The Dollmaker (21 page)

“By whom?”

“Maybe Lucille had one made and forgot about it.”

“She would have remembered something like that. Besides, it’s expensive to commission a portrait doll, especially from an artist as talented as Savannah Sweete. Mama didn’t have that kind of money. Dave, whoever made that doll had to have seen Ruby in person at some point.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she has a tiny birthmark painted on her left arm.”

Their gazes dropped to Dave’s arm, to the red strawberry mark he had been born with and passed on to their daughter.

“Claire, are you saying that this doll artist had something to do with Ruby’s kidnapping?”

“I don’t think she’s the one who did it. But she may have been in contact with the person who did.”

Dave got up and went over to stare out at the bayou. The light outside was fading, and he heard the hoot of an owl from one of the oak trees. The call was eerie, lonely. A sound from his past.

He realized that his hands had started to tremble again, and he stuffed them in his pockets as he turned. “What do you expect me to do with this information?”

“I told you. I want you to find that doll for me.”

“And then what?”

She looked up at him, her eyes troubled. “What do you mean?”

“Our daughter is dead. It took me a long time to accept it, but now that I finally have, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to go digging up the past. I’ve spent a lot of time in some very dark places since Ruby disappeared. Places that look and feel a little too much like hell. I’m not that anxious to go back.”

She stood slowly. “What are you saying? You’re not going to help me?”

“What if you’re just using that doll as a smokescreen, Claire?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s your subconscious way of dealing with the divorce.”

“You think I’m making all this up to take my mind off my broken marriage?” Her tone was incredulous, her blue eyes angry and dark.

Dave turned back to stare out at the twilight.

Behind him, he heard Claire take a breath. “I should have known better than to come here. You weren’t there for our daughter seven years ago, and I don’t know why I thought anything would be different now. It’s always been about you, hasn’t it, Dave? What’s best for you?”

“You’re right,” he said wearily. “This is all about me.”

“Don’t do that.” She grabbed his arm, made him face her. “Don’t shut down like that. Not this time. This is too important, and some of us don’t have the luxury of running away when things get too tough.”

Her tone surprised him. “Is that what you think I did?”

“That’s what I know you did. All those nights when you were drinking yourself into one stupor after another, I was looking for our daughter…making phone calls, passing out flyers, connecting with all the national databanks. I did whatever I could, because running away wasn’t an option for me.”

“You don’t think I looked for Ruby? You don’t think I did everything humanly possible to find her?” He turned, stormed into the house and started grabbing up the boxes piled against one wall. He carried them out to the porch one by one and dropped them at Claire’s feet. “It’s all there. A paper trail of every lead I followed, no matter how small. And every time I came to a dead end, I had my heart ripped out all over again. So maybe you’ll cut me some slack if I’m not anxious to put you through that same torture.”

She lifted her chin, but her eyes were gleaming with tears. “That’s not your decision to make.”

“Maybe not. But I don’t have to be around when you get gutted.”

Her eyes looked stricken as she stared up at him. “I never should have come here.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have. But you did, and now let’s just get this over with. All these years, you’ve blamed me for Ruby’s kidnapping, and now here’s your chance to finally get it off your chest. Come on, Claire. Just say it. I know you want to.”

“That’s not true. I never blamed you. I’m the one who was at the house when she was taken. I’m the one who let her ride her bicycle on the sidewalk that day.”

“And I’m the one who didn’t come home when he was supposed to. I’m the one who wasn’t there to protect her. You might as well say it, Claire, because it’s right there in your eyes. It has been from day one. And it’s not anything I haven’t told myself at least a million times since it happened.”

“You want me to say it, then here it is. You should have come home that day. You should have been there to protect our little girl, but instead you were with
her.
”

The bitterness in Claire’s voice was like a slap in the face. Dave took a step back. “I always figured you knew. Who told you?”

“
She
did.”

Dave closed his eyes briefly.

“That’s right,” Claire said. “That’s the kind of woman you took up with. You chose her over your own wife and child. And it wasn’t enough that my daughter was missing and I had to go through the worst kind of agony a mother could ever face. She had to call me up and tell me where you were at the exact moment Ruby was taken.”

