Dolly Departed - By Deb Baker Page 0,57

enough to keep them in their holes.

Arizona's list of creepy crawlers was endless: snakes, scorpions, Gila monsters, black widows, tarantulas, lizards. And the larger varieties: coyotes, mountain lions, and javelinas, the wild pigs with razor-sharp tusks. Gretchen paused to catch her breath and take in the scenery. A chipmunk munched on the buds of a barrel cactus below and to her right. She'd heard that barrel cacti always leaned to the southwest, something to remember if she was ever lost in the desert.

She continued up until she stood at the very summit of Camelback Mountain. The air seemed clearer, affecting her entire view of the world. She sat down and felt her heart pounding from the exertion of the steep climb. She told herself that once she started the trek back down the mountain, she wouldn't think of anything but the wonder of life. Maybe she would spot a hummingbird, her favorite bird. Hummingbirds were the gold medalists of the bird world, able to hover motionless in midair. They could stop faster and perform more acrobatics than any other bird.

Yes, she thought as she sat at the top of Camelback Mountain, on the way back, she'd research life. But for now she'd study death.

What about Britt Gleeland and her daughter, Melany?

Gretchen hadn't spent much time with Britt, but in the short amount of time she had, she didn't really like her. Was her inability to warm up to the doll maker a jealous reaction to Nina's friendship with her?

What a mess. Not to mention her personal life and the sexy but still married detective she was dodging. She had ignored two calls from him yesterday, listening to his voice messages urging her to return his calls. Gretchen didn't have to have a degree in psychology to suspect that she was running away more from her mixed-up feelings than from him.

One last look out over the city she called home, and she started her descent. Usually the mountain gave her a positive outlook on life, but this time when she put it all together it didn't seem like such a great morning after all. On the way down, even the birds eluded her.

Her mother hadn't forgotten about her offer to introduce Gretchen to Evie Rosemont. She announced the plans when Gretchen walked in the door.

"Get ready," she said. "We're going calling."

Evie Rosemont's home was painted bright and bold. Splashes of red, green, and yellow popped from the small ranch.

Caroline watched Gretchen's face when they parked in the driveway. "Wait until you see the inside," she said. Evie was short and squat and greeted them wearing a purple dressing robe and a matching beret with sequins and beads. Treating them as though they were long-lost friends, she proceeded to carry on a one-sided conversation that never ceased.

"Come in, come in. I have tea brewing. Girls, you must see my remodeled hat room. Come this way. I couldn't fit everything into the room anymore, so I redid this and redid that, decorating skills from my dear departed Nana . . ."

Evie rattled on while Gretchen and Caroline followed her down a narrow orange hallway.

Pictures of Evie at different stages in her life lined the hallway. She wore a hat in every photograph, starting with a black-and-white photo of her as a baby in a bonnet and ending with a current shot of Evie wearing a gold hat with purple and yellow feathers jutting from the top like waterworks.

"This one is from my days in New York, high society you know, and this one is me, and this one . . . Here we are. Wait until you see. Hats make the person, don't you think?" Evie ran on, addressing her hatless guests. "You can tell everything, simply everything, by a woman's collection of hats."

They trailed Evie into a fuchsia room. It was filled with antique hats and shoes: black lace vintage bonnets, Victorian cream leather boots with lace closures, an orange feather hat. The hats were displayed on hooks, the shoes on numerous small platforms mounted on all four walls.

". . . is my latest acquisition, found, if you can believe it, in a dusty old attic when I visited poor Mama when she was on her deathbed. Mama had quite a few lifethreatening health problems throughout her brief time on this earth. First there was her female trouble when she was only twenty-five, then . . ."

When Gretchen had seen Evie Rosemont at Mini Maize she had been wearing a large straw