Deb Baker - Ding Dong Dead

“That’s what I want to ask you,” Caroline said.

“I have no idea, although she did bring a few dolls along on the trip to give as gifts if she found any relatives. It makes me think she was meeting someone.”

“Are you sure you were staying with Allison?” Gretchen said, dispersing with social etiquette and cutting right to the chase. “You don’t have a clue what her plans were. You can’t tell us who she met, where she went, or what she was doing.”

“Research, I told you. Genealogy study of her family history.”

“You must have more than that,” Caroline said. “A name, an address, something to help us?”

“I don’t care about things like who her third cousin twice removed might be. Come on, give me a break. All those charts and tree branches, who cares?”

Charts? Gretchen thought. Of course!

Gretchen almost slammed into the car ahead of her when it stopped at a light. She looked at Caroline, then glanced quickly back at Andy. “Were these charts computerized?” she asked.

“She had a printout in her purse,” Andy said. “But the police told me that she didn’t have her purse when they found her. She used a computer program to record her genealogy research, and while we were in Phoenix, she carried a notebook. That’s gone, too. It would have been inside her purse.”

“Did she bring her laptop?”

Andy shook his head.

“Can we access her home computer records?”

“Without going back to LA, I don’t see how.”

Gretchen stopped the car in front of a central Phoenix soup kitchen. Daisy had been quick to agree to their plan. Nacho, on the other hand, had reservations but had acquiesced with a little prompting from his fiancée.

“We’re leaving you with some friends,” Caroline explained to Andy. “Trust them. They won’t turn you in. What they will do is give you different clothes to wear and show you how to fit in. Follow their example. Watch how they act and follow suit. No one will look for you here. You’ll be in good hands.”

Andy nodded.

Gretchen gave her mother’s old friend a hard look to convey her feelings of distrust. “We won’t make contact with you until we have something to go on. Word will come to you through those who are helping.”

“I understand.”

While Caroline was inside getting Andy settled in his new environment with their homeless friends, Gretchen contemplated her next move. She couldn’t access Allison Thomasia’s computer, but she knew who could.

“Detective Albright,” she said when he answered his phone. “I have information for you.”

“Ms. Birch. So pleased to hear from you.”

“Were you worried?”

“Should I be?”

The man liked to answer her questions with his own. She knew he had to be concerned, because their tail would have informed him that he’d lost the Birch car. Too bad.

“You sound excited,” he said with a playful amusement in his tone she could tell was forced. “What is this intriguing information? A new doll collection purchased by your lovely mother that will make you a rich woman? A newly opened restaurant to which you are about to invite me?”

He was going to be so angry with her in a few more minutes. Gretchen almost hung up.

“We have a bad connection,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”

“I can hear you perfectly fine.”

Great.

“What I have to say is important.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Allison Thomasia was related to our skeleton. I mean to the Swilling family. She was in Phoenix researching her family tree.”

“Yes. I know.” A harder tone.

Jeez.

“Check her computer. She kept computerized records of her findings. You might find something useful in them.”

Heavy, heavy sigh on the other end. “I’ve already done that. Where are you?”

“Uh, running errands.”

“You’re hiding from me, aren’t you?”

“Of course not. I can’t believe you think that. Why would I hide?”

She could have told him that the Birch women were busy trying to keep from getting killed and that to accomplish that goal they were aiding and abetting his primary suspect.

He’d read her rights to her if she’d said that.

“Are you any closer to finding out who tried to kill my mother?”

“She told you about that?”

“Of course.”

“We’re making progress. Where are you?”

“Don’t worry about me. Get to work and catch bad guys.”

“We’re doing the best we can.”

Not good enough!

“I appreciate your concern over my safety,” Gretchen said. “The police protection was thoughtful and sweet, but we need to do this our way, not yours.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“My mother’s with me.”

Since he was already worked up, Gretchen decided to tell him about the note on her windshield.

“I need to see it,” he said.

“It’s missing.”

“I’m putting out an APB.” He was really, really mad, if she was any judge of male voice tones. “And how do you know about the victim’s computerized family history? What do you think you’re doing outrunning an officer of the law, Gretchen?”

She ended the call.

Was he serious about the APB? Could he have her picked up? She doubted it. What was he going to do? Have her arrested every time she did something he didn’t approve of?

Gretchen sensed a glitch in their previously harmonic relationship. They had had another disagreement.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t be their last.

Caroline and Gretchen spent the next hour parked in the crowded lot of the Biltmore Fashion Park making phone calls and warning their other club friends to be on the alert. No one knew why Caroline and Gretchen had been targeted, but all the Phoenix Dollers agreed that the Birch women must have crossed someone, someway, somehow.

Gretchen and Caroline had been the driving force in negotiating the terms of the agreement regarding the museum; they had been singled out to represent the club by the attorney and had handled most of the transaction. They were also the only members with keys to the house, a stipulation required by their benefactor.

The other club members debated whether they too were in danger; it was a possibility they couldn’t ignore.

April had a theory.

“The most active members of the doll club are in big trouble,” she said when she answered her cell and learned of the day’s events. She considered herself in that group, along with Bonnie and Julie. The women would spend the night with friends and stay close together during rehearsals. They were armed with lipstick-size pepper spray, gifts from Nina to all the club members last holiday season.

“It’s the pattern of threes,” April said. “Everything, including murder, comes in threes. Sets. For example, we eat three meals a day.”

Gretchen had heard this before.

“Three cheers,” April continued. “More sets of three-Hip, hip, hooray. Small, medium, and large. Three again. And then abbreviations. ABC, AAA, PTA, TNT, VIP. Before, during, and after. More threes.”

April was building steam. “How about jokes? The minister, priest, and rabbi. The blonde, brunette, and redhead. Tom, Dick, and Harry. All threes.”

“Third time’s the charm,” Gretchen added when April paused for breath. “Gotta go.”

Nina offered to make sure Wobbles was well fed. She’d also pick up Nimrod from their house immediately and keep him with her. Nina, in case she was also on their adversary’s bad side, had her own safety plan.

“I’m staying with Brandon for a few days,” she said coyly, turning the situation to her advantage. “It’ll give me a chance to see if he’s strong relationship material. No sense getting too involved if we aren’t cohabitatively compatible.”