"These aren't the original shoes," she said.
"Really?" Gretchen said, taking the doll from April and examining the shoes. "You're right."
April pointed at Chief Wag's legs. "The shoes and the platform have been added."
"I wonder why? You're the doll appraiser. Why would someone change it?"
"No particular reason," April said. "People do weird things to their dolls all the time, and then wonder why their collections aren't worth anything."
Gretchen finished her hot dog and wiped her hands on a napkin. "Nina, you had coffee with Eric Huntington. Tell me about him."
"Eric doesn't know much about the doll business," Nina said. "He's here mainly to watch after his mother."
"Eric said he knew my mother," Gretchen said. "Did she ever mention him?"
Nina shrugged. "Caroline knows everyone."
Gretchen picked up Chief Wag. Not a chip or crack anywhere on his body. So why send him addressed to the doll repairer? She rummaged through her toolbox and picked out a solvent. She sprayed a tiny amount on the platform around the Kewpie's feet. Then she sprayed some along the top of his shoes.
"What are you doing?" April asked.
"An experiment."
"He asked me out," Nina said.
Gretchen glanced up quickly and saw Nina blush. She couldn't believe it. She'd never in her life seen Nina blush.
"Eric did? He asked you out?"
Nina nodded. "Monday. I'm showing him around town."
"You go, girl," April said.
Gretchen worked more solvent into the glue and felt it soften slightly.
"What's that man over there doing?" Nina said.
Gretchen looked up and saw the photographer from the auction approaching her table. The Leica camera hung from his neck, and he looked paler and shabbier than last time she'd seen him, if that was even possible. Recalling his name, she greeted him. "Peter Finch."
"I remember you, too," Finch said, removing the lens cap from the camera. "You were at the auction. Mind if I take a few pictures?" He waved a hand at her dolls.
"You can't let him take pictures," April said, loud enough for him to hear. "I know this guy. He sells pictures of dolls on the Internet." She turned to the photographer.
"Get your own dolls."
"Okay, okay. I don't want to make trouble." He looked over at Susie Hocker's Madame Alexanders.
"Don't think of going there either," April said. Peter Finch slunk away.
"A few pictures wouldn't have hurt," Gretchen said, astonished at April's verbal attack on the photographer.
"He shouldn't be making his living from other people's dolls without offering them a percentage of the profits. There should be a law against what he does." April muttered under her breath to herself, but Gretchen caught the words, "Bottom feeder."
The platform holding the Kewpie in place came loose, and Gretchen eased it away from the doll. She tipped Chief Wag over. The bottoms of the red shoes were perfectly normal except for a little residual glue. She wiggled the Kewpie's bare legs and sprayed more glue around the shoe tops.
"What are you doing?" Nina said.
"Since the shoes and platform are modifications, I thought I'd see how they were applied."
"With glue," Nina said, exasperated. "Even I can tell that, and I don't know anything about doll repairing."
"I guess the real question is why someone changed the doll's appearance."
"Lowers the appraisal value, that's for sure," April said.
"Any modification to the original doll devalues it. Must have been owned by a beginner."
Gretchen slowly and gently removed the red shoes from the doll, exposing two chubby Kewpie feet. She laid the shoes on the table.
April picked them up, rolled them around in her plump fingers, and said, "Don't put these back on. The doll's worth a lot more without the shoes and goofy platform. I wonder why they were added in the first place."
"Because," Gretchen said, turning Chief Wag upside down, "the bottoms of his feet have been ground off."
* 17 *
Nina, drinking diet soda through a straw at that exact moment, coughed up some of it. "Down the wrong pipe," she sputtered.
April, the consummate doll appraiser, couldn't help saying, "It's not worth a nickel now."
"Please don't tell me something's hidden inside," Nina said. "This is too weird."
Gretchen, silently agreeing with her aunt, peered into the Kewpie's hollow legs. "I do see something." She drew tweezers from the toolbox and poked inside the doll. April saw a customer approaching her table and called out, "You'll have to come back in five minutes. I'm working on something else at the moment." She leaned forward.
"This is so exciting."
Gretchen extracted a small square of paper, neatly folded in quarters.
"Keep going," April said. "Don't stop now."
Gretchen unfolded the paper.