Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

Her gaze darted to the front door, and Dave noticed that she’d chosen a booth where they both had a view of the entrance. He’d taught her that. The things she’d taught him didn’t come in so handy these days.

“I’m seeing someone. I wanted you to hear it from me first.” She ran a fingernail around the rim of her empty glass and Dave could tell she wanted another drink. He knew that feeling, that hunger. It was like a needy old friend you could never get rid of.

He waited for a moment, thinking he might feel a twinge of regret at her news, but no. Not even a flicker of relief. He just didn’t care anymore. “Is it serious?”

“Who knows?” Angelette shook out a cigarette and lit up. The smoke mingled with the steam from his coffee, softening her features and making her face seem almost vulnerable, but Dave knew better than to believe in a mirage. “We’re taking things slow for now. Something you and I should have done, I guess.” She propped an elbow on the table, letting the Camel smolder between her fingers. “Never was anything slow about you, Dave.”

“Most men wouldn’t take that as a compliment.”

“But you’re not most men, now are you?” She gave him a dark smile. “We both liked it fast, didn’t we? And often.”

Her lowered voice conjured images best left in the past. Seedy motel rooms. The hood of his car. A deserted road with the smell of the river drifting in through the open windows.

“We were good for a while, baby. You can’t deny that.” She reached for his hand, but Dave pulled his away.

“Tell me about your new guy. Anyone I know?”

“It’s Lee Elliot.”

Dave was caught off guard by the name. The conservative Orleans Parish district attorney hardly seemed suited to Angelette’s free spirit, but then Elliot came from old money and that would most definitely appeal to her.

“Are you impressed?”

“Have to say that I am. Does he know about the payoffs?”

“I’m clean these days, Dave. I swear. So I’d appreciate it if you’d just keep your mouth shut about the past. I kind of like the idea of a stable relationship for a change and I don’t want you ruining this for me.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Besides, I don’t exactly operate in Elliot’s circle.”

“No, but Claire’s sister does.”

“I don’t talk to Claire’s family. You know that.”

“I thought things might be different now.”

“You mean because I’m not seeing you anymore?”

Angelette took a quick drag on her cigarette. “I did wonder.”

“Claire and I are over,” Dave said slowly. “We’ve been over for a long time. You know she’s remarried.” And wasn’t it pretty damn remarkable how he was able to say it without punching a wall or shattering a window?

But the outbursts of temper and the drunken brawls were behind him. Dave had accepted his life for the way it was, and he’d finally figured out there was no profit in dwelling on what he’d lost.

He could almost hear his AA sponsor coaxing him: Say it with me, Dave. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

A nice sentiment, but it didn’t mean shit when you were lying facedown in a gutter.

“You said there were two reasons why you wanted to see me. What’s the other?”

Angelette’s gaze flashed to the door again. Dave wondered if she was expecting someone. Her nerves were right beneath the surface and he couldn’t help wondering why. “This conversation is going to stay between us, right?”

“Sure.”

She waited a moment longer, then slid the empty glass aside. “Have you been following the Losier case?”

“The murdered Tulane student? Hard not to. Her picture’s been plastered all over the news for weeks.” Nina Losier’s girl-next-door looks had captured the public’s attention, but after nearly a month with no arrests and nothing new to report, media interest was starting to wane. A sure sign the investigation was going nowhere. Dave had learned that lesson the hard way.

Angelette blew a stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth. “The father is looking to hire a P.I. I told him about you.”

“Since when does NOPD recommend a private dick for an active investigation?”

“Since it’s not my case.” She grinned, but her eyes were sober as she gazed across the table at him. “Let’s just say the official investigation has run into some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“There’s a lot about this case that hasn’t been released to the public. Nina Losier was from a wealthy family in Baton Rouge. Her father has a lot of political clout and NOPD has been pressured to keep certain aspects of the investigation out of the news.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that when Nina wasn’t in class, she sometimes danced at a strip club on Bourbon Street. The Gold Medallion.” Angelette paused. “That’s where Renee Savaria worked, isn’t it?”

Dave suddenly realized how badly he wanted a drink. It hit him like that sometimes. Everything would be going along fine, and then bam. A face, a memory…even a name could smash his control all to hell.

The Savaria homicide was the last case he’d worked before his resignation. He’d been knee-deep in the investigation when his daughter went missing. Snatched in broad daylight as she rode her new bicycle up and down the sidewalk in front of their home.

Images were already flashing in Dave’s head. The kind of visions that had made him reach for a bottle—or his gun—on more sleepless nights than he cared to remember.

Ruby had been seven when she was taken. Just seven years old.

“If Nina Losier comes from the kind of background you say she does, how’d she end up stripping on Bourbon Street?”

“You make it sound like she was an anomaly, but rich girls slumming to embarrass their powerful daddies is nothing new in this town.”

“What about leads?”

“One dead end after another, just like the Savaria case. I remember how frustrated you were back then. You told me once it was like beating your head against a stone wall. Then all of a sudden you turned up a new lead. You thought you were getting close to a breakthrough when Ruby went missing. Maybe you were getting a little too close.”

For a moment Dave felt as if the air had been squeezed from his lungs. He’d never told anyone about those phone calls, not even Angelette. She couldn’t know about the missing page from the dead woman’s diary, either. No one knew about that except Dave and Renee Savaria’s murderer.

He’d destroyed evidence in a homicide investigation in order to save his daughter’s life, but Ruby hadn’t been returned as promised. Instead, her trail had grown cold while Dave collaborated with a killer.

A muscle in his jaw began to throb. Seven years and the guilt was still as fresh and deep as the day he’d answered Claire’s frantic phone call.

Angelette’s eyes searched his face. “I always wondered if there was a link between Renee Savaria’s murder and Ruby’s kidnapping. I think you did, too.”

Dave looked down at his hands. They weren’t trembling, but his fingers had curled so tight, his knuckles whitened. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. It’s all in the past.”

“A guy like you lives in the past.”

“Not anymore.”

“I call bullshit on that.”

Dave shrugged.

“After you left, the active investigations on your desk fell through the cracks. Nobody wanted to get tainted by your bad karma. So the Savaria case has been sitting in the cold case files all this time, and the way I see it, that old unfinished business has been eating away at you for too damn long. Maybe it’s time for a little closure.”