“God, Claire…” Dave couldn’t bear to look at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

“Not that this justifies what I did, but it didn’t mean anything—”

“Why do men always say that?” she asked in disgust. “It doesn’t make it better. It makes it so much worse, knowing that you were willing to throw away what we had over something that didn’t even mean anything to you. What kind of person does that?”

Dave didn’t answer, because he didn’t know what to say. Nothing was ever going to erase what he’d done. And nothing was ever going to change how Claire felt about him.

“You chose her over Ruby and me that day,” Claire said quietly.

“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a conscious choice—”

“Did she hold a gun to your head?”

“Claire—”

“Then you made a choice. It’s as simple as that.”

“I made another choice that day, too. I left her to come back home to you.”

“But it was too late, wasn’t it? Ruby was already gone.”

He sat down heavily in the rocking chair and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know what to say to you. I could tell you that I’ve paid dearly for my mistakes, but somehow I don’t think that would make much difference.”

She shook her head sadly. “No, it wouldn’t. There’s nothing that will ever make things right. But even after everything I’ve said to you, I know deep down that Ruby’s kidnapping wasn’t your fault. No more than it was mine. Maybe you were right,” she said. “Maybe it is a mistake to start digging up the past. Because it seems like whatever you and I buried seven years ago still has the power to destroy us.”

T
he cooling air smelled like flowers and wet dirt as Dave stood at the screen door and watched Claire’s car head down the gravel road toward the highway.

Her taillights flashed briefly as she neared a bend in the road, and then the sound of the engine faded in the twilight.

He told himself he should go after her, that he couldn’t leave things this way between them. He even went out to his truck, got in, turned on the ignition and backed out of the driveway. But instead of trying to catch Claire before she reached the highway, he turned in the opposite direction, and a few minutes later pulled into the parking lot of a dilapidated icehouse that sat on the edge of the bayou.

The place was dark and seedy and nearly empty. A country and western song played on the jukebox as a few customers sat at the tables, smoking and drinking, their faces reflecting a strange, bluish glow from the neon light that flashed outside the window.

Dave walked over to the bar and sat down.

“What’ll you have?”

“Give me a draft and a couple of bourbon shots. And here.” Dave fished in his pocket for his keys. “Take these and don’t give them back to me no matter what I say.”

The bartender tossed them into an old shoe box he kept underneath the bar. “Is there somebody you want me to call so you don’t have to walk home?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll see that he gets home okay.”

Dave turned at the sound of the husky voice at his ear. Angelette sat down next to him, her dark eyes smiling, knowing. She wore a low-cut red dress that showed the tops of her breasts when she leaned over. Her lips curved when she saw Dave stare, but then he deliberately glanced away.

She tossed her dark hair over one shoulder as she turned to the bartender. “I’ll have what he’s having. And looks like you better keep ’em coming. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

When the drinks were in front of them, Dave drained one shot of whiskey, then took a long drink of his beer. Funny how natural it felt sitting in a smoky dive with the flicker of neon light reflecting in Angelette’s dark eyes. Dave could smell her perfume, a thick, musky scent that seemed to emanate from her hair and from her smooth, suntanned skin.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight, Dave. What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

He stared straight ahead, cradling his beer in both hands. “What are you doing here?”

“I came by your place earlier. I saw a car in the drive and figured you had company. So I came over here to kill a little time.”

Dave finished the second shot, and closed his eyes as the fire took hold in his belly. His fingertips and scalp tingled, and he could feel the warmth of the whiskey on his face. And already he wanted another drink.

Angelette was way ahead of him. She ordered another round, then grabbed his arm, tried to pull him up off the stool. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s take this party outside.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” But he grabbed his beer and reluctantly followed her out the door.

The music drifted outside and Angelette hummed to herself as she pulled out a chair and sat down. “At least we can hear ourselves think out here.”

A waitress brought out the fresh round, and Dave picked up a shot, drained it and picked up the next one.

Angelette stared at him through the deepening twilight. “That’s some hard-core drinking, baby doll. What brought it on?”

Dave shrugged and downed the fourth shot. The moon was just starting to rise over the bayou and he could hear the cicadas and the bullfrogs over the music. But it was all becoming a bit hazy. Angelette’s perfume mingled with the jasmine that grew around the deck, and the sounds of the swamp became indistinguishable from the murmur of voices inside the bar. It was all just noise inside Dave’s head.

