Goodbye Dolly (5 page)

"A box?" She shakes her head, wishing to be helpful.

"No, he wasn't carrying anything that I recall." She frowns and concentrates. "I think... uh... no, sorry... no box that I remember."

"This is the last time," her husband says, anger in his voice. "I mean it. She's repeated the story for the last time."

Curves for Women literally hopped with activity. When Nina and Gretchen arrived, almost all the stations were in use. Gretchen spotted April and the rest of the doll collectors who made up their exercise group on the far side of the room, exercising away. Nina and Gretchen found space and jumped into the routine.

"Change stations now," a voice boomed every thirty seconds from a recorded message overhead. Women of all sizes and shapes moved around the circle, running on platforms and using pieces of equipment. Gretchen worked on the stepper while Nina ran in place on a platform next to her, arms slightly bent, her feet barely moving.

"Hey!" The greeting came from April, whose long gray-streaked hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore an extra large muumuu over her enormous torso and beatup sneakers. Sweat ran down her puffy face in streams that she blotted at with a wad of tissues clutched in one chubby fist.

Gretchen wondered if anyone in the room knew CPR. Just in case. She waved and greeted each of the collectors she'd come to know in the past two months.

"All set for your first show tomorrow?" April asked.

"Change stations now."

"It's more work than I thought," Gretchen said, moving to the next station on command. "But I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

"You'll do fine. I'm only selling a few of my miniatures at the show, so I can help you." April attempted a squat on a hydraulic machine but became wedged in a crouched position. She edged out sideways and glared at the machine.

"And I have all my books together for appraisals. After a few hundred shows, packing is easy."

"You have to increase the price of your appraisals,"

Nina told her. "You've been charging the same rate for years now."

"I'm thinking about it. I guess it depends if I have any competition and what they're charging."

"I hear Steve's in town to take you home," Bonnie said. The president of the Phoenix Dollers wore her standard red flipped wig and a face full of colorful makeup. Gretchen couldn't see any physical resemblance between Bonnie Albright and her son, Matt. Fewer cups of coffee, and her makeup lines might be a little straighter, Nina had commented to Gretchen. Bonnie drank several pots of coffee every day, which accounted for the caffeine-induced tremors.

"I'm not going anywhere with Steve," Gretchen answered carefully, aware that the club's president was also the club's biggest gossip. "Phoenix is my home now."

"Good for you," April shouted, and the group applauded. "I feel sorry for him, though. He sounds devastated."

"How do you know?" Gretchen said.

"He called me." April bent forward, huffing.

"Me, too," Bonnie said.

"But he doesn't even know either of you," Gretchen said. "How did he get your names and numbers?"

Gretchen noticed Nina was exceptionally quiet. "You're helping him, aren't you, Nina? How else would he know about April and Bonnie?"

"I'm not helping him. I'm on your side."

"I'd hate to have you on the other side."

"He asked for their numbers. How could I refuse?"

"By saying no."

"He just wanted to bend my ear," April said. "He needs someone to talk to."

"He's pathetic, all right," Gretchen said.
Trying to get to me through my friends.

"I hear you were at Chiggy's auction the other day,"

Bonnie said, switching subjects.

Gretchen nodded. "I wish I had skipped it."

"Howie's totally distraught," Bonnie said. "How are you holding up?"

"Much better than Howie, I'm sure. And the poor woman who hit Brett." Gretchen finished at a machine. "At the end, they practically gave away the remaining dolls."

"I could have told you you'd be wasting your time,"

April said. "Chiggy had me over last week to appraise her dolls. Worthless."

"I bought twelve Ginny dolls," Gretchen said. "They seemed okay."

"You're a chip off your mother's block," April said, puffing hard. "They were the only dolls worth anything."

Gretchen told them about the exchange. "Anyone ever hear of Duanne Wilson?" she asked.

No one had. Gretchen's suspicion that she'd been conned increased.

"I don't remember seeing any Kewpie dolls when I was at Chiggy's," April said.

