Dolly Departed dtdf-3 Page 4

  "Apparently not," Nina said, roaming through the shop and picking up one item after another. She glanced at the floor. "What a mess. This place looks like Gretchen's workshop."

  Gretchen slid Nina a look before finding several empty containers in the back room and distributing them to her crew. She picked up a five-inch porcelain ballerina doll from the countertop, encircled it with bubble wrap, and put it inside one of the containers. "Help me pack these up," she said to the two women. "He won't come into the shop until the dolls are out of sight."

  "Why didn't you say so earlier?" April said, rushing to help. "Let's not keep him waiting any longer than we have to."

  Enrico watched slyly from his purse hanging on a doorknob, waiting for just the right opportunity to escape. Nina held up a finger in warning as if she could read his thoughts.

  "Stay," she said in her dog-training, authoritarian voice. Then she turned to Gretchen. "You don't really think you can put away the entire room of dolls, do you?" she said.

  "Just these on the counter and nearest the door."

  April was really moving.

  "Okay," Gretchen called out the door a few minutes later. "Coast is clear. Just don't look inside the display cases around the counter. I don't have time to put away every one of them. After all, this is a doll shop."

  Matt's head popped around the corner, his even tan a few shades lighter. He had a cheesy grin on his face. "I've been called away," he stammered. "I'll check back later and see how it's going."

  Gretchen watched him scramble for his unmarked car.

  "Coward," she muttered under her breath.

  April was on her hands and knees, examining miniature furniture pieces. Nina, casting around for something to do other than actual physical labor, chose to entertain the canines with a walk around the block. She came back with new and improved managerial skills.

  "April," she said, "You need to sort the pieces and do groupings based on the type of furnishings."

  "I know that."

  "Gretchen," Nina said, "where are the mini dolls that go into the room boxes?"

  "Haven't found any yet."

  "April-" Nina began.

  "Stop," April said, raising her arm to Nina, palm out like a cop stopping traffic. "You don't have to manage me. I'm capable of handling this without supervision."

  "Some sort of order would help. And we know Gretchen can't do it."

  A direct shot at Gretchen's lack of organization skills. Wait until Nina found out that Gretchen had locked her keys in her car. She'd discovered the lockout when she tried to get in to retrieve her toolbox. Peering through the tinted window, she had seen her keys hanging in the ignition. If there was any way of keeping Gretchen's mistake from her aunt, she'd try it. At least they had all arrived in separate cars. She'd call for help later.

  "Why don't you take the dogs for another walk?" April suggested to Nina from the floor.

  "I just got back. Why would I. . Wait a minute. . Is that sarcasm I hear in your voice?"

  "If you can't find anything to do, go outside and practice your hocus-pocus," April retorted. "Why stick around if you aren't going to help?"

  "I'm giving valuable advice."

  "Will you two quit crabbing at each other?" Gretchen said, taking Nina by the arm and leading her to the counter.

  "See all these accessories and accents?"

  Nina looked at the things Gretchen had scooped from the floor: tiny lamps, pictures, and knickknacks.

  "You're our interior decorator," Gretchen said. "Your job is to help figure out which ones go together in the same room boxes."

  "How am I supposed to do that?"

  "We're partners, remember? Your skill, you said, was in decorating and deciding where all the pieces should go."

  "I don't remember saying that."

  "I recall it as though it just sprang from your perky lips."

  "I thought I'd take care of the dogs while you worked."

  Gretchen frowned at her aunt. Why did Nina offer to come if she wasn't going to pitch in? Ah. . she got it. Gretchen's cunning, calculating aunt didn't want her spending time alone with April. Gretchen had to find a way to stop this childish rivalry. "See what you can do," she said, leaving Nina alone at the counter.

  "There are some creepy miniatures scatter-" April began to say.

  "Here comes Caroline," Nina announced, cutting her off. Gretchen's mother walked in wearing sunglasses. When she didn't remove them, Gretchen guessed that she was hiding red-rimmed eyes behind the shades. Throughout the night, Gretchen had heard her mother crying over the loss of her friend.

