The Dollmaker

Fifteen

The temperature dropped in the early evening and the French doors in the ballroom at the Hotel Monteleone were thrown open to allow the crowd to spill out into the courtyard. The well-heeled throng that had assembled to help reelect the Orleans Parish district attorney was an incestuous mix of New Orleans royalty, old-time politicos and a greedy new breed of power brokers that had swarmed into the city after the flood.

A zydeco band played from a dais at one end of the ballroom as white-coated waiters moved through the glittering crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’ oeuvres. It was a semiformal event. Most of the men wore suits and ties, but some were more casual, and Dave blended in well enough in the sports coat and pants he’d brought to change into.

The party was not his kind of thing, but some of the faces looked familiar. He’d lived in New Orleans for most of his life and he recognized the local politicians and some of the old-guard movers and shakers that had been brokering backroom deals for decades. Louisiana politics was serious business, always had been, and the passion cut across all social and economic boundaries. Dave could remember the way his old man would lay out drunk for weeks at a time, but come election day, he always managed to sober up long enough to drag his ass to the polls. He’d cast his ballot for the incumbent because, like so many other Louisianans, he didn’t much cotton to change.

The mood of the crowd tonight was clearly jubilant. With the band playing a rousing rendition of “Poor Man’s Two-Step” and a banner overhead proclaiming Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler, no one seemed particularly concerned about past corruption or the tenuous future of a city that could very well be poised on the brink of another disaster. Tonight was a time to celebrate. A new star from one of the oldest political families in New Orleans was on the rise, and the crowd had come to bask in the glow of his charisma. Lee Elliot was the complete package—charming, handsome, and with enough money backing him that he didn’t have to grovel for handouts. The contributions just kept pouring in.

What Dave couldn’t figure out was where Angelette fit into the picture. He couldn’t see a man with Elliot’s aspirations getting seriously involved with a woman who had the kind of baggage Angelette did. Her mother had died when Angelette was ten, and she’d been raised by an aunt who made her living as a prostitute. Dave always wondered if that’s why Angelette had such a cavalier attitude about accepting payoffs and bribes. You did somebody a favor, you got a little something under the table in return. It was the American way, she always said. Or at least, it was the way things were done in New Orleans.

Dave searched the room for her now. He’d been watching the crowd for nearly an hour and hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her dark hair. One more pass around the room and then he’d head for home, he decided.

As he turned to leave, the crowd shifted and Dave’s breath stalled in his chest. For a moment, the room went completely still, and the thought crossed his mind that he might be having some sort of hallucination—the kind he used to get as he lay semiconscious on the bathroom floor, when he thought from time to time that he could hear his now-dead mother calling him in to supper. Or when he’d wake up with the shakes in the middle of the night, his body covered in sweat and the need for alcohol like a raging fever in his bloodstream, and he’d see Ruby’s face floating over his bed. Would even think her teardrops were falling onto his cheeks, before he realized they were his own….

Dave knew only too well what a terrible longing could conjure. But this was no vision. It was her. It was Claire.

The passage of time and ravages of grief had taken a toll. Not that she wasn’t still beautiful. No woman in the room could hold a candle to her as far as Dave was concerned, but Ruby’s disappearance had etched a permanent sadness in features that had once radiated a quiet joy. The strength and dignity that he’d always admired were still there, though, in the set of her shoulders, in the way she held her head. She came from a modest background; they both did. But Claire had always had more class and grace than any woman he’d ever known.

She wore a simple black dress with her grandmother’s pearl brooch pinned to the left shoulder, and her hair was long and gleaming, falling about her shoulders just the way he’d always loved it. She’d cut it after Ruby came along because she hadn’t wanted to fuss with it, and now Dave wondered if she’d grown it back out for her husband. Her second husband.

Dave braced himself, waiting for the moment when Alex Girard would appear at her elbow. Angelette had told him last Wednesday that Claire and Alex were divorcing, but considering the source, Dave didn’t know whether to believe it or not. He tried to convince himself he didn’t care one way or the other, but the thought of her with another man had always killed him.

