“This is her cart.”
“Daisy asked me to watch it for her,” Nacho said, finally answering a question. “She had business.”
“What’s inside the cart, Nacho?”
His knuckles were white, and sweat slid down the side of his face.
“Hide the trunk,” Caroline had written. Where would a homeless man hide a large doll trunk? Certainly not on the street or in the Rescue Mission. Finding a safe hiding place would be a complex task for a man without a home.
Gretchen reached into the cart and tossed his garbage bag onto the pavement. Before he could resist, she pulled the top layer of junk aside.
“Well, well,” she said. “If it isn’t a doll trunk.”
The antique wooden trunk was wedged in the cart between layers of clothing. Gretchen glanced up at Nacho. He backed away.
Gretchen held up a hand in warning. “Don’t go,” she demanded. “You have to help me.”
“Yo traté de ayudarte,” he said, forgetting to speak English in his haste. “Tú debes irte.”
And Nacho grabbed his plastic bag and broke into a run. Gretchen refused to abandon the trunk to pursue him. She watched helplessly as he disappeared around a corner.
Great, she thought, now what do I do?
She wheeled the cart the few feet to Nina’s car and gingerly lifted the doll trunk from the cart and placed it in the passenger seat. She flipped through the other items in the shopping cart without finding anything else of significance. Two shabbily dressed women sat on a park bench watching pigeons compete for bakery scraps. One of the women tossed a torn piece of bread onto the sidewalk and scrutinized Gretchen as she approached.
“Do you know how to find the Rescue Mission?” Gretchen asked them.
After some thought, one woman said, “Yes.”
“Will you take this cart there?” Gretchen said.
“No,” the same woman responded.
“I will pay you five dollars.”
“Yes,” said the other woman. “I will take it.”
“Walk slowly, and if a man asks for the cart or tries to take it from you before you get to the mission, give it to him. If not, leave it with the people there.”
Gretchen handed over the five dollar bill, and both women rose and shuffled down the street, guiding the cart in the direction of the mission.
She sat in the car with the air-conditioning turned all the way up and the doors locked, and studied her remarkable find. Approximately twenty inches long, as April had predicted, the outside of the trunk was in excellent condition. No major flaws in the wood. The brass-headed tacks and brass handle shone as though recently polished. She carefully opened the trunk, and even though she knew from the message found in Nacho’s notebook that the doll had been hidden someplace else, she half expected to see it inside.
The upper tray, designed to hold the doll, was empty.
The interior of the trunk was lined with finely striped beige and blue fabric. When Gretchen removed the tray, her eyes lit up with delight at the wealth of accessories. She gingerly picked up each one, elegantly hand-stitched dresses, little ankle boots, a tortoiseshell comb, corset, bonnet, fan, and a full-length brown kid leather raincoat.
She carefully replaced the accessories, closed the trunk, and pulled out into the early afternoon traffic.
Gretchen racked her brain for her long-dormant knowledge of doll collecting. This was an unbelievable trunk, worth a slew of money. Think, Gretchen. Think back to your mother’s book and the chapter on French fashion dolls. What can you learn from examining this trunk?
The size of the doll, Gretchen thought. Based on the length of the trunk and the size of the clothing, the doll must be about seventeen inches tall. Was that information helpful? Not at the moment, but she filed it away for future reference.
Why did her mother think the trunk was too large to hide? Granted, it wasn’t a tiny, slip-in-your-pocket trunk, but her mother had plenty of rooms in the house in which to tuck away the trunk. Unless she thought someone would search her house for it. Which they had.
Where had Caroline hidden the French fashion doll?
And, more importantly, why?
At this point, Gretchen knew of two dolls her mother had concealed in her game of intrigue. It had all the elements of a conspiracy if she counted Nacho as an accomplice.
Were there more dolls hidden away somewhere?
Her third day in Chicago stretched out before her in slow motion, painfully slow.
Caroline chose Paneras for the café’s high-speed Internet access. She sat at a small table in the back of the restaurant, watching the