Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

She’d never told Dave how she came to be in possession of the dead woman’s diary, but she did nervously confess that someone had ransacked her apartment looking for it. And she was getting the hell out of New Orleans before they came after her. She’d claimed she didn’t know anything about Renee’s murder, but she was convinced that whoever tore her place up looking for the diary was someone who would kill to get his hands on it.

She’d turned the diary over to Dave that day and he’d never heard from her again. He’d been in the tedious process of sifting through the entries when Ruby had gone missing. Two days later, he’d gotten the first phone call.

“If you want your daughter back alive, you better listen carefully to what I have to say.”

Even at the memory, Dave’s chest tightened painfully, and he had to wonder if Marsilius was right. Maybe he wasn’t doing himself any favors by dragging up a seven-year-old homicide. But now that he was sober, he was starting to remember a lot of other things. Like the helpless rage that had engulfed him when he’d realized that his daughter’s disappearance had nothing to do with Renee’s death. The crimes were connected only by Dave’s gullibility. While he’d been played by Renee Savaria’s killer, Ruby’s abductor had gotten clean away.

The pain in his chest intensified, and he absently rubbed his hand up and down his arm as he watched a pelican dive-bomb the surface of the water, rising a moment later with a sliver of glistening silver in its beak. Dave felt a little like that flapping mullet. Hopelessly trapped by the things he’d done in his past.

Beside him, Marsilius waited for a response, but Dave wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell him. Not that he didn’t trust his uncle; he did. But if the calls Dave had already made generated some heat, he didn’t want anyone else caught in the middle.

“Those murders were seven years apart,” Marsilius finally said. “JoJo may not have the connections he once did…hell, no one does since Katrina. But you’ll need more than that to go after him.”

“Maybe I’m not after JoJo.”

His uncle looked glummer by the moment. “Who you after, Dave?”

“Right now I’m just asking a few questions.”

“Why?”

“It’s what I do for a living, remember?”

“For a paying client, maybe, but not just for the hell of stirring things up. Why complicate your life? You’ve got things good these days. You don’t need NOPD breathing down your neck.”

“Who says they will be?”

“What, you think they’re going to be happy to see you back in town? You were a mean drunk, Dave, and you burned a lot of bridges. Everyone understood what you were going through so they were willing to cut you some slack up to a point. But let’s face it, you didn’t exactly leave behind a pile of goodwill when you cleaned out your desk. You start nosing around in an active investigation, somebody might use that as an excuse to mop up the floor with your ass.”

“By somebody, you mean Alex Girard.”

Marsilius set his cup on the porch and straightened slowly. “There’s a lot of bad blood between you two, and he’s got the upper hand these days. Like I said, Katrina changed things in New Orleans. Most of the old alliances were swept away in the floodwaters, and the way I hear it, he’s been cozying up to some of the new power brokers in town. He’s got ambition and he’s got muscle. That makes him a dangerous man in my book. You get crossways with him again, you could end up losing your P.I. license. Then where will you be?”

Dave grinned. “Maybe I’ll buy myself a boat and give you a run for your money, old man.”

Marsilius wasn’t the least bit amused. “You watch your back, boy, you hear me? You keep asking questions, you might find out the hard way there’s a hollow point out there somewhere with your name on it.”

The sun was already blazing when Claire took a cab into the Quarter. She’d been sleeping when her mother had left the hospital. Claire had awakened to find a note from Lucille propped against a cup of water on the bedside table.

Running to the house to get cleaned up and get a little work done. I’ll be back this afternoon to take you home.

Claire had waited until the aide who’d brought her breakfast came in to clear away the tray, and then she’d climbed out of bed, dressed and left the room. She’d used her cell phone to call a cab, then waited in the air-conditioned lobby for the car to pull up outside.

As she’d pushed open the glass doors, the heat had hit her in the face like a blast from the studio furnace. The trees lining the avenues stood droopy and motionless, and the sprinklers that kept the lawns green in the summer sprayed a steady mist over shady beds of impatiens, begonias and maidenhair fern.

As her cab crossed the tracks on Canal Street, the driver seemed overly concerned about Claire’s health. He kept an eye on her in the rearview mirror and asked more than once that she please not be sick in his car. Luckily, Claire managed to oblige him, but as she climbed back out into the smoldering heat, a wave of dizziness washed over her and she had to seek refuge underneath a balcony until the dark spots stopped dancing before her eyes.

The sidewalk was damp from the rain the previous evening, and as the concrete dried in the sun, heat radiated up from the surface like a steam sauna. The air was thick and heavy, and the stench of stale wine and beer hovered over the gutters, turning Claire’s stomach until she had to retreat deeper under the balcony, where cool air wafted from an open shop doorway.

As she waited for the nausea to pass, she stared across the street at the store window, but from where she stood, the glare on the glass made it impossible to see inside. The cool air from the doorway helped revive her, and a moment later, Claire left the shade and crossed the street. Stepping up on the curb, she felt her heart begin to hammer, and she had to draw in several deep breaths to keep the vertigo at bay.

And then she was there, in front of the window, and it felt as if the sidewalk had melted away beneath her feet. Her knees trembled and she put a hand against the glass to steady herself.

The doll was gone.

The beautiful little inlaid table was still set with the miniature porcelain tea service, just as it had been the day before. But the tiny chair was scooted back, as if the doll had gotten up and walked away of her own accord.

The shock and disappointment were so staggering that Claire could do nothing but stare at the empty chair, her chest rising and falling as she gulped the hot air deep into her lungs.

The doll was gone.

The first clue that had surfaced in over seven years was gone.

The last link she had to her missing daughter…was gone.

After the night’s rain, the morning sky was a clear, fragile blue, the exact shade of a bowl Claire had made for Charlotte one Christmas. She kept the bowl on a table in the window of her apartment so that when the sun shone through, the glass became incandescent and warm to the touch, a living, breathing entity that seemed to glow with an inner soul. It was like having a piece of Claire with her always, and thinking about her sister now caused guilt to well in Charlotte’s chest as she stared out the window at the hot July morning.

Through the maze of buildings, she could see the shimmering glide of the Mississippi River, and she imagined herself on a fancy houseboat, sipping mint juleps beneath a striped umbrella as the current carried her out to sea. Away from New Orleans. Away from her family. Far, far away from what she had done last night.

That she imagined herself on a houseboat instead of a yacht was a testament, Charlotte supposed, to the lingering power of a childhood fantasy. When she was little, her mother used to drive them out to her cousin’s place in Metairie, and the houseboats moored along the lake had fascinated Charlotte. Back then she could think of no greater adventure than to live on the water and to wake up each morning with a new destination. It wasn’t until years later that she realized the houseboats rarely left their moorings, and that the view, breathtaking through it might be, was as static as the alley she saw out her own bedroom window.