Janice hesitated. She must have seen the seriousness on Gretchen's face because she said, 'Let me turn the stove off and get the kids.'
'Don't bother knocking,' Gretchen said, walking away.
'Come right in when you get there.'
'Give me five minutes.'
Gretchen was cautious about approaching her mother's house, careful to make sure the doors and windows hadn't been wrenched open. She walked around to the back of the house and opened the gate leading to the pool. Nothing seemed tampered with, at least on first sight. She hoped she was astute enough to detect sights of forced entry. As she opened the front door, Nimrod perked up, and his tail thumped against her side. Gretchen relaxed. He might be pint-sized, but he was street smart. If danger was close by, he'd be the first to announce it. He'd be the first to know.
The second to know, actually. Wobbles had intuitive skills Nimrod could never touch, but Wobbles wouldn't even think of Gretchen. He'd protect his own feline skin by slinking into a private hole someplace safe and leaving her to fend for herself.
She relaxed further when Wobbles greeted her at the door.
After letting herself in, she turned on lights, greeted her two favorite animals, and started the computer in the workshop, shoving piles of doll clothing and paperwork to the side to make room.
Glancing up at Camelback Mountain through the workshop window, she saw twilight approaching. Shadows fell across the face of the mountain as the last stragglers made their way down to the trailhead. They looked like small, black spiders from this distance.
Gretchen shuddered, remembering the scorpion found in Nimrod's traveling purse and her own close escape from the dreaded arachnid.
By the time the computer booted, Janice and her kids had shown up in the workshop. The boys, still too young to understand their stereotyped future of imposed roleplaying in society, lit up at the sight of all the dolls. Gretchen settled them at a table with dolls and clothes and left them to dress and undress them at will.
They promptly took all the clothes off every doll.
'What a fascinating room,' Janice said, wandering from corner to corner, picking through the open bins and handling some of the dolls and their accessories. 'It must be a treat to go to work every day.'
Gretchen laughed. 'It's like working in a candy store but without the temptation and added calories. I was a graphic designer when I lived in Boston. This is my mother's profession. I'm helping her now that the business has taken off. It worked out well for both of us.'
Janice held up a Barbie doll that needed a new leg. The toes of the damaged leg had been chewed off. 'Pet problems?' she said.
'Happens all the time. Dogs love to chew on plastic dolls.'
Gretchen sat down at the computer. 'Come and look at these pictures,' she said. 'I'd like to know if any of the people in these pictures are familiar to you.'
Janice sat down at the chair in front of the computer screen and glanced at the display of one of Peter's photographs. After a puzzled glance at Gretchen and scrolling through some of the pictures, she looked up.
'This must be about the cop yesterday. The one who was at your house, talking to Lilly Beth.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Because…' Janice pointed at the screen. 'That might be him.'
Janice went home to finish making dinner, dragging two boys who wouldn't leave until Gretchen gave each of them an old doll that she had been saving for parts. It was a small price to pay for the valuable information she had received from Janice. Gretchen turned off the overhead lights to reduce any glare on the screen and stared at the photograph. The cop was out of focus, on the periphery of the action that Peter was intent on capturing. The officer must have realized that the photographer was shooting toward him because he had turned his face away. His movement blurred part of his body and he had one arm raised as if to ward off a blow.
Or that could be Gretchen's imagination.
Something about the man seemed familiar to her now that she was really studying him. The way he stood, the tilt of his head… think.
Imagine him without the uniform.
Gretchen put her hand up to the screen and covered his body so only the back of his head was exposed. Nina had accused her of inflexibility, insinuating that she couldn't see auras because of her inability to let go of what she thought reality should be.
Feeling slightly ridiculous, she found her purse and put on the aura glasses. Returning to the computer, she saw nothing different except for a change in the colors created by the indigo lenses.
She wondered if Nina would tell her that no one could see auras emanating from pictures. She also wondered if Nina made up the rules as she went along.
Gretchen removed the glasses and thought about another of Nina's comments. She needed to use her third eye. She sighed heavily before going back to the picture. Then she saw it. The bushy eyebrows. In the picture his hair was a glossy black, not white, as it had been during the auction.
At the time, Gretchen had thought him odd with white hair and black eyebrows, but suddenly it made sense. It's much harder to disguise eyebrows than hair. He wasn't nearly as old as he'd pretended while bidding so fervently on the Kewpie dolls.
The cop in Peter's photograph was Duanne Wilson. Was Duanne Wilson impersonating a police officer? Or was he actually a cop? Gretchen didn't really care whether he was or not.
She really didn't care if her third eye had helped her or not.
Because she knew what had happened, and that's all that mattered.
She felt surprisingly calm as she stared at the man she knew had to be the killer. But why so many deaths? And why hadn't he been seen?
Dressed in a cop's uniform, that's how he'd done it. He could kill Ronny Beam in broad daylight without witnesses. He could bide his time using the Phoenix Police Department as camouflage. And Peter must have let him into his apartment because of the uniform.
Brett was the biggest puzzle. Why push him in front of a car? Unless he was part of the scheme. What if Brett had told Duanne to bid on the Kewpies, knowing all along that one was concealed in the Ginny box? Maybe he had tried to steal the Kewpie for himself. It was a possibility. Then there was Ronny Beam. He planned to write a story about the diamonds. That would give the police a motive in the investigation of Percy's murder. If the reporter hadn't dug through Chiggy's personal boxes, he'd probably be alive today, although his big mouth may have doomed him anyway.
Peter Finch had taken a picture of Duanne in his uniform. When she looked again at the photograph, Gretchen could see more clearly that Duanne was attempting to hide from the camera. Peter had been attacked and left for dead because of the pictures. That expained why Duanne had removed Peter's computer and camera equipment after shooting him. She still thought it was more than a coincidence that most of the men who had been at Chiggy's house before the auction were now dead. Had Duanne been there? How else would he have known who his targets were?
Peter had told her who had been present before the auction started: Peter, of course, Howie, Brett, Ronny, and Steve. That was it. No one else…
Gretchen saw the light for the first time.
Of course! There must have been one more person at the house. The killer would've blended into the background, but he was there all the time. The mover.
None of the others would have known who he was. Only Chiggy. But she hadn't recognized him because her eyesight was as bad as a rhino's.
He must also have been the person who wrote Chiggy the letter with the veiled threats. What had it said?
