Deb Baker - Dolled Up For Murder

Was she the woman Steve had slept with whose name he had conveniently forgotten?

Gretchen heard background music playing through the phone gripped at her ear. She closed her eyes and willed herself to stay cool and composed. She could hear Nina calling her name from the front of the house.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Call me when you have a chance.”

“Will do,” Steve said and disconnected.

Nina peeked into the laundry room. “Oh, oh,” she said when she saw the expression on Gretchen’s face and the phone in her hand. “What happened?”

“Steve took his summer helper to the charity dinner tonight.”

“I thought you had conquered the jealousy issue years ago.”

“Apparently not.” Gretchen stabbed the power button on her phone, and it beeped off.

Nina grinned. “You had it worse than anyone I ever knew. You couldn’t share your dolls or your friends. You always thought someone would steal them away. Any time other little girls tried to play with you and… What was your best friend’s name?… Oh yes, Katie Hachett, you’d figure out how to get rid of them. Remember?”

“How does my shoe look?” Gretchen said, changing the subject.

“Like brand-new.”

“Then let’s go.” Gretchen pulled on her shoes. “And please take Tutu with us. She’s banned from the house until further notice.”

“I missed my little poochy poo,” Nina cooed while Tutu again attempted to usurp the front seat of the Impala.

Without new job prospects in the foreseeable future, a rental car wasn’t an option. If she was forced to share transportation with Nina, she had to work out a compromise with Tutu. Based on Tutu’s recent antics, Gretchen felt she had the upper hand. She refused to take a backseat to a dog, literally.

She lifted the red-collared dog and deposited her in the rear seat.

Nina pulled out of Caroline’s driveway, geared up, and slid a sideways glance at Gretchen.

“My shoe,” Gretchen reminded Nina before she could complain about Gretchen’s treatment of Poochy Poo. “Don’t forget my shoe and my mother’s pillow. Tutu crossed the line, and there’s no going back.”

Nina, for once, had nothing to say.

After several failed attempts to jump into the front and a stare-down contest that Gretchen almost lost, Tutu yawned in defeat and turned her attention to the world whizzing by outside the rear window.

The China Doll Shop was located on Thirty-fourth Avenue, nowhere near Caroline’s house, as Nina had implied earlier. “It’s almost nine,” Gretchen said, checking her watch. Almost midnight in Boston. She needed sleep soon. “We better hurry, or the shop will close.”

Gretchen knew Julia and Larry Gerney, the shop’s owners, through her mother, who considered them friendly competitors. Caroline made very little money cleaning and restringing dolls, rebuilding fingers, and replacing eyes. The work that allowed her mother to live in relative monetary comfort at the base of Camelback Mountain was the details she could furnish: providing the perfect antique shoes, making new mohair wigs, and replacing teeth. The wealthy doll collectors of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley paid whatever it took to round out their collections, so competition for their business and the ensuing financial rewards was fierce.

Nina slid into a small strip mall and turned off the ignition. She attached a pink leash dotted with tiny red hearts to Tutu’s lacy collar.

Gretchen noticed that two of the shops in the mall were vacant. Untenanted shops, she knew, meant empty parking spaces and a feeling of decline that would keep customers away. The mall seemed to be slowly dying. Not a good sign for Larry and Julia, who counted on business from casual drop-ins as well as from established clientele.

“How is their business doing?” Gretchen asked Nina. They were waiting by the side of the car for Tutu to take advantage of a wee-wee pad.

“They put on a good front,” Nina said. “But business is dropping off. The developers overbuilt, and as Phoenix expands west, everyone wants to set up shop in the new malls. I don’t think Larry and Julia can afford to pay those kinds of rents.” She balled up the used pad and tossed it on the floor of the backseat. “Watch what you say in front of them. They feed on gossip like buzzards on dead meat.”

Julia Gerney met them at the door. She looked like a bulldog, short and stout, with an oversized lower jaw and a personality like artificial sugar. Not the real thing. “Sweet as snake venom,” Gretchen’s mother once said in the true spirit of gameswomanship.

“Gretchen, how goooood to see you,” Julia gushed, every vowel exaggerated. Abruptly her broad smile faded and her eyes narrowed. “Does Tutu really have to come in?”

“It’s too hot in the car,” Nina said, watching Tutu prance ahead on the tips of her hairy toes. “She’d roast to death.”

Julia’s steely glare seemed to say that roasting Tutu would be a solution, not a problem. “Keep her on the leash, and don’t let her bother my customers. If my allergies kick up, she’ll have to go.”

Two gray-haired women sat at a large studio table painting doll heads. Large display cabinets lined the sales counter and contained doll supplies: paints, brushes, patterns, and books. More cabinets framed the room and held samples of Julia’s reproduction dolls: American Indian dolls, china dolls, and a variety of fashion dolls from the 1950s.

“Our doll-making classes have been a huge success,” Julia said, heading for the back storage room, which doubled as an office. “But it’s been a trying week.” She arranged herself on a folding chair with her feet tucked neatly under it. “The air-conditioning unit isn’t keeping up. Larry needs to call the repair service before our customers start complaining. He’s been out of town attending a few doll auctions, but I expect him back any minute.”

Julia didn’t ask them to sit down, although Gretchen realized, scanning the room, there wasn’t an inch of extra space. Every corner was crammed with boxes; every tabletop was stacked high with doll parts and clothing.

“Caroline is gone,” Nina said from the doorway, shortening Tutu’s leash to keep her close. “She didn’t say a word to me before she left, and we’re hoping you have some idea where she might be.”

“I certainly don’t know,” Julia said. “I haven’t seen her in weeks. Last time I saw Caroline, probably three weeks ago, now that I think about it, we were both bidding at an auction in Apache Junction.”

Yes, Gretchen thought, her mother put a lot of miles on her car chasing deals. Was she simply following another sale? Had Nina overreacted? Nina tended to incite hysteria at will, and this wouldn’t be the first time she had led Gretchen astray.

“Caroline would never have gone off without telling me,” Nina insisted.

Julia laughed lightly. “She’s a grown woman, Nina. She doesn’t have to report in to you.” She glanced at Gretchen. “Your mother is a very spontaneous woman, prone to rash impulses in spite of what Nina says.” Julia looked pointedly at Nina. “She’s chasing a bargain. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Gretchen said. “Or why she isn’t here. But she disappeared after Martha was found dead, and I have to find her.”

Julia gasped. “You don’t think there’s a connection between Martha’s death and your mother’s disappearance, do you?”

Too late, Gretchen remembered Nina’s warning about Julia, the turkey vulture.

“Most of the Phoenix Dollers weren’t very fond of Martha, and I’m sure your mother was part of that group,” Julia went on. “Martha had a bad habit of alienating people with disparaging comments. For example, she called me the Tasmanian Devil behind my back.”