Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

But a young woman had been brutally murdered and her parents wanted justice. That was a hard situation to walk away from, especially for Dave, and he had a feeling that was exactly what Angelette was banking on.

As the boat rocked gently in the current, Dave tipped back his head, propped up his feet and tried to let the peaceful setting lull him. Sunrise in the Gulf was always spectacular, a fiery palette of crimson and gold splashed across a deep lavender canvas. As the mist slowly burned away in the early morning heat, the landscape turned a deep, earthy green. Violet clumps of iris jutted through a thick carpet of algae and duckweed, and purple water lilies opened in the green-gold light that filtered down through the cypress trees.

Off to his right, a flock of snowy egrets took flight from the swamp grass, and a second later, Dave saw the familiar snout and unblinking stare of a gator glide past his boat. The vista was at once beautiful and menacing, a shadowy world of dark water and thick curtains of Spanish moss.

Dave had been born and raised in New Orleans, but he loved the Cajun Coast, with its teeming bayous and maze of channels where an outsider could get lost for days. Even when he’d still lived in the city, he had come down every chance he had to help Marsilius with the charters. After he and Claire were married, she would come with him, and when he was finished working for the day, they’d take the boat back out to watch the sunset. Sometimes he would rest on deck while she cooked dinner in the galley, but most of the time he would sit below and watch her.

Her face had mesmerized him. Even the menial tasks she’d performed dozens of times drew a fierce scowl of concentration to her brow, and Dave always wondered what went through her head then. He’d call out her name to make her glance up, so that he could see her quick smile. She had a shy, intimate way of looking at him that made him want to drop whatever he was doing and take her in his arms, no matter where they were.

Sometimes they would stay out on the water until well after dark, and make love on the boat. Afterward Claire would sit between his legs, his arms wound around her as they watched the stars shimmer through the treetops.

When Ruby got older they’d brought her along a few times, but she didn’t take to the water. Too many bugs to suit her, and she didn’t like getting her hair all tangled on the breeze.

“You’re a little city girl,” Dave would tease her.

To which Ruby would proudly respond, “I’m just like my maw-maw.”

Claire had always been a little befuddled by how Ruby emulated her grandmother, and Charlotte had been downright horrified. But Dave got a kick out of it. Lucille was earthy and she looked like a hot mess most of the time, but she had a good heart. And she was the only one in the family who still gave him the time of day.

He stirred restlessly. The reminiscing had shattered his fragile peace. Loneliness started to creep up on him, and deep inside, he felt the familiar tug of a dangerous thirst. Maybe he’d been hiding out in the swamps and bayous of St. Mary Parish for a little too long. His trips to New Orleans—two days ago and again last night—had reminded him of a life he’d been trying for years to convince himself he didn’t miss.

Finishing off the coffee, he started the engines and headed back in. Marsilius’s place on the bayou was an old weathered building covered in license plates and sheet metal that glinted in the early-morning sunshine. The ramshackle bait and tackle shop also sold sandwiches and snacks, and as Dave tied off at the private dock, he spotted Latrell Bingham dumping bags of ice into the washtubs Marsilius used to chill soft drinks and beer. The kid looked up, grinned and waved to Dave, then went back to his work.

Dave lived just down the road in an old two-story bungalow with screened-in porches and trellises of climbing roses. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but the place suited him fine. Except for at night, and then he missed the noises of the city. The scream of a siren heading across Canal Street toward the hospital, or the music and drunken laughter spilling from the bars and strip clubs on Bourbon Street. But what he missed most of all was the hum of alcohol as it coursed through his bloodstream, numbing the pain and guilt, giving him a split second of peace before the rage took over.

The bayou gave him too much time to think. Sitting out on his porch after dark, with the moon glinting off the water and the croak of bullfrogs and crickets echoing up from the swamp, Dave would start to remember the way Ruby’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, and how she’d cling to his neck when he galloped her off to bed. The way Claire would look up at him when he returned, and quietly put away her book.

He remembered everything, and yet at times, it seemed to Dave that he had a hard time calling up their faces and the sound of their voices. The old demons would start to prod him then. Alcohol had always given him a moment of clarity along with the peace. If he stopped at one drink or even two, he would be able to remember them properly. The problem was, he’d never known when to quit. A couple of whiskeys would turn into a two-day bender that left him shaky and sick and wondering why he didn’t just hole up somewhere and die.

He didn’t want to go back to those days, no matter how lonely the nights were out here. New Orleans was temptation. New Orleans was Claire and Ruby and a life Dave was never going to get back.

Stepping up on the porch, he fished his house key from a flowerpot and let himself in. The shades were drawn and the house was still dim and cool. He’d converted the small living space off the entrance into his office, and the only other rooms on the bottom floor were an eat-in kitchen and a half bath out back. His current setup didn’t allow for entertaining, but that didn’t matter much to Dave because he rarely had company. And whenever someone did stop by—usually Marsilius or one of the neighbors—they always sat out on the porch, where they could catch a breeze off the water.

Rolling up the old-fashioned shades to allow in some light, Dave walked into the kitchen to put on another pot of coffee before heading upstairs to shower. By the time he came back down, the sweet smell of chicory filled the house. He dug through the coat closet off his office until he located the box of files he wanted, and then carried it out to the porch. Settling down in a padded rocker, he lifted the lid from the box and removed one of the folders.

Before he left the department, he’d made copies of the Savaria case files, and thumbing through the reports and statements now was like sifting through a pile of bad memories. So many things had gone wrong in Dave’s life that he didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the loss of his livelihood. But he’d loved being a cop. It was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do. If someone had told him that he’d end his career by destroying evidence in a homicide investigation, he would have called that person a liar. But he’d done that and worse. His daughter, his wife, his job—all gone in the blink of an eye because of one bad decision. One weak moment that had changed the course of his entire life.

The day Ruby had gone missing, he’d let Angelette talk him into drinks after their watch, and the next thing he knew, they were checking into a seedy motel off the old Airline Highway. The tension had been building between them for months, and a part of him had known it was only a matter of time before he succumbed.

What he’d wanted from Angelette didn’t have anything to do with the way he felt about Claire, but she wouldn’t believe that. No woman would. Dave had still loved Claire then as much as he ever did. Maybe even more. But Angelette was like a poison in his bloodstream, and he only knew one way to get her out of his system.