Deb Baker - Dolly Departed

"Should we call for help?" Nina said through ragged sobs.

"Yes," Gretchen shouted to her aunt. "I'd consider this an emergency."

Nina looked dazed. Caroline rose from the floor.

"The dogs," Gretchen added, scanning the store, relieved that the women were on their feet and appeared to be unharmed. "Mom, help find Enrico."

That did the trick for Nina. Cell phone in hand, she sprang into action, pounding on its keys as she ran along the front of the shop searching for the tiny Chihuahua. With a breaking voice, she gave their location before scurrying off into the back room to check for the animals. Caroline was right behind her.

Gretchen looked for a fire extinguisher but didn't find one. She yanked a tablecloth from under a miniature display table and set about helping April smother the flames. Judging from the power of the blasts, Gretchen thought all of the women should be plastered with glass shards, but she had been front and center, and the cuts on her arms appeared to be superficial, sustained mostly during her lunge for the floor. "Did a bomb go off?" Gretchen asked, beating at the fire with the tablecloth.

"That, or someone shot through the window," April answered, winded from the physical exertion. "You shielded us from most of the debris, Superwoman. Are you all right?"

Gretchen nodded. "We're fanning the flames rather than smothering them," she said. "We better get out of the shop."

"Help is on the way," Nina said, hustling toward them with a bucket of water. "The emergency operator said the fire truck will be here momentarily. Stand back." Her aim was flawless. The flames died back a little. April grabbed the empty bucket and ran for the back room.

"Don't let the dogs out," Nina called after her, watching the underclad woman charge away.

Gretchen tried to put out a line of fire along the windowsill with the cloth. It caught fire. She threw it on the floor and stomped out the flame.

April returned with the bucket and flung water on the remaining flames. "We should join the fire department,"

she said. "We'd be a great team."

"Nimrod and Tutu are in the storage room," Nina said.

"I closed the door so they wouldn't get hurt on the glass or run into the fire. But I can't find Enrico anywhere."

Smoke still rose from the display case, but the flames along the window had been completely extinguished. Gretchen noted a thick, black substance where the fire had died away. April took another swipe at the display case with her dress.

"We'll have company soon. You better put on your dress," Gretchen advised her. The street was already filled with people. Gretchen heard a siren approaching, a few blocks away.

April flung the dress over her head, lumbered to the open window, and spread her legs in a no-nonsense stance. Her sundress, covered with black soot and burn holes, wasn't white anymore. "Everybody stay put right where you are until we figure out what happened in here. Did anybody see anything?"

A kid with a red ball cap raised his hand. "I did. I heard a kaboom and glass flew all over the street."

"Some guy threw something," another observer said.

"He was wearing a do-rag on his head."

Ryan! Gretchen thought with dismay.

"Anybody out there hurt?" April called, sliding a knowing glance at Gretchen. She had thought of Ryan, too. No one spoke up. "Okay, then. I'm taking that as a 'no.' Anybody see a little brown dog?"

Gretchen stiffened, expecting someone to find Enrico's mangled body lying on the pavement. The glass shards would have acted like shrapnel, piercing the tiny dog's hairless body. And the fire! Had he burned alive?

A few people on the street shook their heads. Enrico must have been swept up in the force of the explosion and flung away. The poor thing. Nothing that small would have survived.

Nina cried into a tissue. Caroline wrapped her arms around her sister. "Everything's going to be okay," she said. "Shhh."

"We have to find Enrico. He has to be here somewhere."

"We will," Gretchen assured her. "He could have jumped out the window and run away." She didn't believe her own reassurance for one second.

A fire truck pulled to a stop outside, and the siren died away. Several police officers arrived at the same time. Brandon Kline was one of those who responded. Nina and April told the tale, while Gretchen barely listened to the officer's questions and the women's responses. The professionals went about their business. Gretchen stared at the window, or what was left of the window. All their work ruined. But did it matter anymore? The whole point of the exercise was to prepare the room boxes for display at Charlie's funeral, and they had already abandoned the idea after finding the macabre dolls.

Why attack the shop window and destroy the display?

What if the answer was inside the room boxes? Not in the intricate details they had so lovingly constructed, but in the simplicity of one of the boxes-the unfurnished kitchen. What if the kitchen and the miniature peanut butter jar held the solution to Charlie's and Sara's deaths?

Gretchen felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see an expression of concern on Detective Kline's face.

"Detective," Gretchen said. "We meet again."

"I'd like to inquire after your health. It appears to be in constant jeopardy."

Gretchen gave him a weak smile and introduced him to Nina.

Other emergency workers converged on the window, and Gretchen looked at the opening.

The detective followed her gaze, and his face hardened.

"Not a rifle shot from the street," he observed.

"No." Gretchen had already deduced as much. Whatever had blown through the shop window cast a wider path of destruction than a rifle would. She studied the ruin that had once been a display case. Burned up. The room boxes were charred beyond recognition.

"A jar of gasoline?" she asked. "Or two? There were two explosions."

"We'll find out."

Red tape, yellow tape, crime scene experts, reports, interviews. The next hour was lost in speculation and repeating details of the blast. Matt arrived, striding quickly through the debris. "Did anyone call for an ambulance?" he asked the technicians working the scene.

"We aren't injured," Gretchen answered for them, hiding the cuts on her arms by crossing them.

"I want to make sure," he insisted. "You should be examined."

April grinned widely behind him, smudges of soot on her round face. Gretchen could almost hear her offering to go first, but she remained silent. In a less stressful situation, she wouldn't have missed that opportunity.

"I'll refuse to get into the ambulance," Gretchen said firmly. "I really am fine."

"How about everyone else?"

"We're fine," Gretchen insisted. The other women nodded. Matt opened his mouth to argue but must have decided it was a hopeless cause, because he walked away to confer with the firefighters instead. Gretchen noticed that he avoided looking directly at any of the doll cases. Every few minutes Nina checked on Tutu and Nimrod, then nervously paced on the sidewalk outside the shop.

"Enrico!" she shouted. "Come to Momma."

Detective Kline walked over to the open window where Gretchen was standing. "You can go now," he said. "We'll let you know what we find."

"You must have suspicions," Gretchen said. "What caused this?"

He ran a finger over the black substance on the windowsill that Gretchen noticed earlier. "Poor man's hand grenades." When he saw the questioning look on her face, he explained. "This is tar, one of the ingredients sometimes used in a Molotov cocktail. Tar causes the gasoline to stick to whatever it hits. Then the effect is broader when it ignites. Someone filled bottles with gasoline and tar, made crude wicks out of rags, lit them, and threw them at the window."