  "Just in time," Gretchen said, giving her a hug. "You're the expert. We await your orders."

  "First, we'll pick up all the scattered pieces." Caroline said, digging right in by walking to one corner of the shop and searching the floor.

  Gretchen retrieved an empty room box, admiring its tiny painted walls. A rendition of a church loomed in the background. Charlie had captured the essence of it in her painting: the stonework, stained glass, and a slender tower with a cross at the top.

  Gretchen slid the room box into a display case partition along with the one she had placed there when she met Britt Gleeland. This one must be a bedroom, she guessed, based on the floral pattern of the wallpaper.

  Gretchen's practiced eye scanned the boxes. A standard one-inch scale equaled one real foot, so she estimated the room it represented at about fourteen feet by twelve feet. She bent down to pick up another box that had landed facedown. Gretchen turned it over and gasped.

  "What happened?" April sprang from the floor.

  "I'm not sure what this scene is supposed to represent, but that looks like blood all over the ground," Gretchen said, picking up the room box in her arms and turning it so April and Nina could see it. A wooden structure towered behind a high wooden fence, Charlie's brushstrokes barely visible. The base of the room box was painted brown with small worn tufts of grass jutting along the sides of the fence. "Not real blood, of course, but I'm sure that's what it's meant to be."

  "A courtyard?" April said. "Covered with blood?"

  "Some courtyard," Nina said. "It looks slummy to me."

  Caroline joined them and studied the box. "Well, I think it's a backyard."

  "Here's a street sign," April said, shuffling through a pile of items. The little green street sign mounted on a green post reminded Gretchen of a signpost from the Department 56 Dickens Village that she and her mother assembled every Christmas.

  "Hanbury Street," Gretchen read.

  Caroline placed the room box on the counter. She squinted to read the small numbers that Charlie had painted on the street sign. "Twenty-nine Hanbury Street."

  Gretchen searched through the growing pile of miniature furniture and accents on the counter. "I saw a bloody miniature axe on the floor right after we found Charlie. I wonder where it went."

  "What?" Nina said. "An axe?"

  It wasn't on the counter. Gretchen bent down, peering around the area where she had seen the axe when she had left the shop. An object had been shoved under a display case. She knelt down and pulled it out. "Here it is."

  "One item now in its proper home," Nina said, taking the tiny axe and placing it next to the painted blood in the backyard scene.

  "Creepy," April said. "Why would Charlie create a gruesome room box? There's nothing cute about the background scenery, nothing charming about an ax with red paint all over the blade. What was wrong with her?"

  "It's probably my fault." Caroline leaned against the counter, removed her sunglasses, and rubbed teary eyes.

  "Charlie was totally obsessed with Sara's death. She talked about it incessantly. I suggested she instead focus on creating some room boxes, to give her something to do besides grieve for her sister. I never imagined this."

  "The other room boxes are fine," Gretchen said. "One is set in a meadow with a church in the background. And this one. ." Gretchen lifted another room box.". . is a Victorian dressing room or someth
ing like that. Maybe Charlie had a bad week or two and decided to express herself in a more base way with the axe scene."

  Nina picked up the last room box. "This one looks unfinished," she announced. "It can't be part of the same grouping. But, no blood."

  The room box Nina held was shabby next to the others, like it had been constructed hastily. The sides didn't fit together properly, and the walls were bare except for an uneven piece of full-sized wallpaper glued to the back of it and a rough sketch that resembled a sink.

  "Am I doing the right thing," Caroline said, "by insisting that we restore Charlie's last project?"

  "Absolutely," Gretchen said, realizing her mother needed to do this.

  "We're wasting time standing around hypothesizing,"

  April said. "Each of us needs to go to a corner of the shop and work outward. Let's gather every single item before we start guessing what Charlie had in mind."

  The team paused for a lunch of submarine sandwiches, which April insisted was the answer to her years of obesity. She remained convinced that her new diet plan would transform her into a sexy, curvy shell of her present self. Nina refused to cooperate, stomping down the street in search of "real food." She returned with a salad.

