Dolled Up For Murder

13

“April’s back,” Nina said while fondling the doll costumes. “Well, not exactly back. She never left.”

“What?” Gretchen said.

“She had valley fever. It was awful, April said. A fever, aches and pains, a bad cough. She’s recovering at home and ignored her phone calls until she felt better.”

Valley fever. A lung infection, Gretchen remembered, caused by an airborne fungus. Not uncommon in the Phoenix area.

“She was out four-wheeling,” Nina explained. “And got caught in a dust storm.”

Gretchen tried to picture enormous April on an all-terrain vehicle.

“She should have worn a mask,” Nina finished.

“Somehow,” Gretchen said, “I never thought of April as the rugged, outdoors type.”

“I hope she didn’t give it to Tutu.”

“I don’t think valley fever is contagious, Aunt Nina.”

“You can’t be too careful.”

Gretchen and Nina sat at the workbench in Caroline’s repair shop, admiring the doll trunk. Wobbles, exhibiting newfound confidence around Tutu and Nimrod, perched lazily on a shelf overhead and cleaned his face with his paws. The dogs had learned to tread lightly around him ever since he had won his first boxing match with a well-placed left claw to Tutu’s inquisitive nose.

“Wobbles has a superiority complex,” Nina observed.

Gretchen tried in vain to concentrate on the doll trunk and her missing mother. Nina whirled through a room like one of those dust storms April claimed she four-wheeled into, and the animals weren’t helping matters. The yapping and clicking of toenails on the tiled floor irritated Gretchen’s already strained nerves.

A cool shower would put everything back into perspective.

Leaving Nina to fend for herself, Gretchen stood in the shower under the lukewarm water while holding her broken wrist out of the stream. It was more of a trick than she thought it would be. She raised it higher and attempted to wash her hair with one hand.

Drying it proved impossible. She draped a towel over her head and struggled into white capris and a short red halter top, intending to ask Nina for help with her hair. But when she returned to the workshop, Nina sat crying at the table.

“I can see Caroline’s aura in my mind’s eye,” Nina said through sobs.

Gretchen, well-versed in Nina’s alleged ability to see energy fields in the form of colors emanating from objects, sighed heavily. According to Nina, all matter has auras, including Boston mosquitoes, Phoenix cockroaches, and Tutu poop. However, Nina hadn’t figured out what all the colors meant or how to interpret them.

Much like her dreams.

“I didn’t know you could see auras in your mind’s eye,” Gretchen said.

Nina sniffed. “I didn’t either until now.”

“And?” Gretchen was reluctant to ask but knew it was inevitable. “What did you see?”

The question sent Nina off into another bout of hysteria.

Gretchen ran the towel through her wet hair and waited. She made a mental note to buy a pair of aura glasses as soon as possible. The woman in the New Age shop had assured her that anyone could see auras with the proper glasses.

Nina sniffed. “Her aura is black. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think it means your mother killed Martha. And I can’t bear it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Intrigue, conspiracy, death,” Nina said in a stage whisper. “The writing is on the wall.”

“The writing isn’t on the wall,” Gretchen said. “It’s on a piece of paper. In Martha’s cold hand. In Nacho’s notebook. I have to admit, it looks bad. But looks are deceiving. You know that.”

Gretchen leaned over and gave her aunt a strong hug. “We have to fight, Aunt Nina. We can’t give up hope.”

As the two pink bracelets on Gretchen’s wrist said, Share Beauty Spread Hope.

“Every time we discover new clues,” Nina pointed out, “they incriminate Caroline. Maybe we should stop helping.”

“Our luck has to turn soon.” Gretchen sat down and cupped her chin in her good hand. “Where would my mother hide a French fashion doll?”

“It can’t be here. The police searched the house.”

“Did she have a storage unit someplace?” Gretchen asked. “Or a large safe-deposit box?”