There had always been something special about Claire. Everyone she met felt it, from the little old ladies who came over to quilt with her grandmother, to the kid who cut the neighbors’ grass in the sweltering heat, and the grocer whose day was always made when Claire stopped in. Everyone loved her, the young and the old. She was one of those people who made you want to be near her, if only for a moment.

Dave remembered how, when they were driving home from a party once, he’d put his arm around her, pulled her up against him. “You know what everyone says about us, don’t you? How’d a nice girl like Claire Doucett end up with a raging asshole like Dave Creasy?”

Claire had laughed and snuggled closer. “They don’t see your sweet side like I do.”

“I’ve got a sweet side? And here I thought I was a real Louisiana badass.”

“You just think you are,” she said, running her hand lightly across the top of his thigh.

As soon as they got home, they’d undressed and slipped into bed without talking. Dave could still see her like that, eyes drowsy, blond hair spilling across the pillow. She’d lifted her hand to his face, whispered how much she loved him, and the weight of his love for her had come crashing down on him. That was all it was. Just a touch, a whisper, a moment in time that slipped away unnoticed until it came back years later to haunt him on hot, sleepless nights.

Dave turned away and walked over to the bar. He ordered a Coke with bourbon and carried it out to the courtyard to a quiet corner where he could fade into the shadows. The crowd was smaller out here, and people tended to speak in hushed tones, as if afraid their voices might carry on the night air. The banana and palm trees rustled in the breeze and the scent from the gardenias floating in the fountain was heady and sweet.

Dave held the glass in his hand for the longest time. When he moved, the tinkle of ice against crystal was a little like the distant toll of a bell.

He wasn’t going to drink it. He knew that. Not that he wasn’t above chucking an eight-month stretch of abstinence, but it wasn’t going to be tonight. Maybe he just needed to prove to himself that he was still in control, that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion he would lapse back to his old ways after seeing Claire. Or that he would readily give up his sobriety the way he had thrown away every other good thing in his life.

He drew a long breath as he stared off into the darkness. He could barely remember a time he hadn’t been in love with Claire. He’d loved her when they married, loved her even more after the birth of their baby, and had still loved her when his discontent first began to stir. His restlessness didn’t have anything to do with her. His dark moods were never about Claire or his feelings for her. Sometimes Dave wondered if there was something inside him that just wouldn’t let him be happy.

And then Ruby had been taken, and nothing else had mattered but drinking himself into oblivion.

His hand tightened around the glass and he hesitated only for a moment before tossing the contents into the bushes. Maybe tonight wasn’t the best time to test himself, after all.

He felt someone come up behind him, but he didn’t turn. Not until he heard her voice.

“Dave?”

He closed his eyes briefly as pain washed over him. He thought it ironic that the abuses he’d heaped upon his body for so long could heal so quickly, with hardly any scars, but the wounds inside him, even after seven years, were still raw.

He took a moment before he turned to face her. “Hello, Claire.”

She stood in the shadows, but the glow from the tiny white lights that wound through the trees filtered down on her face. She looked pale, blond, serene. Almost like a dream.

Her eyes met his and he saw her lift a hand to her throat, as if she wasn’t quite sure why she had approached him. “I thought I glimpsed you earlier, but I wondered if I was seeing things. This is just about the last place I expected to run into you.”

Dave mustered a faint smile. “I could say the same about you.”

“I came with Charlotte. She works for Lee Elliot in the D.A.’s office.”

“So I heard. She always did have ambition. Give her another year and she’ll be running that office.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Claire glanced away, as if she’d already run out of things to say to him. “How do you know Lee Elliot?”

“I don’t. I’m not here to support his campaign. I came to meet a client. I’ve got my investigation business going again.”

“You’re back in New Orleans?”

Was that dread he heard in her voice? “No. I moved the office to Morgan City.”

“Are you staying with Marsilius?”

