Dolled Up for Murder - By Deb Baker Page 0,96

for a job. Stay and be my partner.”

Gretchen smiled awkwardly. Could she exchange her life in Boston with its East Coast sophistication and changing seasons for eternal heat and sun and transient neighbors? She’d lived her entire life in Boston, born and raised, and all her connections and roots were there. Except for her mother, who had yanked her roots up without a backward glance.

“Steve wouldn’t appreciate it,” Gretchen said lamely.

Nina sighed deeply. “You two have to make the next step or change direction. I’m all for dumping him and starting over.”

“Nina,” Caroline said. “This isn’t your business.”

Gretchen left her mother and aunt bantering at the table and slid through the patio doors. She sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her toes in the lukewarm water, the sun already a burning glow above.

She dialed Steve’s cell phone and was surprised to hear his voice when she expected to connect to his voice mail.

“My mother’s home,” she said. “It’s over.”

“Has she been arrested?”

“No. The real murderer confessed.”

Steve blew a sigh of relief over the airwaves. “I’m sorry I didn’t show more support, but I had to distance myself until it was over. If your family had been involved in that murder, it would have destroyed my chances for partnership. You know how much that means to me.”

Gretchen knew exactly how much the partnership meant to him. It meant enough that he had abandoned her at a time when she needed him the most.

Seven years of work on this relationship.

How much did it mean to her? How much was she willing to sacrifice? And what about Courtney, the intern?

Was Steve willing to put the same effort into the relationship as she was? As much as she wanted to believe that he was committed, his actions spoke against him.

Gretchen stared up at Camelback Mountain.

“Steve,” she said, closing her eyes, “I’m going to stay in Arizona for awhile. I need to sort out my priorities and decide what I want to do with my life.”

The rest of the conversation was predictable. Steve, the divorce attorney, gave a brilliant closing argument.

“No,” Gretchen said, surprising herself with the force of her conviction, with the forcefulness of the small word.

Aunt Gertie’s parting words popped into her head. “Stay strong.”

“My mind is made up. I’m staying.”

Turn the page for a preview of the next Dolls to Die For Mystery,

Goodbye Dolly

Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

1

Jennie H. Graves created the Ginny doll in the late nineteen-forties. Her small home business quickly grew to become the Vogue Doll Company. Ginny’s popularity sent other companies racing to emulate the eight-inch plastic play doll. The most innovative feature of the new doll was its separate clothing. Ginny came wearing underwear and ready to dress in costumes designed by her creator. And what wonderful costumes they were.

—From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch

Gretchen Birch stood next to the flatbed trailer parked in the driveway leading to the house and eyed the mounds of dolls. Howie Howard, the auctioneer, worked the crowd like a harmonica tongue slap, all swinging elbows and agile, fluid mouth movements. Gretchen had a first-timer’s knot of nerves in her stomach the size and weight of a Sunkist grapefruit.

“Do I hear twenty? There’s a two oh. Thirty. Forty. Fine box of dolls.” Howie’s head bobbed like one of the swivel-head dolls boxed up in Gretchen’s doll repair workshop. “Fifty? No. Forty going once . . . Sold for forty dollars.”

Gretchen glanced at the stucco-and-tile house where Chiggy Kent, the once-vibrant founder of the Phoenix Dollers Club, had lived. Dragging an oxygen tank connected to her nostrils, Chiggy had finally succumbed to the persistence of her concerned neighbors and the ravages of lung disease and now resided at Grace Senior Care. But Chiggy would have forced them to haul her out kicking and screaming if she’d had the breath to resist.

Chiggy’s doll-making skills hadn’t improved with experience or with advanced age. At least six hundred handmade dolls cluttered the open-bed truck and Gretchen winced at the poor workmanship. Dolls’ eyebrows wisped in unlikely directions, painted with heavy, awkward strokes; eyelashes that would have impressed the legendary Tammy Faye, notorious queen of eye art.

The doll clothes were worth more than the dolls that wore them, but many of the shoppers bellied up to the truck weren’t serious collectors and couldn’t tell the difference between an original and a poor reproduction.

Howie Howard wasn’t about to clue them in. “Here’s a priceless imitation of a German Kestner. Full of character. Who could