Baby Face, page 7
part #2 of Bubba Mabry Series
I'd seen the place listed in the yellow pages and had been meaning to check it out for my other case, the one I'd barely thought about for two days. I whipped into the empty gravel parking lot.
A bell jangled as I swung open the door. Bright sunlight gave way to fluorescent-punctuated dimness, and my eyes took a second to adjust. What I saw made me step back.
Dolls stared down at me from every direction. Shelves and shelves of them, floor to rafters. Baby dolls and porcelain belles and Barbies. Round-headed waifs and cheerleaders and gnomes. A zoo's worth of plush animals—whales and hippos, giraffes and elephants, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Hundreds were packed tightly on the shelves, right up to the edge, like a crowd on a subway platform. They all stared with unblinking eyes, all turned just right to be looking at you when you walked in the door.
"Can I help you?"
The high-pitched voice rose from somewhere in the shadowy recesses at the back of the room. I shielded my eyes from the fluorescent tubes and peered back there. I saw no one.
"Over here."
I took a step forward, the dolls watching carefully. Everyone I could see looked like they'd need somebody to pull their chains before they could talk.
A little man popped up from behind a glass-front counter like a jack-in-the-box. I jumped.
"Hi. Sorry. I was on my knees unpacking some boxes."
Even up off his knees, the little man wasn't much taller than the counter. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he blinked like he hadn't spooked me on purpose, and I let it go.
He had a disappearing chin, sloping shoulders, and a layer of baby fat accentuated by stretched red suspenders. His bald head was shiny pink, and he wore tiny, wire-rimmed glasses that fit tight against his brows. His voice was a high-pitched whine just this side of effeminate. All in all, he looked and sounded like he should be on a shelf with a price tag on his toe.
"You must be Delbert."
"That's me. What can I do for you today?"
"My name is Bubba Mabry and I'm a private investigator." I gave him one of my cards and he looked it over, frowning. "I'm investigating the theft of some dolls, and I was wondering whether anybody might've tried to sell them to you."
"A theft? Here in Albuquerque?" He looked alarmed.
"Yeah, about a week ago."
"A whole collection?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, my. Whose was it?"
"I'm afraid I can't say. You've probably never heard of it anyway. It hasn't been displayed anywhere."
"Hmmm."
I'd put the Polaroids of the dolls in my shirt pocket before I got out of the car, and the photos' sharp corners caught in there as I tried to fish them out. I wedged them this way and that, trying to get them loose.
"This is quite a place you've got here."
"Thank you. Biggest selection in town. You're welcome to look around if you want."
I finally freed the photos and handed them over. He looked at each one, hmming and aahing like he appreciated what he saw.
I rocked on my heels and looked around. We were in what once had been the living room of the old house, and I could see through a doorway other rooms packed just as full with dolls and toys. I had a brief horror movie fantasy of being trapped in there, all the dolls staring while I waited for the first one to move. Killer Babes in Toyland, something like that.
"These are excellent!" Delbert declared when he'd finished sorting through the photos.
"Yeah?"
"Oh, my, yes. They're some of the best I've seen. Very old, but still in great condition. I'd like to see the real things."
"I would, too. So would the person who owns them."
"I would really like to meet the collector," Delbert said. "I love to chat with someone who knows their dolls."
"Well, I'll mention that to my client. Maybe she'll give you a call. But I doubt it."
"Too bad." He shrugged and flapped his pudgy hands.
"So I take it nobody's brought these dolls around, trying to sell them."
"No. And I'd remember dolls like those."
"They're pretty valuable, huh?"
He looked me over with a sharp eye. "I hardly think your client would've hired you otherwise."
Now it was my turn to shrug. "Afraid I don't know much about dolls."
"Well, kewpies aren't my forte, either," Delbert said. "That's why I don't have any in the shop. But some collectors are crazy about them. All part of the folk art fad."
He said it with some disdain, and I knew better than to pursue it.
