The Dollmaker (9 page)

“Saw the name on the box and couldn’t help myself.” Marsilius exchanged the folder for the coffee. “Why you hanging on to those files anyway, son? That was a bad time for you back then. You’re not doing yourself any favors by dwelling on that old business.”

Dave sipped his coffee. “I haven’t had a look at those files since I’ve been sober. Thought I might have missed something. Besides, some new information has come to my attention.”

Marsilius frowned. “What kind of information?”

“Have you seen the news reports about that murdered Tulane student?”

“It was all over the news a few weeks back, but what’s that got to do with Renee Savaria?”

“They both worked at a strip joint on Bourbon Street called the Gold Medallion. The owner’s a greaser named JoJo Barone. He goes all the way back to your old vice squad days. You wouldn’t happen to remember anything about him, would you?”

“Nothing more than what I told you seven years ago.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly seven years ago. Refresh my memory.”

Marsilius shifted his weight to accommodate his knee as he looked out over the bayou. Dave followed his gaze, and for a moment they both seemed to get caught up in the sway of the Spanish moss that fell, like an old woman’s knotted hair, from the water oaks in the yard. The motion was hypnotic in the silent heat. Then another heron took flight from the marsh, breaking the spell, and Dave watched until it was out of sight before turning back to his uncle.

“Well?”

“All I remember is that JoJo had a lot of irons in the fire back then. Besides the skin club in the Quarter, he ran a couple of massage parlors out on Chef Menteur Highway. Had a bunch of Haitian drug dealers for clients, low-life badasses that used to necklace Aristide’s political opponents back in the early nineties. Bastards like that have antifreeze in their veins. I saw one of ’embite the head off a chicken one night and drink the blood like it was pop.”

“Did you ever bust JoJo?”

“We ran him in two or three times, but he had the juice on some pretty high-up officials back then. They always got a little nervous whenever JoJo was in custody, so the charges had a way of disappearing.”

“Did you ever spend any off-duty time at his establishments?”

Marsilius’s features tightened as if Dave might have hit a sore spot. “Chef Menteur Highway was always a place where a guy could get into trouble pretty damn fast. I never went out there unless I had to. And anyway, JoJo didn’t hire the usual crack whores you saw hanging out in the Quarter. His girls were quality and they didn’t come cheap. Where would a cop get that kind of coin?”

Dave laughed.

Marsilius didn’t. He was like a lot of cops Dave had known over the years. He hadn’t been above taking a little something under the table now and then in exchange for muscle or protection, but he didn’t like getting called on it. “Where you going with this, Dave?”

“Maybe nowhere. But now that I’ve got a clear head, I’m starting to remember some things.”

“Like what?”

Like a diary entry with initials and an address on Chef Menteur Highway, Dave thought.

The discovery of Renee Savaria’s diary was the first break he’d had in her case for weeks, and it had come seemingly out of the blue when her roommate called him at the station and asked to meet at a bar on Magazine Street. She was a dancer at the Gold Medallion, too, but that day she’d traded her G-string and pasties for dark glasses and a black head scarf. She’d sat huddled in the back booth of the bar, fear dripping from every pore as she sipped a whiskey sour and chain-smoked Lucky Strikes.

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.”

T
he 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.

The grass is always greener,
her mother used to warn her, and as often as not, Lucille had been right. But for some reason Charlotte could never bring herself to admit it. Nor did she ever feel the need to temper her fantasies, no matter how many disillusionments she encountered.

Hitching the sheet over her breasts, she shifted her position at the window. When she turned a certain way, the river disappeared and she could see Alex’s reflection in the glass. He had his back to the window as he stood in front of the bureau, knotting his tie. Charlotte glanced over her shoulder and their gazes met briefly in the mirror before she looked away.

Tiny shivers whispered along her bare skin, and even now, with guilt and shame niggling at her conscience, she couldn’t say that she was entirely sorry for what had happened. She’d been attracted to Alex Girard for as long as she could remember. He was nearly a decade older, but age had never mattered to Charlotte. She’d always had a thing for mature men. What did matter was that he was still technically married to her sister.

“You’ve been standing at that window for ten damn minutes,” he said. “What are you looking at?”

“You can see the river from here.”

“Just enough so that they call it a view and charge twice as much rent.” He came over to stand behind her, casually resting his hand on her bare shoulder as he propped his other arm against the window frame.

He’d just come from the shower, and Charlotte could smell the soap on his skin and the starch in his shirt. She wanted to turn and bury her head against that snowy crispness, tug loose his tie and slide her hand up under his shirttail. His stomach beneath was flat and hard from the hours he spent at the gym. He took a lot of care with his appearance, and Charlotte appreciated the effort.

Absently, he massaged her shoulder. “Man, would you look at that traffic? Seeing all those cars out there, it’s hard to believe what a ghost town this place was after the flood. Of course, eighty percent of the city was underwater. Nothing going in and out but gators and moccasins.”

Charlotte glanced up at his profile. She felt a pull of desire every time she looked at him, so she hastily averted her gaze. This morning she wouldn’t have the excuse of fear and loneliness driving her toward irresponsibility. This morning she wouldn’t be able to blame anything but her own selfish needs.

“You rode out the storm here in town, didn’t you? I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”

Alex squinted against the glare of sunlight that spilled through the window. “It was bad. Worst damn thing I’ve ever been through, but half of what you heard on the news was bullshit. Like the reports about cops leaving the city in droves. Never happened.”

“The first thing I learned when I went to work in the D.A.’s office was never to trust the media,” Charlotte said with a shrug. “But they got one thing right. New Orleans is never going to be the same.”

“No, probably not. But I’ve never seen much point in looking back. You can’t change the past. All you can do is play the hand you got dealt and move on.”