Nina shook her head. “Nothing that I know of. That Nacho character is creepy. I can’t believe you went to see him alone.”

Gretchen didn’t respond. She gazed out the window at the rugged beauty of the mountain. “She must have the doll with her.”

“It’s not important,” Nina said. “Finding the doll won’t help your mother. We have the trunk.” Nina gestured at the wooden doll trunk and the scattered costumes. “And what good is it? With our current streak of bad luck, we’ll find the doll, remove its head, and we’ll find a note. The note will say, ‘Caroline Birch murdered Martha Williams.’”

“No need for sarcasm, dear aunt. Your pessimism is getting to me.”

Gretchen gathered up the doll clothes and accessories and replaced them in the trunk. She opened a cabinet, rearranged the shelves to make room, and slid the trunk inside. A stack of folded fabric placed in front of it concealed the trunk from the casual observer.

“I have to keep moving,” she said. “Every minute at this house feels like wasted time.”

“I’m coming along.” Nina’s voice held a hint of stubbornness.

Gretchen watched Nimrod tackle Tutu. Playful snarls filled the room. Having Nina along meant having Nimrod and Tutu as well. The term comes with baggage took on a whole new meaning.

“Someone has to look out for you,” Nina said, stuffing Nimrod in his traveling purse.

April Lehman lived in Tempe, close to Arizona State University. Nina drove quickly along a newly opened express-way. Gretchen couldn’t believe how many new routes were available in Maricopa County making access easy to surrounding cities such as Tempe, which was situated a few miles southeast of Phoenix. It had a small-town college atmosphere that Gretchen appreciated.

As they approached Tempe, Nina raised the subject of Steve.

“How’s it going with you two?”

“Fine,” Gretchen replied, looking out the side window.

“Your life doesn’t seem too exciting,” Nina continued. “Where’s the action?”

“What do you mean? Are you saying I don’t have a life?”

“All I’m saying is it could be more exciting.”

“It’s more exciting than I care for, right now.”

“Humpf.”

Maybe Nina is right, Gretchen thought. My life hasn’t been exactly movie material. The same boyfriend for seven years, the same job, which never quite materialized into an established career before it unceremoniously terminated, and numerous torturous business-related events in the name of Steve’s rapid rise in the law firm.

Gretchen thought about friends her own age, or rather her lack of friends. A few college buddies seen occasionally to relive the past, happy hour with coworkers before the long drive home in the early evening, a book club group once a month. She thought of the stray voice messages left on her cell phone. Casual acquaintances. No true friends. Not one person particularly concerned over her whereabouts.

Looking back, she realized that she hadn’t taken the time to develop friendships because her relationship with Steve required constant care and attention, even as Steve spent less and less time with her. She had allowed some friendships to lapse, and as a result she was intensely lonely.

Her small and quirky family had been a steady ship for her, a cast of strong females who colored Gretchen’s life with animation. Ten years ago she couldn’t imagine herself thinking this, because at that time she was emotionally geared for independence. But at twenty-nine she didn’t hesitate to list her missing mother as her best friend.

Martha’s murder and her mother’s disappearance certainly verged on cliff-hanging entertainment, excuse the pun, but those events weren’t about her life. They were about other people’s lives.

Gretchen vowed to work on spicing up her own life in more positive ways just as soon as this family crisis was resolved.

Nina turned onto Apache Boulevard and parked.

The temperature registered one hundred and five degrees according to a large display sign above a local bank. The time was a few minutes after three. The heat hit Gretchen with something like physical force when she left the car. She could have been strapped to a stake in the middle of a blazing fire. Nina adjusted a cardboard windshield shade along the dashboard and began assembling her canine clan.

Gretchen studied April’s dilapidated home. Peeling paint and a green AstroTurf lawn that effectively eliminated the need for watering and weeding. The house sat on a tiny lot without benefit of a swimming pool or exotic tropical landscaping. As she followed Nina along the crumbling sidewalk, Gretchen hoped April had air-conditioning.

