Ding Dong Dead (8 page)

He helps himself to a cup of coffee before tackling the boxes of equipment. His first captured bird pops in his head, just like that, for no reason. When he was a kid he liked to sneak up on birds. He’d wait patiently, motionless, then strike like lightning. The first time, he took the bird home in his backpack, proud of his accomplishment. His mother wigged out, made him release it.

“That’s not normal behavior,” she said. “You should be playing ball with the rest of the kids.”

But birds, he discovered, were much better companions than people.

He gulps the last dregs of coffee, wipes his mouth, and gets to work.

—From
World of Dolls
by Caroline Birch

 

 

 

Thursday morning Gretchen was on her first round of exercises on the Curves circuit when the subject of the haunted house came up, thanks to Nina, who couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

And Gretchen had thought her aunt’s fascination with tarot cards had been intense!

“April’s not here,” Nina pointed out unnecessarily, suspiciously. “She isn’t at the museum, is she? I don’t want anyone over there. I made it quite clear.”

Bonnie glanced up from the abductor machine. “She’s at the banquet hall finishing up her sewing project.”

Aside from Gretchen, her aunt, and Matt’s mother, the only other women in Curves at the moment were Julie and Ora, the manager. The doll collectors had studied the crowd patterns and had picked a time to exercise when they had more space and privacy.

“What a relief,” Nina said. “Thank goodness we aren’t planning to open the museum to the public soon. I don’t want anyone near the place until I get to the bottom of our problem.”

“April thinks your ghost is really a genie,” Bonnie said. “She wants to rub the travel trunk to see what happens.”

Nina frowned. “She’s still on that kick? I can’t decide if she’s making fun of me or not. April doesn’t have any experience with ghosts. She isn’t qualified to make a statement like that. Genies! That’s ridiculous.”

Gretchen could have mentioned that April had as many credentials as Nina, which were none at all. Nor was she going to tell Nina that Caroline had left before sunrise to work at the very place that Nina was warning them to avoid. Bonnie and Julie knew, too, but were sworn to secrecy.

“An apparition is a very serious phenomenon,” Nina said, running in place on a mat. “It’s the disfranchised body of a displaced person, stuck between this plane and another one. We have to help her get unstuck so she can finish her journey.”

“How did you actually see a ghost?” Ora called from the front desk. “Aren’t they supposed to be invisible?”

Bonnie nodded her bewigged head. “I’m wondering the same thing.”

“I thought I heard a sound coming from the vicinity of the trunk,” Nina said, continuing on to the next machine. “Once I opened the lid, something swished past. I felt it touch my cheek on the flyby. It was very cold and silver. Yes, it absolutely, positively was silver.”

“Why don’t you go back and photograph it?” Bonnie said.

“That’s a good idea,” Nina said. “I’m one hundred percent sure I was touched by an apparition and it has something to do with the girl and her travel doll. Want to see a picture of Flora when she was young? I remembered to bring it.”

Everybody did.

The familiar programmed voice reminded them to switch stations while Blondie belted out “One Way or Another” from a speaker on the wall. Nina left the circle, dug through her purse on a shelf by the entrance, and came back with a sheet of paper. “The historical society people wouldn’t let me take the actual photograph out of the building, but they made a copy of it.”

She handed the sheet of paper to Gretchen. “That’s her father, John Swilling. And that’s Flora.”

An unsmiling man with dark, neatly parted hair stared at the camera. He sat next to a young girl. Flora wore a chiffon dress with ribbons and a large bow on the right side of her short, dark bob. She held a doll in her arms. Part of the travel trunk was visible in the corner of the frame, not all of it, but enough to tell that it was the same trunk from the museum.

“Let me see,” Julie said.

Gretchen passed the photo to her.

“A metal-head doll,” Bonnie said, viewing the photo from behind Julie. “Those metal-head dolls really held up well, much better than porcelain,” Bonnie continued, giving Nina a lesson in doll history. “Too bad the paint they used in those days wasn’t better quality. You can’t find a metal head today that doesn’t need major repainting. The heads were sold separately from the bodies, did you know that? And some were made from tin.”

“And a cloth body,” Gretchen said. “Probably homemade, as most of them were in the 1920s.” Since working with her mother, Gretchen’s doll knowledge had improved tremendously. She’d recently repainted a metal-head doll, and the owner had liked her work.

“Just like a bunch of doll collectors,” Nina said, not sounding pleased at all. “The first thing you notice is the doll. Keep the picture, Gretchen. I made extras.”

“I wouldn’t try to take a picture of the ghost,” Julie said. “What if it’s a bad ghost?”

“I don’t think ghosts can be bad,” Nina said, looking unsure.

Until recent events, Gretchen hadn’t had strong personal opinions on any of Nina’s past delvings—tarot cards, auras, her conversations with the universe, the telepathic communications she’d tried to share with Gretchen with limited and questionable success. Throughout all of it, Gretchen usually had a wait-and-see attitude.

“I heard,” she said to the doll collectors, “that almost half of the population believes in ghosts.”

“And one in five has seen a ghost,” Nina added. “Ghost hunters have documented sightings that have been verified by other people who were with them at the time.”

Unlike colored auras and Nina’s other pursuits that were all based on her testimony alone, ghost sightings were group activities. Was there truth in numbers?

Gretchen didn’t know and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. It was exciting to think about, though.

The cemetery murder came up next. Gretchen had made a point of avoiding the subject. Since Bonnie was Matt’s mother and the club’s biggest gossip, all Matt needed to hear was that Gretchen was discussing his cases with his mother and her other workout buddies.

