Goodbye Dolly

25

After fighting gridlock traffic, Gretchen found Daisy sitting on a park bench on Central Avenue, her trusty shopping cart containing her life story at her side. Nacho, looking grim and menacing as usual, sat beside her. When he saw Gretchen pull over to the curb and jump from the car, he rose without acknowledging her presence, handed something to Daisy, and strode rapidly away.

"What's with him?" Gretchen said, plopping down beside Daisy. Heat rose in waves from the concrete, and she looked around for a more shaded spot to sit.

She missed shade trees more than she missed anything else from back home in Boston. Oaks and red maples and towering elms. She'd traded them for lanky, transplanted palm trees and spindly desert shrubs. Phoenix's desert landscape offered no relief from the sun's hot rays.

"He's mad at you," Daisy said, her arms crossed in front of her, same red hat pulled down close to her eyes, same purple dress. "You snitched."

Gretchen watched Nacho's back disappear among the lunchtime crowd. The man was like a chameleon. "Snitched about what? I never snitched."

Daisy held out the object Nacho had given to her before hurrying off.

Gretchen took the photograph from her and winced.

"The poor man. What happened to him?" A battered face stared at the camera through a swollen slit in one eye. The other eye was completely closed. His face looked like ground hamburger.

"His name is Albert Thoreau. I thought you might know him," Daisy said stiffly. Gretchen knew Daisy was studying her reaction with a steady, judging gaze. She shook her head. At least she thought he was a stranger to her. With his face swollen into an unrecognizable mass, she couldn't be sure.

Gretchen looked away from the picture in her hand. Life on the street was decidedly hard. "Should I know him?

Is he okay?"

"He's alive, and that's all I can say for him."

"What happened?" Gretchen asked again.

"You told the cops that Thoreau saw that guy get pushed into the street."

"No, I didn't." Gretchen argued in her defense. "I never saw the man in this picture before." With wild accusations slung by Steve and now Daisy, she should have been the one studying litigation techniques and defensive strategies.

"Daisy, you were in the parking lot when Nacho told me someone had seen Brett pushed, but he refused to tell me who it was. Don't you remember?"

"Well, you must have told somebody, because a cop came after him."

Gretchen looked at the picture again. "A cop did this?"

Daisy nodded.

Gretchen blanched, remembering that she had told a cop. Matt Albright. She hadn't gotten a name from Nacho, but she did tell Matt about the witness's account of what had taken place on the curb in front of Chiggy Kent's house. How hard would it have been for Matt to find him?

Simple. Hit the streets and start asking questions. She forced herself to look at Albert's battered face again. Could Matt Albright have done this to Albert Thoreau?

"What makes you think Albert's beating had anything to do with what he saw at the auction?" she asked.

Daisy's eyes shifted away. "I just know, is all," she said in a small voice. "Albert's sister is famous, you know, and he used to be, too."

Gretchen gave her a hard look. Fame played too much of a role in Daisy's life.

"I need a place to lay low for a little while," Daisy said, drawing Gretchen away from a jumble of disturbing thoughts. "Can I go home with you?"

Gretchen, startled by the request, felt hopeful that Daisy was moving in the right direction, away from her destitute life. It was the first time she had ever reached out for help.

"Sure," she said. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Daisy shook her head. "There's something ugly happening on the street right now. This could have been me," she said, taking back the picture and waving it at Gretchen. "I've been advised to find a safe house for the time being. But I have to bring my shopping cart."

Gretchen looked at the cart, then at the trunk of the Echo. "I can get your things inside, but the cart itself is too big." Then she realized she hadn't emptied the trunk last night after the doll show. Daisy's so-called treasures would have to fit in the backseat.

"I can't leave my cart. I'll find someplace else to stay."

Daisy stood up and smoothed her dress, defiance in her stance and in the sharp glint in her eyes.

"Wait," Gretchen said. "I have an idea."

Digging her cell phone out of her pocket, she called Nina. "I have a favor to ask."

"Okay," Nina said. "I don't mean okay, I'll do it. I mean, okay, tell me."

"Daisy needs a place to stay and insists on bringing her shopping cart along. It won't fit in my car."