“Sometimes it’s not that easy, Alex.”

“And sometimes it is,” he insisted. “It’s all a matter of persective. Take this window, for instance. If you’re the glass half-empty type, you’d look out and see nothing but the memory of flooded streets and piles of garbage. But me? I prefer to be a little more optimistic. I look out that window and see opportunity.”

“Now you sound just like a politician,” Charlotte teased. “You can’t expect people to forget so soon. New Orleans has always been a city that lives in the past. It’s who we are.”

“And maybe that’s been our problem all along. Like I said, I don’t see much profit in looking back. I don’t believe in regrets.” His voice softened as he turned and traced a finger down her jawline. “That goes for what happened last night, too. I’m not sorry and I don’t want you to be, either.”

She kept her gaze trained on the window, as if the sunshine flooding through the glass could burn away her desire for him as easily as it melted the early morning mist over the river. “I can’t help it. I shouldn’t have come here, Alex.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I could tell that you were hurt and upset when you left the hospital last night. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“One thing you gotta know about me. I’m not a man who takes well to charity. I don’t need your pity. That’s the last thing I want from you.”

“I don’t pity you, but I do understand what you’re going through. Last night you were hurt and vulnerable, and I was lonely. We let things get out of hand. It never should have happened.”

“Is that really the way you feel?” His eyes moved over her face. “If you don’t want to see me again, that’s fine. If the earth didn’t move or we didn’t click, or you can’t stand the way I hog all the covers in the middle of the night, then tell me straight up. I can handle the truth. But don’t give me any bullshit about guilt and regrets. We didn’t hurt anybody.”

“What about Claire?”

“Claire doesn’t give a damn what I do.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

The question obviously hit a nerve that was still raw and exposed. Alex winced as he turned back to the window. “No, I’m not going to tell her. Are you?”

Charlotte clutched the sheet to her breasts, the lingering passion she’d felt earlier dissolving now in the tawdry light of the morning after. “I don’t want her to know. I can’t stand the thought of her being hurt because of something we did in a weak moment.”

“You need to lighten up.” His voice was becoming irritated, but Charlotte didn’t think he was so much annoyed with her as he was with his own conscience. “It’s over between Claire and me. It has been for a long time. I was just too stubborn to admit it. I kept clinging to the way I wanted things to be instead of facing how it really was.”

“Because you loved her,” Charlotte said softly. “You still do. That’s plain to anyone.”

“Maybe I do, but I’m damned if I know why.”

“Because she’s Claire.”

“Right.” His eyes were suddenly cold and remote as he stared out at the traffic. “She’s Claire. The woman I let walk all over me for the past six years.”

Charlotte flinched. “Don’t talk about her that way. You don’t know what she’s been through.”

He gave a bitter laugh as his eyes cut sideways at her. “
I
don’t know what she’s been through? That’s a joke, right? Because I’m the one who used to wake her up from the nightmares, remember? I’m the one who was right there beside her when she went through the house looking for Ruby. I’m the one who held her for hours when she couldn’t stop shaking. So don’t tell me I don’t understand what she went through, okay? I was with her every step of the way. And it still wasn’t enough.”

“I’m sorry.” Charlotte put a hand on his arm. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You know as well as I do what a terrible time she’s had. I’m just defensive when it comes to my sister.”

He shook off her hand and walked back over to the mirror to adjust his tie. His movements were jerky with anger. “We’re all defensive when it comes to Claire. But you and Lucille aren’t doing her any favors by feeding into this latest obsession of hers.”

“You mean the doll?”

“I mean the doll, I mean that kid she saw in the park, I mean everything. She’s got to find a way to let this thing go or it’ll eat her alive.”

Maybe it already has.
Because when she remembered her sister the way she once was, Charlotte realized all too painfully that the Claire she knew now was nothing but a shell. She’d never been outgoing like Charlotte, or as openly demonstrative as Lucille, but she’d adored her daughter, loved her more than life itself. And there was a time when she’d been quietly, ecstatically happy. With Dave.

Charlotte supposed if she searched her memory banks hard enough she might be able to remember why Claire had fallen so hard for Dave Creasy. He’d once been handsome enough, before the booze destroyed his looks. Charming, too, and maybe even a little cocky when he’d first made detective. But he’d never had Alex’s sophistication or ambition. He’d never been the kind of man Charlotte would ever envision for herself, but he and Claire had once been good together. Then Ruby had disappeared and Dave had gone off the deep end. But even before that, he’d done some things to her sister that Charlotte would never be able to forgive.

In light of her current situation, she realized her attitude was probably hypocritical, and she thought there might be some truth in the old saying that everyone had the propensity to become what they hated the most. She’d despised Dave for his moral failings, and now here she was, standing naked in her brother-in-law’s bedroom.

Alex picked up his keys and wallet and stuffed them in his pockets. “I have to get to the station. There’s juice in the refrigerator and plenty of clean towels in the bathroom. Stay as long as you want. Just lock up when you leave.”

He started for the door, then turned back and walked over to where she still stood at the window. He bent to kiss her forehead, the affectionate peck of a friend—or worse, of a brother—before he straightened and ran his knuckles down the side of her face.

“Don’t beat yourself up over what happened, okay? Claire never has to know.”

But I know.

And Charlotte wondered if, years later, she would look back at some point and be able to recall that this moment was the beginning of her own moral decline.

She turned and stared into the blinding sunlight until she heard the front door close behind Alex. She was still standing at the window a few moments later when the phone on the nightstand rang, and she heard the message machine in the living room pick up. Alex’s recorded greeting came on, and then a moment later, the caller said impatiently, “You’re a hard man to reach these days. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to avoid me.”