Dolled Up for Murder (18 page)

I lifted the Chatty Cathy dolls out of the suitcase.

Each of the three soft vinyl dolls was tucked in a clean white pillowcase, two blondes and a brunette. I placed one of the blondes on the work surface. She wore an ice blue dress with a white eyelet, short-sleeved bolero-style top, off-white anklet socks, and black Mary Janes. Her hair was styled in a pageboy. Her blue eyes were open wide. I removed her clothes, revealing the speaker built into her chest. The pull ring lay flat against her back. I pulled the string and it moved smoothly, but, as expected, she was mute. On her front side, her upper torso had been fabricated as a separate unit and was connected to her bottom half with what appeared to be some kind of sealant. Neither the design nor the construction allowed access to the miniphonograph that gave her voice.

I should have asked Jamie how to open her,
I thought, deciding to give it a try on my own before calling her. I slid my finger along the seam seeking some sign of an opening, a gap perhaps, or a lever. The seal was unbroken. I turned her over and noticed another seam, this one hidden by her hips. I pushed and prodded, easing my fingernail into the crevice. Halfway around, I ran into an obstacle, a hard plastic latch. I tapped it, and Chatty Cathy's back raised up silently and smoothly. I was staring into her chest cavity. I opened all three dolls and extracted the bills. My count matched Jamie's information: Their inheritance now included one thousand bills. If Barry's estimate held, I was looking at two million dollars' worth of rare currency. I placed each doll's currency in a separate envelope and the hundred bills in another.

“We're done,” Fred called, and I ran to join them.

All three of us examined each counterfeit bill to ensure it had been properly trimmed, then counted out stacks of twenty and rolled them into tight cylinders, fastening each one with a rubber band.

“We can take it from here,” I told Fred. “Thank you. Check back in fifteen minutes or so, okay?”

“Will do,” he said.

I stood, listening to his footsteps recede, and then Dawn and I slipped the rolls of bills inside the dolls' chests, stacking them like logs. As I wrapped each doll in flannel, I felt my anxiety grow.

“Why hasn't the kidnapper contacted me again?” I asked Dawn.

“He's getting his ducks in a row,” she said. “He'll call when he's ready.”

“I'm going a little nuts waiting.”

“That's normal.” She held up the kachina doll. “What's this?”

I explained its history, adding, “It's horrible to think that someone may stomp it to bits. Not only is it beautiful, but it's historically and culturally significant, too. But we have no choice.”

“I'm with you,” Dawn said. “When given a choice of a man's life or an object, the object loses every time. Or should.”

“Yeah. Not everyone agrees, though. Lots of people have died trying to preserve objects worth pennies. Value is relative.” As I reached for another length of bubble wrap, I saw that my hand was trembling. “Look at me. I'm a mess.” I closed my eyes and gripped the countertop to steady myself. “God, I hope we're doing everything we can to help Eric.” I opened my eyes and looked at her straight on. “Do you think I'm making a mistake? Should I call the FBI? Tell me the truth. It's not too late to change my mind.”

Dawn shook her head. “I'm sorry, but I can't advise you, Josie.”

I straightened up. “Yeah … I know. No one can.”

I finished wrapping the last doll and placed it in the plastic tub. I lowered the top and latched it; then Dawn and I double wrapped it in heavy plastic to protect it from the rain.

“Now if I can only keep it together long enough to deliver the ransom.” I laughed, embarrassed. “I'm a quivering mass of jelly.”

“You'd never know it. You seem darn poised to me.”

“Thanks. It's all an illusion.” I smoothed the last piece of tape. “That's it. We're done. Thanks for the help, Dawn. Thanks for listening. I'm fine. I'll be fine.”

“You're welcome. I know you'll be fine. You'll be great. What else can I do?”

“Nothing. Neither can I. All we can do now is wait.”

She said good-bye, and we walked to the front office. Keeping to the story, she thanked me for letting her check out a couple of other gift options for her mom.

“You were right in the first place, Josie,” Dawn said. “She's going to love that ladle.”

