Deb Baker - Goodbye Dolly

Am I psychic? Or a good judge of people?

Gretchen snorted self-derisively. A good judge of character? Come on, I'm the one who spent seven years on Steve.

If Steve was an example of her stellar judgment, she should give up on men while she had a little self-respect left.

She glanced at Milt, hoping he hadn't heard her snort, but he was bent over the box, still coveting the doll. Gretchen pushed Steve from her mind with one final thought. Let him stay in jail for awhile. Serves him right.

"Did you know Percy O'Connor?" she asked Milt, pulling the doll box away and closing the cover. Of course he would know the man if Percy had belonged to the same club.

Milt nodded. "What happened to him was horrible. And to that reporter yesterday. What is the world coming to? I don't envy that detective."

"Detective Albright? Have you seen him here?"

Gretchen had been keenly aware of his absence from the show today.

"Oh yes," Milt said. "Hasn't he been by your table?

He's been questioning exhibitors most of the day. Haven't you seen him?"

"Why, no."

Maybe Matt was simply trying to gather more evidence against Steve. In any case, Gretchen was glad that he was being thorough. Strange though, that he hadn't stopped by.

"Have you seen Matt?" she called over to April.

"He asked me a few questions earlier," she called back.

"What kind of questions?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"You don't know what he asked you?"

A pink flush spread across April's face. "I didn't want to tell you. You've been under enough pressure."

"What? Tell me."

"He wanted me to vouch for you and Nina, to make sure you were accounted for around the time that Ronny was killed."

"And?"

"And I knew that Nina was right here with the dogs the whole time."

"I was here, too. Did you tell him that?"

April squirmed like a giant nightcrawler on the end of a fishing hook. "I couldn't, because you weren't. That was right around the time that Bonnie offered to watch your table so you could go see the Boston Kewpie Club's table. Remember? I had to be honest with him."

Gretchen turned to Milt. "I was at your table when Margaret explained the different kinds of Kewpie dolls to customers. Maybe you can tell that to Detective Albright."

"He asked me about you," Milt said. "I remember seeing you and told him that. But I think it happened after Margaret's demonstration."

Uh-oh. This isn't good.

"There you are," Nina said, as though Gretchen and the entire table had shifted to a new area and Nina had been looking everywhere for her. "Take Tutu and wrap the end of her leash around the chair leg for me, would you?"

"Good day, ladies," Milt said, moving along. "Let me know about the doll, Ms. Birch."

Gretchen made a mental note to quiz Milt later about Percy O'Connor.

Nina had Sophie and Nimrod on tiny leashes, and they ran wildly around each other until they were hopelessly tangled. Gretchen secured Tutu and went to work untangling the puppies.

"There you go," Gretchen said, handing them back to Nina.

"I ran into Bonnie on the way in," Nina said. "She said to remind you that cocktails start at five at her house. We'll finish up here at four o'clock, pack up, and head right over."

Nina hung the empty traveling purses on each side of Gretchen's chair and scooped the puppies onto her table.

"I've signed up enough clients to keep me busy for two months," she announced. "This show has been great for my business."

April leaned against Gretchen's table. The entire table shifted. "It's wrecked my business," she grumbled. "I've never had so many customers, yet so little business, at the same time." April lowered her voice while Nina fussed with the dogs. "Next show I'm going back to a solo enterprise. Either that or…" she glanced at the dogs, "I'm changing careers."

"Nina, can you watch my table for a few minutes?"

Gretchen asked, already making her way down the aisle.

"Sure," she heard Nina say.

She found Matt on the far side of the hall near the main door, leaning against Shelley Mack's doll table and writing in a notebook. He was dressed in shorts and T-shirt, sunglasses on top of his dark hair, the faint smell of Chrome cologne hanging in the air.

Gretchen took a deep breath of the scent. "You're asking people about me?" she said, trying but failing to keep the concern out of her voice.

"Routine," he replied, looking at her with those deep, piercing eyes. "Didn't your mother teach you any manners? It's polite to greet me warmly to throw me off guard before any type of verbal assault. It's a rule. Care to start over?"

"Keep my mother out of this." Gretchen crossed her arms defiantly, then thought better of the defensive poseand swung her hands to her hips. Being around Matt always threw her timing off. "You're going about the entire investigation all wrong," she said.

"Ah, so you came over to tell me how to do my job." He tucked the notebook in a back pocket and pushed off from the table.

Shelley Mack leaned across her doll table, squeezing her arms together to expose as much cleavage as possible.

"Anything else I can do to help, Detective Albright?" She was obviously even more affected by the cologne than Gretchen. Shelley batted goo-enhanced eyelashes.

"Thanks, Shelley. That pretty much wraps it up. You've been a big help."

"I'll be right here if you need me."

Matt stepped away from the doll table, and Gretchen followed.

"Let's go outside," he said. "I can't breathe in here."

"Don't you want to hear my alibi?" she said when they found a slice of shade under a palm tree.

"Do you feel you need one?"

"I think I do, since you've been asking everyone else about it."

"Shoot."

"Shoot?"

"Tell me where you were when Ronny Beam was

killed."

Gretchen told him about Bonnie's offer to watch her table and about the Boston group discussing Blunderboos.

"Milt remembered that I was there, and your mother can tell you that she wanted me to see the club's Kewpies."

"I still see a gap in time where you aren't accounted for," Matt said. "But I don't think it matters. I think we have our man."

"Steve? You don't still think he did it?"

"He argued with the deceased shortly before the murder. His fingerprints are on the knife, and several witnesses saw him out in the parking lot before Ronny was killed. How much more evidence would you like?"

"But what about the real murder weapon?"

"The tire iron didn't have any prints on it."

"Steve isn't capable of murder."

"Everyone has the potential."

Brett, Percy O'Connor, and Ronny Beam were connected through a trail of Kewpie dolls. So was she, for that matter. The messages inside the Kewpies made her fear she was involved more deeply than she wanted to be. Should she tell him everything she knew?

If she told him about the deliveries, he might think she was making a clumsy effort to shift suspicion away from Steve. Would he look more closely at her?

Matt Albright was too full of himself to see the truth. Arrogant, selfabsorbed, stubborn… She searched for more adjectives to describe him. Why did she even think for one moment that she could confide in him?

The detective standing in front of her with the ridiculous smirk would probably scoff at her concerns and dismiss them out of hand as sheer fantasy.

"Has Steve requested legal representation yet?" Gretchen asked instead.

"I offered, he refuses. Says he's waiting for you. That's one of the reasons I circled your name in big bold red pen. Any idea what he's talking about?"

"None," Gretchen said. Was Steve trying to protect her?

How chivalrous of him to come through for her. Finally. But too late. "Can I see him?"