Ding Dong Dead

8

Caroline steps from the car. Matt Albright waits in front of the police station to escort her inside. He has impeccable manners-opening doors for her, offering coffee, performing the obligatory small talk. How have you been? How’s Nina? By the way, you have a beautiful daughter with a matching soul.

He scores extra points for mentioning Gretchen’s inner beauty.

Caroline is sure he feels the same as she does under the circumstances, uncomfortable because of their personal relationship, wanting to get the unpleasant task over with as quickly as possible.

The mother and the boyfriend size each other up.

“After you,” he says, showing her into a room.

She doesn’t really want to know the truth, so why did she make the call to the detective? Out of a sense of truth and justice? Yes. But also out of fear.

He leaves her alone. A large mirror on the wall shows her that her face is as pale as her silver hair. Is it a two-way mirror? Is someone on the other side?

She sits down at a square table in the middle of the room and rakes her silver hair with her fingers, thinking of her daughter. Two nuts from the same black walnut tree, her husband used to say when he was alive. Before the fatal car accident that took him but thankfully left her daughter physically unharmed. She hopes the emotional scars have faded if not totally healed. Gretchen assures her they have, but her daughter’s nightmares tell Caroline the truth.

God, she misses him. Nothing could ever make up for her loss. Nobody, anywhere, could replace that man. Gretchen reminds her so much of him, although everyone else says mother and daughter resemble each other. They have the same strong build, but her daughter has her father’s inquisitive mind, boldly taking on and dealing with life’s hardships, sometimes acting a little too impulsively for her own good.

Matt comes back into the room with two cups of coffee. He’s nothing at all like his chatty mother, Bonnie. He’s secretive and cautious.

The detective sits across from her at the scarred table in the shabby room with tired furniture and bad lighting. A manila file folder lies between them.

“How did she die?” Caroline asks, the word tumbling out beyond her control.

Matt doesn’t answer her question. “You don’t have to do this, you know?” he says, but she can tell that he’s eager for anything that might assist him in his search.

They have the same strong sense of justice.

“What if I’m right?” she says. “You need to know as quickly as possible to catch whoever did this.”

“What if you’re wrong? Either way, it isn’t necessary that you be the one to identify her. Give me a name and I’ll track down the family. It will be easy to find out if it’s the woman you think it is. Just give me a name.”

Caroline shakes her head. “I don’t want to be responsible for an incorrect identification. I don’t want to intrude on the wrong family’s life. Please, it’s important to me to make sure.” She glances up at the mirror. “I’ve never done this before, identified someone.”

“It takes some getting used to.”

“Will we go into the morgue?”

Matt grins, but not with his eyes. “No. I have pictures.”

She wants to take a sip of her coffee from the foam cup he has placed in front of her, but she knows that her hand will shake. That’s the tip-off. She might look calm on the outside, but the way she handles a coffee cup will reveal the opposite. Hers would slosh back and forth. She’d spill it.

“I need to know how she died,” Caroline says again, her eyes flicking to a file lying on the table between them, wondering why the cause of death is so important to her.

After all, dead is dead.

“Blows to the back of the head,” Matt says. “With a blunt instrument.”

Visions of a raised hammer, a clenched fist, the descent.

Why did I even ask?

He opens the file, withdraws what is obviously a stack of photographs, holds them so she can see only the back side, like a folded hand of cards in a poker game.

“I’d like to see the doll again,” Caroline says, stalling for time. She sees Matt shudder and says quickly, “A picture, I meant. You must have one.”

Not much gets through this tough detective’s steely coat of manly armor, but Caroline knows Matt’s embarrassing secret: he suffers from a condition known as pediophobia. In layman’s terms, he is afraid of dolls. Caroline has witnessed the panic attacks, seen him work up an unnatural sweat, watched him struggle to breathe normally whenever he came into viewing range of any kind of doll.

He sorts through the file and hands a photo to her.

Caroline stares at the fairy doll, even more sure of her suspicions.

Matt busies himself by placing another picture on the table, facedown. Selects another. He returns the others to the file folder and picks up the remaining ones. “Ready?” he says.

Caroline doesn’t answer immediately.

Then she nods.