Dolly Departed

catapulted everywhere. His eyes shift back to Charlie's body. Two EMTs are loading her onto a stretcher.

'Careful,' one of them warns the other.

The one doing the cautioning is a female, as are several of the cops in the room. In his day women didn't do this kind of work. They knew their place just like the men knew theirs. The world is a changed place, and Bernard isn't sure he likes it.

Will they cover Charlie's face before carrying her past the gawkers outside the shop? Look at them out there, straining to see through the window from their positions on the other side of a line of cops, all hoping for a good view of something horrible. Anything will do.

And the ones inside don't give a hoot about Charlie Maize. Nosy gossips, the bunch of them. If they craned their necks any farther, they'd look like geese. Bernard watches the EMTs prepare Charlie for the ambulance, strapping her in. Once, long ago, Bernard had been an emergency medical technician himself, back before all the governmental licensing requirements and insurance restrictions. He knows what death looks like. He knows it in all its forms. Grow as old as he is, and you watch friends and family drop one by one. The curse of old age. All his friends gone and not much family left either. The two EMTs heave Charlie up between them and carry her out. It was hard to see what was happening before, such a cluster of people swarming around her and him forced back into a corner with the rest, like a herd of cattle. Yellow tape used as fencing strung everywhere. Camera flashes going off. Someone is making one of those newfangled movies of the shop. Not good. Several more cops arrive. They begin interrogating everyone inside the shop. Let them. His turn is coming, and he is more than ready. The key weighs heavy in his pants pocket. Bernard is puzzled by one of the boxes on the floor. Why did she build a room box herself? Why didn't she ask me to do it?

Bernard knows Charlie must have made it herself, because it isn't exactly perfect. Not even close. The edges are rough, the sides don't fit together like they should. A craftsman would have done much better. This one was amateurish. Looks like she used a jigsaw and fiberboard to construct it. He glances around and sees the ones he made. His practiced eye skillfully measures each one, calculates the dimensions: nineteen inches by twenty-six inches by fourteen. Large room boxes, crafted to Charlie's specifications. He wants to pick up the one she made and study it, but the cops are attentive, watchful of the so-called 'witnesses,' treating them more like suspects than concerned friends of Charlie's.

'Are you the one who unlocked the door?' a cop asks him. Bernard stares at his badge.

'Yes, Officer Kline. I have a key.' He keeps his voice low and respectful.

'What are you doing with a key?'

'I've had one since the day Charlie opened the shop. She gave out keys like candy.' He hopes his hand isn't shaking noticeably when he points at the dollhouses. 'I made those.' He sees the tremor running along his index finger and quickly closes the finger against his palm. The cop's indifferent eyes slide up to the dollhouses. He writes something down in a notebook.

'Name.'

'Bernard Waites.'

'When was the last time you saw Charlie?'

'Yesterday,' he lies as pat as a slice of butter, or so he imagines. The cop eyes him with a piercing stare, but Bernard stays calm and pierces him right back.

'Let me see the key,' the cop says.

Bernard dutifully presents it.

'Same key fit the back door?'

Bernard nods.

'Did you ever think you might have destroyed evidence by letting all these people in here?'

'I had to see if she needed help. How was I supposed to know she was dead?' Tears form in his eyes when he says the word dead. He allows his sorrow to show.

The cop closes the notebook and hands Bernard a piece of paper. 'Fill this out. At the moment, we're using every clipboard, thanks to the free-for-all. We have an entire room full of potential witnesses who haven't seen a thing.' The cop looks frustrated. 'You'll have to find something firm to write on.'

Bernard looks around the room with satisfaction. People are filling out paperwork left and right. They're hunkered over the questions as though this is a written exam, and they want to get all the answers correct.

'And stay on this side of the room,' the cop cautions him.

'What about my key?' Bernard says.

'We'll get it back to you.'

A woman enters and approaches the officer, 'I have to leave,' she says. 'I have an appointment.'

She's good-looking, about thirty, give or take, wild hair, buxomy. Bernard always liked his women full-figured. Most Arizona women look like toothpicks, like they'd snap if you squeezed them. Not this one.

He notices the dog. It looks like a black dust ball.

'You can go,' the cop says to her. 'I have your number, if I have any more questions.' She nods, stands in the entrance searching through her purse. Must be chock-full of whatever women carry with them, because it takes her a while. That dog is in there, too. She draws out sunglasses and puts them on, then swishes out with her bowwow dog. But first she touches the palm of her hand to the doorframe. Fingerprints.

The more, the merrier.

3

In the early 1900s, candy shops sold tiny bisque dolls. These half-inch, miniature dolls could be purchased for a penny-the same price as a piece of candy. Many of the penny dolls wore crepe paper dresses. Others were nude except for shoes and socks, so little girls could design and make their own clothing. The first penny dolls had mohair wigs or molded and painted blonde hair, and their eyes were painted bright blue. The smallest dolls were made with no movable parts. Larger dolls had wire- strung joints and heads that moved. Today, penny dolls are fun to collect and are still affordable, although they cost much more than a penny.

– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch Gretchen held a penny doll in her hand. A four-inch dollhouse doll with finely painted features, it wore a pale blue silk gown and a matching hair band in its blond molded hair. It had belonged to Charlie. The doll shop owner had asked Gretchen's mother to repair a damaged arm, and she had. Gretchen had planned to return it at the party, but the doll had been forgotten in her purse. Until now.

'The Scottsdale cop asked me if I believed in the chaos theory,' Gretchen said to her aunt from a stool at her worktable. Aunt Nina removed a pile of doll clothing from a chair and scooted lightly onto it. The bows in her hair matched perfectly with the pink and green swirls on her capris. Nina's precocious schnoodle, Tutu, also sported matching pink and green bows. The spoiled pet was bent on destroying the possibility of a long, pampered life by angering Wobbles, the three-legged cat who chose to live with Gretchen. Wobbles, Gretchen had found out early on, belonged to no one.

'The chaos theory,' Nina said, 'is a mathematic theory about finding order in chaos. I wonder if he's a New Ager like me.'

Gretchen bent over the doll, still studying it. 'I reached Mom. She's canceling the rest of her book tour and coming home tomorrow. I told her one of Charlie's display cases tipped over, upending a number of room boxes, and she's insisting she's going to restore the room boxes to their original forms.'

Gretchen heard a hiss from Wobbles and a yelp from Tutu. Nimrod, the teacup poodle, was sound asleep in his bed, oblivious to the disagreement. Nina lunged from her seat and distracted the two warriors. She shooed Wobbles out of the workshop, closed the door, and fussed over her darling pet.

Nina reassured herself that Tutu had survived her brush with death. 'Okay,' she said, 'where were we? What are these room boxes you were talking about?'

'They're usually little displays that contain a miniature scene. Like those dioramas kids make from shoe boxes, but much more sophisticated,' Gretchen explained. 'A living room with all the furnishings, for example, or the inside of a store, like a pet shop. All with very realistic miniature scale details.'