"Are they rare?"
"Fairly so, yes, at least high-quality ones like these. The old ones are well-detailed, but they're delicate, so there aren't that many left."
"Delicate, huh?"
"Oh, yes. Some have heads of a type of cheap porcelain they used before plastic came along. Plus, they have feathers and tiny legs that must be handled with care. They weren't meant to last forever. They were just carnival prizes, usually long gone by the next time the carnival came to town."
"Would there be much of a market for stolen ones?"
Delbert put a hand to his plump chin and thought it over.
"If the thief knew a collector, or was a collector himself, then yes, of course. But if it's just some burglar, it's unlikely he'll know what he has. Even if he did, collectors are difficult to locate. He couldn't very well take out a booth at the annual doll show."
Which brought me back to my original theory: that neighborhood kids had lifted the dolls and probably were playing with the fragile valuables in the mud somewhere right now. The doll collection, some jewelry, and a few other small items were all that had been taken. Kids.
I thanked him and backed away toward the door. All the dolls and teddy bears still seemed to stare at me, following me with their eyes.
"How do you do that anyway?"
"Do what?"
My cheeks warmed, and I couldn't believe what I was saying.
"How do you turn those dolls so it looks like they're all looking down at the customers?"
Delbert smiled primly. "I assure you, Mr. Mabry, they're up there haphazardly. Customers rifle through them all the time. Does it feel like they're staring at you?"
"No, no. Well, yeah."
He chuckled, touched a finger to his lips to shush himself.
"Maybe it's just their little souls peering out," he said.
I ran a hand over my face and shook my head.
"It's been a long day already, and it's not even lunchtime."
He nodded and chuckled some more.
"I'll call you if anybody drops by with these dolls, but it isn't very likely."
"I know."
"Good day."
Out in the dusty parking lot, I took a deep breath and gazed up at the high blue New Mexico sky and the claustrophobia eased its grip. The daily wind was just starting to breeze into town, and I felt the sweat on my forehead cool and dry. I climbed into the Chevy and rattled out onto North Fourth.
A coffee shop snuggled among some cottonwoods up ahead on the left, and I steered into the parking lot. I needed a break, some coffee to clear my head. Working two cases at once left me feeling distracted, jumbled. Of course, the problem didn't come up too often. Usually I was lucky to have one case.
The cafe was one of those franchise joints whose trademark is a toaster on every table. I never have understood that concept. Why don't they just bring you some freaking toast? Are there people who are so concerned with getting their toast just right that they want to do it themselves? Toast connoisseurs?
One time, I ate at a steakhouse in El Paso, Texas, where the grills sat right out in the middle of the room and the raw meat was displayed in glass-front coolers.
You picked out your steak like it was a lobster, and then you could stand over the cook while he grilled it. Or they'd hand you the spatula and you could grill it yourself. All these potbellied barbecue nuts standing around with forks in their hands, talking the manly art of cooking outdoors. Me, I kept thinking about health codes and colon cancer and flying spit.
The coffee shop menu went on for pages and pages, but I couldn't focus on it. A middle-aged waitress with a pile of brunette hair lacquered on top of her head appeared at my table, pen poised, gum popping.
"What can I get you?" She spoke out the side of her mouth, which was a red slash across her powdered face, never missing a beat on that gum.
"Burger and fries. Coffee. No toast."
She pulled up on her gum-chewing for half a second, cut her eyes over to me for a hard look and said, "Uh-huh." Then she snapped her pad shut and disappeared.
I tried not to think about finding chewed gum in my food. I was fiddling with the knobs on the toaster when the waitress silently appeared again to give me a disapproving look. I thought she set the coffee cup down a little hard, but I didn't say anything, just smiled and nodded.
I don't know what it is about me that sets people off. Been that way all my life, especially with authority figures. In school, I was always the one the teachers caught. Something about the way I stood with my shoulders slumped, a certain hangdog quality about my face, something about me looked guilty.
