After seven years of couplehood, she was struggling through a vast and complex desert of singleness, and today, another perpetually sunny Arizona day, Gretchen felt totally alone in the world. But aloneness, as she was finding out, wasn't synonymous with loneliness.
In fact, it felt good, sort of renewing.
Gretchen selected a doll from a repair bin. She applied a line of glue around the edge of a kid leather patch she had made before the doll show, worked the glue around with her fingers, and placed the patch over a hole in a French fashion doll's leather body. She used a doll hook to secure it against the doll's body.
Nina had been furious when she learned that Tutu was fine and that Gretchen had used the dog as an excuse to wrench her away from that intriguing man. "Jealous," Nina had snarled, "jealous that I might find a shred of happiness."
Nina, the drama queen, had made it very clear that Gretchen should stay out of her path until she cooled down. Whenever that might be.
The phone rang, and her mother's cell number appeared on the caller ID.
"What's new?" Caroline asked.
What's new? Why did her mother have to ask that every time she called? Gretchen wasn't about to spoil her trip, but her cover-ups were quickly becoming full-blown lies.
"New? Not much. I'm working on the dolls from the show."
"Is Steve still in Phoenix?"
Oh, yes, he is. "Unfortunately."
"He has a lot of pride. It'll take him some time to come to grips with your decision."
"I have a few repair questions for you," Gretchen said, steering the conversation to safer topics.
They spent a few minutes talking about some of Gretchen's more complex doll repair problems before disconnecting. Dolls. Her eyes swept the shop's wide assortment of dolls and doll parts. How could something created with such loving hands, that invoked memories of warmth and comfort in adults as well as children, become a tool of greed and destruction?
Gretchen laid the doll aside, rose from the worktable, and wandered to the kitchen.
She found the note from Daisy right after she poured a cup of coffee. "Gone to an audition. Be back later. Don't let anyone go into my room." Gretchen wondered how the woman managed to disappear without a trace. Did she have an invisible cloak? Gretchen grinned. An audition. Daisy, always waiting for her star.
Still smiling, Gretchen went to the cabana next to the pool, which she had taken over when she moved in. Her mother had remodeled the bathhouse, and now it served as a guesthouse for visitors. More of a casita than a cabana. Staying there made her feel as though she had a place of her own.
Gretchen tapped a few keys on her computer, and the screen lit up. Last night she had quickly scanned through Peter Finch's pictures, but weariness and her argument with Nina had prevented her from a thorough study of them. What did she hope to see? A grinning murderer mugging from one of the pictures?
That would be a good start.
Scrolling rapidly through the photographs of dolls, she stopped when she came to the series of pictures taken at the scene of Brett's death, after the ambulance pulled away. Gretchen recognized some of the people milling around on the curb.
A woman who'd bid on a couple of Chiggy's worst reproductions.
The driver whose SUV had struck Brett, a Phoenix Police Department investigator at her side, her hands clasping a face that registered anguish.
Half of Howie caught in another photo, his left side. Gretchen saw raw grief etched along the portion of his jawline that showed. Real pain, or contrived emotion for the camera? From everything Gretchen had heard, Howie and Brett had had a long and close friendship in addition to a business relationship, synchronized like the gears inside the wristwatch repaired by the jeweler.
Pictures popped onto the computer screen, and Gretchen continued to click slowly through them. Uniformed police officers caught in the camera frame, frozen in varying positions among groups of stunned onlookers. Gretchen searched for the face of the homeless man who had claimed to have witnessed a murder, although by the time these photos were taken, he might have moved away from the accident. The homeless community and the local police force, Gretchen knew, barely tolerated each other. Street people like Nacho, Daisy, and Albert didn't trust cops. Maybe for good reason, considering what happened to Albert. Paranoia would have driven him away at the first sign of trouble.
How long had the spectators stayed along the street after Brett was struck and killed? It had seemed to Gretchen that time stood still, but in fact, at least one agonizing hour had elapsed between the first squeal of tires and the time when she had wandered up to the registration desk to get the Kewpie doll owner's address. By then, the police had already interrogated those closest to the accident and had encouraged the rest to move on.
She thought about the sequence of events. A call for an ambulance, the wait for it to respond, the paramedics' efforts to revive Brett before transporting their unresponsive patient, the police and their search for eyewitnesses. The ambulance pulling away, and everyone remaining in Chiggy's yard, in shock, moving aimlessly around the flatbed truck. Gretchen leaned heavily on her elbows and squeezed the bridge of her nose as she continued to search the pictures. Oh, the glory of modern technology. Digital cameras, no longer constrained by antiquated film and the costs of processing, allowed a photographer to shoot continuously, almost like movie frames, catching the action in a series of fluid movements. Photo after photo.
Viewing Finch's pictures brought back memories that would haunt her for a long time. She relived the horror of that moment when she first realized what the squeal of tires meant. When she saw Brett lying in the street. Her own father had died next to her. Again she heard the squealing tires and the impact of the other car slamming into the driver's side of her father's car.
Old memories that wouldn't fade.
She wasn't looking forward to the memorial service tonight.
"I'm an old friend of hers," Gretchen said to the administrator on the phone, after looking up the number for Grace Senior Care.
"I don't see a Chiggy Kent listed here," the voice replied, sounding young and hesitant.
"I'm sorry. I forgot. Her real name is Florence. Florence Kent."
"Just a minute."
Gretchen heard papers rustling.
"Yes, I've found her."
"Good. I'd like to drive over and visit her."
"I'm sorry… Ms… what did you say your name was?"
"Um… Mary Smith." It was time to go undercover for her own extended good health.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Smith, but Ms. Kent has been moved from assisted living, and she isn't accepting visitors."
"Moved from assisted living?"
"Yes, she now requires an elevated level of care."
That translated to nursing home care. Gretchen remembered talk among the other club members of the everpresent oxygen tank.
"But she only arrived last week. Surely her health hasn't declined that rapidly." According to Peter Finch, Chiggy had been well enough a week ago to supervise the disposition of her household furnishings and arrange to auction off her collection of handmade dolls. "I was under the impression that she had some sort of apartment arrangement."
"I really can't tell you any more than that. The federal privacy act doesn't allow me to elaborate on her condition without her written consent. Would you like to speak to my supervisor?"