Dolled Up for Murder - By Deb Baker Page 0,29

down the street but didn’t see him. She peeked into a trash receptacle on the corner, then motioned to Nina with her head.

“What?” Nina asked, stepping out of the Impala.

“You’ll have to grab it,” Gretchen said. “He stuffed the bag in here.” She gestured with her hands.

“Do I have to?” Nina said, wrinkling her nose.

“Afraid so.”

Nina pulled out the black bag with a grimace of disgust and held it away from her body. “Now what?”

“Let’s look through it in the car, then I’ll return it,” Gretchen suggested. “I don’t want to take it away from him. It’s all he has.”

Nina looked at her sharply. “After what he’s put you through, how can you sympathize with him? He threatened you. And look at your wrist. An innocent man doesn’t run away like he did. And you don’t want to take his bag? Unbelievable!”

Nina continued to grumble as they returned to the car, and her protests grew louder when she realized she’d have to search the bag herself. Gretchen’s wrist began to swell and turn a deep purple.

The search produced a single change of clothes, not especially clean, and a thick, tattered notebook held together with two rubber bands. At Gretchen’s insistence, Nina found a piece of paper and a pen and Gretchen wrote out a message for Nacho with her good right hand, advising him that she had his notebook. She would return it, she wrote, when he was ready to answer her questions. She included her cell phone number.

“I’m holding it hostage,” Gretchen said to Nina. “Maybe he’s written something useful in it.”

Nina stalked over to the garbage receptacle and stuffed the bag inside. “He’ll probably murder us in our sleep,” she said on returning to the car. “That’s how he’ll get his notebook back.”

Gretchen wondered why he had run away. What had scared him?

Nina pulled away from the curb. “Where to?”

“That gas station on the corner for ice,” Gretchen said, wincing. “Then the hospital.”

Caroline’s eyes traced the arch of the high ceiling, the original paintings on the walls, and the marble floor beneath her feet. She sat on a high-backed tasseled sofa. Rudolph Timms sat across from her in a broad leather chair—tall and slender, with a pronounced widow’s peak and dark, piercing eyes.

“I still don’t see the fuss over this particular doll,” he said.

“As I explained earlier, I’m researching my next book, and I’d like a photograph of the doll you own,” Caroline said, her story believable even to her ears. “For the book.”

He chuckled, obviously proud of his latest acquisition. “It is a perfect Madame Rohmer from the mid-eighteen-hundreds. Original costume and the blue Rohmer stamp on the leather body. Quite a find.”

“Glazed china,” Caroline muttered. “Swivel head?”

Rudolph Timms nodded. “And blonde wig.”

Caroline held up a small Leica camera. “A shot or two would be appreciated.” The day before her frantic race across the country, she had dropped off film for developing and tossed the empty camera in her satchel-like purse. It was proving useful today as a prop, with or without film.

His thick brows met the dark widow’s peak. “How did you find me so quickly? I only acquired the doll recently.”

“I followed the auction on eBay,” Caroline said, feeling chilled in her damp clothes. “I considered bidding myself.”

“I would have outbid you, no matter the cost,” he said. “I had to have this doll for my very own. Whatever the price.”

Caroline arched a brow. “Whatever the price?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I would have paid whatever it took.”

Rudolph Timms rose. “I’ll get her.”

Caroline held her breath as he walked away.

9

Antique bisque, china, and parian doll heads were all made from the same type of clay, but different finishes were given to the porcelain. Each doll maker mixed the ingredients in a unique way, and the recipes were fiercely guarded. Parian dolls retained their white porcelain finish, and bisque dolls had flesh-colored tints added to the clay. China dolls were glazed to a high, shiny gloss.

—From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch

When Gretchen emerged from Scottsdale Memorial Hospital at a little after seven o’clock with a cast on her broken left wrist, she found Detective Albright leaning against his car at the curb. He sauntered over to join her.

“I’m looking for Aunt Nina,” Gretchen said coolly while she scanned the immediate vicinity for the red Impala. “She isn’t in the waiting room.”

“Your Aunt Nina tried to hide a mutt in her purse, and the emergency room staff didn’t appreciate the humor in it,” he said.

“Tutu wouldn’t