A car pulled into the parking lot and a high beam caught him square in the face. He squinted and put up a hand to shield his eyes until the lights went out. A door slammed and a woman’s soft laughter drifted through the darkness.

By the time he had a few more shots, Dave started to relax. He was on familiar turf now. He’d spent more nights like this than he could remember, in icehouses and bars all up and down Highway 90. The buzz inside his head was like the comfortable chatter of an old friend.

“Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“That was Claire’s car I saw at your house, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not going to talk about Claire with you.”

He saw her smile tighten in the half-light. “All right.”

He gazed off at the water. “Why’d you do it, Angie?”

“Do what, Dave?”

“Why did you tell her about us?”

She picked up her beer and shrugged. “Because they say the wife’s always the last to find out. I thought she had a right to know.”

“Bullshit.”

Angelette drew back from the table, anger flashing in her eyes. “You walked out on me. You left me in that dump like some cheap whore that you’d bought and paid for and didn’t give a damn about. What did you think, Dave? That I was one of those women who liked being treated like shit?”

“So you took it out on Claire? A woman who never did anything to you?”

“She had it coming.”

Anger shot through the alcohol fog inside his brain, and Dave clenched his fists. “How do you figure that?”

“She had you. That was enough to make me hate her.” Angelette laughed, but the sound was bitter and hollow as she fished in her purse for a cigarette. “What can I say? I was young and foolish and I thought I was in love.”

“That’s no excuse. You went out of your way to hurt a woman who was already grieving for her missing child. I knew you had a cold heart,” Dave said. “I never thought you were vicious.”

“Turns out there’s a lot about me you don’t know.” She lit her cigarette and shook out the match.

“Yeah, I guess I’m starting to find that out.”

She sat smoking quietly, one arm folded over her middle as she stared at him across the table.

“You knew when you approached me about the Losier case that NOPD had a viable suspect and was close to making an arrest, didn’t you? It was all a setup.”

She flicked ashes into the dark.

“You never even talked to Gordon Losier about me, did you? Why say that you did?”

“Because I wanted to make sure I could get you interested in the Savaria case again. I figured the best way to do that was to convince you there was a connection between those two dead girls. I don’t get it, though. What has you so upset, Dave? Are you mad that I played you? So what if I did? I’m not the first and I probably won’t be the last, but in the end, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve tortured yourself all these years about who made those phone calls to you after Ruby disappeared. Now you know it was a cop.”

He stared at her for a moment. “How did you know about that?”

She shrugged and kept silent.

“Were you there the night Renee Savaria was murdered? Were you in on the cover-up?”

She laughed as she tossed her cigarette into the darkness. “Come on, Dave. Those parties were for the good ol’boys. You think they’d invite a female cop into their inner sanctum?”

“Then how did you know about Renee Savaria, much less about those phone calls?”

She leaned forward, smiling. “Use your imagination. What do you think I was doing all those nights when you were crying in your beer over Claire? You think you were the only cop who had the hots for me back then? I had plenty of guys after me, and they weren’t like you, Dave. They didn’t get all quiet and moody and remorseful after we did it. Some of them got pretty talkative afterward, especially after a few drinks.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything? You knew what Nettle did to that poor girl. You knew about the cover-up and you didn’t say a word.”

“What was I supposed to do? I spill the juice on a bunch of my brothers, you know as well as I do what would happen. Career over, that’s what. I’d be lucky if I didn’t get a bullet in the face.”

“So why are you forcing the issue now?”

She ran a finger around the rim of her beer mug. “Because things are different. A lot’s changed since you left the department. That glass ceiling isn’t quite as bulletproof as it used to be, and I’d like to take advantage of some new opportunities. But as it turns out, the guys who covered up what Nettle did seven years ago are the same assholes standing in my way now. That’s where you come in.”

“I do the dirty work, is that it? I get rid of Nettle and the others and you don’t get popped for snitching on a fellow cop. This isn’t about justice, is it, Angie? It’s about your ambition.”

Angelette smiled and lifted her drink. “What can I say? We can’t all be martyrs like you, Dave.”

Dave woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. His body recoiled from the scent and he stumbled into the bathroom to throw up.

