Deb Baker - Ding Dong Dead

“What’s wrong with you?” Terry asks, seeing that his friend is extremely agitated, pacing, sweating.

“I recognize the doll’s head,” Matt says. “It was in Caroline’s car. After the accident, I pulled it out and gave it to Gretchen. Which means that whoever buried the skull and doll head was inside the Birch house yesterday.”

“Are you sure?”

But Matt isn’t listening. He’s making another call.

“Send a car over to the Birch house,” Matt barks into the cell phone. “I want twenty-four-hour surveillance. Stop anybody going in or coming out.”

Matt is on a roll now, he has his composure back, but he’s reactive rather than proactive, never the best place to be. Terry doesn’t like defense, preferring to play his games offensively. Matt’s the same way.

“We have to step up the search for Andy Thomasia,” Terry says.

Matt agrees. “We also need to find the missing son,” he adds. “Richard Berringer better surface soon, either as a live body or on a death certificate.”

“We’ll get them.”

“Damn! The nerve to break into Gretchen’s home and take the head.”

Terry glances toward their team. “A doll head buried in a grave and a doll body in a wardrobe inside the Swilling house. Bet they’re a match.”

Yes, this killer fits another classic sociopath characteristic.

They like to live on the edge.

Terry runs his eyes over the gravestones, suspicious of everyone, all the people coming and going, visiting the dead. He stares at the handful of spectators.

“If he touches her,” Matt says under his breath, “I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

Gretchen and Nina slid through the door into the dilapidated house.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” the woman had said. What was that all about?

Nina had hung back, concerned about entering. She’d sputtered about the bad aura permeating the building, but followed Gretchen inside after calling Caroline on her cell to let her know where they were.

The other part of their team would continue with the search and meet them back at the museum in approximately one hour.

The living room smelled of talcum powder and mothballs.

“I’m Nora Wade,” the woman said, showing them to a flowered sofa covered in yellowed plastic. “This is my mother, Bea.”

Most of the mothball smell seemed to be coming from the old shriveled woman sitting in a matching upholstered chair in a corner of the small room. Heavy drapes on the windows were pulled shut. A lamp on an end table supplied the only light.

Gretchen gave Nora her warmest smile before she said, “Our doll club is renovating the Swilling home, and we’re searching for history on the house and the Swilling family members. We are looking for neighbors who may have known them.”

A knowing look passed between the other two women.

An affirmation that they knew the family? “Did you know them?”

Another look at each other before Nora nodded.

Wonderful. They’d found someone from the old days who might be able to help.

“Would you like some tea?” the mother, Bea, asked. Her voice was so low that Gretchen had to strain to hear her.

Gretchen shook her head.

“No, but thank you,” Nina said.

“What did you mean,” Gretchen asked, “when you said that you had been waiting for us?”

Nora sat down on the edge of the sofa close to Gretchen. The heavy fragrance of talcum powder came from her. “We weren’t waiting specifically for you, but it was only a matter of time before people started wondering about that family and the house. You couldn’t have been inquiring about any other. Besides, we’ve seen you in the neighborhood. You’re the ones who are restoring the Swilling house.”

“Please tell us what you know.”

As it turned out, Nora Wade’s mother had lived her entire life in the home they were in at the moment. Gretchen didn’t think a single piece of furniture had been replaced during all those years. And the drapes must have been drawn to keep natural light from exposing layers of grime and the sorry condition of the furnishings. Dust danced in the lamplight.

“I remember when Flora disappeared,” Bea said, speaking slowly and softly. Gretchen again strained to hear. “The family had so many tragedies, one right after another. You’ve known families like that, I’m sure, where everything goes wrong for them.”

“Yes, I have,” Gretchen said.

“The family had a long history of mental issues, but Richard had the most serious of the lot. Rachel was one year younger than Richard, and he hated her from the day she was born. He was a willful, jealous child, and when Rachel was ten, he tried to smother her with a pillow.”

“Shocking,” Nina said.

Gretchen and Nina exchanged concerned glances. If psychic ability ran in families as Nina believed, then Gretchen had a little of her own and was feeling it now. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy. She felt as cold as one of Aunt Gertie’s Michigan winters, as if her veins had turned to ice and were slowly freezing her arms and legs.

“His mother stopped him in time,” Nora said. “But he became more and more dangerous as he grew. Richard started along his violent path in the same way many people with mental problems begin. He was horribly cruel to animals. His poor sister would tell the most awful stories about him.”

“A lot of whispering went on in the neighborhood,” Bea said. “I tried to tell Flora about the danger her son posed, since we were friends, but she wouldn’t listen. The entire community was afraid of him. Finally when he was a teenager, the family sent him to a special place for people like him. What a relief for the entire neighborhood’s sake.”

“Did he ever return?” Gretchen asked.

Bea shook her frail head. “No. Rumors came and went about what happened to him. Some said he existed in a vegetative state after a botched lobotomy. Others thought they spotted him on the streets of Phoenix periodically. I always suspected he was dead. Then that woman from California showed up here looking for Rachel and strange things began to happen.”

Gretchen sat up straight. “Did you meet Allison Thomasia? Did you speak with her?”

“My mother didn’t,” Nora said. “But I met her while I was out on one of my daily walks. She was standing in front of the Swilling house, staring at it. I asked her if she had a special interest.”

“When was this?”

“A few months ago. When was it, Mother?”

“About then.”

A few months ago? Had Allison been in Phoenix all that time? Or had she made two trips?

“She was tracing her family history,” Nora said. “She said she was related to the Swilling branch. I gave her as many details as I could, like I’m doing now. Recently that young woman was found dead in the cemetery.”

“Yes, we know,” Gretchen said. “She designed dolls.”

“She had a nice doll with her. Kind of strange for my taste, but you could tell that she had talent even if it wasn’t my cup of tea.”

Gretchen asked Nora to describe the doll. Flowing hair, fairy wings, ivy on the doll’s leg. It was the same one found in the cemetery.

“She said she was going to give the doll to the next relative she met,” Nora said. “She liked to do that, give away dolls, she said. The dear never had a chance.”

Gretchen was pretty sure that Allison had found her next of kin. But the doll had been discarded along with the dollmaker’s body. “Do you know why Rachel didn’t live in the house anymore?”

“Too much misery,” Bea said. “Flora’s daughter had mental problems of her own.”

“Well,” Nora said, “we don’t know that for a fact. But she had more than one side to her, that’s for sure. Not that I’d speak ill of the dead.”