“Did she ever buy anything?”
“Naw. She didn’t have two nickels to rub together. She only came to look.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“I’d have to think about it.” Joseph’s fingers twirled a diamond stud, and Gretchen could see tension etched on his face.
“We can wait,” Matt said.
Bonnie tittered nervously. “What is this? The third degree? Next you’ll be asking all of us for alibis.”
The detective’s eyes met Gretchen’s. “At the moment,” he said. “I’m only interested in one specific alibi.”
Caroline’s hands trembled as she held the nineteen-inch china doll on her lap. She studied the marking on the doll’s body and stroked the cream dress with dainty blue feather wisps in the design. Was this it? The Madame Rohmer she had crossed the country to find?
It had to be. Could there be another exactly like the one she sought? Impossible. But she had to be sure.
Caroline would have examined the inside of the doll’s head if the pate had been loose. With the doll’s new owner sitting next to her, she couldn’t very well rip its head off.
“Do you have a flashlight I can use?” she asked.
Rudolph Timms’s piercing eyes searched hers questioningly. “Excuse me? I thought you wanted a picture.”
Caroline, remembering her ruse, quickly arranged the doll on the ornate sofa and moved back, camera to her eye. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, after snapping several pictures with her filmless camera. “It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to examine such a wonderful specimen so closely.”
Rudolph preened as though she were complimenting him personally.
“A flashlight would illuminate the doll,” Caroline said, desperate to convince him of the truth of her lie. “The picture will be more striking with additional lighting.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” He hurried across the room and opened a drawer in a desk against the wall. “This should do.”
To continue the illusion, Caroline arranged the light and took more pictures. Then with the doll on her lap, she tapped on the doll’s head and listened. She tapped again on its cheek. She heard a dull thud. Her excitement grew.
She pulled the wig high and held the flashlight against the back of its head. She examined the face of the doll, moving the light as she worked.
Rudolph Timms cleared his throat.
“Remarkable,” Caroline said, without looking up from her work. “Simply remarkable.”
The light’s rays penetrated the layers of transparent porcelain.
Caroline’s gasp of relief caught in her throat.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She had the doll right in her lap.
10
Deceptions are practiced wherever money can be made, and the doll world is no exception. Swindlers scour the country buying damaged dolls and sometimes work with an accomplice who repairs the dolls for them. These con artists represent the dolls to avid buyers as something they are not, sell them at inflated prices, then quickly disappear from sight.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
As Gretchen stood outside of Nina’s house, she heard a coyote howl in the distance. Larry and Julia were the last to leave. Larry wandered out to join her while Julia and Nina worked in the kitchen. Julia, apparently allergy-free tonight, had offered to help clean up in the spirit of renewed camaraderie. More likely, she hoped for an earful of tantalizing new gossip.
“Where did you and Julia originally live?” Gretchen asked. “Everyone in the Phoenix area seems to be a transplant from another state, mainly from the Midwest. I have yet to meet a native Arizonian in Phoenix or Scottsdale.”
“We’re both from Cleveland,” he said, laughing. He wore sunglasses to hide his facial tic, and Gretchen wondered how he could see through them in the dark of night. If she didn’t remove her sunglasses before entering any type of building, she couldn’t see a thing.
“Ah, you started out here as snowbirds.” Permanent Arizonians, Gretchen knew, weren’t particularly fond of Northerners who fled their home states every winter to bask for a few months in the sun. When the cherry and apple trees began to blossom, the snowbirds returned home.
“Didn’t we all?” he asked.
The coyote’s howl was joined by other howls, and a choir of yipp yipp calls sounded across the desert.
“Thank you for your help with the repair projects,” Gretchen said.
“My pleasure. Julia doesn’t let me work on restorations much anymore. She wants me out buying and selling. I forgot how much I enjoy it.”
“It’s relaxing,” Gretchen acknowledged, recalling the many times she had assisted her mother, immersing herself in a doll project, forgetting about the passage of time and life’s pressing responsibilities. “Repairing a doll is one of the few times I actually live in the moment,” she said. “There’s something very Zen about it.”
Larry agreed. “I’m making a wig for one of Caroline’s customers. It’s time-consuming but gratifying. Working on it gives me that same sense of timelessness.”
“Really? You’re making a wig?” Gretchen was surprised. Her mother saved wigs from dolls that were beyond repair and used them to replace damaged wigs. “That’s well beyond the call of duty. The workshop has bins brimming with supplies. You could look there for a wig that would work.”
“I enjoy the challenge. Wig making is one of my specialties.”
“What material are you using? Mohair? A kit?”
“Kits are for amateurs, you know that. I’m using human hair. It’s going to be an extraordinary wig when I’m finished.”
“Is a local salon saving hair for you?” Gretchen had found several human hairpieces stored in the repair shop, but she knew her mother avoided making them unless a customer couldn’t be satisfied in any other way and if the price was right.
“I can’t give out my secrets,” Larry said crisply. “Your mother might move into my territory.”
Gretchen eyed him. “I think it’s the other way around. But seriously, I appreciate your help, and I’m sure she will, too, when she gets back.” She didn’t add that her mother would have more problems than she could deal with when she resurfaced without worrying about her customers’ needs.
“Maybe I can pitch in soon and help you out,” she added.
“No rush.”
Julia, her bulldog jaw leading the way, whirled out in a flurry of activity, and the Gerneys waved from the car windows as they drove off.
“He’s still out there?” Nina asked, joining her and peering into the night.
Gretchen nodded and glanced down the street where the detective sat in his car. “Does he really think I’m going to lead him to my mother?”
“That tells me he’s out of ideas. He’s hoping you come up with something.”
“He and I are in agreement on that,” Gretchen said wearily. “But I don’t know what to do next.”
“We can start with that disgusting dirty journal you swiped from Nacho.”
“I completely forgot about it.” The painkiller seemed to be affecting her mental alertness, but at the moment she didn’t care. The pill had done its magic, and her wrist didn’t hurt.
With one last look at the detective’s car, Gretchen returned to the house, fished through her purse, and extracted the worn notebook. Nina carefully drew the curtains, and the two of them settled at the kitchen table.
“He wouldn’t creep around and look in the windows, would he?” Gretchen asked, carefully removing the rubber bands encircling the notebook.
Nina shrugged. “Who knows what he will do? We should have brought a few of Caroline’s dolls over to post at the windows and doors as guards.” She watched Gretchen open the thick wad of paper with disgust. “What a mess.”
Without the rubber bands to hold the notebook together, bits and pieces of paper slipped out onto the table. A few fell to the floor. Gretchen bent down and retrieved them. “He must have saved every receipt he ever received.” She picked through a variety of purchase receipts from fast-food restaurants and liquor stores. “He drinks a lot of wine,” she noted.