22

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 want anyone else to know. There. Are you happy?” The words came fast, spilling over each other in one long breath.

Gretchen gaped at Bonnie, wondering if she had heard correctly. Detective Albright’s mother? What surprised Gretchen the most was the ease with which they had forced the truth from her. Bonnie crumbled with little resistance. Detective work might be easier than she originally thought.

Nina found her voice first. “You broke in, stole the bag, and hung Caroline’s doll?”

Bonnie held her hands up in protest. “No, of course not. I don’t know why anyone would do that. I wanted to get my key back before it surfaced and I became a suspect, too. Matty would be so angry. But I never went to Caroline’s house. You have to believe me.”

“I do,” Nina said, and Gretchen wondered if Nina’s aura analysis skills were working again. She also wondered what color Bonnie’s aura would be. Red, she guessed, to match her hair and teddy bears’ bows. “The key was in the bag, Bonnie. But why would anyone else steal it?” Nina asked.

No one said anything.

An idea dawned on Gretchen, and she wanted to thump her head with her cast. What little mind she had left could fit inside the French fashion doll’s beaded purse. Dense. Dense. Dense. “We didn’t tell anyone what we found in the bag,” she said. “So maybe the thief expected to find something else. The strangled doll might have been an angry afterthought.”

Bonnie nodded her snarled head in agreement. “That makes sense.”

“It’s possible,” Nina said.

“Tell us what happened, Bonnie,” Gretchen said. “Why did Martha have a key to your house?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“We promise,” Nina said.

Bonnie looked at Gretchen. “You, too?”

“Me, too.”

“About a week before Martha died,” Bonnie began, “she came to my house, disheveled and agitated. At first, I thought she’d been drinking, and I had reservations about even letting her in, much less doing her a favor. But Martha insisted repeatedly that someone was stealing from her and that she needed a safe place to store something that meant a lot to her.”

“She wouldn’t tell you what it was?” Gretchen asked.

“She said she would tell me when she brought it over. That she had to find it first. She said she needed several hiding spots, not just one, because one hadn’t worked before. I felt sorry for her. She cried and carried on like her closest family member had died, and in a weak moment, I told her where I keep a spare key in case she came back when I was gone. Behind that little Hummel picture inside the screen porch, I told her. That’s where I keep it. Or kept it.”

“What happened?” Nina asked.

“A few days later, the key disappeared. I didn’t find anything hidden in the house, but she was the only person I ever told about the key, so I know she took it. Then after she died, I forgot all about it until Matty started saying he thought she had been murdered, and by the time I remembered, the opportunity to tell him about it seemed to have passed. You know how sometimes you put off telling someone something important, and the longer you wait, the harder it gets until you don’t tell them at all?” Bonnie sniffed, and tears formed around the rims of her eyes.

“That’s why you went to the Rescue Mission?” Gretchen asked. “To find Martha’s friends and to retrieve your key?”

Bonnie wrung her hands. “No one there would help me. It scared me to think that some homeless people might have a key to my house. And I didn’t want Matty to know how foolish I’d been.”

Nina cupped Bonnie’s hands in her own. “You have to tell your son what you just told us.”

“I did. I told him all about it. Well, except for the key. But I told him everything Martha said to me about her dolls.” Bonnie glanced sharply at Gretchen. “It certainly doesn’t clear Caroline. In fact, it casts more suspicion on her.”

Gretchen thought the same thing. Bonnie’s story only confirmed the existence of dolls worth stealing, worth killing for. If only Martha had mentioned a name, things might have turned out differently. Her furtive actions and evasive words could destroy an innocent person and allow the guilty one to escape.