“Come on in,” April called out from inside, her voice muffled but audible through the front door. The fact that the door was closed indicated the presence of cool air. “You got here fast.”

Gretchen and Nina found April’s massive form sprawled across a sagging sofa. She wore a muumuu with green and purple stripes and had hiked it up around her thighs, exposing treelike legs snaked with varicose veins.

A window air conditioner droned loudly, the motor struggling to lower the temperature of the small room, with limited success.

“You look awful,” Nina said. “I wish you had called me when you were diagnosed with valley fever. I would have helped you out.”

“I didn’t want to bother anybody,” April said. “I’m feeling pretty good now. Gretchen, what happened to your arm?”

“I tripped and fell yesterday.” Gretchen caught Nina’s eye, hoping Nina would follow her lead and refrain from sharing the details of the encounter with Nacho.

“That’s too bad,” April said.

Nina sat down in a torn and faded cloth chair with Tutu leashed at her feet. The top of Nimrod’s purse was vacant, indicating a napping puppy inside. Gretchen remained standing and couldn’t resist scrutinizing the room.

Piles of doll magazines littered the floor, and every inch of table space was covered with dolls.

Gretchen stifled an involuntary giggle. Enormous April collected miniature dolls, all types and styles. The table next to Gretchen held several dolls, an eight-inch Lee Middleton, a Strawberry Shortcake riding her trike with Custard Cat in the basket, a five-inch cloth doll with an embroidered face, and an antique German bisque with jointed arms, wearing a blue dress.

“I have almost all of the original boxes and packing,” April said proudly, looking at Gretchen with a schoolgirl’s beam. “You didn’t know I was a miniaturist, did ya?”

“These are marvelous,” Gretchen said. And inexpensive, she thought. None of the dolls in April’s collection were worth much more than twenty dollars. Based on April’s lifestyle, that was all she probably could afford. Her appraisal service might be the backbone of the collecting business, but it didn’t pay well.

“I always wanted to get into collecting doll houses and furniture,” April said. “But the time hasn’t been right. For my thirtieth birthday I’m going to treat myself to my very first doll house.”

Thirty! Gretchen had assumed April was well into her fifties, but she was the same age as Gretchen.

Nina piped up. “Caroline is still missing, April, and it’s turning ugly. We have to ask you a few questions about Martha.”

April stiffened noticeably, and her warm smile froze. “I never liked that woman.”

“You need to tell us why,” Nina said encouragingly. “It might help.”

April shifted on the couch, and her muumuu rode higher. “Eight years ago, Martha’s husband died, and she came into some money through a life insurance policy. She went on a buying spree, buying the most fabulous dolls you could imagine. And the prices she paid.” April slapped her forehead. “But she couldn’t control herself. She bought dolls instead of paying off her mortgage, like she should of. She went wild.

“Then the whole thing collapsed around her. She started drinking because she couldn’t face the financial problems. Three years ago the bank called her loan and repossessed her house.”

“What happened after the bank foreclosed?” Gretchen asked. “What happened to the dolls?”

“I knew she was going to lose the dolls right along with the house, and I could hardly stand to watch it happen, but look around you,” April said, sweeping her arms across the room. “I couldn’t afford to buy them from her either. She wouldn’t have sold anyway. She was in denial and probably drunk most of the time and didn’t believe anything could happen to them. She adored her dolls.”

Nina frowned. “But what made you so mad at her?”

“A lot of the Dollers tried to help her out by offering to buy her dolls. But part of the problem was that she wouldn’t even let us see her collection. Over the years, she’d talk about a doll here and there, or we’d see one of them, but no one knew the actual extent of the collection.”

“She certainly was an odd one,” Nina said.

“She had one miniature doll that she showed me about a year before all this happened. It was only three and a half inches high.” April spread her fingers to show how small three and a half inches really was. “It was a German bisque miniature, hand-painted with inset blue glass eyes. The prettiest thing you’d ever see. I loved that doll at first sight.”

