“Are you feeling well enough to work out tomorrow?” Gretchen asked.
“Doctor says I should get a little exercise as long as I go slow and don’t overdo.”
“Good. I’ll see you at Curves.”
April shifted her weight and slung a leg onto the coffee table. “Speaking of Curves. It’s a social event for our little group. We’ve been working out together for the last year or so, and we touch on a lot of subjects while we try to shed some fat.” She patted her midsection and sighed. “I suppose I’d lose some weight if I’d watch what I eat, but I work up a real appetite after all that exercise. They have a diet plan I’m going to look into.”
“You’d feel better,” Gretchen agreed.
“What I’m trying to say and taking the long way to say it is that Bonnie’s been dropping hints about Martha’s dolls. She knows more than she’s letting on.”
“What kind of hints?”
“She says things like, what if Martha stashed her collection someplace. Or, what if some of the Phoenix Dollers were hiding Martha’s dolls for her. Bonnie’s the club gossip, and she has a secret she can’t hardly keep. Give her a little shove, and she’ll spill.”
April’s face turned rosy red when she realized what she had said, and she lifted a pudgy hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. After what happened to Martha I shouldn’t be telling you to give her a little shove.” April reached for a box of tissues. “Bonnie’s always up real late. She won’t mind if you stop by right now. Just don’t call her before noon. She’s a late sleeper.”
Gretchen lifted the umbrella and worked it through the front door. “Thanks for the information, April.”
“Let me know what you find out,” April called out. “And say hi to Nina out in the car.”
Caroline wondered if she had made a mistake by placing an early bid and alerting other bidders to her presence. Web traffic through the doll listing was extremely heavy. As antique dolls became more difficult to find, their worth increased by volumes, and the bidding for the French Jumeau Bebe proved it.
The bidding war that Caroline had hoped to avoid had begun. The current bid flashed across the screen for the doll with the unique eyebrows designed by the world-famous French designer: $12,000.
Every doll collector yearned for at least one Jumeau, but few could afford to purchase a doll selling for thousands. At this price, how many different collectors were actually bidding? Two? Four? Certainly no more than ten.
Caroline wondered how long the seller would risk exposure. A stolen doll. A murdered collector. The seller must be motivated by uncontrollable greed or bold arrogance. Or desperation.
Using both hands she pulled her silver hair away from her face and neck and twirled it on her head. She gazed outside. Soon the planes overhead would cease flying for the night, only to start up again a few hours later at sunrise. Orange lighting from the parking lot shone into the drab room, and she could hear a television playing in the room next to hers.
Caroline rose and closed the heavy, smoke-laden drapes. She felt a small shiver of excitement, tasted the thrill of the auction on her tongue. She welcomed these new emotions, which until now had been masked under her own sense of desperation. Refreshing after days of extended panic. Pretend you’re in Vegas, she thought, where time is meaningless. Where light and dark merge into an insignificant gray.
Good and evil. Light and dark. Were these and concepts such as justice and retribution subjective in nature? Caroline had always been able to see both sides of an issue, empathize with each point of view, rarely taking a firm stance. Everything a hazy shade of melded colors. Until now.
“Play to win,” she whispered aloud. “At closing time, you must be the highest bidder.”
The motel phone rang shrilly, the harsh and unexpected sound startling her, and, after a pause to still her pounding heart, she picked up the receiver.
A voice spoke soothingly to her in flawless French, and she smiled.
“You know I don’t speak French,” she said.
“Take a small break and eat something, cherie. What can I do for you?”
“Stall,” Caroline said. “I need more time.”
22
A new hobbyist interested in collecting dolls should start out by joining a local doll club. There are as many types of clubs as there are different dolls. You can join a Barbie club or an antique doll club, but a general doll club that welcomes all types of collectors will present the most variety. Clubs offer educational opportunities as well as experienced advice and an appreciative audience to share new acquisitions with. Active doll club members develop durable bonds and consider themselves part of a large extended family.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
Bonnie Albright sat at her kitchen table combing out her red wig and looking nothing like the presiding president of the Phoenix Dollers club. The small table overflowed with hair rollers in various sizes, bobby pins, a pile of brushes and combs, and a can of heavy-duty hair spray.
Gretchen tried not to stare at the mass of tangled red hair sitting on its wig stand or at the tight red wig cap covering Bonnie’s head. She tried not to stare at her eyebrows, or rather her lack of eyebrows, since the penciled lines had been scrubbed away.
Nina’s mouth hung open. “I never guessed you wore a wig. All these years…” Her voice trailed off.
“You should have called first,” Bonnie said, annoyed, tufts of steel gray poking out from the wig cap, lips thin and pale without lipstick.
She spritzed the inside of the wig with Lysol, and Gretchen looked away.
Kewpie dolls lined a shelf in the dining room. Classic Kewpies, Action Kewpies waving and crawling, one of Kewpie’s companion dogs-Doodle Dog-a Kewpie bank, and two Kewpie Thinker paperweights.
Teddy bears in every imaginable pose overflowed from bookcases in the adjacent living room. Nina had been right about teddy bear collectors. The bears resembled Bonnie with their big red bows and colorful faces.
“We were in the neighborhood and need to talk to you,” Nina said, struggling to compose her facial features and avoid hurting Bonnie’s feelings. “We had a break-in tonight, and someone hung one of Caroline’s Shirley Temple dolls with a noose and poured red paint over it to look like blood.”
“Oh my,” Bonnie said, her hand slowing as it worked the rat-tail comb through the wig, picking out tangles.
“We need to know who else knew that we had Martha’s bag,” Gretchen said. “The burglar took the bag.”
“I didn’t tell a soul,” Bonnie said, her knuckles white around the comb.
Nina pulled a chair out and sat down. She leaned across the table. “I’ve known you a long time, Bonnie, and you don’t keep secrets well. You must have called someone, told someone.”
Bonnie continued combing, looking down at the wig. “Do you know why I wear a wig? Because I’m practically bald on top of my head, that’s why. Just like a man. You know how embarrassing that has been for me. And wearing a wig requires special attention. I have to watch out for rotating fans and revolving doors. I live in constant fear that my wig will fly off and expose me for what I really am.”
Nina rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and Gretchen waited patiently beside her.
“I’m sure it’s been hard for you,” Nina said, sliding her eyes back to Bonnie. “But we are talking about breaking and entering and destruction of property, and we need answers.”
“I kept my wig a secret, and I kept Martha’s bag a secret, too.”
“We never asked you to keep it a secret,” Gretchen said gently. “You can tell anyone you want to tell. Why did you think it was a secret?”
Bonnie jabbed the wig on her head, roughly adjusting it, the hair still matted like a Barbie doll’s crown of knots after making the rounds through a group of toddlers. A trapped look formed in Bonnie’s eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone because Martha had my key and I’ve been trying to get it back and I thought it might be in that bag and I didn’t
