“Not a soul,” April said. “I’m not a blabbermouth.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, April. I don’t care if you did tell everyone you see, I’m just rounding up suspects.”
“Well, you’ll have to look someplace else.” April blew her nose. “I have something to tell you that might help, though. I finally got a look at that doll the police found in your mother’s workshop. I’m proud of my appraisal skills and consider myself one of the best around. I base most of my analysis on market research like actual sales from shops and shows and on what’s hot at the moment. Right now its all-bisque dolls, but that parian, even though it’s not on the hot list, is so rare, I took awhile to estimate its worth.”
Gretchen gently dabbed the towel on her wet arms and legs. “What did you decide?”
“The doll has a unique hairdo, for starters. Real elaborate. And it has flowers and jewels molded in the bisque. Pierced ears, too. The other appraiser said three thousand, but my guess is it’s worth an easy five thousand and could sell for a lot more. And I’m being conservative. One fine doll, that one.”
“Because of her repair business, my mother works on rare and valuable dolls all the time.” Gretchen folded the towel over a chair and returned to the window. “That’s how she makes her living. She isn’t a thief.”
“Nobody said she was.” April coughed. “Martha’s the one I’d peg as a thief.”
“Martha was an enigma,” Gretchen said. “From what people tell me she kept everyone at a distance. She had few confidantes, if any. No one really knew her.”
April grunted. “A nasty woman. She used to call me Chubby Checker. Hey, Chubby, she’d call out every time she saw me, and then she’d laugh. She had nicknames for all of us. Bonnie was Pippi Longstocking because of her stiff hair. She called your mother Cruella De Vil from that Dalmation movie, because of her silver hair. Right to our faces, too.”
“Alcoholism is a disease,” Gretchen said, remembering Julia’s own complaints about Martha’s name-calling. The Tasmanian Devil was Martha’s term for Julia, she’d said, sounding hurt. “She probably couldn’t help herself.”
“There’s no excuse for cruelty.”
“Are you feeling well enough to work out tomorrow?” Gretchen asked.
“Doctor says I should get a little exercise as long as I go slow and don’t overdo.”
“Good. I’ll see you at Curves.”
April shifted her weight and slung a leg onto the coffee table. “Speaking of Curves. It’s a social event for our little group. We’ve been working out together for the last year or so, and we touch on a lot of subjects while we try to shed some fat.” She patted her midsection and sighed. “I suppose I’d lose some weight if I’d watch what I eat, but I work up a real appetite after all that exercise. They have a diet plan I’m going to look into.”
“You’d feel better,” Gretchen agreed.
“What I’m trying to say and taking the long way to say it is that Bonnie’s been dropping hints about Martha’s dolls. She knows more than she’s letting on.”
“What kind of hints?”
“She says things like, what if Martha stashed her collection someplace. Or, what if some of the Phoenix Dollers were hiding Martha’s dolls for her. Bonnie’s the club gossip, and she has a secret she can’t hardly keep. Give her a little shove, and she’ll spill.”
April’s face turned rosy red when she realized what she had said, and she lifted a pudgy hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. After what happened to Martha I shouldn’t be telling you to give her a little shove.” April reached for a box of tissues. “Bonnie’s always up real late. She won’t mind if you stop by right now. Just don’t call her before noon. She’s a late sleeper.”
Gretchen lifted the umbrella and worked it through the front door. “Thanks for the information, April.”
“Let me know what you find out,” April called out. “And say hi to Nina out in the car.”
Caroline wondered if she had made a mistake by placing an early bid and alerting other bidders to her presence. Web traffic through the doll listing was extremely heavy. As antique dolls became more difficult to find, their worth increased by volumes, and the bidding for the French Jumeau Bébé proved it.
The bidding war that Caroline had hoped to avoid had begun. The current bid flashed across the screen for the doll with the unique eyebrows designed by the world-famous French designer: $12,000.
Every doll collector yearned for at least one Jumeau, but few could afford to purchase a doll selling for thousands. At this price, how many different collectors were actually bidding? Two? Four? Certainly no more than ten.
Caroline wondered how long the seller would risk exposure. A stolen doll. A murdered collector. The seller must be motivated by uncontrollable greed or bold arrogance. Or desperation.
Using both hands she pulled her silver hair away from her face and neck and twirled it on her head. She gazed outside. Soon the planes overhead would cease flying for the night, only to start up again a few hours later at sunrise. Orange lighting from the parking lot shone into the drab room, and she could hear a television playing in the room next to hers.
Caroline rose and closed the heavy, smoke-laden drapes. She felt a small shiver of excitement, tasted the thrill of the auction on her tongue. She welcomed these new emotions, which until now had been masked under her own sense of desperation. Refreshing after days of extended panic. Pretend you’re in Vegas, she thought, where time is meaningless. Where light and dark merge into an insignificant gray.
Good and evil. Light and dark. Were these and concepts such as justice and retribution subjective in nature? Caroline had always been able to see both sides of an issue, empathize with each point of view, rarely taking a firm stance. Everything a hazy shade of melded colors. Until now.
“Play to win,” she whispered aloud. “At closing time, you must be the highest bidder.”
The motel phone rang shrilly, the harsh and unexpected sound startling her, and, after a pause to still her pounding heart, she picked up the receiver.
A voice spoke soothingly to her in flawless French, and she smiled.
“You know I don’t speak French,” she said.
“Take a small break and eat something, cherie. What can I do for you?”
“Stall,” Caroline said. “I need more time.”
22
A new hobbyist interested in collecting dolls should start out by joining a local doll club. There are as many types of clubs as there are different dolls. You can join a Barbie club or an antique doll club, but a general doll club that welcomes all types of collectors will present the most variety. Clubs offer educational opportunities as well as experienced advice and an appreciative audience to share new acquisitions with. Active doll club members develop durable bonds and consider themselves part of a large extended family.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
Bonnie Albright sat at her kitchen table combing out her red wig and looking nothing like the presiding president of the Phoenix Dollers club. The small table overflowed with hair rollers in various sizes, bobby pins, a pile of brushes and combs, and a can of heavy-duty hair spray.
Gretchen tried not to stare at the mass of tangled red hair sitting on its wig stand or at the tight red wig cap covering Bonnie’s head. She tried not to stare at her eyebrows, or rather her lack of eyebrows, since the penciled lines had been scrubbed away.
Nina’s mouth hung open. “I never guessed you wore a wig. All these years…” Her voice trailed off.
“You should have called first,” Bonnie said, annoyed, tufts of steel gray poking out from the wig cap, lips thin and pale without lipstick.
She spritzed the inside of the wig with Lysol, and Gretchen looked away.