6

Nina teetered on the edge of hysteria. She stomped back and forth on the Mexican tile that bordered Caroline’s swimming pool and had come precariously close to tipping into it on her last turn. Tutu followed on her heels, and Gretchen suspected that the latest dog trainee in the poodle-embroidered purse on her shoulder would soon succumb to motion sickness.

“Nothing makes sense anymore.” Nina continued her frenzied pacing. “Something’s happened to your mother. I can feel it.”

“She isn’t dead,” Gretchen said, finally broaching the inevitable subject.

Nina, her lower lip trembling, whirled. “We don’t know that.”

“Yes, we do. I searched the mountain and didn’t find her. No one has discovered her body.”

“She could have been murdered, too,” Nina cried. “And her body…”

“No, she’s alive and hiding,” Gretchen said firmly.

“I refuse to believe that my sister killed Martha Williams. And what do the police think? That she killed Martha for a doll?” Nina snorted. “Please. They need to come up with a better motive than that.”

“We need to find her and the French fashion doll.”

“All these different dolls are confusing me. The Parisian doll and the French doll. Aren’t they the same thing?”

“Parian, not Parisian. Parian refers to the type of finish given to the porcelain. A parian’s face is white. Tell me what happened to Martha’s doll collection. Where is it?”

Nina, the dramatist, flung her arms out wide, then bent and slapped them on her thighs, causing the purse trainee to duck inside for cover. “Martha wouldn’t tell us. April Lehman even offered to buy several dolls from her collection at fair market prices. In fact, they had a little falling-out over that. Martha refused to sell until it was too late, and I think the bank auctioned them off with the rest of her possessions, including the house. She really did lose everything.”

Gretchen watched the black pup venture to poke its curly head out of the purse, its ears flattened against its head.

“Give the little curly mutt a break, Nina. It’s going to upchuck in the purse.”

Nina gasped. “This isn’t a mutt. He’s a teacup poodle.”

She released the tiny poodle. It shook its body and ran off around the pool with Tutu. At ten pounds Tutu towered monumentally over the puppy. “Nimrod will be with me for the next two days. His owner is out of town, and he’s in immersion training. He loves his purse already.”

Gretchen sat down on the edge of the pool and slid one bare foot along the surface. “I couldn’t find a work order for the doll the police confiscated,” she said. Her mother kept pink copies of all her work orders in the top drawer of the workbench. “The records aren’t well-organized, though.”

“Your mother is rather disorganized. That doesn’t mean much.” Nina glanced at her watch. “It’s almost eleven. We’ll miss our hair appointment if we don’t leave right now. Tutu. Nimrod. Let’s go.”

Nina packed up her entourage while Gretchen checked on Wobbles, who had disappeared during the search but reappeared briefly to voice his objections to the intrusion as soon as the police left. She found him curled in a ball in the center of her mother’s bed, sound asleep.

She carefully secured the house, not about to forget to lock up again.

Nina headed for Scottsdale Road, zipping through traffic, making up for lost time. “I should cancel my hair appointment and help you. After all, I’m the one who insisted that you come to Phoenix.”

“It’s absolutely fine,” Gretchen assured her, wanting some personal space to consider the problem on her own. “You can help me this afternoon.”

“Matt Albright has a dreadful fear of dolls,” Nina said, swerving into another lane. “There’s even a name for it-pediophobia.”

“That explains why he backed away whenever someone approached with the doll.” Gretchen remembered his discomfort. “And that explains why he wouldn’t enter the workshop.”

“Bonnie had to keep all her dolls in a spare bedroom with the door closed.” Nina screeched to a halt at a red light and turned to check on the dogs in the backseat, making sure no one had fallen forward.

“It started when he was a young boy. Every time he saw one of her dolls, he’d feel faint and nauseous,” Nina continued. “He had trouble breathing and broke out in a sweat. I saw it happen once, and it was awful. We could never have meetings at her house. And she’s the president of the club.”

Gretchen suddenly thought of the French fashion doll’s shawl in Nina’s trunk. “It’s a good thing you have the shawl. What if the police had found it at the house?”

“A little piece of fabric? It wouldn’t have meant a thing to them,” Nina said. “Besides, you said the Bru and the trunk weren’t on the list.”

“Which makes it more puzzling. We have to find out why she had doll accessories and the picture with her when she died.”

Nina brought the car to a stop under a sign reading Scottsdale Solutions and opened the car door. “You have at least two hours, maybe three. I’ll call you on your cell when we are almost finished. Can I leave Nimrod with you?”

Gretchen reluctantly looked at the miniature black fur ball sitting in the backseat. Hearing his name, Nimrod tipped his head to the side and took a step forward, wagging his tail. Gretchen looked doubtful as she walked around to the driver’s side of the car and slipped in.

“I wee-weed him before we left your mother’s house,” Nina said, as if that would make all the difference.

“I’d rather not,” Gretchen said, attempting a firm no, but barely managing the watered-down version that always begged a challenge.

“He won’t be a bother,” Nina insisted, clipping a leash on Tutu’s collar and standing aside while the canine jumped to the ground. “Oh, I almost forgot to leave you his poodle purse.”

Wouldn’t that be a serious fashion faux pas? Gretchen thought. A dog without his purse.

Nina tugged the dog purse from her shoulder and quickly threw it on Gretchen’s lap. “Have fun.”

Gretchen and Nimrod pulled away and turned toward the center of the city of Phoenix, situated on the opposite side of Camelback Mountain. Three hours didn’t give her much time. She drove to the older part of downtown, west of Central Avenue, and slowly cruised up and down each street, moving to First Avenue then Second Avenue in a quest to find the homeless man.

Her encounter with him on the street in front of the restaurant wasn’t chance, and Gretchen didn’t think he was a ranting madman. She was convinced that he had a compelling reason to threaten her, and she needed to know why.

The midday heat had driven most of the homeless to seek shelter from the sun, but a few directionless people wandered the sidewalks. She weaved through the endless lines of cars. Phoenix traffic was perpetually in gridlock every hour of the day including late evening rush hour.

Gretchen didn’t see the man.

After several passes, she eased to the curb, reached in the backseat, and lifted Nimrod into the front seat. His tiny feet spun in anticipation, and once she opened the purse he lunged eagerly inside.

“You’re an old pro at this, aren’t you,” she said, adjusting dog and purse on her shoulder.