Dolled Up for Murder - By Deb Baker Page 0,1
disorganized, and Gretchen secretly attributed the anomaly to a renegade gene passed down through generations of Birch women. A strong matriarchal line with a few crossed wires.
I have to learn to say no, Gretchen thought, considering another genome gone askew, afflicting her but having passed up her mother and Nina. Skipping generations, like twins. She could think no, shake her head back and forth no, and shout no in her head, but when it came to forming the word with her lips and emitting the actual sound, she froze. This inability to refuse a request had landed her in many murky situations. This one, for example.
She threw shorts and tank tops into a suitcase and sorted through a pile of laundry in her closet. Nearly all her clothes needed washing, but she tossed in the cleanest of the dirty clothes. She could wash them at her mother’s house. Before she closed the suitcase, she remembered one other essential item: her hiking boots. How could she forget her gear?
Phoenix had few redeeming qualities in mid-July, but it did have Camelback Mountain, and its most challenging series of steep inclines, Summit Trail, was Gretchen’s favorite. Before closing the suitcase, she added a Western states bird book and a pair of binoculars. Traveling to Arizona in July was on a par with arriving in northern Michigan in January, but she planned on making the most of it.
The first call from Nina flashed into Gretchen’s mind. Martha, a casual acquaintance of her mother, had fallen from Camelback Mountain. Found by a group of hikers. Broken. Dead. A destitute alcoholic with the bad judgment to leave the trails and wander along the rock outcroppings.
What could you expect from a crazy, onetime doll collector who roamed the streets and lived inside a bottle? Certainly not a gentle passing.
Gretchen struggled to remember more, but she’d been too tired at the time to listen to the details. Nina sounded concerned about her mother, but Nina tended to overreact to everything.
Gretchen, loaded down with luggage and a drowsy, medicated Wobbles, entered a taxi. While the cabby expertly maneuvered through winding streets and roared toward Callahan Tunnel, which led to Logan Airport, Gretchen called Steve on her cell phone and explained the events of the last few hours.
She tried to keep her voice even, hiding the hurt she felt at his recent betrayal.
“We had dinner reservations for tonight,” Steve said when she finished, sounding groggy and confused.
The taxi flew into the tunnel, and reception on the cell phone began to break up.
Steve’s voice cracked. “This is sudden. And early. What time is it?”
“You don’t want to know,” Gretchen said, watching the tunnel walls, listening to the rapid clack-clack of the tires on the pavement. “I wanted to catch you before I boarded. It’s only for a few days. Nina’s concerned about my mother, but she’ll turn up soon. She might reappear before my plane even lands.”
“How is your mother connected with that woman’s death?”
“She’s not. Nina should be in theater. Mom’s off someplace, and Nina’s doing her sixth-sense routine. No two events can be coincidence according to her. The universe flows into and onto itself.”
“Your family is too weird,” Steve said.
Too weird for what?
Gretchen felt impatient with Steve, a gathering cloud of annoyance. Just nerves, she thought. And lack of sleep. She was about to lighten the moment by asking him what was so weird about a mother who restores dolls and an aunt who trains purse dogs, but the cell phone beeped and displayed the message Call Lost. She flipped it closed and tossed it into her purse just as the cab burst through the tunnel into the early morning sunlight.
Gretchen stood on the curb for a moment before entering the terminal, hoping to breathe the crisp Atlantic Ocean air. One last cleansing breath. But all she could smell was auto exhaust from the heavy traffic jamming the lanes leading to check-in. She considered calling Steve again but decided against it. Later, when she felt more rested, she’d call from Phoenix.
She knew she would sleep on the plane, catch up after last night’s lost battle of wills with Nina. She’d have to find a special therapy group when she returned to Boston for people like herself, people who couldn’t say no.
As the plane backed away from the gate, her thoughts turned to Steve. After seven years of dating, their relationship operated more by rote than by reckless abandon. Seven years without progress, without commitment. Gretchen brushed away feelings of