“I’ve got my own place, but I’m close enough that he thinks he has to keep an eye on me.”

Somebody needs to.

No one spoke the words, but Dave had a feeling they were both thinking the same thing. He looked off through the French doors to the ballroom, where the waiters continued to circulate through the crowd with their gleaming trays.

“You look good, Dave.”

The compliment drew his gaze back in surprise. “So do you.”

“No, I mean…you look really good.”

He knew what she meant. “I’ve stopped drinking.” He paused and shrugged. “Let me rephrase that. I’m not drinking tonight.”

“One day at a time,” she said softly.

“Always.”

Someone laughed in the crowd behind her, and Claire turned to glance over her shoulder. When her gaze came back to Dave, she smiled, and the fist around his heart tightened. “I should go find Charlotte. She promised we wouldn’t stay long, and I’m going to hold her to it.”

“Good luck with that.”

She smiled again, not his smile, but one that still tightened his chest. She lingered for a split second before giving a little head shake as if she couldn’t quite believe that they were standing face-to-face. “It was good seeing you, Dave.”

“You, too, Claire.”

She wound her way through the crowd toward the French doors, and Dave came out of the shadows so that he could watch her until she was out of sight. She moved like the ghost she was, floating in front of him one moment, gone the next, an elusive specter banished back to the past.

Dave turned away, telling himself not to go there. What he and Claire had was over. Dead. Buried. Let it rest.

But some ghosts never went away. They lingered forever, existing on the fringes of his life, wandering in and out of his dreams, materializing now and then to remind him of what he’d lost and what he could never have again.

Some ghosts would never be exorcised no matter what he did. Especially when the ghost was the only woman he’d ever loved.

“Was that Dave I saw you with on the terrace?” Charlotte asked as she came up beside Claire. “What did he want?”

“He didn’t want anything,” she said a little defensively. “I glimpsed him through the crowd and I went over to say hello. And please don’t start with me. I’m not in the mood.”

Charlotte lifted a brow at her sister’s tone. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t going to say a word.”

“I find that hard to believe, knowing your opinion on Dave.”

“Maybe I’m feeling a little more charitable tonight,” Charlotte muttered, lifting her champagne glass. She looked off across the crowd. “Did he say anything?”

“About what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, about what he’s doing these days. What’s he up to?”

Claire turned. “He’s reopened his P.I. office over in Morgan City, but why in the world do you care? Since when have you become so interested in Dave Creasy?”

Charlotte’s gaze was still on the crowd. “I heard his name mentioned recently in conjunction with an NOPD homicide investigation. You know how territorial cops are. I wouldn’t want him getting in over his head, that’s all.”

Claire stared at her sister for a moment. “Never mind about Dave. He can take care of himself. I want to know what’s up with you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’ve been acting strange all evening. You hardly said a word when you picked me up, and then you deserted me as soon as we walked through the door. And now you actually sound worried about Dave. What’s going on with you?”

Charlotte’s gaze darted away, but not before Claire glimpsed a sheen of tears in her green eyes. “I guess I’m just feeling a little guilty tonight.”

“About what?”

“I shouldn’t have tried to discourage you about finding that doll. And then I dragged you here, after you just got out of the hospital….” She turned to Claire. “I’m a terrible sister.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve always been very supportive, and I don’t blame you for having your doubts about the doll. I know how bizarre it sounds.”

“Don’t do that,” Charlotte said almost angrily.

“Do what?”

“Excuse my behavior. You and Mama have been doing that all my life. Maybe it’s time you both take off your rose-colored glasses. I’m not a good person, Claire. I’m selfish and ambitious, and when I see something I want, I go after it, without regard to the consequences.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. That’s not the Charlotte I know.”

“That’s just it,” she said sadly. “You don’t know me at all. And you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

She walked off then, leaving Claire to stare after her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dave standing just inside the terrace doorway, and when she turned, their gazes met across the room. She wondered if she should go back over to him, warn him about Charlotte’s concerns. But before she could make up her mind, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.