Nina shrugged. "Caroline knows everyone."
Gretchen picked up Chief Wag. Not a chip or crack anywhere on his body. So why send him addressed to the doll repairer? She rummaged through her toolbox and picked out a solvent. She sprayed a tiny amount on the platform around the Kewpie's feet. Then she sprayed some along the top of his shoes.
"What are you doing?" April asked.
"An experiment."
"He asked me out," Nina said.
Gretchen glanced up quickly and saw Nina blush. She couldn't believe it. She'd never in her life seen Nina blush.
"Eric did? He asked you out?"
Nina nodded. "Monday. I'm showing him around town."
"You go, girl," April said.
Gretchen worked more solvent into the glue and felt it soften slightly.
"What's that man over there doing?" Nina said.
Gretchen looked up and saw the photographer from the auction approaching her table. The Leica camera hung from his neck, and he looked paler and shabbier than last time she'd seen him, if that was even possible. Recalling his name, she greeted him. "Peter Finch."
"I remember you, too," Finch said, removing the lens cap from the camera. "You were at the auction. Mind if I take a few pictures?" He waved a hand at her dolls.
"You can't let him take pictures," April said, loud enough for him to hear. "I know this guy. He sells pictures of dolls on the Internet." She turned to the photographer.
"Get your own dolls."
"Okay, okay. I don't want to make trouble." He looked over at Susie Hocker's Madame Alexanders.
"Don't think of going there either," April said. Peter Finch slunk away.
"A few pictures wouldn't have hurt," Gretchen said, astonished at April's verbal attack on the photographer.
"He shouldn't be making his living from other people's dolls without offering them a percentage of the profits. There should be a law against what he does." April muttered under her breath to herself, but Gretchen caught the words, "Bottom feeder."
The platform holding the Kewpie in place came loose, and Gretchen eased it away from the doll. She tipped Chief Wag over. The bottoms of the red shoes were perfectly normal except for a little residual glue. She wiggled the Kewpie's bare legs and sprayed more glue around the shoe tops.
"What are you doing?" Nina said.
"Since the shoes and platform are modifications, I thought I'd see how they were applied."
"With glue," Nina said, exasperated. "Even I can tell that, and I don't know anything about doll repairing."
"I guess the real question is why someone changed the doll's appearance."
"Lowers the appraisal value, that's for sure," April said.
"Any modification to the original doll devalues it. Must have been owned by a beginner."
Gretchen slowly and gently removed the red shoes from the doll, exposing two chubby Kewpie feet. She laid the shoes on the table.
April picked them up, rolled them around in her plump fingers, and said, "Don't put these back on. The doll's worth a lot more without the shoes and goofy platform. I wonder why they were added in the first place."
"Because," Gretchen said, turning Chief Wag upside down, "the bottoms of his feet have been ground off."
17
Nina, drinking diet soda through a straw at that exact moment, coughed up some of it. "Down the wrong pipe," she sputtered.
April, the consummate doll appraiser, couldn't help saying, "It's not worth a nickel now."
"Please don't tell me something's hidden inside," Nina said. "This is too weird."
Gretchen, silently agreeing with her aunt, peered into the Kewpie's hollow legs. "I do see something." She drew tweezers from the toolbox and poked inside the doll. April saw a customer approaching her table and called out, "You'll have to come back in five minutes. I'm working on something else at the moment." She leaned forward.
"This is so exciting."
Gretchen extracted a small square of paper, neatly folded in quarters.
"Keep going," April said. "Don't stop now."
Gretchen unfolded the paper. "It's a name," she said.
"Percy O'Connor."
"Let me see that." Nina plucked it from her fingers.
"You're right. That's all it says."
"Maybe this Chief Wag belonged to Percy O'Connor,"
April suggested.
"It's possible." Gretchen was hesitant. "If that's so, he went to a lot of trouble to put his name inside of it."
"I've never heard of collectors defacing their own dolls to put their names inside," April said. "It isn't done."
"Like cattle branding," Nina said.
"But he destroyed the doll's value," April insisted.
"Has anyone heard of Percy O'Connor?" Gretchen asked.
Nina and April shook their heads.
"What's going on over there?" Susie Hocker called from across the aisle.
"We're wondering if you know anyone by the name of Percy O'Connor?" April called back.
"Never heard of him. Is he giving a presentation or something?"
"Something like that," April said to her, heading back to her table. "I better get back to work. If you find out who he is, holler over."
"Find out who who is?" Eric Huntington said, leaning over the table and startling Gretchen and Nina.
"Percy O'Connor," Nina said.
Gretchen shoved the red shoes back onto the Kewpie's chunky legs, hoping Eric hadn't noticed the missing feet at the very bottom of the doll.
"He was a Boston doll collector," Eric said.
"Was?" Gretchen asked.
"He's dead."
"This must have been his doll." Nina held up the Kewpie. "His name was inside."
It was too late to give her aunt a warning signal. Nina's cosmic antenna had malfunctioned. Again.
Eric frowned. "It's possible that the doll belonged to him. He collected Kewpie dolls. But what do you mean, his name was inside?"
Gretchen watched Eric's face. If he had packaged the doll and sent it to her, he was an impressive actor. No sign of recognition flickered in his eyes.
Nina held up the piece of paper with Percy's name scrawled across it.
Eric stared at it. "A Kewpie doll belonging to Percy O'Connor was inside the package I handed to you?" He was either genuinely surprised or an accomplished fraud.
"What makes you think this doll was in the package you delivered?" Gretchen asked. "We didn't tell you that."
Eric pointed to the floor. "Brown bag, newspaper, and the same packaging. I simply surmised that you had recently opened it. The Kewpie would have fit conveniently inside the box. Quite a sleuth, I must admit."
"Very astute of you, Sherlock," Nina said, a silly smile on her face. "Do tell us about Mr. O'Connor."
"Percy O'Connor pretended he was of the Old Guard from the wealthiest end of Boston. Old, old blood, he said, but of course, the actual blue bloods of Boston knew he wasn't, and he never quite fit in. His father came into some money during the war, I believe, an inheritance or something."
"Nouveau riche," Nina said.
"Exactly." Eric nodded solemnly. "Aside from quite an impressive collection of dolls, he was also an avid historian. Fascinated with World War Two. Talked about it ad nauseam."
"I assume," Gretchen said, "he was a member of the Kewpie Club?"
"Yes, but not an active member. He rarely attended meetings."
"When did he pass away?" Gretchen took the piece of paper from Nina and glanced at the name.
"Just three weeks ago. But he didn't exactly pass on. Percy was well into his seventies, yet he had boundless energy, worked out at the men's club, swam, jogged. Incredible form really, for his age. Remarkably healthy, we all said down at the club."
Eric's weak chin and flabby jowls contradicted his own claim to physical fitness.
"So what happened to him?" Nina asked, a starry look on her face.
Gretchen knew what Eric was about to say. Nina would attribute this knowledge to Gretchen's alleged psychic abilities. But it was deduction, really. No one from the doll community seemed to be dying of natural causes lately. Why start now?