"I'm taking back every single okay that I've ever uttered. I know what's coming next."

"So…"

"I hate sentences that start with so."

"I thought you could run down here and pick her up."

"How thoughtful." Nina let out a noisy sigh. "This is going to cost you big time."

"Anything."

"All right, I'll bring her back home with me. Karen Phelps wants me to start training her pup, and I've been putting her off because I haven't had time. Ask Daisy if she's willing to help."

Gretchen relayed the request, and Daisy broke into a wide grin.

"I guess that's a yes," Gretchen said, giving Nina directions and sealing the deal. As Gretchen drove away, she saw Daisy give her a shy five-finger wave and sit back down.

She also saw the black Jetta pull out right behind her. At first, Gretchen didn't think anything of it. Traffic along Central tended to be tight and congested, and even here in this valley of incredibly intense sun, black cars weren't an exception, and Volkswagen Jettas were the car of the moment.

What drew Gretchen's attention to the tail was the proximity of the other car. Any closer, and they'd be sharing the same rearview mirror.

Now what? Should Gretchen call the police or try to lose the car? Maybe she should drive to the police station, but her pursuer might drive past, and Gretchen wouldn't be any closer to identifying her.

At that moment the driver must have realized that she had breached the imaginary line between a comfortable following distance and extreme road rage, because the Jetta blended back into the obscurity of traffic.

What a dope Gretchen was. She should get the Jetta's license plate for starters. Gretchen checked her mirror, but the car had allowed some distance to separate them. Paper and pen within reach, Gretchen slowed, waiting for the other car to creep forward. Still, it was too hard to get a license number while looking through a mirror with one eye and scoping out the flow of traffic ahead with the other. Not to mention the license number appeared backward in the mirror, making it that much harder to read. And the traffic was as thick as a flock of migrating geese. Ahead, a light turned red, and she eased to a stop. The Jetta was once again right behind her, now too close to read the number.

Impulsively, Gretchen set the brake, jumped out, and ran to the back of her car. She read the license number with no time to spare for glancing at the other driver, and jumped back into her own car as the light changed. As she drove, she wrote down the number.

The Jetta stayed right behind her. She switched lanes. So did the Jetta.

Maybe jumping out at the light hadn't been the smartest move she'd ever made. What if the driver had shot her? Or tromped on the accelerator and crushed Gretchen against her own car?

What did the woman hope to accomplish by following her? Gretchen wanted to pull over, stomp back to the other car, and demand answers to a growing number of questions. Did the Jetta driver want the box of Kewpie dolls? It just happened to be in her car's trunk at this very moment. If she gave it up, the scare tactics might stop. The lethal scorpions and mysterious packages with creepy messages inside might go away. It made sense to get out of the middle, wherever that was. Let them know she wasn't a threat any longer and didn't want anything to do with the Kewpies. Aha! She had a plan.

At the next intersection, Gretchen stopped abruptly when the light turned to red, and she trotted to the back of the Echo with her hands up in classic surrender position. The Jetta driver's mouth dropped open at the same time that Gretchen popped the trunk and removed the box of broken Kewpie dolls. She placed it on the hood of the Jetta, directly in front of the driver's window. Relieved to note that she wasn't facing the barrel of a pistol, she managed a weak wave and ran back to her car just before the light turned green.

As she turned onto Lincoln Drive, she watched the woman leap from her car and grab the box. Horns blared behind the Jetta as the light changed again, and the traffic hadn't moved.

Gretchen dug in her purse for her cell phone.

"I'd like to report an incident of road rage," she said when the Phoenix Police Department's dispatcher answered. She filed the report, giving all details including the numbers of the Jetta's license plate and her own cell phone.

"I'd like to know who that car is registered to."

"We'll send a car. We have one close by," the dispatcher said.

"I just want the name of the driver."

"That's not up to me. I'm a police dispatcher, not your personal information clerk."

Whatever happened to the courteous, helpful public servant of the past?

"Go about your business," the dispatcher advised.

"We'll be in touch."

"Sure," Gretchen said, with no idea why she'd bothered calling the police. All she wanted was the name of her pursuer, and she couldn't even get that. Once her complaint passed through enough red tape to produce the information she needed, she would have died of natural causes. Or unnatural causes.

