“We’ve already gone through the boxes,” Nina said, bringing Gretchen back to the moment. “It isn’t in any of them.”

“I know,” Gretchen said, scanning the room, her eyes sweeping over clay pottery and potted cacti. She bent and peered up the chimney, then pulled a small television set from a built-in shelf and checked behind it. She walked into the bathroom.

Nothing here except stationary bathroom fixtures and an overhead cabinet set above the sink. Two towels rolled up, stacked neatly inside the cabinet, entirely filled the space. Gretchen removed the towels and stared at the back of the cabinet. Her heart pounded, because she remembered everything about the cabana and she remembered the cabinet. Plenty of room inside, last time she visited, for a large stack of assorted towels, bath, hand, and face.

Her fingers pushed gently on the back of the cabinet, pressing and exploring, and she felt the wall give slightly. She pushed on a corner, and the backing moved.

Gretchen heard Nina gasp behind her as she forced her fingers under the false wall and pulled the backing toward her, exposing a compartment.

Like Nacho’s hidden home, the cabinet interior had been designed to deceive the casual observer, to dupe the unaware.

From behind the wall, Gretchen removed a package wrapped in fabric the size of the doll she sought, along with another parcel, smaller and denser.

Gretchen had found the French fashion doll.

The landing gear whined into place as the plane rapidly descended over the familiar desert landscape. Caroline braced herself and waited for the plane to touch down. Finding a flight home had been more difficult than she’d anticipated. The first flights she checked were filled to capacity. In July, she thought. Who flies willingly into Phoenix in July, where the day’s temperature, according to the pilot, hovered around one hundred and seventeen degrees?

Her plan was simple. A cab ride home, since she assumed her car had been properly disposed of. She would remove the hastily fashioned wall containing the French fashion doll and the accompanying pictures and inventory. Those items and the information stored on her computer were the only things she needed.

The Inspector had been caught unaware, and the end was near.

The picture hadn’t done her justice. A photograph, in Gretchen’s mind, was never able to re-create the splendor and beauty the photographer hoped to capture.

The doll’s delicate bisque features, unflawed in any way, shone with charm, her green cascading costume sumptuous and accurately portraying the dress fashion of her historical era. A circle and dot on the back of her neck established her Bru heritage. Gretchen marveled at the craftsmanship and at this rare opportunity to hold the doll in her hands.

Nina unwrapped the second package, and photographs spilled out onto the kitchen table.

Gretchen carefully laid the French fashion doll down on the sofa and picked up a sheet of paper. “Look,” she said. “Martha’s old inventory of dolls. And pictures of each.” She shuffled through the photographs, noting bisque dolls from various French and German makers, several fashion dolls, Bébés, character dolls, dolly-faced dolls, cloth dolls, wooden dolls. Gretchen was stunned by the number of quality dolls in the collection. Reading the inventory days ago didn’t have the same impact that viewing the pictures did.

She turned over a photograph. The doll’s written description, transposed from the inventory list, was scrawled across the back of the picture. Gretchen studied the date stamp on the back, the same as the date stamp on the back of the French fashion doll photograph. Picking up the inventory list, she scanned it, running her index finger along the entries. She stopped at a listing.

“Nina,” she said, breathlessly. “This inventory list is different from the one the police found in the workshop.”

“How do you know?” Nina asked. “What’s different?”

“Well, to begin with, the Bru French fashion doll is listed right here.” She dragged the paper across the table, careful to keep her finger placed next to the appropriate listing. “It wasn’t part of the other inventory. I remember commenting on that at the time. We thought Martha must have forgotten to update the list.”

While Nina looked it over, she hurried to her mother’s bedroom and returned with her copy of the inventory. A cross-comparison of the two lists exposed several inconsistencies, aside from a difference in the font used to print the lists. The list found in the cabana appeared to have been composed on an old-fashioned typewriter; the one found in the workshop was laser-printed from a computer word processor.

The fashion doll wasn’t the only doll excluded from the first list. “A china Madame Rohmer wearing a cream dress with blue feathers is also missing,” Gretchen said. “And a French Jumeau Bébé holding a Steiff monkey.” Gretchen continued along the list. “Here’s the Kewpie that Joseph said he purchased through an estate sale.”

Nina shuffled through the photographs. “I found pictures of those three,” she said, holding up the pictures.

“But why aren’t they included in the list from the workshop?” Gretchen said, confused. “Why two different lists?”

“Maybe the second list is a more current inventory,” Nina suggested.

Gretchen shook her head. “If that were true, the dolls’ descriptions missing from the first list would be entered together at the end of the second list. They aren’t. The list is in order by dates of purchase. The French fashion doll was purchased early in her collection. She wouldn’t have forgotten it.” Gretchen laid the two lists side by side. “No. Someone tampered with the first list, the one the police found in the workshop.”

Nina picked up the fashion doll and gently touched the white daisies on her straw hat.

Gretchen found another conflicting entry. “Here’s another one that didn’t appear on the first list. She read the entry out loud.“Jumeau Triste doll, circa. 1875, composition and jointed wood body, real hair wig, thirty-three inches.” She shuffled through the pictures, checking the back of each until she found the matching description. The dark-haired doll with the thick eyebrows must be worth a nice sum, she thought.

“Let’s assume that Nacho planted the parian doll and the inventory list to throw suspicion on my mother,” Gretchen said to Nina. “For some reason he wanted the police to view her as the prime suspect, so he hid the dolls and made an anonymous call to the police.”

“There isn’t any other explanation, since we know she’s innocent,” Nina said.

“Right,” Gretchen said. “And let’s assume that Martha Williams saved her entire collection after all.”

“That’s a stretch,” Nina said. “Look at how she lived. She wouldn’t have lived that way if she had thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of dolls.”

“She would have lived that way if she was emotionally disturbed, and the indications are pretty strong that she had emotional issues. She also had a drinking problem. And she was obsessed with her dolls.”

“Okay, let’s pretend that she managed to keep her dolls when she lost her house. Then what?”