She needn’t have bothered, though, since Bonnie chimed in with, “My Matty is working on a tough case, a murder in Eternal View Cemetery. He can’t tell me a thing about it, because it’s highly confidential. However, my friend Anne works in the office at the cemetery and she gave me all the gory details.”

Bonnie’s red wig was adjusted properly for a change, and her penciled eyebrows were straight. Recently she’d switched to half-decaf, half-regular coffee. It had been Nina’s suggestion, a “psychic moment” she called it, and the results were amazing. No more jitters for Bonnie. No more crooked wigs or wobbly eyebrows. “Want to hear the details?” she asked.

“My. More juicy gossip,” Ora said. “You girls are energized today.”

Gretchen was all ears. Anything she could learn might help solve the crime and put a killer away. And as an added benefit, getting the case wrapped up quickly would get Matt back in her arms with his mind focused completely on her.

“We’re ready, Bonnie,” Nina said. “Don’t leave out a thing.”

“Well, Gretchen was there when it happened,” Bonnie said. “She should help tell it.”

“Really?” Julie said, swinging her head toward Gretchen in surprise.

“What?”
Nina shouted. “Is that true? I’m family. Why am I always the last to know anything?”

“I’m sorry, Nina.”
Thank you, Bonnie.
“It was so late by the time I got home . . .” What else could she say?

“My own niece,” Nina said. “Absolutely no consideration for me at all.”

Bonnie jumped in again. “I knew Gretchen had been there the minute Anne said the detective had a woman with him.”

“Was your friend Anne in the cemetery when it happened?” Gretchen asked.

“No, but she was behind on her work, so she stayed late in the office that night. She was going to her car when she heard a ruckus in the cemetery. She’s the one who called the cops. Of course, she didn’t know about the dead woman until the police arrived and searched the area.”

Two other Curves members came through the door, putting an end to their private conversation. “Let’s stretch,” Bonnie said, leading them to another room. Gretchen took up the end position. They were like a flock of inquisitive turkeys all in a row, trotting along with their necks craned.

Nina hadn’t said a word since she found out that Gretchen had been in the cemetery and hadn’t told her. She was too busy showing Gretchen that she was angry by ignoring her. “I’m sorry,” Gretchen mouthed the next time Nina glared her way. No reaction from her aunt.

Bonnie was already sitting on a floor mat, twisting over one raised knee. “Here’s the scoop. It wasn’t a random murder. A bunch of those homeless people were lurking in the cemetery, so that would have been my first thought, that one of them did it, or all of them together.”

Gretchen couldn’t imagine Nacho or Daisy killing anyone or anything. She’d have to take Bonnie down to the rescue mission for a little charitable giving. “People everywhere come in all kinds of packages,” she said. “Good and evil exists on all social levels.”

“But that’s what the police would have thought,” Bonnie continued. “That she had been picked just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because she reminded the killer of someone, or because of whatever reason a psycho kills. But that wasn’t the case because the police found a big clue.”

“What big clue?” Julie asked.

“A doll,” Bonnie said. Gretchen made a point of keeping her mouth shut.

Everyone had forgotten to stretch. Instead they huddled together like football players. Bonnie continued in a whisper. “I put two and two together when Anne told me the dead woman’s name. Allison Thomasia. I searched on the Internet and found her right away. She was a fantasy doll artist.”

“My mother knew her,” Gretchen said quietly. “They were old friends but had lost touch over the years.”

“What was Allison doing in the cemetery?” Nina asked. Gretchen took it as a good sign that the intrigue was winning her aunt over enough that she hadn’t even commented on Caroline’s connection to the dead woman.

“No one knows,” Bonnie said. “Or if they do, they aren’t saying. I’m going to keep at Matty, but my son has tight lips.”

Since learning he can’t trust his mother to keep a secret,
Gretchen thought.

“What I want to know,” Nina said, “is whose grave was she visiting after dark?”

All eyes turned to Gretchen, who shrugged.

“Gretchen doesn’t know,” Nina said, still testy. “Right there at the scene of the crime and she doesn’t notice the engraving on the headstone.”

“She must have been very upset,” Julie said in Gretchen’s defense.

“It was pitch-black,” Gretchen said. “And, yes, I was upset.”
When was the last time
you
stood beside a murdered woman?
“The woman had crawled from one location to another. I really don’t know the answer, but that’s a very good question.”

“Fine,” Nina snapped. “A killer is on the loose, killing doll collectors, which all of you happen to be, and you didn’t notice. Fine. Just fine.”

—From
World of Dolls
by Caroline Birch

 

 

 

Caroline unpacks boxes in the museum’s upstairs storage room, the same room in which her sister claimed she’d witnessed the presence of an apparition. Nina has made her aware of every creak and groan from the old home, thanks to her talk of otherworldly creatures. Nina has always been very different from Caroline, searching for answers best left unfound, those that defy human logic.

Caroline has never been able to decide if Nina is right or wrong. Strange things
do
happen when she is around. Unexplainable things. But Caroline is more comfortable with her black-and-white view of the world. Why complicate it any more than it already is by throwing in beings from other worlds and other dimensions?

She glances at her watch. Ten o’clock a.m., still enough time to look through one more box of dolls before heading home to meet with a customer. The cast of
Ding Dong Dead
should be at the banquet hall deep into rehearsal. Caroline is very glad she opted out of that fiasco, preferring to work quietly and at her own pace at the museum. She’s also glad that she didn’t let the other members talk her into trying to open the museum this month. She needs three, four, maybe five months, hopefully less once the luncheon and play are over, when the others can devote more time to help prepare the museum’s displays.