left side of the road, coyotes appeared in the Impala’s headlights, gaunt, running loosely in a pack, eyes red and glaring. Their heads swung in unison to look at the car, but they continued moving on through the spears of rain.
The windshield wipers slapped against the window in high gear. Occasionally, Nina pulled over to the side of the road until visibility returned. At times, all they could see ahead of them were taillights and streams of water rushing down the windshield.
April’s modest home came into view through the descending gloom. Nina parked across the street and killed the lights, and Gretchen saw April’s car parked in the carport. Through the rapidly fogging windshield of the Impala they watched an undulating glow behind April’s front curtain.
“She’s watching television in the dark,” Nina said, rubbing her palm in a circle on the driver’s window to clear her view. “This isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”
Gretchen clutched the key. “Only one of us needs to go,” she said, watching April’s window for movement.
“You can,” Nina said, looking away.
“Who’s idea was this in the first place?”
Rain hammered on the roof of the car, reminding Gretchen of one Boston hailstorm so intense that it pounded circular dents into the hood of Steve’s Porche.
“I have an umbrella,” Nina said, reaching onto the backseat floor and pulling out a long white umbrella with pink polka dots. She handed it to Gretchen.
“Pink and white? How can I hide with this?” Gretchen cast a dubious expression Nina’s way. She tossed the umbrella into the backseat and quickly jumped out into the rain. Sometimes, she thought, you have to take a deep breath and plunge in, like a dive into frigid water. The longer you wait, the harder it is to go through with it.
Her flip-flops splashed through sheets of water, and her hair hung from her face in dripping strands even before she made it to the first porch step. She clomped under an overhang and flattened against the brick wall, wiping water from her face and listening to the sound of the television, muted by the pounding rain. The light through the window flickered.
She edged over and risked a peak between the curtains. April’s enormous frame covered her sagging sofa, and in the glow from the screen, Gretchen could tell that she was fast asleep, eyes closed, mouth hanging wide open.
She wiggled back to the front door, careful to stay under the protection of the eave, although she wasn’t sure why she bothered, since she was soaked to the skin. She tried to slide the key into the lock.
It didn’t fit.
In one mad rush, she lunged back to the car. Nina, encased in fogged windows, searched Gretchen’s face. “Well?” she said.
“It isn’t April’s key.”
“You didn’t try the back door.”
“The back door?”
“We have to be thorough,” Nina said.
“We?” Gretchen was annoyed by Nina’s use of a plural noun to describe a singular act. It wasn’t as though Nina was making a significant contribution. “We?” she said again. “Remember what you said? We are going to slink around in the rain like a rattlesnake. Your turn.”
“Don’t be silly,” Nina said, crossing her arms in protest. “You’re already wet. And rattlesnakes know better than to slink around in the rain.”
Gretchen climbed up on the seat and reached into the back for the umbrella. “April’s sleeping. I’m through slinking.”
She made her way carefully over the AstroTurf in April’s yard and circled around the back. Lightning struck nearby, too close for comfort, and Gretchen hoped her umbrella wasn’t the tallest structure in the vicinity. Not a single tree or large shrub grew near April’s yard. Aside from an antenna on top of the house, she held the only other lightning rod around. With her recent streak of bad luck, electrocution was a distinct possibility.
She hurried to the back door and transferred the umbrella to her left hand, hooking it with her thumb, which protruded from the cast. The umbrella swayed and tipped out of her hand, falling to the ground. Abandoning it, she fumbled in her pocket for the key, retrieved it, and tried it in the lock. It didn’t fit.
As she bent in the rain to pick up the umbrella and make a speedy exit, she heard the back door squeak open. She straightened. April’s face loomed in front of her.
“Thought I heard something out here,” April said. “What you coming to the back door for when the front’s so much closer? And look at you, you’re soaked through. Come on in.” April held the door open.
“I’m too wet,” Gretchen said. “I’ll come back later.”
“Nonsense, girl, I’ll get you a towel. Well, come on.”
While April went for the towel, Gretchen stood in front of the window, hoping Nina was paying attention and had spotted her. She turned and swept her eyes over the clutter in the room. Miniature dolls scattered over the tables, empty bags of chips, a collection of soda cans on the coffee table.
Overnight bag still on the floor with its contents thrown carelessly on top.
Gretchen realized that the overnight bag could have been on the floor a long time. Judging from April’s nonexistent housekeeping skills, her earlier assumption that the bag had been used recently could have been wrong.
“How are you feeling?” she asked when April handed her the towel.
“This valley fever has me feeling awful,” April said, coughing and sinking back into the sofa. She looked ashen and languid, and Gretchen couldn’t help but believe that she really was ill. April probably did suffer from Phoenix’s infamous lung infection. She hadn’t been away on some furtive mission after all.
While toweling dry the best she could, Gretchen told April everything-about the break-in, Martha’s bag, the key, and the hung doll. As she talked, April sat up straighter.
“Hanging a doll is scary business,” she said. “You better go back to Boston until this is cleared up. You might be in danger.”
“Someone is trying to scare me off. I can’t let them win. I need to know who else you told about Martha’s bag.”
“Not a soul,” April said. “I’m not a blabbermouth.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, April. I don’t care if you did tell everyone you see, I’m just rounding up suspects.”
“Well, you’ll have to look someplace else.” April blew her nose. “I have something to tell you that might help, though. I finally got a look at that doll the police found in your mother’s workshop. I’m proud of my appraisal skills and consider myself one of the best around. I base most of my analysis on market research like actual sales from shops and shows and on what’s hot at the moment. Right now its all-bisque dolls, but that parian, even though it’s not on the hot list, is so rare, I took awhile to estimate its worth.”
Gretchen gently dabbed the towel on her wet arms and legs. “What did you decide?”
“The doll has a unique hairdo, for starters. Real elaborate. And it has flowers and jewels molded in the bisque. Pierced ears, too. The other appraiser said three thousand, but my guess is it’s worth an easy five thousand and could sell for a lot more. And I’m being conservative. One fine doll, that one.”
“Because of her repair business, my mother works on rare and valuable dolls all the time.” Gretchen folded the towel over a chair and returned to the window. “That’s how she makes her living. She isn’t a thief.”
“Nobody said she was.” April coughed. “Martha’s the one I’d peg as a thief.”
“Martha was an enigma,” Gretchen said. “From what people tell me she kept everyone at a distance. She had few confidantes, if any. No one really knew her.”
April grunted. “A nasty woman. She used to call me Chubby Checker. Hey, Chubby, she’d call out every time she saw me, and then she’d laugh. She had nicknames for all of us. Bonnie was Pippi Longstocking because of her stiff hair. She called your mother Cruella De Vil from that Dalmation movie, because of her silver hair. Right to our faces, too.”
“Alcoholism is a disease,” Gretchen said, remembering Julia’s own complaints about Martha’s name-calling. The Tasmanian Devil was Martha’s term for Julia, she’d said, sounding hurt. “She probably couldn’t help herself.”
“There’s no excuse for cruelty.”
