Britt grabbed her wrist, striking out swiftly, as though she'd anticipated Nina's intent. "I have pieces cooling inside. If you open it, they might crack."
"Cool air meeting hot air," April said, picking up a pair of safety goggles with green lenses and trying them on.
"Basic physics."
Britt's daughter Melany appeared in the doorway. "I'm going now," she said, staring at her mother, seemingly unaware that she had company. Britt hurried over and gave her a hug. Melany stiffened. She didn't move to return the embrace.
Britt's fingers fluttered to her French twist, nervously feeling for renegade locks.
Again, Gretchen noticed the contrast in the two women. Melany went for the no-makeup, rumpled look, almost in direct opposition to her mother's organized, proper appearance. Was she acting out? Was it a passive-aggressive stance?
Once Melany was gone, Britt moved her guests to another table. "These are some of my work in progress. I go through six stages of painting and firing. See these? The initial firing makes the porcelain pink, but not a fleshcolored pink like I want. I keep adding colors. They become richer and more natural looking with every firing."
"What if I make a mistake?" April asked.
"Then you use paint thinner to start over." Britt's voice had become tutorial. "Over here I'm cutting out eye sockets, and over here I've just cut out the crown of this doll's head."
"And you made earring holes," April exclaimed, beside herself with joy. So much for a working crime partner. One of Charlie's Angels had gone to heaven.
While Britt preened under the rays of April's worship, Gretchen studied Britt's dollmaking tools. Gretchen didn't feel the same warmth for the doll maker as April did. What if Britt and Bernard were accomplices?
Gretchen felt a twinge of conscience for being meanspirited. While Bernard had stolen from her, and she had a good reason to distrust him, Britt hadn't done anything remotely suspicious. She'd try harder to like her, after she got a good look at Britt's kitchen. She'd make more of an effort. That was, if the wallpaper didn't match. Some of Britt's tools were familiar to Gretchen: stringing clamps, body paint to give a doll body's an antique look, hooks, and pliers. The studio was also well-stocked with supplies different from Gretchen's: modeling clays and a variety of molds.
When Gretchen needed to replace a part, she had to find an original from the same time period. Too bad she couldn't just whip up a copy in Britt's kiln. Her serious antique collectors would know instantly that she had cheated.
"That's an incising tool," Britt said, appearing next to her. "It's used to mark the creator's name on the doll. We have to be very careful that a reproduction isn't mistaken for an original."
Gretchen held up a scalpel. Nina, she suddenly noticed, was missing from the room. The bathroom door was open, so she wasn't in there. Her stealthy aunt had vanished into the interior of the house.
"I have all different sizes in the drawer below it," Britt said.
Taking that as permission, Gretchen opened the drawer. It was filled with scalpels and syringes. She reminded herself that Britt was a doll maker and that scalpels and syringes were important tools of her trade. She opened the next drawer. More knives. "Quite a collection." She held up a knife. The handle bore the steel image of a feather.
"That's a Native American feather knife. It belonged to my grandfather."
Gretchen used the contents of the drawers as a distraction to cover for Nina. "What do you use this one for?"
Where was Nina?
Finally she caught a flash of pink behind Britt. Nina's jeweled fingers reached in and closed a drawer.
"We should be going," Nina said.
"Thank you for stopping by." Britt said, showing them out a back door. "April, I'll call you as soon as I have enough students signed up for a class. And Nina, call me."
"Well?" Gretchen said when they were in the car. "Was it the kitchen?"
"Same general colors as the room box wallpaper, but the border isn't teapots, its grapes."
"Good work, partner," Gretchen said. "Another elimination."
"Check that Maize kid's house," April advised. "I'm sure he did it."
"The drug house is next on our list of kitchen stops,"
Nina said.
"Ryan Maize didn't kill his mother," Gretchen insisted.
"He's the most obvious suspect," April said from the front seat. "He was stoned out of his mind on drugs, he's violent-I saw him hit you-he threw a Mali-something cocktail and almost blew us up."
Gretchen scooted to the middle of the backseat and leaned forward. "If you had evidence that your son had killed your sister, would you make a room box and accuse him at an unveiling with a room filled with complete strangers? What kind of mother would expose her child that way?"
April humphed. "What kind of kid would kill his mother or his aunt?"
"Exactly!"
"Let's check him out anyway," Nina said diplomatically.
"We should rule him out together. A unanimous decision, since we are a t-e-a-m."
"Go team," April said. "I could hardly drink the coffee after our discussion of Arsenic Anna and rat poison."
"Britt and I are becoming close friends," Nina said. "I shouldn't even be suspecting her."
"The coffee was fine," Gretchen said. "It came out of one carafe."
"That was smart thinking," April said.
"There's so much to learn about detecting," Nina said.
"Live and learn," April said.
"I think you mean," Gretchen said, "learn and live."
32
They should have saved the mission to Ryan's house for another day. "Look at the commotion," April said.
"Keep going right past," Gretchen said to Nina from the backseat. From now on, she was going to drive herself. She felt trapped in her aunt's car.
A police officer tried impatiently to wave them past when Nina slowed down. "I said, keep going," Gretchen repeated, raising her voice. Matt Albright's unmarked blue car was parked at the curb. She saw Detective Brandon Kline standing on the broken-down porch talking to a cop. Brandon turned and shouted something to the officer near their car. The cop gave way, and motioned them to pull over.
Nina followed his direction. Gretchen moaned.
"The cops are searching Ryan's pad," April said, breaking into her version of street talk. "Look at all those strungout crackheads." She pointed to a pathetic group of five huddled at the corner of the house. They were in varying degrees of undress. Only one wore a shirt, all were barefoot, and if the others hadn't been bare-chested, Gretchen wouldn't have been able to figure out which were males. The one wearing the shirt was still an unknown as far as sexual persuasion went.
Gretchen slunk down in the backseat and crawled onto her stomach. The dogs, always ready for a ripping good time, used her as a runway. Tiny, sharp claws raked her back as they ran back and forth.
"What are you doing?" Nina said with more than a hint of disbelief in her tone.
"Hiding."
"I can see that. But from whom?"
"I vowed never to have anything to do with that womanizer again. If you had driven by when I asked you to, I wouldn't be flat on the seat with little nails piercing my skin. I'll be able to wear studs in the holes by the time they're done with me."
Okay. Gretchen was pretty sure she was acting immature. That's precisely what the detective did to her and why she was avoiding him. When was the last time she hid out in a car? She remembered exactly when-fourteen years ago-her sophomore year in high school, right before Eddie Bremen caught her with another guy. She'd tried to break it off, but he wouldn't take no for an answer, so she had ducked down to protect her date. It hadn't worked. Eddie Bremen had really clobbered her date. Slinking was justified that time, and it was justified this time. Hopefully, she'd have better luck than last time.