Dolled Up for Murder - By Deb Baker Page 0,3

to a red light, slowing at the last moment.

“Well,” Nina insisted. “Has he popped the question?”

“We’ve discussed it,” Gretchen said evasively.

“Discussed it?” Nina shrieked. “It’s been seven years. One of you has a commitment problem. Or maybe both of you do. Living together yet?”

“No. We’re comfortable the way things are.” Talking about Steve and their stalled forward progress made Gretchen uncomfortable. Lately she’d been hearing her internal clock ticking louder than it once had. Ticking clocks, even those firmly attached to the wall, made her nervous.

The desperation she’d been feeling recently didn’t thrill her either. She hated paging through the wedding announcements in the Boston Globe. Pages and pages ad nauseam.

One month and three days until she turned thirty. Chances of wearing an engagement ring were growing slim since her latest discovery.

“Humph,” Nina snorted. “I’d give him an ultimatum in spite of his good looks. Pop the question or hit the road. That tactic works, you know. At least there would be some kind of action.”

Gretchen couldn’t imagine Steve’s reaction to that sort of pressure. His imported Italian shoes would curl up at the toes.

Nina turned right onto Lincoln and sped toward Camelback Mountain, its prominent humps towering over the city. Caroline’s home, their destination, nestled at its base.

Gretchen felt a familiar sense of wonder as she absorbed the mass of the mountain and the scope of the city. The dry, enormous clumps of reddish rock were visible throughout Phoenix and the surrounding suburbs of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.

For all Phoenix’s exotic beauty and its reputation as a haven in the winter months, it turned forbidding and hostile in July.

She had dozed fitfully on the plane. Thoughts of her mother had been disjointed and intrusive, allowing her only a light, uneasy sleep. Now she bounced new ideas off Nina. “Maybe she heard about a great estate sale and she’s on a doll-buying spree.”

“Must be in Timbuktu,” Nina replied, refusing to catch the ball. “She would be back by now.”

“Maybe she’s mixing business and pleasure. She’s probably sightseeing at the same time. No car in the carport, you said. Right?”

“Right.”

“So we know she has it with her. And does this dog have to be on my lap?” Gretchen was annoyed with the schnoodle digging her sharp back nails into Gretchen’s legs while planting groomed front paws on the side window, her nose leaving gooey streaks on the glass. Tutu wore a red lacy collar the size of a neck brace. Having sensed competition for Nina’s attention the moment Gretchen opened the car door, the schnoodle insisted on the seat of command, which is exactly where Gretchen thought she should sit.

“You’re in her spot,” Nina said, sliding into Caroline’s driveway and turning off the ignition. “You have to learn to share. See how nicely Tutu shares. Good Tutu.”

Tutu wagged her tail and barked, a shrill, nerve-piercing sound.

Gretchen’s opinion of dogs—groveling, dependent creatures with lofty attitudes and bad manners—hadn’t changed upon meeting Tutu. Wobbles, like most cats, had a superiority complex, but at least he could clean himself. And he was quiet. Yapping dogs drove her crazy.

Nina produced a key to the door of Caroline’s adobe-style home and stood back with Tutu to allow Gretchen to enter. “After you,” she said with a sweeping gesture.

Standing in the doorway holding Wobbles’s carrier, Gretchen felt like an intruder. The house was too quiet, disconcertingly vacant. It smelled, not fragrant and earthy like her mother, but like a closed-up, abandoned space. Her mother’s spirit, which usually infused a room, was gone.

Dishes from a morning breakfast were scattered on the counter, and a newspaper lay open on the table. A box of maple buckwheat flakes had fallen next to the paper, the top left open. A few pieces of cereal had spilled from the box.

Her mother, in spite of her lack of organizational skills, was meticulous about keeping her kitchen clean, fanatical almost. She wouldn’t have left the table like this unless something unforeseen had happened.

For the first time since Nina began calling yesterday, Gretchen believed it might be possible that her mother really was missing.

“See her bracelet.” Nina pointed to a pink band lying on the counter. “She always wears it.”

Gretchen picked up the bracelet designed to support cancer research and fingered the engraving, Share Beauty Spread Hope. The bracelet matched the one on her own wrist. Their common bond was her mother’s triumph over breast cancer, her mother, a five-year survivor: sickened by chemotherapy, bald, her once dark brown hair growing back a monochromatic silver.