"Maybe she planned on throwing them out," Gretchen said. "They're pretty banged up."

"Chiggy never threw out a thing," April said.

"Did you see Brett get hit?" Bonnie asked.

"No, and I'm glad I didn't."

"Has anyone met that bunch from Boston yet?" Nina said, stopping on a platform to rest, not one bead of perspiration anywhere on her body. Bonnie scrunched her nose. "I greeted some of them at the airport. I held one of those little signs up so they'd know who I was." She looked around the group. "Four of them came in together. When did your Steve arrive, Gretchen?"

Gretchen sensed Nina looking at her as if expecting her to challenge the possessive pronoun.

"I don't know."

Gretchen threw more energy into the hydraulic machines.

"What are the club members like?" April asked Bonnie.

"Oh, they're very friendly."

"Then why did you scrunch your nose when I asked about them?" April wanted to know.

"They talk funny, is all. I couldn't understand a word any of them said. I could have used a translator." Bonnie looked over at Gretchen and said, "I extended an invitation to them for cocktails at my place after the doll show wraps up. They leave on Wednesday morning after a little sightseeing. Everybody's invited over. You, too, Gretchen."

"Gretchen's part of
everybody
," April said. "Why are you singling her out?"

Bonnie gave a weak little laugh. "I invited Steve to the party when he called me. He sounded so sad."

"Don't worry about Gretchen," said Nina of the questionable loyalty. "She couldn't care less if he's there."

Gretchen almost waved at Nina to remind her that she was in the room.

"I'd much rather see her hitched up with Matty," Bonnie said over Gretchen's head.

Gretchen imagined herself as a gray mare hitched to a wagon and Matt slapping the reins across her wide rump. She shook her head to clear the image.

Bonnie bent forward and tried to touch her toes. "We've been talking about her and Matty," she said when she straightened up. "Haven't we, girls?"

Everyone muttered assent, confirming Gretchen's suspicion that the doll group gossiped unmercifully about each other. She vowed to get to Curves earlier next time to keep her name out of the conversation.

"My son needs to think about something other than detective work," Bonnie said.

"He's got his wife to think about right now," April reminded them, stopping to mop her reddening face. "I'm never going to make it around a whole time. I don't know how you guys go around three times. It'd kill me."

"Your goal is one full circuit," Bonnie said in her uppermanagement voice. "You can do it. Keep at it, and you'll look like Gretchen in no time."

"Gretchen thinks she needs to lose ten pounds," Nina said.

Bonnie eyed Gretchen up and down. "Humph," she said. "Most women would give anything to have your shape."

"Voluptuous," Nina pointed out, nodding.

Bonnie left the circle of women and grabbed a hula hoop. "Matty's almost divorced from that awful woman,"

she said, her hips flying and her flip swinging. "She cheated on him and then had the nerve to stalk him when he moved out after he couldn't take it anymore. The poor boy is always hiding."

Gretchen hoped Matt's problems didn't foreshadow her own with Steve. She knew exactly how the detective felt when he discovered the betrayal, because the same thing had happened to her.

And now the woman was stalking him?

Gretchen remembered how Steve had crept into the workshop without warning.

He should have called first, and he definitely should have announced himself at the door.

And why was he trying to enlist her friends?

Maybe she should start looking over her shoulder a little more. Ronny Beam leaned against Nina's red Impala, ignoring Tutu, who lunged at the closed window in an attempt to sever Ronny's carotid artery with her sharp incisors. Unfortunately, shutting off the blood supply to his brain wouldn't improve his personality.

Ronny was a hopelessly flawed human being, something even a prima donna like Tutu could tell. Ronny's face looked as if it had been cranked through a vise grip. All his features appeared crushed together in a small skull, with narrow-set, beady eyes and a thin streak of a mouth showing mismatched teeth but no lips. Gretchen recognized him immediately from the photo that Nina had recently mutilated with an entire set of darts.

"What are you doing touching my car?" Nina yelled, rushing out of Curves. "Get away before I sic Tutu on you."

Ronny sneered at the lunging schnoodle and didn't move.

