Dolled Up for Murder (8 page)

“And now our Legal Eagle, Pennington Moreau, will discuss investor rights,” the TV anchor said.

“Thanks, Mitch,” Penn said. “There's never a good time to lose money, and everyone knows that investing carries risks, but losing money because an investment didn't pan out as you'd hoped is a different animal altogether than losing money because of fraud.

“A senior employee in the district attorney's office told me that Alice Michaels, the owner of ADM Financial Advisers, was about to be indicted for fraud. The allegations state that she'd been running a Ponzi scheme for at least the last decade. As you may know, a Ponzi scheme is a scam that pays returns to investors, not from profits, dividends, or interest earned, but from the monies they themselves paid into the company or from the monies other investors paid into the company.

“While individuals must take responsibility for their investment decisions, they can't be held responsible if they don't have the facts or if they were lied to. Sorting out who knew what and when and who told whom what and when is always complex. The situation got even more complicated today. Alice Michaels, who was a friend of mine, died. She was shot, murdered, in Prescott's Antiques and Auctions' parking lot. Alice had been at Prescott's to buy antique dolls for her stellar collection. So what does all of this mean to you, if you're one of the more than two hundred investors who lost money with ADM Financial Advisers?

“In all probability, if Alice had been found guilty of fraud, the court would have frozen both the company's assets and her personal assets. The judge would then appoint an administrator to vet investor claims and divvy up the proceeds in an attempt to make the victims whole, that is, to try to get people back to where they started.

“Her death complicates the issue, but that's all it does—complicate it. It doesn't eliminate her obligation to repay her investors—if she did, in fact, commit fraud. So what should you do now? Make certain the district attorney's office has your name and contact information. Call the number running along the bottom of the screen. You can bet they'll be burning the midnight oil to sort out this thorny situation as expeditiously as possible.

“I want to leave you with one last thought. The old saw that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is, are words to live by. This is Pennington Moreau, the Legal Eagle, soaring high and signing off.”

I clicked off the remote and finished printing the doll photos, then taped the front and back views so each doll was represented on one two-sided printout. I labeled each one with the doll's number from my listing. I divided the photos into two piles, the dolls I had brought back with me and the dolls that Eric had been sent to pack up. The dolls we had on-site were:

  1. The Bébé Bru Jne Alice had held earlier in the day

  2. A Bébé Teteur (a Bru with a mechanism that allows the doll to suck liquid from a baby bottle)

  3. A Bébé Musique (a Bru with a mechanism that allows the doll to play music)

  4. A Bébé Gourmand (a Bru with a mechanism that allows the doll to be fed)

  5. The G.I. Joe prototype

  6. The kachina

  7. A Long-Faced Triste Bébé, made by Belton & Jumeau

  8. A nineteenth-century European doll with a bisque head and leather body wearing a plaid jumper over a white eyelet blouse

  9. A Dutch doll with a cloth torso and wooden legs wearing clogs

10. A Japanese kokeshi doll

11. A set of nineteenth-century Russian nesting dolls, painted with an Oriental motif

The dolls Eric had been sent to pack up were:

  1. An Effanbee doll depicting George Washington, paired with #2

  2. An Effanbee doll depicting Martha Washington, paired with #1

  3. An early European papier-mâché doll, wearing a white cotton dress and red felt boots

  4. A Barrois French fashion doll

  5. A leather-bodied doll with a papier-mâché head

  6. A Conta & Boehme parian doll

  7. An early Kestner doll

  8. A midcentury Kestner doll

  9. A K*R Simon & Halbig doll

10. A German-made Armand Marseille doll, dressed after a Renoir portrait

11. A Heinrich Handwerck Simon & Halbig doll

12. A Belton shoulder head doll by Bahr & Proschild

“How are you doing?” I asked Fred as I tapped the sheets on the desk to square up the edges.

“It's a little tricky taping it together—the images overlap.”

I nodded. “Let me help.”

