Bury Me With Barbie (2 page)

On the next shelf, a platinum blond AG in Lunch On The Terrace, a red-haired AG in Outdoor Art Show, and a cinnamon brunette in Pretty As A Picture formed a stunning trio. They were followed by a standard brunette and a dark brunette, the first dressed in the pastel blue Reception Line and the second in the soft pink Fashion Luncheon.

Gayle indeed owned Debutante Ball, as she had claimed on the Best Barbie Board, and P.J. was quick to note that the rosebud at the waistline on this dress was precisely the same shade as hers, no doubt about it. She felt faint and needed to sit down. A deep, thick-cushioned chair had been squeezed into the corner between two cases. She made her way over to it and collapsed into its plush depth.

The house was utterly still and, transfixed by the beauty around her, P.J. found it hard to breathe. Frank came in and jumped in her lap, staring into her eyes with his imperturbable golden gaze. A moment passed. P.J. stroked the cat with her sodden gloved hands. Then she stood and placed him to the right of her feet on the floor.

There were eight dolls on every shelf. Moving from case to case, she cherry-picked five from each group. Where eight had stood before, she spaced the remaining three out evenly and stepped back to admire them. Fifty dolls and a full duffel bag later, she made her way to the doll sanctuary door, snapping the lights off via the wall switch.

Frank had left the room. P.J. crept down the hallway to the front doorway, stopping only to drop the duffel to the floor. She lifted the bag with her left hand to give her right side a break. At the front door, she indented the button near the knob, locking it from the inside, and went out, quietly leaving Gayle’s domain behind her.

* * *

A few blocks away and some hours later, the late afternoon winter sun was setting. Gayle and Mike got into their Saturn, discussing the merits of salmon versus pasta for dinner.

Mike got in on the driver’s side. His wife happily rode shotgun—their normal routine. The key hit the ignition while Mike was mid-sentence. Once the key hit, sparks went off inside the tank and the Grace family car exploded. One door flew off and hit the stop sign at the intersection. The closest car remaining in the parking lot this late in the day was showered with chunks of metal and glass.

Astonished students and administrative personnel came running, coatless and bootless, out of nearby buildings.

Upon arriving at the wreckage, most were initially too stunned to act.

By the time someone realized they should call 911, P.J. was well on her way to the Buffalo Airport to return her rental car to Enterprise’s sister company. Snowfall had turned into sheets of graupel midway through her 113-mile drive on Interstate 90—the bulk of the 147-mile ride—but even hail could not dampen her spirits.

The burgundy Altima, awash in a sea of pelting precipitation, moved effortlessly along the thruway despite the violent storm. Inside the car, P.J. played Seal’s
Kiss From a Rose
twenty times before it occurred to her that she might listen to news on the car radio to find out if there had been any accidents up near Lake Ontario. Then she shook her head, realizing she didn’t want to spoil her day if the rigged Saturn hadn’t exploded.

She could make better use of her time if she unzipped the duffel bag beside her to see what she could of her treasure. While keeping one eye on the road, she managed to get the duffel fully open. The first doll she pulled out, a blond AG in Student Teacher, did the trick and sent her spirits soaring. The doll had all her accessories—the black pointer, the turquoise cardboard geography textbook, and the aqua and black globe on its white plastic pedestal. They were sealed in a mini baggie tied to the doll’s wrist with two-millimeter red silk ribbon.

P.J.’s voice was a bit hoarse but filled with emotion. “Well, girlfriend, it looks like you’ve got the world in a bag.”

Her imitation of Barbie was classic posh. “Oh, but your bag is ever so much bigger, and you’re going to get ever so much more!”

P.J. laughed out loud. Who said a woman in her thirties was too old to play with dolls?

Even if she didn’t turn heads when she walked by, Caresse Redd was undeniably cute. She had a good figure, bright green eyes, and a mop of disheveled brown hair. She was popular, good-natured and friendly, and she refused to be jealous of her best friend, Ann Josephs, the
San Luis Obispo County Times’
crime reporter—even though there were days she wished that, as a staff writer herself, she could address more than run-of-the-mill community fare. Fortunately, her workday doldrums were forgotten as soon as she began writing about her passion in her off-hours. She liked dolls—specifically Barbies—and she moonlighted as a staff writer for the international Barbie collectors’ magazine. She’d covered a series of interviews with a woman who claimed to channel the spirit of Barbie’s Jackie O. themed clothing designer Charlotte Armstrong, and another with a preppie couple who had built a life-size version of Barbie’s New Dream House in Denver. As an at-home hobby, Caresse customized Barbie’s friends, including her younger sisters Skipper and Kelly, making the dolls over into one-of-a-kind wonders, occasionally re-rooting their hair with saran in a bevy of exotic shades like Fire Mist and Sea Glow.

An example of Caresse’s handiwork stood on Ann’s desk—a one-of-a-kind Ken Cop. He stood, stern-faced, near Ann’s phone, his Monopoly-token–sized gun aimed straight at her, daring her to take the next call. Ann laughed at least once a day when she looked at him.

Caresse was pounding out obits when Ann’s pager went off.

“Where do you have to go?”

Ann glanced down at it. “You know an Oceano man pointed a gun at a crew working construction on Highway 1 earlier today.”

“Allegedly.”

“Allegedly. He lived across the way, and witnesses identified him. The deputies commanded him out of his home. They went in, found the weapon, and arrested him.”

“Why was he upset with the construction guys? Was it them or was it what they were doing?”

Ann shrugged. “Wouldn’t say, but I hear talk he’s a definite 51-50. I’ve already been out there once. Looks like I’m headed back.”

Caresse grinned. “When are the 51-50s gonna learn it’s not okay to brandish firearms in a threatening manner?”