“She wouldn’t sell it to you, would she?” Gretchen asked.

April nodded. “As it turned out, the bank or somebody acting for the bank took the whole thing away from her. What would it have hurt to give me that tiny little doll?”

“Did anyone ever find out for sure what happened to the collection?” Gretchen anticipated April’s answer, but had to ask anyway.

“No. It vanished without a trace.”

“There are a lot of things around here that seem to vanish without a trace,” Nina observed.

April struggled into a sitting position, and a fine line of sweat dripped down the side of her face. She wiped it away. “I better head out,” she said. “I’m late to work out. I missed my exercises all week because I was sick. I can’t miss again today, or I’ll fall behind on my new health program.”

Nina shot a warning glance at Gretchen, and Gretchen composed her face.

“April has lost fifty pounds,” Nina said to Gretchen. “She’s working out at Curves.”

Gretchen hadn’t noticed any poundage loss, but she had spotted April’s purse on the side table by the door and a set of keys beside it. She’d also noticed an overnight travel bag tossed carelessly on its side by the bedroom door. A cosmetic bag and a hairbrush had slid out onto the floor.

It looked like the woman stricken with valley fever had been away from home.

“Maybe she’s packing for a trip,” Nina said, when they returned to the car. They opened all the car doors, Nina turned on the ignition and the air-conditioning, and they waited on the sidewalk while the car cooled down. April lumbered to her crumpled Buick and waved as she drove off. Nina opened the back door and helped Tutu onto the seat. Nimrod squirmed out of his purse and ran back and forth in the rear as Nina took the driver’s seat and belted up. “Maybe she’s leaving today.”

“I think she lied about the valley fever,” Gretchen said, digging a folded piece of paper from her shorts and scanning the copy of Martha’s inventory list. She found the doll April had once coveted: “German miniature, all bisque, jointed, marked German 10 on back of head, original hand-made dress, three and a half inches high.” She glanced up at the street ahead. “Can you catch up to her? Let’s see if she’s going where she said she’s going.”

“Fun. My first tail.”

Nina stepped on the gas, and Gretchen’s head snapped back. “Take it easy. I don’t want any more trips to the hospital.”

Several lights ahead, the back of April’s car came into view, and Gretchen watched it turn onto University Drive and head for Phoenix. Fifteen minutes later April pulled over in front of a building bearing a small overhead sign, Curves. Curves, a popular fitness center exclusively for women, was sweeping the country, and Gretchen had considered paying a visit to one. This was her chance.

“Now we’ll go in and ask her if she’s leaving town,” Nina said.

“We can’t say it just like that.” Gretchen watched April enter the building. “I’ll go in and think of some reason for following her, something we forgot to ask her before she took off. You stay here with the dogs.”

“We can all go in.”

“I’m sure they don’t allow dogs,” Gretchen said. “Let’s not cause a scene.” She walked into Curves.

April was waiting for her.

“I thought I saw Nina’s car following me,” she said, eyeing Gretchen up and down. “You could stand to lose a few pounds, and there’s no better way to do it. You want to give it a try, don’t you?”

Gretchen gave April a weak smile. “That’s why we decided to follow you. What do I do?”

April looked over at the front desk. “That okay with you?” she said to the woman sitting behind the desk. “That’s Ora, the manager.”

“Hey,” Ora said to Gretchen. “April will take good care of you.”

“You can be my guest today,” April said, pride in her voice. “Follow behind me, and I’ll show you how to use the machines. But watch that bad arm. You’ll have to skip some of the arm weights. Our workout usually takes thirty minutes, but we’ll cut it short since we’re both on the mend.”

April jumped onto a piece of equipment as an energetic voice called from a CD overhead, “Change stations now.” Gretchen peered out the window and caught Nina’s eye. She sent a telepathic message to let Nina know that she’d be back in twenty minutes and hoped Nina’s invisible antenna was operating at peak performance.

