carried with him. She had his number. He lured her in with feigned concern and a dazzling smile, then zapped her with the current turn of affairs, which was never advantageous for her. She cringed to think of what he had to say this time.
Yet she had to know.
She panicked briefly when she thought of the French fashion doll’s trunk and the assorted pictures lying in plain view in the workshop, but then remembered his phobia.
He’d be the last one to suggest they meet in a workshop brimming with dolls and assorted doll parts.
“Since you seem to thrive on exercising in horrific heat,” he said. “I thought you might like to take a walk. As long as we don’t go that way.” He motioned up at Camelback Mountain. “Uphill and hot don’t mix well with me, but there are two kids selling lemonade down the street, and I’d like to buy you one. My treat.”
Gretchen slid through the door and closed it behind her. “Sounds like just the thing.”
They walked up the street, turned the corner, and bought two lemonades from the young entrepreneurs. The sun, slowly descending in the west, filled the sky with streaks of brilliant orange. Gretchen wondered where the day had gone and checked her watch. Six thirty. It would be dark in an hour. They started walking back to the house.
“Any word from your mother?” Matt asked, sipping from a straw.
“No,” Gretchen said. “Sometimes I’m filled with dread thinking she’s dead and will never return. Other times I think she’s okay and expect her to walk in the door any minute. I can’t understand how she could simply disappear without contacting me.”
“Your feelings aren’t unusual,” Matt said. “In my job I see people all the time who are dealing with the same issues you are. Besides, I have irrefutable proof that your mother is alive.”
Blood rushed to Gretchen’s head, and her heart began to beat so loud she thought he would hear it. “Tell me.”
“Caroline Birch requested a credit card transaction for a large sum of money. So large that the credit card service required verbal approval from her. We traced the call to a motel near O’Hare International Airport.”
“She went to Chicago?” Gretchen was incredulous.
“She purchased a doll online for an exorbitant amount of money.”
Anger flashed through Gretchen. After the relief of knowing her mother was safe, Gretchen felt an intense anger toward her. “She’s out buying dolls while I’m worried sick about her?”
“Everything I’m telling you right now is confidential,” Matt said. “I’m giving you a heads-up because of our family friendships, but you can’t interfere with the arrest process.”
“Aren’t you worried that I’ll find a way to warn her?”
“She’s on a plane as we speak,” Matt said, glancing at his watch. “She can’t receive phone calls in the air, and she’ll be landing in less than an hour. Two plainclothes agents are waiting at the gate, and they have orders to arrest her quietly. We don’t want a spectacle in the airport.”
Gretchen felt light-headed, and her steps slowed.
“This is her opportunity to clear her name,” he said quietly.
A squad car slid along and parked in front of the house, and an officer got out and hitched his belt.
“He has orders to make sure you stay in the house until further notice.” Matt nodded to the officer.
“You can’t hold me hostage,” Gretchen said, aghast. “This isn’t a police state.”
“Arrest her if she tries to leave,” he said to the officer and hurried to his car. “I have to go to the airport to meet your mother when her plane lands.”
The Inspector, Gretchen thought, watching the blue Chevy make a U-turn. Isn’t that what the English called their detectives?
Gretchen’s eyes were riveted to the empty workbench. The French fashion doll, the trunk, the inventory list, and all the pictures were gone. That explained why the patio doors stood wide open and hot air billowed in. Someone had entered the house through the back.
The air-conditioning unit whirled into motion to compensate for the increase in temperature. Then Gretchen saw it. She picked up a rumpled piece of paper lying where the fashion doll had lain a short while ago.
Meet me on the mountain. You know where. I’ll explain everything. And hurry.
Mom
Gretchen felt an enormous weight crushing her chest and concentrated on breathing slowly. The handwriting appeared to belong to her mother, although obviously rushed. How could Matt have been so wrong about her time of arrival? She must have eluded his efforts to spring the trap by taking an earlier flight.
Gretchen sprinted to the bedroom, grabbed her binoculars, and returned to the workshop window. The few hikers on the mountain, aware that the sun was rapidly setting, descended from the heights and began traveling earthward. Only one climber continued upward, and Gretchen sighted in the binoculars for a clearer view.
The departing sun’s shadows splayed across the red cliffs of Camelback Mountain, darkening Gretchen’s visibility through the binoculars. But she made out one distinguishing feature. Her mother’s shoulder-length silver hair gleamed in a ray of light as she climbed with her back to Gretchen. The light shifted away, the color in her hair faded, but her daughter had recognized her in that brief moment.
Gretchen struggled to understand her mother’s actions.
Why did she take the doll and climb the mountain? What was going on?
The only path to the truth was up. She had to meet her mother and demand an explanation, had to hear her reason for running away. Then she had to convince her to turn herself in. With a good lawyer and Gretchen beside her, they would overcome this obstacle just as they had survived the cancer scare.
She remembered the police officer stationed outside. The only way out of the house would be through the backyard and over the adobe wall. Gretchen sized up the wall, a good six feet high, and frantically looked around for something to stand on or to climb with.
A kiva log ladder in the living room with a decorative runner draped over its rungs would work perfectly. She flung the cotton runner aside and hurried past the pool with the ladder in her good hand.
Bracing it against the wall, she climbed the rungs, then, with incredible effort, given her broken wrist, she pulled her body the rest of the way up and dropped over the other side. She loped up to the trailhead and passed the posted safety warnings while scanning the ledges above her.
The last of the straggling hikers passed as she veered to the left and began the steep climb up Summit Trail. The only thing on her mind was her reunion with her mother.
Twilight descended quickly in the desert, but Gretchen’s eyesight adjusted readily to the change. Perhaps her mother didn’t realize the dangers of being on the mountain after dark. They would have time to descend safely as long as she hadn’t gone all the way to the top. Gretchen doubted that. The few times they had hiked the mountain together, their goal had been a point on the enormous boulder. The same one that attracted all the tourists and offered a splendid view of Phoenix and the valley below.
The boulder towered ahead, rising like an obelisk before her. She scurried up until she stood on its highest point. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Right when she decided she must have been wrong about their meeting place, she heard a voice softly call her name.
She twirled around on the ledge and stared with dawning terror at the image before her.
It wasn’t her mother standing back in the shadows of the mountain.
Too late, she remembered where she had seen one of the dolls in the picture.
27
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the Phoenix Dollers for their overwhelming contributions to this book, especially April Lehman, doll appraiser extraordinaire, Bonnie Albright, who manages to keep the club members on task and supplied a