Gretchen hurried after Nina, hoping to get between them before Nina blasted him with the pepper spray she carried in her purse.

"Who's your girlfriend?" He ogled Gretchen while running his tongue around the outside of his mouth. "She's a looker.

"Hi, darlin'," he said to Gretchen.

"Shut up, Ronny," Nina warned.

"I'm gathering news for next week's edition, and I'd like a quote from you," he said to Nina while leering at Gretchen.

Gretchen saw a recording unit in his shirt pocket and a microphone extended toward Nina. "
Phoenix Exposed
is the hottest paper coming off the press. A quote from you will be read by everybody in town, so make it good."

"You rotten little twerp," Nina said, digging in her purse. "You could have ruined my dog training business with that stupid, lying article."

"Is that your quote? Can you repeat it a little louder please? I'm not sure you were close enough for the mic to pick up those fine, literary words."

"I should sue your brains out-that is, if you have any."

Nina continued to dig through her large purse. "It's a good thing you have only two subscribers, your mother and your sister."

"Make fun all you want," Ronny said, "but I'm positioning myself to go mainstream. I just need some compelling, breaking news."

"I'll break you, you..." Nina's hand shot out of her purse, pointing the nozzle of the spray at Ronny. "Back off."

Ronny pushed off from the Impala and stepped back.

"Whoa, Nellie. You didn't like the article?"

Gretchen was aghast at Ronnie's audacity. Didn't the guy have a conscience? Ever since he launched his weekly newspaper, he'd been slinking around hoping for a legitimate story. In the meantime, he wrote bad pulp fiction using real people's names. The article that had Nina ready to zap Ronny into the nearest hospital with a full frontal spray attack was about her canine business. According to Ronny, Nina was the supreme commander of an alien group from a distant galaxy called Canial that "sent puppy impersonators to infiltrate Arizonian's homes and study human behavior."

He had snapped a photo of Nina as she came out of a downtown New Age shop. She had a purse dog trainee riding in a purse on her shoulder, and she was cooing to him when Ronny snapped the shot. The caption read "Commander Caught Debriefing Foot Soldier."

"People love that stuff," he made the mistake of saying.

"Martians, alien attacks, all that space stuff."

Gretchen couldn't bring herself to stop Nina. It was a direct hit.

Ronny screamed, while Nina rushed around the car and hurriedly unlocked the Impala's doors.

"You better not show up at the doll show with those peeing, shedding mutts," he screamed at her. "I'll have you arrested for a public health violation. That ought to make a great story."

Nina turned and ran at him again. The pepper spray flew in a long, carefully aimed stream.

Gretchen and her aunt jumped into the car and sped off.

"You think he'll call the police?" Gretchen asked.

"It'll be his word against mine. No one saw it."

Gretchen looked back. Ronny was crouched on the ground. "Are you kidding? Everyone inside Curves was watching through the front window."

"That will be his last alien article," Nina said with confidence. "I hope he doesn't recover soon. If he plans on attending the doll show tomorrow, I'm in trouble."

After a little shuffling around and rearranging on Bonnie's part, Gretchen found herself setting up next to April and Nina's table early Saturday morning.

She arranged the dolls on her assigned table. Nimrod peeked out of Gretchen's white cotton purse with the black poodles and red bows. Named for the biblical mighty hunter, the puppy casually watched the commotion around him from a strategic vantage point, slung from the back of Gretchen's chair.

Gretchn glanced at the next table with amusement.
Leave it to Nina to create a buzz.

Her aunt sported a yellow dress with enormous blue and pink flowers and several matching bows wedged into her hair. Her color scheme appeared to be all the colors of the rainbow. Tutu, leashed to a table leg, wore an enormous, multicolored collar with streaming ribbons.

Nina rushed over and tied a bow into Nimrod's hair as well. It matched her rainbow color scheme.

A third dog-a tiny Yorkshire terrier-was next.

"Color coordination is important," Nina said, catching Gretchen laughing. "Gimmicks and gizmos sell services."