Deb Baker - Ding Dong Dead

“Cancer,” Caroline said. “The disease that I thought would take my life away brought me a gift beyond anything I could have imagined. It gave back our life.”

“We have to stick close together. We’re all we have.”

While Gretchen blew her nose, she caught sight of her aunt, standing behind them, a camera slung over her shoulder. “What about me?” Nina said, coming closer. “Don’t I count in the equation?”

“Of course you do,” Caroline said, redirecting her next hug to include her sister. “We’re three of the toughest, smartest women in Phoenix.”

“Good genes count for a lot of it,” Nina said, taking a good look at them before frowning. “What’s with you two? You both look a mess. Have you been crying?”

Gretchen shook her head. “A little, but we couldn’t be happier at the moment.”

After Caroline repeated her experience for Nina, mother, daughter, and aunt had another good cry.

“I love fuzzy moments,” Nina said, blowing her nose into a tissue as the threesome walked into the house. “But it’s officially nighttime, and I have an important mission to carry out. Care to come along?”

“Sure,” Gretchen said, feeling closer to her family than ever before. Why did most special moments like this come only after near disaster?

“Don’t you want to know what the mission entails before you sign up?” Caroline asked.

“Nope, I’m in. As long as it’s family, you need only ask. What about you?”

“Okay, then, I’m in, too.”

“Are you sure you’re up to going out?” Gretchen asked her mother. “You’ve had a really bad day.”

“I need to get my mind off the accident. My sister’s always a great distraction.”

Nina rummaged through the hall closet. “Caroline,” she said, “where do you keep your walkie-talkies?”

“Now I’m curious,” her sister said. “What’s this mission we’re on?”

“We’re going to the museum,” Nina replied. “To gather indisputable evidence to support my claim. A disembodied soul lives in the house.” She patted the camera case hanging against her side. “And we are going to prove it.”

Antique cloth doll bodies were usually homemade. Every household had a sewing machine and a woman who knew how to use it. Creating a cloth body was a simple task. Fabrics included muslin, pink sateen, felt, and printed cloth. Before polyester, bodies were stuffed with straw or excelsior, a strawlike material made from fine wood strips. Cloth dolls and bodies are still popular today. Patterns and fabrics can be found at doll shows, doll shops, and at online doll stores.

– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch

Be careful of what you wish for, Gretchen thought.

She’d made a wish and it had come true. Hadn’t she wanted to work in the museum or join Nina in her ghost hunt instead of directing the play? Here she was, at the museum, working on a ghost project. But she wasn’t sure she wanted it any longer.

“John and Emma Swilling had one child, a girl named Flora,” Nina said while Gretchen unlocked the door to the home they were converting into a museum. “Emma died giving birth, as we thought. John raised his daughter alone. After he died, Flora, who must have been in her midtwenties by then, kept the house, moving her own family into it in the fifties and raising two children of her own, Richard and Rachel.”

Gretchen turned on an entry light. Learning the names of the house’s former inhabitants made them come alive for her. What these walls could tell her if they could talk!

“How do you know so many details?” Caroline asked her sister.

“It was amazingly easy, considering how hard it’s been to find out who the latest owner is. I called the historical society. They dug through the records and gave me the information over the phone. I called as soon as we left the cemetery.”

“Cemetery?” Caroline said, bringing up the rear, shutting the door behind them and rubbing her neck.

“Eternal View,” Nina said.

Caroline glanced at Gretchen. “Why would you go there?”

Gretchen turned on another overhead light. “It’s a long story,” she said. “April promised Bonnie I’d take them to the murder sight if Bonnie could make it through her lines without messing up. And she pulled it off.”

“She’ll tell Matt about the outing,” her mother said. “How will he feel about you and his mother following his case?”

“She promised not to.” At least she was hanging out with his mother. Matt should appreciate that.

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”

“Tell Caroline about the grave site,” Nina said, plopping a tote bag on the counter.

“We located the cemetery plot where the couple who built this house-John and Emma Swilling-are buried.”

“And you’ll never guess the rest,” Nina said, unable to resist taking over the story.

“I’m too tired and achy to guess,” Caroline said.

“It’s right where Allison Thomasia’s body was found, right on top of John and Emma’s graves.”

Caroline was quiet while she processed the news. “That’s not good,” she said. “If Allison’s murder is connected in any way to the past owners of this house-”

Gretchen cut her off, suddenly worried that her mother would want to halt work at the museum. “Maybe it has nothing to do with the Swillings. Just a creepy coincidence. Remember what Matt told me, that she crawled a distance before she collapsed?”

Nina was busy emptying the tote. She pulled out items and placed them on the counter: paper, pen, flashlights, extra batteries. “Gretchen doesn’t really think it was a coincidence that the murdered woman was found on that grave site.”

“I don’t either,” Caroline said. The Birch women, in spite of their differences, had a few shared beliefs, one being that interrelated occurrences weren’t coincidences. “These events align,” she said firmly to Gretchen. “Therefore they are connected.”

“I was only trying to eliminate possibilities,” Gretchen protested.

“If the cemetery was a game board and you tossed a coin over it,” her mother said, “what are the chances that the coin would fall on that particular grave?”

“Not good,” Nina said. “I’d bet against it.”

Her mother wouldn’t let it go. “Exactly,” she said.

Nina picked up a flashlight and handed it to her sister. “Gretchen had a bad reading, yet she refuses to redirect. Therefore, we must make friends with the house ghost,” Nina said. “The spirit might decide to help us. But we can’t make contact if you two keep talking.”

She handed a flashlight to Gretchen, then distributed walkie-talkies. “First we need to establish rules and duties.”

“Have you ever done a ghosting before?” Gretchen asked. She felt excited but scared, too. She wasn’t exactly sure that she believed in ghosts, but she preferred to err on the cautious side since she was in a dark house. If this ghost existed, should she be stalking it?

“Stop with the lights,” Nina hissed when Gretchen turned on yet another light. Nina followed behind her, turning them off until Gretchen could see only the narrow beams of flashlights and ghastly facial shadows.

“Who is the ghost?” Caroline asked Nina. “Emma?”

In shadow, Nina’s teeth appeared long and pointy like a vampire’s. “Flora,” she said without a bit of doubt. Her teeth seemed to stretch out even longer.

Gretchen had heard stories of vampire ghosts. Didn’t they attack people and leave visible bites on their victims’ necks?

“Let’s get started,” Caroline said.

Gretchen felt the hairs on her own neck stand at attention.

“Our mission is to locate the ghost,” Nina said. “And to find out what it wants and how we can help it accomplish its goal.” She spent several minutes going through the procedure. They would stay close enough to hear each other and make individual observations, which they would compare later.