Fred had laid out the printouts on the floor and was piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Once we got in the rhythm of matching known elements, accounting for the overlaps was easy, and the process moved quickly. Fifteen minutes after we started, we had produced a life-sized image of the van floor. I handed Fred shots one through six of the dolls Eric had been sent to pack up. I took the remaining photos myself.

My cell phone rang, and I grabbed it, silently intoning a quick prayer that it was Eric, that he'd broken free and was somewhere safe needing a ride. It wasn't. It was Zoë, my friend, landlady, and neighbor.

“Oh, God, Zoë,” I said. “I completely forgot about dinner. We have a situation here. I can't explain now.”

“I heard about Alice and Eric on the news. You must be flipping out. Are you okay?”

“More or less. I'll call you later, okay?”

“Sure—just know I'm here if you need me.”

“Thanks, Zoë.”

I hung up and noticed two texts, both from Wes. I wouldn't be surprised if he came pounding on the door.

I looked at the taped-together image of the van floor. I leaned back, resting on the heels of my hands and crossing my legs Indian-style.

“I'm thinking we should use Post-it flags to indicate which doll part is from which doll,” I said. “We shouldn't write on the photo itself until we're certain we're right. So many of the dolls are similar in style, material, and color, identifying which body part comes from which doll isn't going to be easy. Even identifying the wigs and clothes is going to be tough. Look at this brunette wig, for example.” I pointed to a fan-shaped straight bit of long dark brown hair partially hidden under the passenger's seat, then spread my collection of photos out as if I were melding a hand in a card game. “If you look at these dolls, you can see that three of the six have similar hair.” I shrugged. “Oh, well. All we can do is the best we can.”

Fred and I worked methodically, side by side. We crawled around the van photo to get as close to each image as possible. The process was tedious but not complicated and, to my relief, went much more quickly than I'd feared. Within half an hour, I'd eliminated all of my six dolls. Fred was almost done with his allotment as well.

“Look,” I said, pointing to a bisque head. “The eyes are glass, glued on. They haven't been ripped off or destroyed.” I raised my eyes to meet his gaze. “Which means whatever is going on, the attacker isn't looking for jewels. If he were, he'd have removed all the eyes to check if they're sapphires or emeralds.”

“Good point,” Fred said. He stretched out his legs. “Now what?” he asked. “Everything is accounted for.”

“That doesn't make any sense. Why would someone destroy the dolls?”

“Beats me,” Fred said, shaking his head.

I stared at the van floor image. Strips of pink and yellow Post-it flags crisscrossed over the debris. “So since it's clear this wasn't about stealing for profit, what was it about?”

“Anger. Destruction. Someone was completely pissed off at the dolls' former owner and took it out on the collection.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to reason it through.

If this was some kind of payback or commentary on the Farmington family, wouldn't it be more satisfying to break the glassware, to hear the shattering? If someone had set out to destroy something, maybe the dolls, why wouldn't he simply have broken into the Farmington house and trashed them on the spot? Maybe he tried. Maybe the kidnapper was the same man Eric told Grace had tried to get into the house. Why not break in when the place was empty? Because the Farmingtons have an excellent security system. Why kidnap Eric? Because Eric saw him hijacking the van and could identify him. The scenario seemed obvious, but it didn't answer the key question—why would someone destroy only the dolls?

I stood up. “Sasha put the eleven dolls we have here in the safe, right?”

“Yup, in a bin.”

“I'll go get them—maybe we can figure out what's going on if we have them in our hands.”

“I'll do a video of the van floor so we'll have it on record if the police want the original.”

“Good thinking,” I said and pushed open the heavy door that led into the warehouse. I headed down the central aisle. The lighting was dim. Shelves of inventory stood on either side, casting long, spider-shaped shadows along the walkways. Midway down, I glanced to the left. Hank was in his basket. I wondered if he was still asleep or back asleep. I recalled an article I'd read years earlier stating that cats need roughly three times as much sleep as people. Observing Hank, I could believe it.

