Read Online Ding Dong Dead by Deb Baker - Free Book Online Page B

a mat. “It’s the disfranchised body of a displaced person, stuck between this plane and another one. We have to help her get unstuck so she can finish her journey.”
    “How did you actually see a ghost?” Ora called from the front desk. “Aren’t they supposed to be invisible?”
    Bonnie nodded her bewigged head. “I’m wondering the same thing.”
    “I thought I heard a sound coming from the vicinity of the trunk,” Nina said, continuing on to the next machine. “Once I opened the lid, something swished past. I felt it touch my cheek on the flyby. It was very cold and silver. Yes, it absolutely, positively was silver.”
    “Why don’t you go back and photograph it?” Bonnie said.
    “That’s a good idea,” Nina said. “I’m one hundred percent sure I was touched by an apparition and it has something to do with the girl and her travel doll. Want to see a picture of Flora when she was young? I remembered to bring it.”
    Everybody did.
    The familiar programmed voice reminded them to switch stations while Blondie belted out “One Way or Another” from a speaker on the wall. Nina left the circle, dug through her purse on a shelf by the entrance, and came back with a sheet of paper. “The historical society people wouldn’t let me take the actual photograph out of the building, but they made a copy of it.”
    She handed the sheet of paper to Gretchen. “That’s her father, John Swilling. And that’s Flora.”
    An unsmiling man with dark, neatly parted hair stared at the camera. He sat next to a young girl. Flora wore a chiffon dress with ribbons and a large bow on the right side of her short, dark bob. She held a doll in her arms. Part of the travel trunk was visible in the corner of the frame, not all of it, but enough to tell that it was the same trunk from the museum.
    “Let me see,” Julie said.
    Gretchen passed the photo to her.
    “A metal-head doll,” Bonnie said, viewing the photo from behind Julie. “Those metal-head dolls really held up well, much better than porcelain,” Bonnie continued, giving Nina a lesson in doll history. “Too bad the paint they used in those days wasn’t better quality. You can’t find a metal head today that doesn’t need major repainting. The heads were sold separately from the bodies, did you know that? And some were made from tin.”
    “And a cloth body,” Gretchen said. “Probably homemade, as most of them were in the 1920s.” Since working with her mother, Gretchen’s doll knowledge had improved tremendously. She’d recently repainted a metal-head doll, and the owner had liked her work.
    “Just like a bunch of doll collectors,” Nina said, not sounding pleased at all. “The first thing you notice is the doll. Keep the picture, Gretchen. I made extras.”
    “I wouldn’t try to take a picture of the ghost,” Julie said. “What if it’s a bad ghost?”
    “I don’t think ghosts can be bad,” Nina said, looking unsure.
    Until recent events, Gretchen hadn’t had strong personal opinions on any of Nina’s past delvings—tarot cards, auras, her conversations with the universe, the telepathic communications she’d tried to share with Gretchen with limited and questionable success. Throughout all of it, Gretchen usually had a wait-and-see attitude.
    “I heard,” she said to the doll collectors, “that almost half of the population believes in ghosts.”
    “And one in five has seen a ghost,” Nina added. “Ghost hunters have documented sightings that have been verified by other people who were with them at the time.”
    Unlike colored auras and Nina’s other pursuits that were all based on her testimony alone, ghost sightings were group activities. Was there truth in numbers?
    Gretchen didn’t know and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. It was exciting to think about, though.
    The cemetery murder came up next. Gretchen had made a point of avoiding the subject. Since Bonnie was Matt’s mother and the club’s biggest gossip, all