And then there's my mouth, which sometimes takes on a life of its own, blurting out the one thing that will get me in the most trouble. Like that business with the dolls. I couldn't just keep my mouth shut and race out of there. I had to rant about how they were looking at me. Delbert probably thought I was crazy, probably tossed my card in the trash.
I heard myself sigh just as the waitress popped up again, but her features didn't soften at the sound. She turned away before I could ask for some ketchup.
An old guy at the next table teetered to his feet and ambled toward the cash register. He'd left his newspaper folded neatly, but he didn't look like he was coming back for it. I reached across and snatched it and spread it out beside my plate. If I was going to sit and eat dry fries until my nerves stopped jangling, I might as well catch up with whatever Felicia was doing.
Sure enough, there she was on the front page with a story about the rally. The righteous black-and-white images of Reverend Skip Jericho and the Dudleys stared up at me, their mouths open in song. Her story was a thorough, accurate account, though there was no mention of the disturbance by the drunk. I thought that had been the best part of the rally, but Felicia's editors probably wouldn't let her include it.
It was a comfort to see she'd done a good job. You want the person you love to be good at what they do. You want to be proud of them. I tried not to dwell on Felicia's opinions about what I do for a living.
Of course, since I'd been at the rally, I didn't learn anything from the story that might help me solve the murders. But it occurred to me I'd be able to track most everything Felicia could come up with, just by reading the newspaper. That gave me an advantage in our little race. I carefully tore out the story and stuffed it in my pocket to be filed later.
I leafed through the rest of the paper while I ate my lunch. Not much else that interested me, just the same old revolutions and famines and catastrophes. One item grabbed my eye, though. Deep inside the paper was a full page of photos and profiles of the people running for City Council in Tuesday's primary election, Republicans on the top half of the page and Democrats across the bottom. I scanned across, looking for the faces I knew.
Quentin Dudley looked serious in his photo, his wide jaw clenched and his brow furrowed in concern for his constituents. The brief profile said he was a forty-year-old lawyer who'd represented his Northeast Heights district for four years and who was proudest of his work campaigning against crime.
His opponent in the Republican primary was a thick-mustached Spanish fellow name of Stan Gutierrez. It was his first run at the council, but he had a dazzling smile and a decent resume and the right last name. Lot of people out here still vote a straight ticket along ethnic lines. But the Northeast Heights isn't exactly teeming with Hispanics, and it was my bet Gutierrez didn't have a prayer whipping somebody as visible as Dudley. After all, who had his picture on the front page?
The Democratic candidate running for Dudley's seat was unopposed in the primary, but they still ran his photo and profile, just to be equitable. He was a gray-haired old pol named Stoney Davis, who'd held nearly every other job in city government over the past thirty years. Guess he decided it was time to step up to the council and be the boss awhile. If I lived in his district, I thought, I'd pull this guy's lever in the voting booth. Better to have an old fixer who knows how things work than some do-gooder like Dudley.
While I was downpage among the Democrats, I checked out the profile on Alice Burden. She, too, was unopposed, and she beamed in her photo, peeking out from under the brim of one of her large, lavish hats. You had to look close to see the toughness in her eyes, a glint that said, Damned right, I'm unopposed, who'd dare come after me?
Alice Burden has a build like Bella Abzug and a voice like Ethel Merman and the political cunning of Lyndon B. Johnson. She wears wide-brimmed hats with bouquets and waxed fruit on them, and I think she knows Liberace's tailor. She's loud and brassy and she knows how to draw a crowd. The rest of the City Council is scared to death of her.
But I knew Alice Burden had a soft spot. Somewhere in there, under the hats and the brass and the clouds of Chanel No. 5, beat the heart of a sentimental woman. And someone had stolen that woman's doll collection.
Alice Burden had called me a week earlier and invited me to her home to discuss a case. She lived alone in a neat little ivy-covered cottage near the university, where she taught classes when she wasn't stirring up trouble at City Hall. I'd put on a sport coat for the occasion, which is pretty dressy for me. I refuse to wear neckties.
