“And so you’re going to stand out here in this heat until you keel right over from exhaustion. Is that it?”
“If I have to.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror this morning? You look like hell. You’re as pale as a ghost and your hands are trembling like an old woman’s. You need to get out of this heat. At least go with me down the street to get something cold to drink.”
“You go if you want to.”
“Claire—”
“Just leave me alone, Alex. Please.”
“Damn it.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders and turned to stare at the traffic, his mouth a thin, straight line. Then he started walking away. “Wait here.”
“Where are you going?”
“Next door. Maybe someone there knows something about when this place normally opens.”
Claire wished she’d thought of that. “Alex?”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“Thanks.”
His face tightened. “Don’t thank me. It’s not like I’m doing you any favors. I’m just prolonging the inevitable, is all.”
He disappeared into the neighboring shop, and Claire stepped back into the deeper shade of the doorway. Putting her face to the glass, she tried to peer through the sliver at the edge of the blind again, but Alex was right. The interior was so dim she could barely see anything. Maybe she really had glimpsed her own reflection earlier.
But in the split second before Alex showed up, Claire had been certain that someone stood on the other side of the door, staring back at her. She hadn’t seen a face, at least not clearly, but she’d glimpsed a silhouette that seemed distinct from the other shadows in the shop. And even now she still had a strange feeling that someone was in there.
Leaning a shoulder against the wall, she fanned herself with her hand. Alex was right about something else, too. If she waited out here much longer, the heat might do her in.
A young woman came toward her down the street, and Claire watched her curiously, wondering if she might be the one to open up the shop. But before she reached Mignon’s, she turned down a narrow alley that ran between the two buildings.
Claire left her spot in the doorway and walked over to stare after her. At the back of the alley, the woman knocked on the door of the adjacent building, and a moment later, someone let her inside.
The alley was like any number of passageways that ran between narrow buildings in the Quarter, many of them leading back to the hidden courtyards for which New Orleans was so famous. At the rear, a wrought-iron fence ran between the two buildings, and the smell of wet brick and damp moss mingled with the scent of the yellow roses spilling over the scrollwork.
As Claire stood gazing after the young woman, she thought again of her dream last night and wondered if she might have glimpsed the alley a split second before the car hit her. Maybe the image had been stamped on her subconscious, only to surface hours later in her sleep.
Her grandmother would have claimed the dream was a sign. In spite of her devout Catholic upbringing, Maw-Maw Doucett had been a big believer in omens and presages, and had been buried, at her request, with the silver dime she’d always worn on a string tied around her neck.
Claire was more inclined to think that the shock of seeing the doll and the trauma of the accident had produced her strange visions. She entered the alley without hesitation, sidestepping a puddle left from the night’s rainstorm.
But as she slowly walked down the weathered pathway, she couldn’t get the dream out of her head. The sound of a child crying from behind a closed door. Dave’s silent warning as he stepped out of the shadows. And then the shattering of that porcelain face—a face that looked so much like Ruby’s—against the stone floor.
She might not share her grandmother’s faith in dreams and second sight, but Claire was Southern enough to believe that there were things in this world that couldn’t be easily explained, things that couldn’t be seen or felt, but were no less real and true. As she neared the end of the alley, a chill swept through her, and for one brief moment, she had the strangest sensation that her grandmother was somewhere behind her, calling her back before it was too late.
The feeling was so strong that Claire couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder. She could hear voices from the street, and from somewhere nearby, music drifted through an open window. The sky overhead was clear and blue, the air all around her as still as an indrawn breath.
But there was no one behind her. She was all alone in the alley. Her grandmother was dead and so was Ruby. Yet at that moment it seemed to Claire that she felt them both. The tug on her hands was as real to her as the pounding heartbeat in her chest.
She didn’t retreat, though. Instead, she walked to the back of the alley and peered through the iron gate into a courtyard that looked lush and cool after the night’s downpour. No one was about, so Claire turned away.
The rear entrance to the collectibles shop was set in the brick wall directly across the alley from the door the young woman had disappeared into earlier. Claire lifted her hand and rapped loudly enough for anyone inside to hear her. When no one responded, she tried the knob. To her surprise, it turned in her hand, and she pushed open the door. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Even with light spilling in, the back of the shop was dim and shadowy, and it took Claire’s eyes a moment to adjust. Then she stepped inside and glanced around. The space was apparently used as a storage area and workroom. One side was equipped with a sink, microwave and an old refrigerator, and on the other side, shelves were crammed with cardboard boxes and packing materials.
And scattered across the surface of a worktable was a grotesque tableau of doll heads, torsos, and a pile of glass eyes.
The mangled dolls were creepy and unnerving in the gloomy light, and when the door closed behind Claire, she jumped in spite of herself.
The room was
Strings of crystal beads covered the entrance to the shop, and tinkled softly in the air that flowed from a nearby vent.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Claire called as she moved nervously toward the beads. “I’ve been waiting outside for your shop to open. Your sign says ten. It’s after that now.”
No one was there. Whoever she’d spotted earlier must have stepped out and left the door unlocked. If the person came back, Claire could be in big trouble for trespassing. But now that she was finally inside, it would take more than the prospect of jail to deter her from searching for that doll.
Nervously, she parted the beads and entered the shop. The place was small and cramped, but the owner had utilized every square inch to display her collectibles. Dozens and dozens of dolls were lined up on the shelves, and unlike their broken counterparts in the back, the showcased pieces were perfect in appearance, from their frilly dresses to the exquisite hand-painted faces.
Claire’s mother had been an avid collector for as long as she could remember. Lucille had never been able to afford the one of a kind dolls that commanded hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, but she’d always kept her eye out for bargains, and she’d dragged her daughters with her to flea markets and yard sales for years. From the hours they’d spent at shows and exhibits, Claire recognized the more common Madame Alexanders and Queen Tatianas. The expensive and truly collectible dolls were locked in cases.
As she made her way around the crowded shop, she had to resist the temptation to keep looking over her shoulder. She knew that she was alone, but all those glass eyes staring back at her became a little unsettling.
Ignoring the flutter of nerves in her stomach, she bent to explore the lower shelves of a display case, but had already concluded her search was pointless. The doll she’d seen the day before was nowhere to be found. As she stared at a collection of antique French dolls in velvet dresses and elaborate wigs, she tried to beat back her helpless frustration. She’d looked in every case, searched along every shelf. The doll was gone, and there was nothing more she could do until she spoke with the owner or someone who worked here.
