Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

She watched as Claire carefully wrapped the fragile glass in layers of old newspaper. “I can’t help noticing the bandage on your hand,” the woman said. “Do you need some help?”

“Thanks, but I can manage.”

The woman’s eyes held a curious glint. “I’m sorry. I know it’s rude to stare, but…do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” Claire said. “Although I’ve lived in New Orleans all my life. I suppose it’s possible our paths have crossed.”

“That must be it.”

The woman paid for the piece in cash, and as she waited for her change, she gave Claire a hesitant smile. “I think I know why you look so familiar. It’s your eyes. They’re turquoise, yes? A very unusual color, but I once knew someone with eyes the exact same shade.”

Claire murmured a response as the woman put away her change. Then she picked up the package from the counter and left the gallery.

Even after she was gone, Claire remained uneasy. She went over to the window to watch until the woman was out of sight, telling herself all the while that she was just tired and on edge. The past few days had been trying. The doll, the accident and the missing picture of Ruby. Any one of those incidents would have been unnerving, but to have all three occur at once was overwhelming.

Claire thought again of her grandmother, who’d always claimed that bad things came in threes. Charlotte would say that Claire was letting her imagination get the better of her. And maybe she was. But ever since she’d spotted the doll in the shop window, she couldn’t shake the notion that a door to the past had been opened.

A door that might lead her someplace she had no wish to go.

At a little after five, Claire locked the front door to the gallery, then closed out the register and secured the day’s receipts in the vault. After tidying up the showroom and display shelves, she walked back through the studio. The other glassblowers had already gone home, but Ansel Ready was still busy at his bench, and Claire stopped to watch him for a moment as he separated a striated bronze jar from a punty rod attached to the bottom of the glass.

“You always make that look so easy,” she said.

“When you’ve been doing it as long as I have, it should be easy.” He was a small, pleasant-looking man with a ruddy complexion and long, straight hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sweat glistened on his brow as he carefully dropped the jar onto the insulated knock-off table and then set the punty rod aside. Pulling on Kevlar gloves, he placed the piece inside the annealer, an electric oven that would keep the glass from cooling too quickly. After a few hours, the control system would slowly decrease the temperature to keep the object from shattering.

Sealing the oven door, he came back over to his bench and removed the gloves. “What’s on your mind, Claire?”

“Does something have to be on my mind for me to appreciate your work?”

He put away the jacks he’d been using to open up the lip of the jar. “You’ve been here, what? Almost seven years now, isn’t it? Even since you took your first class from me. I think I know you pretty well. And don’t forget I raised four daughters. I can tell when a woman is troubled about something.”

“I’m not really troubled,” Claire said. “I just wondered if you happened to notice someone in the tour group this afternoon. She was blond, thin, had on one of those long, flowy skirts.”

“Kept to the back of the crowd?”

Claire nodded. “Did she seem at all familiar to you, Ansel?”

“If it’s the same woman I’m thinking of, it was hard to tell what she looked like through all that makeup. I thought she had a mask on at first. Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but I have a feeling that I know her from somewhere. Or maybe that she knows me somehow. Does that make sense?”

“A lot of people come into the gallery. Maybe she’s been in before.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

Ansel grew all fatherly, his brow puckering in concern. “Did she say something to upset you?”

“No. It wasn’t anything that she said or did. It wasn’t even the way she looked. There was just something kind of strange about her.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. This is New Orleans. Strange is normal for us.” He nodded toward Claire’s bandaged palm. “You just worry about taking care of that hand. It’s mighty lonely back here without you at your bench.”

“You still have Esther,” Claire teased, referring to one of the other glassblowers, who had been trying to get Ansel’s attention for years. Despite Ansel’s dogged indifference, Esther Stark was not a woman who discouraged easily.

He merely grunted as he started to clean up around his workbench. Claire said good-night and left through the back entrance. The afternoon was warm and balmy, and at five-thirty, hours of daylight remained. She fished in her purse for her car keys, and as she glanced up, she saw a man standing in the narrow alley that ran between two neighboring buildings. She couldn’t see him clearly, and experience told her that he was probably one of the city’s homeless, but he seemed familiar somehow.

Claire had always felt relatively safe in the American District, but she’d lived in New Orleans all her life and knew enough not to let down her guard, no matter the area. As she hurried toward her car, she kept her eyes on the man in the alley. He didn’t try to approach her, but stood back in the shadows so that she couldn’t see his face.

Claire had the uneasy feeling that he was watching her, and as she opened the door and slid behind the wheel, she glanced back to keep an eye on him. But he’d already disappeared.

Sunlight danced like perch off the muddy surface of the Mississippi River as Dave drove across the Huey Long Bridge late that afternoon. He was headed into New Orleans to see JoJo Barone, the owner of the strip joint on Bourbon Street where both Nina Losier and Renee Savaria had worked. When Dave walked into the Gold Medallion a little while later, the bartender glanced up and gave him a lazy salute. He was about Dave’s age, tall and lean, with bad teeth and dishwater-blond hair that fell in greasy hanks around his face.

At this time of day, the front of the bar was empty and the daylight that streamed in through the open doorway didn’t quite penetrate the darker recesses of the club, where a handful of customers sat grouped around the runway watching an early floor show.

Dave walked over to the bar and sat down. “Is JoJo around?”

The bartender tipped his head toward the back of the club. “He’s in his office.”

“Can you tell him Dave Creasy would like to see him?”

The man scratched the mushroom cloud on his Megadeth T-shirt. “Yeah, thing is, JoJo don’t like to be disturbed when he’s going over the books. He’ll probably be at it for another hour or two, so you might as well relax and enjoy the show. What can I get you to drink?”

“I’ll take a Coke.”

“You sure? It’ll cost the same with or without the bourbon.”

“Just the Coke.”

Dave glanced toward the back, where a group of middle-aged businessmen sat with loosened ties and smoldering cigarettes, watching a redhead in a green G-string pole-dance to the hip-hop beat blasting from the sound system. A mirrored ball rotating overhead threw prisms of light on the walls and ceiling, and reflected off the crystal in the dancer’s belly button. She curled a leg around the pole and slid slowly up and down the slick surface, eyes closed, head thrown back. Then, grasping the pole with both hands, she lifted herself until she hung suspended with her head only a few inches from the floor, and slowly opened her legs. A drunken college boy seated with his buddy at the end of the runway let out a loud rebel yell as he waved a fistful of bills at the dancer.