  "Detective Albright should be back soon," April said, munching on a foot-long sandwich while she looked out the window.

  "Fat chance," Gretchen replied.

  "I completely understand his phobia." April placed a few tiny articles of doll clothing into one of the bins. "I have my own fears, you know."

  "We know," Nina said with a hint of distaste. "Clowns."

  "Half the world's population is afraid of clowns," April said, defending herself. "And you know it."

  "Yes," Nina agreed. "The half that's under four years old."

  Gretchen couldn't believe what she was hearing. It wasn't like Nina to be so spiteful. "Isn't it potty time for the dogs?" Gretchen said to break up the next round of pointed barbs before one of them was fatally stabbed. Nina checked her watch, then stuffed the pups in carrying totes. She slung Enrico over one shoulder and Nimrod over the other, ignoring Enrico's throaty growl. She clipped the pink leash to Tutu's collar and disappeared down the street.

  "What's with her?" Caroline said. "I've never seen her behave like that before."

  "I'm not sure what her problem is. April, just ignore it, if you can." Gretchen sat down, removed her flip-flops, and wiggled her feet.

  "I'm going for a walk," Caroline said. "Maybe it will perk me up."

  Gretchen watched her classy mom walk down the street in the same direction her aunt had chosen and wished she had inherited more of her features. Beautiful shoulderlength silver hair, delicate nose, green thoughtful eyes, and a slim body, even at twenty-six years older than Gretchen.

  "I found something interesting," April said, digging in her pocket. "I thought I'd wait until we were alone to show you."

  She held up a miniature dagger. The tip had been dipped in red paint.

  "Terrific. Another piece for the backyard scene."

  "And. .," April paused. "There's a smudge of red on the floor of the Victorian bedroom, but I'll try to clean it off if you think it will upset Caroline."

  "Let's leave everything as it is for the moment,"

  Gretchen answered. "You don't seem upset by all these flashes of blood."

  "Blood doesn't scare me."

  "But clowns do?"

  April nodded. "If I even see a clown in the distance, I get all sweaty and dizzy, and I worry that I'll pass out. It's a horrible feeling. I know it's irrational, but I can't control how I feel."

  "I think you have to work through it," Gretchen said, sorting through some of the tiny pieces of furniture.

  "Maybe it would help if you exposed yourself to your fears more often, like Matt's trying to do." She didn't mention what a bad job the detective was doing.

  "I've tried that, but clowns are not nice people. They scare kids, and they're ugly and evil. Have you ever seen a clown helping a little old lady across the street?"

  Gretchen thought it over. Actually, she hadn't.

  "See?" April said, reading the expression on her face.

  "I ran into a clown yesterday at Parada del Sol,"

  Gretchen said, remembering the green-haired clown and her fall to the sidewalk. He hadn't bothered to help Gretchen up.

  April grimaced. "That's exactly why I didn't go to the Scottsdale parade. Clowns are my absolute worst nightmare."

  April looked around as though they might be overheard.

  "That's not all I'm afraid of, but don't tell Nina. Promise?"

  "Promise." Gretchen felt childish.

  "Ventriloquists scare me to death, too. And sometimes in the dark, I'm afraid that something is lurking under my bed."

  "I used to think something scary was under my bed,"

  Gretchen said, remembering how afraid she was, almost paralyzed with fear. But that was when she was a kid. She headed for the back room to search for boxes to separate and temporarily store the pieces, once they determined where each of them went. Gretchen rummaged through several small boxes, removing their contents and stacking the items neatly on a shelving unit. When she came back into the shop, she spotted something behind the storage room door.

  She bent down and picked up a tiny pistol.

  6

  Britt Gleeland stands across the street and watches the women through the shop window. She remains motionless, arms crossed.

  Almost five o'clock, and the sun slowly edges over the desert horizon, casting long shadows on the sidewalk. By six it will be dark.

