on a fundraiser, decorate a doll museum, and finish lassoing her hot man.

  Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Now she was up to her neck in murders, bones, and haunting, doing everything possible to destroy the fledgling relationship with Matt Albright.

  “Someone in a white van tried to hurt me,” Caroline said. “It wasn’t driver’s error that made me lost control of my car. Another driver rammed into the side of my car twice. The first time I was able to correct my direction and escape injury. The second time the driver was much more determined and I was forced into oncoming traffic.”

  Gretchen slowed and pulled over to the side of the street. She put the car in park. Information was coming at her too fast and none of it was good news.

  Silence hung heavy inside the car as Caroline let Gretchen absorb what she had learned. Finally, Gretchen said, “Then the driver was trying to kill you.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far.” Caroline saw Gretchen’s incredulous stare. “All right. It’s possible, yes, that the driver intended to kill me.”

  “He didn’t count on your amazing resilience.
”

  “It was dumb luck that I survived.”

  “Someone was killed, though. That van driver obviously didn’t care how many innocent people were killed. That’s unbelievably ruthless.” Gretchen was horrified at what had occurred. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

  “Why would someone leave a threatening note on your windshield?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “April mentioned it. She thought it was a suggestion for a new play title. She thought I’d be interested.” Caroline narrowed her eyes, in mother-bear mode. “Come on, Gretchen, after a murder in a cemetery with those exact words written on a tombstone and a skeleton in a house we happen to be converting into a doll museum, do you really think Die, Dolly, Die could be something that innocent?”

  “I wanted to block it out,” she admitted. “I really wanted to believe it was a bad joke.”

  “You didn’t want to face the truth.”

  “And what is the truth?”

  Caroline didn’t answer. Gretchen pondered the possibilities. They all led back to Allison’s death in the cemetery and the bones in the museum. “Up until this point in time,” Gretchen said, “we worked on the luncheon without anyone threatening us or trying to kill us.”

  “But after Allison was murdered, someone attempted to kill me and you found the note,” her mother said.

  “Someone wants us to do what? Abandon the show? Close the museum?” They weren’t dealing with idle threats. They were targets. “We’re in the way?”

  “What’s changed?”

  “You began working in the house,” Gretchen said.

  “And you were at the murder scene.”

  “We’re the only ones with keys to the museum? Is that important?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Now what?”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid. The reason I didn’t want to leave the coffee shop with Andy is because we’re being followed.”