Nina turned right onto Lincoln and sped toward Camelback Mountain, its prominent humps towering over the city. Caroline’s home, their destination, nestled at its base.
Gretchen felt a familiar sense of wonder as she absorbed the mass of the mountain and the scope of the city. The dry, enormous clumps of reddish rock were visible throughout Phoenix and the surrounding suburbs of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.
For all Phoenix’s exotic beauty and its reputation as a haven in the winter months, it turned forbidding and hostile in July.
She had dozed fitfully on the plane. Thoughts of her mother had been disjointed and intrusive, allowing her only a light, uneasy sleep. Now she bounced new ideas off Nina. “Maybe she heard about a great estate sale and she’s on a doll-buying spree.”
“Must be in Timbuktu,” Nina replied, refusing to catch the ball. “She would be back by now.”
“Maybe she’s mixing business and pleasure. She’s probably sightseeing at the same time. No car in the carport, you said. Right?”
“Right.”
“So we know she has it with her. And does this dog have to be on my lap?” Gretchen was annoyed with the schnoodle digging her sharp back nails into Gretchen’s legs while planting groomed front paws on the side window, her nose leaving gooey streaks on the glass. Tutu wore a red lacy collar the size of a neck brace. Having sensed competition for Nina’s attention the moment Gretchen opened the car door, the schnoodle insisted on the seat of command, which is exactly where Gretchen thought she should sit.
“You’re in her spot,” Nina said, sliding into Caroline’s driveway and turning off the ignition. “You have to learn to share. See how nicely Tutu shares. Good Tutu.”
Tutu wagged her tail and barked, a shrill, nerve-piercing sound.
Gretchen’s opinion of dogs-groveling, dependent creatures with lofty attitudes and bad manners-hadn’t changed upon meeting Tutu. Wobbles, like most cats, had a superiority complex, but at least he could clean himself. And he was quiet. Yapping dogs drove her crazy.
Nina produced a key to the door of Caroline’s adobe-style home and stood back with Tutu to allow Gretchen to enter. “After you,” she said with a sweeping gesture.
Standing in the doorway holding Wobbles’s carrier, Gretchen felt like an intruder. The house was too quiet, disconcertingly vacant. It smelled, not fragrant and earthy like her mother, but like a closed-up, abandoned space. Her mother’s spirit, which usually infused a room, was gone.
Dishes from a morning breakfast were scattered on the counter, and a newspaper lay open on the table. A box of maple buckwheat flakes had fallen next to the paper, the top left open. A few pieces of cereal had spilled from the box.
Her mother, in spite of her lack of organizational skills, was meticulous about keeping her kitchen clean, fanatical almost. She wouldn’t have left the table like this unless something unforeseen had happened.
For the first time since Nina began calling yesterday, Gretchen believed it might be possible that her mother really was missing.
“See her bracelet.” Nina pointed to a pink band lying on the counter. “She always wears it.”
Gretchen picked up the bracelet designed to support cancer research and fingered the engraving, Share Beauty Spread Hope. The bracelet matched the one on her own wrist. Their common bond was her mother’s triumph over breast cancer, her mother, a five-year survivor: sickened by chemotherapy, bald, her once dark brown hair growing back a monochromatic silver. Their bond continued to strengthen through her long, frightening recovery and the sudden death of Gretchen’s father in an automobile accident. Then came her mother’s compelling need for a new life, ripping out established roots, the move to Phoenix to be near her sister, abandoning her life in Boston. And Gretchen.
“She left in a rush,” Nina whispered.
“Yes,” Gretchen muttered, studying the contents of the kitchen. “She didn’t take the time to clean up, and that’s not like her.” She slipped her mother’s bracelet onto her wrist next to her own pink band. For good luck.
Gretchen wandered through the house. Her mother’s workshop was exactly the same as she remembered it from her last visit. A perpetual work in progress: dolls hanging from lines, dolls scattered over workbenches, heads, bodies, repair tools. Gretchen had helped her mother with the simpler repairs such as cleaning and restringing before the move to Phoenix. Gretchen smiled to herself. She had lived every little girl’s fantasy, rooms full of dolls and dresser drawers filled with doll clothing.
Nina made iced tea while Gretchen tugged Wobbles out of his carrier. He lifted his head and emitted a feeble meow, while Tutu’s nose twitched, catching his scent. Tutu tried to climb Gretchen’s leg.
“Call Tutu,” she said to Nina, doubting that Tutu even knew the come command. How could Nina train dogs to stay in purses when she couldn’t train Tutu in the basics? Yet her mother had insisted that Nina was the best purse dog trainer in the Valley of the Sun. Probably the only one, thought Gretchen, holding Wobbles in both arms. She’d never heard of the profession until Nina announced her new career move.
Nina picked up Tutu. Gretchen carried Wobbles down the hall to her mother’s bedroom and wrapped him in the bedding. He seemed to smile gratefully and was fast asleep before she walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Nina’s iced tea smelled wonderfully fruity, and Gretchen sipped it slowly at the kitchen table. Nina plopped down beside her. “Tell me everything again,” Gretchen said. “I want to hear it all.”
“Early yesterday morning, hikers found Martha’s body at the base of a ridge on the mountain,” Nina began. “Information travels fast through the doll community, and by noon everyone knew about it, including your mother. In fact, I’m the one who told her.”
“What did she say when she found out?” Gretchen asked.
“Very little, small exclamations of shock, I suppose. We were all gasping at the suddenness of her death.” Nina picked up her glass with both hands and placed her elbows on the table, cradling the glass against her lips. “Then I told her the rest.”
“The rest?”
“Bonnie Albright’s son is a detective with the Phoenix Police Department. You remember Bonnie? She’s president of the local doll club, the Phoenix Dollers.”
Gretchen remembered. Red hair shellacked into an exaggerated flip, red-smeared lips, penciled lines where eyebrows used to be. “The Kewpie doll collector.”
Her mother had a few Kewpies in her own collection. The original ones had blue wings fanning from their necks. Gretchen liked the chubby dolls, each with a small lock of hair and cherubic grin.
“That’s Bonnie,” Nina said. “She collects Action Kewpies. Farmers, drummers. Her son, Matt, called her right away because Martha didn’t have any identification with her, and he needed Bonnie’s help figuring out who she was.”
Gretchen frowned. “I don’t understand. How did he know Bonnie could help?”
“Because Martha had a doll parasol in the pocket of her shorts, and since his mother collected dolls, he thought she might know her. As it turns out, she did. Bonnie went down to the morgue, and sure enough, it was Martha Williams.”
Nina, a solemn expression on her face, set the glass on the table. “Poor Martha.”
“It sounds like she had a hard life,” Gretchen said.
Nina nodded, then noticed Tutu dancing at her feet. “Let’s take Tutu outside. The little dear needs to go.”
Tutu started yapping.
Gretchen watched Nina dig through a pouch as big as a baby diaper bag. Out came a white folded pad.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see. Follow me.”
Gretchen smiled inwardly. Aunt Nina was as quirky as quirky comes. Stores her shoes on top of the refrigerator so scorpions can’t climb in. Had all the silver fillings removed from her teeth so she wouldn’t get mercury poisoning. Believes she has special psychic power and can see auras emanating from people. Gretchen wouldn’t be surprised if Nina believed that space ships flew out of holes in Antarctica.