Diana looked from Cordelia to Maggie. “Was this Cordelia’s idea?”

“No; but if you’d like to come, I’ll ask her if it’s all right.”

“I make my own decisions. I’ll get a jacket.” Diana ran back up the stairs.

Maggie signed, “Diana’s going to help Gussie and me pack some of Gussie’s things; she’s hoping to finish moving to the new house before her wedding.”

Cordelia nodded. “Good. The girl’s restless. She has nothing to do. Thank Gussie for me.”

Maggie nodded. They’d wanted to help Diana. If Cordelia thought they were helping her, so much the better.

“Let’s go,” said Diana, heading out the door. Maggie waved at Cordelia, and followed her.

“I’ll take my car and follow you,” said Diana. “That way I can leave when we’re finished.”

“Fine.” Maggie headed back to Gussie’s, the VW following close behind.

Was this a good decision? There was plenty to pack; that wasn’t the issue. But with Diana there it meant she and Gussie wouldn’t have as much time alone together as they’d hoped.

She hoped Ike Irons was making headway in figuring out who’d killed Diana’s father. She’d had a few experiences with murder investigations, and usually the “why” came first. That led to the “who.”

The chief certainly should be looking at why Dan Jeffrey disappeared such a short time after his daughter had found him. Could that just be a coincidence? Maggie shook her head. She’d lived long enough not to believe in coincidences.

If Ike Irons wasn’t interested in Dan Jeffrey’s history pre-Winslow, then he wouldn’t worry about Dan’s daughter. The more Maggie thought about it, the more she worried about Diana.

What happened in Colorado that made Diana’s father leave his daughter? A daughter who’d already lost her mother? Starting a new life somewhere else, with a new name, was something people did only when they were desperate, and either they didn’t care about those they left behind, or they needed to protect them.

Diana certainly acted as though she felt her father cared about her.

That only left one other possibility.

By the time Maggie pulled her van into a space in back of Gussie’s shop she was determined to find out whatever she could. And make sure no other bodies were found on the beach, or anywhere else, in Winslow.

Chapter 12

EXTRA! PRES. ROOSEVELT DIES!One page, one side, broadside, issued by the SCIO Tribune, Linn County, Oregon, Thursday, April 12, 1945, to announce President Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Paper tanned, but in perfect condition. “The United States and the World was shocked suddenly this afternoon when the news was flashed over the wires—“President Roosevelt dies suddenly!” Death came at 4:35 P.M. Eastern War Time (2:35 Pacific War Time), at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had gone two weeks ago to rest before going to the United Nations’ Conference called for the 25th of this month at San Francisco.” 13 x 20 inches. Price: $350.

“Welcome!” said Gussie, as Maggie walked in the back door of her old shop.

Diana followed, looking curiously around her. “I thought we were going to your house.”

“You’re here. I live on the second floor, above the shop,” Gussie explained.

Diana walked around the back room, looking at the inventory items Gussie hadn’t packed yet: boxes of antique doll arms, legs, wigs, and bodies. Dolls’ clothes, one box of hats, one of shoes. Two shelves of china heads, arms, and legs. One box of eyes. She shuddered. “Those are creepy! But not as creepy as the dolls at Cordelia’s house. Now I know why you two are friends. You have weird dolls, too.”

Maggie and Gussie looked at each other.

“I use those parts to repair old dolls. I didn’t know Cordelia had dolls,” said Gussie. “But lots of people collect them. What kind does she have?”

“She doesn’t exactly collect them,” said Diana. “That would be normal for a kid, I guess, but for an older woman—I mean, she must be over forty! It would be strange.” She ignored the half smile Maggie and Gussie exchanged. “She cooks them.”

“What?” Maggie blurted. “Cooks them? Are you sure?”

Diana nodded dramatically. “The first night I was there Dad said he’d get Chinese food for us because we couldn’t use the stove. I thought it was broken, so when he was out I looked at it. The oven was on, and there were two baby dolls inside. In a roasting pan! Now I know she does that all the time. She has parts of dolls upstairs in her bedroom, too, like you have in those boxes. Eyes, and hair, and arms and legs. Clothes, too.”

“Have you seen her working on them?” asked Gussie.

“She keeps the door to her room closed. But I’ve peeked when she was out walking,” Diana admitted. “She has a workbench in there, with half-finished naked dolls all over it.”

Gussie laughed.

“Gussie, I’m with Diana. That’s strange. Roasting dolls? If she has doll parts maybe she’s making or repairing dolls. Okay. But cooking them in the oven? What’s that? Voodoo?” Maggie shivered. “I don’t see what’s funny.”

“No, no, no. I’ve always wondered how Cordelia makes a living, since she stays in that house by herself all the time. Now I think I know. I’ll bet she’s making OOAK reborns. The best get pretty high prices nowadays.”

Diana and Maggie looked bewildered.

“English, please? OOAK? Reborns?” Maggie shook her head. “Whatever that means, it sounds awful. Educate us who clearly have no clue.”

“It’s not awful.” Gussie smiled. “They’re dolls, like Diana said. OOAK means One of a Kind. Reborns are dolls that look like newborns or preemies. People make them by hand. Someone, like maybe Cordelia, takes expensive manufactured baby dolls apart, removes the factory paint, cleans them, and then repaints them, adding real hair, eyes, eyelashes, and fillers to make the doll feel like a real baby. Then they dress the doll, often in real preemie or baby clothes. ­Every OOAK is different. They can be made to look like any race. At several steps along the way the doll has to be baked to set the paint or glue. Making them isn’t simple. It takes patience and time, and only someone who’s really talented artistically can do it successfully.”

“It sounds horrible,” said Maggie.

“Not to a lot of people. A reborn isn’t the kind of doll most children would play with. It’s a baby doll that can sometimes be mistaken for a real infant. People collect them. Some women with emotional issues, especially those who’ve lost an infant, find taking care of them is relaxing. I’ve heard of women who can’t have children who ‘adopt’ an OOAK as a substitute.” Gussie shot a sideways glance at Maggie, who pointedly ignored her.

“Taking care of them?” Diana looked askance. “You mean people act like they’re real babies? Weird!”

“I’ve seen women with reborns in strollers at doll shows. The best are very realistic. One of the artists, as their makers are called, told me she had a customer arrested for child abuse for leaving hers in a car seat in a parked car. Of course, all charges were dropped when the policeman saw her ‘baby’ was really a doll.”

“Talk about embarrassing moments!” said Maggie. “I’ll bet the other cops teased him about that for months.”

“How much do the dolls sell for?” asked Diana.

“At the doll shows they can go over a couple of thousand dollars. If you want a custom-made one, perhaps with the facial features of a specific child, maybe even higher. The last time I looked on eBay they were up to sixteen hundred. It depends. Different styles and races are popular at different times.”

“You don’t have any, do you?” asked Diana, glancing around as though one might pop out of one of Gussie’s cartons.

“No,” said Gussie. “They’re not my sort of doll. I specialize in toys made before 1950, and most of my inventory is nineteenth-century. Reborns are brand new, or made within the last ten years. The collectible doll industry is a diverse one. It’s like teddy bears. Thousands of different teddy bears are made each year, and lots of people collect them. The only teddies I have in my shop are from the early twentieth century, when a stuffed bear was a cute way of remembering that Teddy Roosevelt spared the life of a baby black bear when he was hunting. A couple in Brooklyn created a stuffed bear in his honor in 1903. Then the Steiff Toy Company in Germany introduced a stuffed bear the same year, and most of them sold to the United States. In 1904 President Roosevelt used the teddy bear as one of his campaign mascots.”