A circle of women on various machines and platforms moved in unison, performing simple stretching exercises. Gretchen joined in next to April and spotted Bonnie Albright and Rita Phyller at the opposite end of the circuit. She waved. They waved back.

Jogging in place on a platform, Gretchen said, “Is this the local hangout for the doll club members? I see Bonnie and Rita.”

“It is,” April said, rowing away on a machine, her elbows flapping like chicken wings. “Usually we have more than this. Where’s Nina?”

“She didn’t want to leave the dogs alone in the car. It’s too hot without the air-conditioning running.”

With each “Change stations now,” April and Gretchen rotated on the equipment circling the room. Gretchen had to skip at least half of the machines because of her broken wrist. She jogged in place instead.

“Did you hear from your mother yet?” Bonnie shouted over the beat of disco music.

Gretchen shook her head, noting the glances exchanged between the two doll collectors on the other side of the room. She wondered what they said when she wasn’t present, and whether they thought her mother had killed Martha. It made for good gossip regardless of the final outcome, and Bonnie could squeeze juicy tidbits out of a barrel cactus.

“Now move away from your station and find your heart rate.” Every woman in the room raised her hand to the side of her neck as the prerecorded instructor called off the count.

Gretchen heard April breathing in sharp, jagged gasps. The front of April’s shirt was soaked as though she had taken a dip in a swimming pool with all her clothes on. As a few women cleared the workout stations around April and Gretchen, Bonnie and Rita skipped ahead and joined them.

After one time around the circuit, April sat down on a chair by the door. “I need a breather. Ten minutes is about all I have in me all at one time,” she said thickly. “You go on around again. I’ll catch up.”

“I’m going over to South Phoenix to look at a Barbie,” Rita said. “It’s a Ponytail with a black-and-white-striped swimsuit, and in its original box. I looked at it yesterday and can’t decide if I should buy it.”

“What’s holding you back?” Bonnie said.

“The price,” Rita said. “They want twelve hundred dollars, and I really can’t afford it.”

“That’s a lot of dough,” April called out from the chair.

“That’s why I’m looking at it again,” Rita said, bending over and touching her toes. “I’m hoping they’ll come way down on the price.”

“I haven’t been able to touch my toes since high school,” April observed wistfully.

“Keep losing weight the way you have,” Gretchen said encouragingly, treading steadily on a machine labeled the stepper, “and you’ll be touching your toes in no time.”

“Change stations now.”

Everyone rotated.

“When I went to look at the Barbie yesterday,” Rita said to Bonnie, “I saw you going into the Rescue Mission. Are you volunteering there?”

Bonnie looked startled. “You must be mistaken,” she said. “I wasn’t anywhere near the Rescue Mission.”

“That’s funny. I was certain it was you.”

“No,” Bonnie said, shaking her red shellacked flip. “It wasn’t me.”

Gretchen studied Bonnie. Flaming red hair and makeup painted on in exaggerated colors. It would be hard to mistake someone else for her.

“Anyway, what else is new?” April rejoined the group with renewed vigor and put everything she had into the shoulder press machine.

Gretchen, dancing on a platform, couldn’t believe how easily the conversation turned in the right direction. Without missing a beat, she asked, “Anyone planning any trips?”

Death.

Caroline had felt its presence ever since that horrible moment when the doctor spoke the chilling words: “Breast cancer.” The disease she had feared the most had invaded without a warning battle cry, its army of killer cells waging a war for supremacy within her chest.

She had felt death accompanying her through the ensuing surgery and the inescapable chemotherapy treatments. Death continued to whisper an incessant promise of eventual victory, and she had been on a quest ever since to find meaning in her life.

The answer to her existence continued to elude her in the same way that the doll she sought continued to slip away.

She had cheated death once before.

She could do it again.