After he’d emptied his stomach, he sat with his head against the porcelain for at least ten minutes before he felt strong enough to get up. He didn’t want to look at himself in the mirror so he kept his eyes averted as he tried to brush his teeth, but he couldn’t even manage that. He sank to his knees and hung his head over the toilet once again.

When he rose this time, weak and shaking, he stripped off his underwear and climbed into the shower. He stood under the spray for a long time, hoping the water would help beat back the demons.

When he finally got out, he brushed his teeth again and then took a quick look at his reflection. His face was still bruised and battered from where he’d been worked over the other night, and now he also had bags under his eyes and a sickly yellow tinge to his skin.

He glanced away quickly, not liking what he saw—and hating what he’d done. Eight months of sobriety down the toilet along with last night’s dinner. At that moment, Dave didn’t even want to contemplate what lay ahead of him. As soon as he could, he had to get himself back to an AA meeting.

He went into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of jeans, then walked downstairs buttoning his shirt. He figured Marsilius had come over this morning and let himself in, but instead it was Angelette he found at the stove. She had on the same red dress she’d worn the night before, but now she was barefoot, her dark hair tangled from sleep.

She looked up with a grin as she turned the bacon.

“Morning, sunshine.”

He leaned a shoulder against the door frame and folded his arms. “What are you doing here?”

Her smile faded. “Are you telling me you don’t remember last night? I’m hurt, Dave.”

“Angie—”

She laughed at his scowl. “Relax, hotshot, nothing happened. I drove you home, helped you to bed and then spent the night on the couch. See?” She pointed with the spatula, and he glanced over his shoulder, saw a blanket folded at the end of the couch, and let out a slow breath.

“Sit down,” she said. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

“I don’t think I can eat.”

“Yeah, you don’t look so good. But you’ll feel better when you get something in your stomach.”

Somehow Dave doubted that, but he sat down and watched as she dished up a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, and carried it over to the table.

He forced himself to pick up the fork and take a few bites. “It’s good. Thanks.”

She sat down at the table with him, but she only had coffee.

“You’re not hungry?”

“I’ll have something later. Right now, I’m more concerned with what you plan to do about Nettle.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“It’s not going to be easy taking him down, Dave. If he feels cornered, he’ll come out fighting.”

He gave a brittle laugh. “No shit.”

“He did that to you? I wondered.”

But didn’t care enough to ask, Dave thought. “He already thinks I’m working with someone. If you want to keep your name out of this, you better keep your distance from now on.”

She studied him for a moment, as if trying to figure something out. When she spoke, her voice was cool and detached, and she rose from the table without looking at him. “That’s good advice, Dave.”

Walking over to the couch, she picked up her purse and hooked the strap over her shoulder. “You take care of yourself, hear? I have a feeling that from here on out, me and you won’t be seeing much of one another.”

Dave waited until he heard Angelette’s car pull out of the drive, then got up and carried his dishes into the kitchen. Dumping the rest of the food into the garbage, he stacked his plate and cup in the sink, then went outside to the porch.

The day was already hot and humid, and he could feel sweat collect at the back of his neck and run down his spine. His hands and legs were shaking. It was all he could do not to walk over to Marsilius’s place, take a longneck from the cooler and pop it open.

Instead, he went back inside, poured a tall glass of iced tea and swallowed some aspirin. He carried the drink to the porch and sank down in one of the rockers. It had been a long time since he’d felt this sick and weak. He didn’t know what he was going to do about Nettle, because right now he couldn’t think beyond the moment. He didn’t know how he’d get through the next hour without a drink, much less the rest of the day, the rest of his life.

He stared out at the sun shimmering off the bayou, but what he saw instead was the long, dark road that lay ahead of him.

The phone started ringing inside the house, and Dave’s first inclination was to ignore it. He didn’t want to talk to anybody right now, least of all Marsilius, who was probably calling to check up on him. But if he didn’t pick up, his uncle was apt to show up on his doorstep, and Dave sure as hell didn’t want that.

He went inside to answer.

“Dave, it’s Titus.”

“I was beginning to think you’d just blown me off,” Dave said.

“Don’t think I didn’t consider it. Listen up. I followed your boy Nettle out here to a dive off Airline Drive.” He gave Dave the address. “You better get your ass down here quick ’cause you ain’t gonna believe who just showed up to meet him.”