Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town

They reminded her of the Cabbage Patch craze years ago, only bigger. Much bigger, their long flour-white limbs like sausages. They were dressed in gingham pinafores, dotted Swiss baby-doll dresses, gunny-sack dresses. White, pink, yellow.

“You’ve got a lot of dolls,” she said as Olsen went through the shop turning on lights.

“You like them?”

“Very nice.” Actually, they creeped her out.

She wondered: Could this be the guy? She didn’t get anything from him except matter-of-factness, but she wasn’t psychic.

“Where did you get them?” she asked.

“My girls? I make them.”

“You do?” Her next question would naturally be Why? Instead she asked him if anyone had shown interest in the doll in the window.

“She’s not one of mine. She’s plastic. I use only natural materials.”

“But has anyone asked about it? Or any of your dolls?”

“Tourists.”

“Any men?”

“Men?” He stroked his beard. “Usually the men are interested in stuff like that gas pump. I can’t recall anyone …” He coughed up something into a handkerchief that he kept in his gray pants, pants that reminded Laura of the custodian at her high school years ago. “There was a guy interested in a dress. Wanted to buy it.”

“Why?”

“People never cease to amaze me. Been in this business for twenty years, and you never can figure out what they’re gonna ask for. He wanted to take that dress up there right off Daisy, but I told him no.”

Laura’s gaze followed his long crooked finger.

The doll wore a pale pink tulle dress with baby-doll sleeves.

“If I sold him the dress, Daisy would have been left in her birthday suit,” Olsen explained. ‘I couldn’t do that. When I explained it to him, he got mad.”

“Mad?”

“He didn’t make a scene, but you could tell he was steaming. Like he was counting to ten.”

“Can I see the doll?”

“Sure.” He grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end of it and pulled at a rope hanging down behind him. Laura realized that it was a pulley system, kind of like at a dry cleaner’s, from which the dolls were suspended. He pulled the doll around, then expertly hooked her off by the neck and set her down on the counter. She noticed he had a US Marines tattoo on one arm.

Laura eyeballed Daisy, thinking she was approximately the same size as Jessica Parris—one big damn doll. “What size dress is that?”

“Size 3, junior.”

“What age would that fit?”

“Thirteen, fourteen years old.”

“Tell me about the guy.”

According to Ted Olsen, the man was white, average-looking except for a black mustache, and he had blue eyes. Olsen remembered the eyes because the guy was so mad. Asked to describe his clothing, Olsen thought he might have been wearing a ball cap and “probably jeans.”

“Nothing seemed unusual about him?”

“When he first came in, he didn’t seem like somebody who would get so mad.”

“So how did he strike you? When he first came in?”

“Well, see, I didn’t really notice him until he found me. He was the kind who blends in—just a regular guy.”

“When did he come in?”

“Day before yesterday. I was open that night, which I do sometimes when I’m working on a doll in back. Stayed open until nine o’clock.”

Nine o’clock: three to four hours after Jessica Parris was last seen.

Laura told him she’d be back with a photograph of the dress Jessica Parris had worn, in case he recognized the style. “In the meantime, if you remember anything else about this guy, please call me.” She handed him her card.

As she crossed the street to her car, she finally got hold of Buddy Holland.

“Where are you? I’ve been looking for you.”

“Running down some things on my own.”

And avoiding her, she thought. “We need to compare notes. I’m headed up to take some plaster casts on West Boulevard right now, but—”