The Dollmaker. Amanda Stevens

meal for dinner.

      The vision was so real that Claire could feel the crusty shells of the crawfish beneath her fingers as she watched out the window for Ruby. She’d gotten a new bicycle for her seventh birthday and was riding up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. Claire called through the open window for her to come inside, but Ruby ignored her. Each time she rode up the street, she took longer and longer to get back.

      Putting away the crawfish, Claire washed her hands at the sink and then went outside to call her in. The late afternoon shadows from the oak and pecan trees slowly crept toward the street.

      She could see the gleam of Ruby’s red helmet off in the distance and she started running after her. Somehow she knew that she had to reach her daughter before Ruby got to the end of the street. Something terrible waited for her there. If Claire didn’t get to her first, she would be lost forever.

      Claire screamed her daughter’s name, but Ruby just kept on pedaling. Claire could barely see her now. She was only a dot in the distance. But she was still on her bike. Claire could reach her in time. She tried to run faster, but her legs were suddenly so heavy she could barely lift them.

      And then the dream shifted. She saw herself at the end of a narrow alley, the kind in the Quarter that led back to sun-dappled courtyards. She smelled roses and damp moss, and somewhere nearby water splashed against stone. Someone brushed up against her back, but when she glanced over her shoulder, no one was there.

      A door appeared in front of her and she heard Ruby sobbing inside the room. Slowly, Claire reached for the knob. When she drew back the door, a shaft of sunlight spilled into the darkened space. A little girl sat at a small table, her head buried in her arms. Claire called out her daughter’s name and the child lifted her head. But it wasn’t Ruby. It was the little girl from the news.

      Claire started toward her, but Alex’s voice said from behind her, “She’s dead, Claire. Leave her be.”

      She turned to search for him in the narrow alley, but he was hidden in the shadows. And when he stepped into the light, she saw that it was Dave. His lips moved, but he made no sound at all. When he realized that she didn’t understand him, he lifted a hand and pointed behind her. Claire turned slowly back to the door. The little girl was gone, and in her place was the golden-haired doll from the shop window.

      Clare glanced over her shoulder at Dave. He reached out to her now, as if to stop her, but she shook her head and walked through the door. She glided across the room and picked up the doll. The porcelain felt warm and soft in her arms, like human flesh, but when the doll slipped from her grasp and hit the stone floor, the fragile face shattered into a million pieces.

      Eight

      Dave took the Sea Ray out at dawn the next morning to test the overhauled Chevy engines for his uncle. The boat had been in dry dock for over two weeks, a financially disastrous situation during peak season, but Marsilius had used the opportunity to update some of the equipment.

      The old thirty-foot sports cruiser now offered a television, stereo, microwave and a fully stocked refrigerator, along with the two-burner stove, full head and stand-up shower. The cabin area could comfortably accommodate four guests for overnight trips out to the steel reefs where the bright vapor lights from the oil rigs beamed down to the water’s surface, attracting schools of bait fish that in turn lured in the yellowfin, mackerel and amberjack.

      Marsilius had night fishing down to a science, but Dave had been trying for years to get him to invest in a smaller boat for the anglers who liked to fish the marshes and oyster beds in the basin. His uncle was set in his ways, though, and wasn’t looking to expand his business. He had Dave to relieve him when his knee acted up, and Jinx Bingham’s boy to run the bait and tackle. No sense fixing what wasn’t broke, he always said.

      Throttling back the engines, Dave glided through a glimmering channel and dropped anchor in the bay to watch the sunrise. Mist hovered over the marshes and islets, and clung like wet silk to the treetops.

      Pouring a cup of coffee from his thermos, he sat down to enjoy the solitude. He couldn’t help but think about the past this morning, or the case that Angelette Lapierre had dropped in his lap. She’d faxed a copy of the file to his office, and he’d sifted through the reports and made a few calls before going down to New Orleans late last night. But he needed more time to study the case before he made a decision about taking it on. He didn’t want to give the grieving family false hope until he figured out Angelette’s angle. She’d used the similarity to the Savaria case to draw him in, but Dave couldn’t figure out why she’d bother. She said Nina Losier’s parents were looking to hire a private detective, and she’d told them about him, but that alone set off an alarm for Dave. He and Angelette hadn’t exactly parted on good terms. Aside from the fact that she’d tried to kill him when he broke things off with her, he didn’t trust her and never had. Maybe at one time her edge had been a big part of her appeal, but now Dave knew only too well the cost of getting mixed up with Angelette Lapierre. And that was one mistake he wasn’t looking to repeat.

      But a young woman had been brutally murdered and her parents wanted justice. That was a hard situation to walk away from, especially for Dave, and he had a feeling that was exactly what Angelette was banking on.

      As the boat rocked gently in the current, Dave tipped back his head, propped up his feet and tried to let the peaceful setting lull him. Sunrise in the Gulf was always spectacular, a fiery palette of crimson and gold splashed across a deep lavender canvas. As the mist slowly burned away in the early morning heat, the landscape turned a deep, earthy green. Violet clumps of iris jutted through a thick carpet of algae and duckweed, and purple water lilies opened in the green-gold light that filtered down through the cypress trees.

      Off to his right, a flock of snowy egrets took flight from the swamp grass, and a second later, Dave saw the familiar snout and unblinking stare of a gator glide past his boat. The vista was at once beautiful and menacing, a shadowy world of dark water and thick curtains of Spanish moss.

      Dave had been born and raised in New Orleans, but he loved the Cajun Coast, with its teeming bayous and maze of channels where an outsider could get lost for days. Even when he’d still lived in the city, he had come down every chance he had to help Marsilius with the charters. After he and Claire were married, she would come with him, and when he was finished working for the day, they’d take the boat back out to watch the sunset. Sometimes he would rest on deck while she cooked dinner in the galley, but most of the time he would sit below and watch her.

      Her face had mesmerized him. Even the menial tasks she’d performed dozens of times drew a fierce scowl of concentration to her brow, and Dave always wondered what went through her head then. He’d call out her name to make her glance up, so that he could see her quick smile. She had a shy, intimate way of looking at him that made him want to drop whatever he was doing and take her in his arms, no matter where they were.

      Sometimes they would stay out on the water until well after dark, and make love on the boat. Afterward Claire would sit between his legs, his arms wound around her as they watched the stars shimmer through the treetops.

      When Ruby got older they’d brought her along a few times, but she didn’t take to the water. Too many bugs to suit her, and she didn’t like getting her hair all tangled on the breeze.

      “You’re a little city girl,” Dave would tease her.

      To which Ruby would proudly respond, “I’m just like my maw-maw.”

      Claire had always been a little befuddled by how Ruby emulated her grandmother, and Charlotte had been downright horrified. But Dave got a kick out of it. Lucille was earthy and she looked like a hot mess most of the time, but she had a good heart. And she was the only one in the family who still gave him the time of day.

      He stirred restlessly. The reminiscing had shattered his fragile peace. Loneliness started to creep up on him, and deep inside, he felt the familiar tug of a dangerous thirst. Maybe he’d been hiding out in the swamps and bayous of St. Mary Parish for a little too long. His trips to New Orleans—two days ago and again