Alice met me in her living room with a silver tray, and over coffee told me about her burglary. Ten five-inch-tall kewpie dolls had been arranged in a blue-velvet-lined box on top of an upright piano. Even a stupid burglar would've seen they were worth something, displayed like that. And a kid would've gone nuts for them.
"So," I said when she finished, "these dolls are valuable?"
"Well, they were expensive," she brayed. "But their value involves more than money. If it was just the money, I'd take the insurance settlement and be living on my high hog."
Like most New Mexico politicians, Alice Burden never met a mixed metaphor she didn't like. Our governor once referred to someone "opening a box of Pandoras."
"But there's a certain sentimental value."
"How's that?"
She looked me over, deciding whether to tell. Then she said, "It's all confidential?"
"Absolutely."
Alice shifted on the sofa and sat forward, ready to dish. "When I was a young girl, I had a, um, romantic fling."
My eyebrows must've rose, because she laughed and slapped her knee.
"Hard to believe now, isn't it, Bubba? But this saggy old body used to have men swarming around like bees at a honey pot."
I laughed with her, and mumbled something polite.
"One summer I met this man who worked at the carnival. Oh, he was a rough old boy. He had tattoos and greasy blue jeans and my parents would've keeled over at the sight of him. But he was soft on the inside, gentle, and I was crazy about him."
"So what happened?"
"Well, the carnival left town, of course. And he went with it. I'd probably just been a pleasant diversion for him, but it seemed like more than that. When he left, he gave me one of those kewpie dolls as a parting gift."
She sorted through the Polaroids of her collection until she came up with the right doll, then passed it across to me. The doll was a little more tattered than the others, its pencil-thin eyebrows nearly gone and the red feathers that sprang from behind it limp. Alice Burden looked a little misty as she handed me the other photographs.
"I kept that doll a long time. Eventually, I collected the others so I could set it out in the open without raising too many questions. It gave me a warm feeling to see it over there."
I nodded understandingly and agreed to take the case.
Private eyes don't often get stolen goods cases. We can't do much more than the police, contacting pawnshops, getting the word out. And, while the police might not do much on the typical residential burglary, you can bet they'd pulled out the stops when it came to a city councilwoman's stolen dolls.
I took the case, I told myself, because of the sentimental angle. And I desperately needed the money to pay my taxes. Alice Burden seemed to understand such an investigation could be lengthy and expensive and might not produce any results. My specialty.
Besides, having a member of the City Council for a client had to be good for business, right?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rosie Corona's house looked like a fortress, an old thick-walled adobe with small, crooked windows and pointed roof beams that bristled from the walls like spears. The mud-colored house squatted in the middle of a field under a couple of huge cottonwood trees, all surrounded by a chain-link fence.
I parked in the dusty driveway outside the gate, tooted the horn, and stepped out of the car. I'm six feet tall, and the fence must've been eight because I could've just about reached the top.
The screen door opened and a black bolt of lightning shot from it, racing toward me.
Rahr-rahr-rahr-rar-rar!
The damned Doberman didn't make a sound until it scrabbled to a stop at the fence. Then it roared at me through chopping fangs, bouncing around behind the fence, froth dripping from its jaws. Startled, I stumbled backward and sat down hard in the dust.
"Baby!"
The barking died in mid-rahr. Baby's butt dropped to the ground and he sat quivering, licking his chops, watching me.
A dark-haired woman stood in the doorway of the house. She wore cutoff jeans and a loose shirt tied at her waist Daisy Mae style. She was barefoot.
"Get up off your ass and tell me what you want," she shouted over the wind. A fine greeting.
I scrambled to my feet and brushed at the back of my jeans.
"Hi, uh, I'm Bubba Mabry. I'm a private investigator and I'm looking into some murders. I'd like to talk to you about them."
