this inventory twice, and it isn’t here.”
“What isn’t here?” Nina said.
“Martha showed me several dolls. This was long before the bank repossessed her house, and I had gone over to solicit donations for the Phoenix Dollers annual fund-raiser, which by the way is coming up again soon, and I hope I can count on you two for a contribution. Anyway, she showed me the character children, and she showed me another doll. A Madame Rohmer. I remember how surprised I was at the time, because she never let anyone see her dolls. But this group was new to her collection, and she was very excited.”
Nina swung the list around to her side of the table, and Gretchen watched her index finger underline each entry. “No Madame Rohmer,” she announced.
“That’s so odd. It had a darling blonde wig.” Bonnie posed both hands lightly on top of her own wig for emphasis. “And the cutest little cream dress with a blue feather pattern.”
“Maybe she sold the doll and revised the list,” Gretchen suggested. “But from what I hear, she refused to sell anything from her collection.”
“That’s right,” Bonnie said. “Even at the end, she wouldn’t sell any of them. They were like her children. She never had children of her own, you know, and I think she transferred all her pent-up affection onto the dolls.”
“That’s so strange when women do that,” Nina said, missing the connection between a childless woman and her own four-legged forms of compensation. Everyone needed to love somebody, and it didn’t matter whether they chose children or dogs or dolls. But children and dogs, and—yes, cats—loved you back. Inanimate objects like dolls couldn’t reciprocate.
No wonder Martha felt compelled to finish out her life in a lonely state of inebriation after her lifelong partner had died.
“She must have loved her husband very much,” Gretchen said, “to have fallen so far.”
Bonnie nodded, and the unsecured wig slid to the side of her face. She straightened it. “You have no idea what his death did to her. A match made in heaven, we all said. I hope they finally found each other.” Bonnie looked upward.
Gretchen, caught in a relationship that was quickly spiraling downhill, tried to imagine total and unconditional love with a husband of her own. She loved her mother that way, but could she say the same about her feelings for Steve? Would her world fall apart without him? Would she become a homeless drunk destined for a life of degradation and excess?
Hardly, she thought. She was stronger than that. If they failed to work out their problems, she would go on. Maybe that was the true test. If she wanted to fling herself from the top of Camelback Mountain, would she pass the test of love?
Maybe, after all the speculation and information gathered to the contrary, Martha had simply soared from the mountain heights in an attempt to rejoin her husband.
“It’s possible that she forgot to include the new doll in her inventory,” Gretchen said. “Everyone makes mistakes occasionally.”
Caroline knew that some doll collectors refuse to participate in online auctions. They worry that the seller will exaggerate the condition of the doll and they will unknowingly purchase one of inferior quality. Some say that they must hold a doll in their hands, prod for flaws or misrepresented repair work, look into the doll’s eyes, make a connection.
Watching the computer screen, Caroline again admired the valuable doll. She had already held this particular Bébé in her hands, had examined it from every angle. She knew it was in mint condition, not a single imperfection, and it wore its original white muslin dress and matching bonnet.
Her requirements for purchasing the doll were not the same hands-on connection that some collectors demanded. The doll was superfluous to her. The seller was her target.
Four hours and twenty minutes left in the auction, and twenty-seven bids registered. Caroline watched her e-mail in-box intently for new bids, the auction house alerting her each time another buyer outbid her. She rapidly and expertly moved between screens, from e-mail to auction.
Two thirty in the morning, and Caroline felt her resolve slipping as her need for sleep increased. Anxious worldwide buyers were bidding on the same doll. What time was it in London? In Rome? She cursed the seller for accepting international bids but recognized it as a brilliant maneuver to remove the doll from the United States. Crucial for the seller, but she refused to allow it to happen.
Caroline decided to check the auction bid one