  Her daughter, Melany, comes out of a trading post, carrying a shopping bag, a gift for a friend. Twenty years old and talking about abandoning the family business and finding a new life someplace else. Out of the blue with no warning signs at all. Hasn't Britt groomed her daughter to take over for her in a few years? Perhaps it isn't the most profitable business, creating exquisite miniature dolls, but it has its own rewards. Britt works her own hours, in her nightgown if she wants to. She's her own boss, answering to nobody. And, most importantly, she has the respect of the local miniature community.

  Apparently these perks aren't enough for her daughter. Let her go out in the world and slop burgers for minimum wage. That will cure her of her wanderlust. But what about this "person" she's moving out east with?

  Britt knows exactly who the man is, and she doesn't like him one bit. Melany is going to "live in sin," as Britt's mother would have said in shock if she were still alive. Whatever you call the arrangement, it's still shacking up. Young people and their relationships. Who can figure them out? "Going out" they call it. Going out used to mean going on a date. Not anymore. Now it means something much more serious. What does she know?

  More importantly, what will Britt tell her acquaintances?

  "My daughter's attending an Ivy League school out east"?

  Yale, maybe? Yes, that could work. Britt could make it sound like a wonderful opportunity. And who is she to hold her daughter back? After all, there is the scholarship. Ooh. That's good.

  "One more stop." Melany scowls as though she's angry and disappears into a bookstore.

  Another twenty minutes of waiting, for sure. The girl loves books.

  Britt fidgets with her French twist and fluffs her bangs. Who will do the miniature faux flower arrangements if her daughter moves away? Britt feels the crevice widening between them, the enormous, cavernous divide. And the fear that she won't cope well with aloneness.

  If only Charlie were here. What will she do without Charlie and Melany?

  She sees someone come out of the doll shop and approach a car parked at the curb. It's the same woman who barged into the shop when she was collecting her dolls. Gretchen something. She had been spying on Britt, she was sure of it, questioning her loyalty and her right to be in Charlie's shop. The nerve!

  What's she up to now?

  The nosy woman has a wire hanger in her hand that she is bending to chang
e its shape. After a furtive look back at Mini Maize, she tries to stick it in the top of the car's closed passenger window.

  Breaking into someone's car? Not likely in the middle of the day right outside the shop.

  No. That must be dear Gretchen's own car, and she is locked out of it. Britt smiles smugly to herself while she watches Gretchen move to the driver's window and twist and pry with the wire hanger.

  No luck. The snoop tries again, both sides, determined. After the second try, she goes back inside. Harder than it looks, isn't it?

  Britt cringes at the thought of strangers in the shop, rifling through Charlie's things, her things. The work she has put into her miniature dolls! She's a professional artisan, not some hack. Twenty years in this business, and she is the best there is. Sculpting all her tiny creations, no kits or premade molds for her. Firing them in her very own kiln. Then wigging and dressing the darlings to be exact replicas of anything your little heart desires. Charlie, for example, wanting those tiny dolls, each with specific requirements regarding sex, size, and age. And for what? That was the question Britt kept asking her friend. And Charlie just smiling. "You'll see."

  Well, she had.

  Yes, she had.

  Britt's eyes try to penetrate the window. If only she could hear what is being said in the shop, and if only she had a clearer view. What do they hope to accomplish by putting a silly display back together?

  The one with the pretty gray hair is familiar, she's been around before. Her name is Caroline Birch, another of Charlie's friends. She must be Gretchen's mother. Her friendship with Charlie wasn't nearly as close as the relationship Britt had with Charlie. Britt feels such physical pain at her loss.

  She thinks of Ryan Maize, Charlie's drug-addicted, pathetic excuse for a son. Ryan is somewhere in the city of Phoenix, panhandling with other homeless, empty-eyed derelicts. Poor Charlie. She had actually tried to help the ingrate. How many rehabilitation centers before she finally gave up? How much money down the drain?

  Britt stares at Gretchen's car. What luck that she has a few sharp sculpting tools in her purse. She glances at the bookstore where Melany is roaming the shelves, delving into possible purchases. She'll be a while longer. Britt steps into the street, using the shadows for cover.