She ran through the still-steady rain to her car. I watched as reporters watched her. I didn't see Bertie or Wes. I wondered if any of them would follow her.

I caught Fred's eye and nodded, giving him a thumbs-up, then selected a large padded envelope from the stock in our storage cabinet and headed back into the warehouse.

“Cara,” I said from the door, “I'll be in the back.”

One step in, I heard Fred say to Sasha, “All clear.”

Thanks, Fred,
I said silently.

I wanted to pack up the currency and get it into Barry's hands as quickly as possible, but I needed a moment's respite. I'd confessed that I'd felt a little rocky to Dawn, but she didn't know the half of it. I needed a moment to regroup, to regain my equilibrium. I headed straight to Hank.

He was eating, so I stopped on the concrete just shy of his rug, not wanting to disturb him. He crunched purposefully. After a few bites and chomps and swallows he turned to his water bowl and lapped for several seconds, then, as if he could sense my presence, looked over his shoulder, saw me, and mewed. He scampered to me, mewing all the way, asking for a hug.

“Hi, Hank,” I said, scooping him up. “Do you want a little cuddle?”

He nuzzled my neck.

“I'm upset, Hank. I'm really, really upset.”

He licked my ear, one lick, then tucked his head under my chin again.

“I know … I know … You're right … I'm doing all I can.”

Hank settled in and began purring.

I held him close and petted him, long strokes along his back and short ones running from his tummy to under his chin. Down his back and up his chest. Down and up. Down and up.

“What a good boy you are, Hank. You're
such
a good boy.”

His purring grew louder. After a minute, maybe two, I said, “I could stand here and pet you all day, baby boy, but I've got to go.” I kissed the top of his head and placed him on the rug. He stretched, then sauntered back to his food bowl and picked up where he left off, and I walked to the table where I'd left the money with the comforting sounds of his crunching in the air.

I packed up the four envelopes containing the currency and brought the envelope back to the office. I asked Gretchen to call for a courier pickup and to e-mail the receipt for nine hundred bills to the Farmington sisters.

“Did you just find them?” she asked, as curious as Hank once he got a whiff of a new toy.

“I'll tell you about it later,” I said. “Right now, consider it confidential information.”

“All right,” she said, her eyes communicating her concern.

I called Barry myself to tell him to expect delivery in the morning, then went back to my office to wait for word from the kidnapper. My part was done. All I was supposed to do now was wait. I wasn't a good waiter. I couldn't work. I couldn't think. I couldn't read or watch TV. All I could do was watch the rain patter against the window. I tried to think of something to do, anything. I called Grace.

“I've almost called a dozen times,” she said. “I knew if you had news you'd tell me.”

I bit my lip. “I'll tell you everything I can,” I said.

“That sounds like you know something, but you won't tell me.”

“No, I don't.”
I wish,
I thought. “How's Eric's mom? Have you spoken to her since last night?”

“Yes. She's upset, as you might imagine. She wanted to call you but decided not to. She told me that she doesn't trust herself to talk to anyone, not when she feels like this.” She cleared her throat. “Chief Hunter tells me he's certain there'll be a ransom note. Do you know why he would—”

My cell phone vibrated, wiggling across the desk, a text message. I pushed the
READ
button. It was a text from the kidnapper.

“Grace,” I said, “excuse me for interrupting—I need to go. I'll call you later.” I hung up.

The kidnapper asked,
DOLLS READY?

My eyes filled, I was so relieved to hear from him.

I typed:
YES. ERIC OK?

I hit
SEND
and stared at the screen waiting for his reply. None came. After several minutes, I realized there would be no immediate response. More waiting. More anxiety. More fear. I transcribed the message and my reply into the disposable phone Ellis had given me, then added,
WHY HASN'T HE REPLIED?

I hurried into the warehouse to send the message, then called him directly.

“Did you get it yet?” I asked. “The text? I just sent it.”

“I see it. Good news.”

“Why is it good? We don't know anything more than we did before he sent it.”