Ten minutes later, she was driving home with an alert eye out for the Jetta and a bag of green chile burgers from a fast-food drive-through in the passenger seat. Her cell phone rang.

"I hear you had a close encounter," Matt said.

"Of the third kind," Gretchen responded cautiously, the photograph of Albert vivid in her mind. "News travels fast. I didn't know you hung around dispatch centers."

"I don't. This one requires special attention, so they notified me."

"I should be flattered." For the first time, Gretchen realized the power of his position. Was he having her watched? As a detective in the Phoenix Police Department, his authority extended further than that of an ordinary patrol cop. He had access to everything and everyone. Frightening, once Gretchen really thought about it.

"Just tell me what happened," he said, sounding concerned.

"This car has been following me in a very aggressive way. It almost hit me. Whoever it is, is trying to scare me. It's working."

Matt asked her to repeat the license number.

There was a long pause on the other end. Then Matt told her the name of the person registered to the black Jetta. Her turn for a long pause. He must have thought she hung up, because he said, "Hello? Are you still there?"

She groaned audibly.

"This is extremely embarrassing for me," he said.

"Great. Just great. I'll leave you to handle it. If it happens again, I'm filing harassment charges."

Gretchen hung up.

She had just given her box of dolls, the one she hoped to use in negotiations; to Matt's crazy, estranged wife.

"Well," Nina said from the other end of the line. "Bonnie told us she was a psych case. Now we know for sure."

Gretchen swung into her carport just as her ear, pressed against the receiver, was beginning to hurt. She made a mental note to add more minutes to her cell phone plan and buy a headset. "Why me? She doesn't have any reason to follow me."

"She must have caught on."

"Caught on?" Gretchen turned off the ignition.

"It's obvious to everyone but you that Matt's hot on your heels, and it isn't because he wants to give you a speeding ticket."

"That can't be true."

"It is. You both have foolish smiles on your faces whenever you run into each other. Stop fighting against it and go with the flow."

"Do you think Bonnie told his wife about me?"

"It isn't a long shot. I bet that's exactly what happened. Blabby Bonnie's been trying to set you two up for a while now." Gretchen imagined Nina grinning widely. "You and Matt want to go out with Eric and me tonight?"

"Give it up, Nina. I'm not dating Matt. He hasn't even asked me out."

"This is the twenty-first century. You don't have to wait for him to ask you. Turn the tables. Get aggressive."

"Butt out, Nina. I'm still trying to extricate myself from one man."

"I'll put a bug in Matt's ear."

"Don't you dare." Gretchen knew her aunt certainly would dare. The idea might have appealed to Gretchen yesterday. Today, after seeing the photo of Albert Thoreau, she had too many doubts about Matt.

She decided not to tell Nina about Albert's beating until she had concrete information to back up her fear that Matt had attacked the homeless man. She hoped it wasn't true. It seemed so out of character for him.

Of course, she had badly misjudged Steve. She had believed in him, too.

"Did you pick up Daisy?" Gretchen asked.

"She's working with Karen's dog right now."

"What should I do about the box of Kewpies? I can't believe I gave it to the wrong person."

"Forget about it," Nina said. "You'd have to ask the queen bee for it back, and you know what the queen does if she spots a new queen emerging?"

"I don't want to know."

"She kills the new queen."

On that positive note, Gretchen signed off and grabbed the bag of green chile burgers. They smelled wonderful. One for now, and two for snacks later. She had to find time to cook a healthy meal one of these days, instead of existing on junk food. Like two days of hot dogs at the doll show and these cholesterol-soaked burgers.

She rounded the corner of the carport and dug for her house keys, wishing again that her purse was more organized. Everything she needed always seemed to rest at the very bottom.

When she stepped onto the porch, she saw it.

A package propped up against the door, positioned so she couldn't miss it.

Postal stamp-Phoenix, Arizona.

Handwriting-the same.

Gretchen thought about ignoring it. Maybe if she didn't acknowledge its existence, it would vanish.

She looked up and down the street, a tiny sliver of fear traversing her spine.

She made another phone call, gave the package wide berth when she entered the house, and sat down to wait for April to arrive.