Ann laughed. “Just keep them away from the silverware, and they’re great.”

Wishing Ann could pack her in with her gear, Caresse dragged her feet toward the cafeteria, where Jenna Donaghy, the Arts and Entertainment editor, liked to hold meetings with her three assistants. Caresse felt no better than the
County Times’
equivalent of a floating waitress, helping others but never having a station of her own.

The piece she was assigned to write was worse than expected. Jenna’s brilliant idea was for four staff writers to answer personal ads and go on dates, writing about their experiences and sharing them in the supplement due out the weekend before Valentine’s Day.

“I’m going to do it myself,” Jenna exclaimed, as a chunk of hair flopped forward onto her face. She blew upwards and smoothed it back, then jumped off the table and repositioned her micro jean skirt. “I just love romance, all that yummy stuff.”

“Fabio,” Jenna’s assistant Rhea said, Cheetos falling from her mouth.

Jenna’s other two assistants, Bree and Nibbles, giggled.

Caresse signaled that she got the message and knew what to do.

She also knew something else: she didn’t want to do it.

She was 37. She was divorced. She was a mom. She was tired.

City Editor Seth Tanner poked his head into the room. Blond and moon-faced, with round-lensed glasses, he grinned and wagged a finger at Caresse, who promptly headed over to him.

“You like Barbies, right?” he asked. He fiddled with his cell phone, brought up a news story, gave the phone to her, and studied her expression as she read the condensed newsflash. The online photo showed upstate New York crime scene investigators working around the debris of a demolished Saturn, one of them holding what looked to be a speaker cover. The headline read, “Oswego Couple Dies in Explosion,” with the subheading, “Wife’s Barbie Collection Missing.”

She scrolled down and read the summary:

Caresse looked up, stunned.

“I know,” Seth said, accepting his phone back. “Totally up your alley.”

P.J. went to visit her half-brother the following Tuesday. Darby lived ten miles away in Glendale, in an apartment complex that was built partially beneath the Glendale Freeway near Harvey Drive.

Darby’s best friends in the complex were a couple of married drunks who didn’t need New Year’s Eve to make it a party. The joke was that they both worked in healthcare—Bob as a transporter of medical equipment to various hospitals and Bev as a nurse at a local hospital’s maternity center. A trip down to the basement and past the laundry room brought a person to their door and into a world of hard booze and painkillers. If Darby wasn’t home, he was likely with Bob and Bev, getting stoned and watching Comedy Central courtesy of Charter Cable.

On this Tuesday evening, however, Darby was home.

Recently injured at an unlicensed construction gig when a pile of lumber fell and crushed him beneath its weight, Darby was resting his ruined back and enjoying Internet porn. After he let P.J. in, he turned to see what was on his monitor before rushing across the room to close a site showing pictures of Swedish girls vomiting into each other’s mouths.

P.J. laughed as she flopped onto the aging brown couch and put her feet up on the arm at the far end. “Have you seen that
South Park
episode? I’m surprised you’re not looking at Brazilian fart porn.”

Darby was glad to see his half-sister in a relaxed mood. He straightened his Lakers cap and sat down across from the couch in an overstuffed brown chair.

“So when’d you make it back?”

“Sunday. Goddamn Amtrak takes four days to go cross-country.”

Darby went back to the computer desk that faced a porch overlooking a garden bed, the complex garage entrance, and the street below. He Googled “SUNY” plus “Oswego” plus “car” plus “explosion” and came up with the front-page news. Photos of Gayle and Mike, cropped to equal height and width, were embedded in the lead paragraph of the article that began in larger font on the left-hand side of the screen. No longer were they two thickly-bundled strangers whose faces were hidden in parka hoods. Gayle was a chubby-cheeked brunette with blond highlights in her hair. She wore a strand of pearls; a conservative, high-collared blouse; and simple gold button earrings. Mike’s dark hair, gray at the temples and cut short, was parted on the right. His charcoal suit was accessorized with a wide orange and blue striped tie held in place with a diamond tack.

To balance the photos on the left, the right-hand side of the layout was devoted to the investigation. Darby read quietly for a few minutes while P.J. alternated between resting her eyes and gazing at the back of his full head of light brown hair, poorly cut but tucked neatly inside his purple and gold cap. Her half-brother’s hair was darker than hers; he had inherited his melanin-rich coloring from his dad’s side of the family. Their eyes, however, were their mother’s ice-flecked blue.

When Darby was satisfied, he turned around. “Looks like you listened to the master.” He was younger than P.J., but he never lost an opportunity to remind her that when shove came to thrust, he could be smarter, swifter, and shiftier.

“Yep, so what’s next?” She smoothed down the front of her pale blue blouse and used the toe of one loafer to peel down the back of her other shoe. It clunked on the floor and the second one followed.

“Are you losing weight?” Darby rubbed the bridge of his nose. She looked great—in fact, quite a bit like the classic Barbies she collected—and he found himself wondering for the thousandth time if she would have dated him if they weren’t related, but the odds were against him. She was miles above him socially and was married to a successful entrepreneur with two degrees and a great job. She was smart and had her own business. She was beautiful. She was a bitch. She needed him, but she oftentimes found him pathetic.

While Darby fantasized about P.J., P.J. analyzed Darby and gave him a failing grade in the looks department. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like the Unabomber?” P.J.’s face was screwed up when she said this, so he couldn’t tell whether she was serious or laughing at him. “Finish growing a mustache and grab yourself some old Aviator frame sunglasses and you’ll be all set.”

The similarities were indeed there—and not just any facial features he might share with Ted Kaczynski. Given the opportunity to blow something up or burn it down, Darby chose explosions every time.

“I was thinking about that,” Darby said, clearing his throat and sloughing off P.J.’s rude remark. He walked across the room and returned to his chair.