“Communication is always good. As long as he's talking and sees that you're cooperating, he has no reason to worry. Remember that he has to be feeling anxious, too.”

I nodded, struck by Ellis's unexpected perspective. “That's funny to think about, isn't it? It hadn't occurred to me, but I bet this is his first time kidnapping someone. I mean, it's not the kind of thing you do week in and week out.”

“Very true.”

“But he didn't tell me about Eric,” I said.

“He will.”

“What would you think of my making him send me a photo of Eric holding today's
Seacoast Star
before I agree to the meet?”

“It's a risk, Josie. We don't know how twitchy he is. Your demanding anything may send him over the edge.”

“Is this the kind of thing the FBI might be able to advise us about?”

“Yes.”

“Can you ask them without committing us to bringing them in?”

“I know someone I can call.”

“Thank you, Ellis. Will you ask them now?”

“Yes. Hang in there, Josie.”

I paced, waiting for Ellis to call back, waiting for the kidnapper to reply. Hank was eating again, and when he was done I gave him a bottom pat. He nuzzled my hand and raised his chin. I took the hint and gave him a nice underchin rub. He was getting the massage, yet I found myself relaxing.

“Good boy,” I said. “I don't know when I'll be leaving, Hank, so I'll refresh your food and water now, okay?”

Ellis called as I was adding crunchy bits to Hank's food bowl.

“My contact's answer is the same as mine. We don't know how he'll react to a demand. That said, my contact thinks, and I concur, that the kidnapper has to expect you to want proof Eric is alive before handing over the ransom.”

“I'm going to do it,” I said. “I think it's a reasonable request, and if the kidnapper is a rational person, he will, too. If he's not rational, well, we're in big trouble anyway.” I paused for a moment. “Please thank your FBI person for me.”

“I will. Are you doing all right?”

“No. I'm pacing. I can't work.”

“Understood,” he said. “I suspect you won't hear anything for the next few hours.”

“Why?”

“Because if I were trying to pick up a tub full of dolls without attracting a lot of attention, I'd wait until after dark.”

“That makes complete sense.” I sighed. “But that's hours away.”

“I know you, Josie. You should try to work.”

Ellis was right. Throughout my adult life, whenever I've been depressed or worried, I've counted on work to help me cope. Doing nothing only exacerbates my anxiety. I trudged back to my desk and picked up Fred's draft for the catalogue of witchcraft objects. If anything could captivate my mind, reading catalogue copy could.

The auction was unusual and would, I was certain, attract a fair amount of publicity. One of our best finds was a sixteenth-century book, Reginald Scot's
Conjuring Tricks from the Discoverie of Witchcraft.
Scot published the book to debunk claims that witches had magical powers by revealing magicians' tricks.

“I'm hot on the trail of connecting this witchcraft book to James Boswell,” Fred wrote in a parenthetical note to me.

I couldn't help smiling. James Boswell was well respected in his own right, but he was better known as Samuel Johnson's friend and biographer. If Fred could nail down the book's provenance, the value would skyrocket, going from our current estimate of twenty-five hundred dollars to perhaps as much as twenty-five thousand.

“It has an owner's signature reading ‘James Boswel,'” Fred's note continued, “and I have a source who says Boswell spelled his name with one
L
for two years while he was in law school. If it's true, I figure it's like that girl Becky I dated in college. For about a month she wrote her name as Beckee, just to be different, I guess. After a while she got tired of correcting everyone, so she went back to good old-fashioned Becky.”

I smiled at the thought of a young man in the eighteenth century wanting to show his individuality in a conventional world.
The more things change,
I thought,
the more they stay the same.
I could easily believe that Boswell had, while studying law, become intrigued with magic and witchcraft. Lots of college kids do.

Cara called up to tell me that everyone was leaving for the night. I glanced at my computer monitor. It was two minutes after five. I'd been absorbed for nearly three hours.
Thank you, Ellis,
I thought. I asked Cara to lock the front door, explaining I would be staying awhile longer and would set the night alarm when I left. I resumed my reading.