At the end of the aisle, I turned left toward the walk-in safe. Two steps before I reached it, I heard a soft rumbling and stopped short. I glanced at Hank, but he hadn't budged. The soft, steady, low sound was familiar, but I couldn't place it. A lawn mower? No. Some construction equipment? No. The loading dock garage-style door being raised? Yes.

I ran along the back wall to the access door, my boots clomping on the concrete floor. By the time I got there, the rumbling had stopped. I peered out the tempered glass miniwindow. The loading dock door was closed. I pressed my eyes against the glass and looked in every direction. No one was visible. I checked the bolts. The door was secure. Even if someone succeeded in accessing the loading dock, there was no way they could get into the warehouse. Still, it was creepy. I shrugged and shook my head, wondering if I could have imagined the sound. I hadn't.

“Oh, my God!” I said aloud.

I ran full speed to the front, wrenched open the office door, and dashed outside. Griff was sitting in his idling patrol car. He saw me charging at him, jumped out of his car, and ran to meet me.

“Someone was trying to break in through the loading dock door,” I said. “They stopped, but they can't have gotten far. You should look for them. Now.”

“How could they have opened the door?” Griff asked.

“Using a remote. Eric would have had it with him in the van.”

Griff nodded and ran back to his car, grabbed his radio, and said something. He turned off the car and pocketed the key, then said, “Get inside and lock the door. Stay there.”

I nodded and ran. Fred was standing by the window.

“I didn't know whether to stay here or follow you out,” he said.

“You did the right thing.” I locked the door and set the perimeter alarm as I told him about the mystery sound. “Someone opened the loading dock door using Eric's remote. I bet that when it was up about three feet he peeked in and saw that we have security cameras aimed at the opening. So he lowered the door and left the same way he came onto the property, probably through the woods.”

“That's crazy—who'd try to break in with police all over the place?”

“A risk taker,” I said. “We need to get a look at the cameras.” I called our security company. The monitor on duty was a man named Vince. “There are two cameras on the loading dock platform, mounted in the top rear corners facing the loading dock door,” I said. I described what I wanted, and he asked me to hold on.

“Will there be enough light?” Fred asked while I was on hold.

“Yes. When the door lifts, spotlights come on so there's enough light for us—and for the cameras—to work.”

“I found what you're looking for,” Vince said when he was back on the line. “Each camera takes a shot every three seconds. Whoever lifted the door aimed a flashlight inside, a big one, like a torch. The beam is so bright you can't make out anything about the person holding it. You'll see what I mean. I was on break then, but I looked up the notes. The guy on duty wrote that the door lowered twenty seconds after it began to lift and there was no intrusion.”

I thanked him and repeated what he said to Fred.

My cell phone rang—it was Ellis checking in. He said Griff had called in that he hadn't spotted anyone in the woods.

“Forward me those e-mails from the security company, okay?” Ellis asked. “The computer guys are adept at isolating images.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Vince sent fourteen shots, seven from each camera, all showing the same thing: the inside of the loading dock door, the concrete floor, and a black-clad human shape visible in the space under the partially raised door—and a large circle of blindingly bright light.

From all my years working with Photoshop pros whose job it was to showcase the best of an antique without in any way misrepresenting it, I knew they could enhance a glint of gold on an ormolu clock or add a luminous quality to the rich reds in mahogany furniture. Yet they could only work with what was visible. I couldn't discern a single thing in these photos that might be useful, not a hint of a monogram that might help identify a club or organization, not a color variation that might reveal a patterned fabric, not a hint of flesh. I didn't think there was a chance the police expert would be able to bring anything useful to light.

Someone, probably Eric's kidnapper, had been at my business. He'd tried to break into my warehouse. And he'd made a clean escape.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“There are only two remotes,” I said to Fred, thinking it through. “I have one, and Eric has one. Which means this wasn't a run-of-the-mill break-in. I bet he was after the other dolls.”

“Then whoever it is knows the collection includes additional dolls.”