Phoebe thought again as she changed. She glanced at the blush pink lilies in the cobalt-blue vase on her dresser. Flowers were lovely. But blooms faded and died.
Chapter 6
Still, flowers and an evening of girl movies smoothed out a lot of edges. At the end of the marathon, Phoebe carried her sleeping daughter to bed. Any-o'clock made it to just past midnight this time.
Twenty minutes later, Phoebe was as deeply asleep as her daughter. The sound of the doorbell had her bolting straight up in bed. She rolled out, glancing at the bedside clock-three-fifteen-before snatching up her robe. She was already at the steps and starting down when
Essie and Ava came out of their rooms.
"Was that the doorbell?" Essie clutched her robe closed at the neck, and her knuckles were white. "At this hour?"
"Probably just kids fooling around. You stay up here with Carly, okay? In case it woke her."
"Don't open the door. Don't-"
"Don't worry, Mama."
That twenty-year-old fear, Phoebe knew, was always waiting to push off from the bottom of the dark pool toward the surface.
"I'll go with you. Probably just a couple half-drunk teenagers playing pranks," Ava said before Phoebe could object.
No point in making it bigger than it was, Phoebe decided, and let
Ava walk down with her. "She'll be upset the rest of the night," Phoebe murmured.
"I'll see she takes a sleeping pill if she needs it. Stupid kids." Phoebe peered through the pattern of textured glass on the panel of the front door and saw nothing. They'd run off, she thought, likely laughing hysterically as kids would over waking up a household. But when she rose to her toes to study the veranda more carefully, she saw it.
"Go on up, Ava, tell Mama it was nothing. Just kids being a nuisance."
"What is it?" Ava clutched at Phoebe's arm. "Is there something out there?"
"Go on up and tell Mama. I don't want her scared. Tell her I'm just getting a glass of water while I'm down here."
"What is it? I'll go up and get Steven's baseball bat. Don't you open that door until-"
"Ava, nobody's out there, but I need to open this door, and I can't until you go up and tell Mama everything's fine. She's working herself up into a state by now. You know she is."
"Damn it." Loyalty to Essie overrode the rest. "I'm coming right back."
Phoebe waited until Ava was up the stairs before she unlocked the door. She scanned the street-right, left, across-but her gut told her whoever had rung the bell was gone. She had only to crouch down to pick up what lay on the doorstep. Then she shut the door and relocked it before carrying it into the kitchen to set it on the table.
The doll had bright red hair. It had probably been long hair once but had been crudely hacked off. Whoever had done it had stripped it, bound its hands with clothesline, affixed a square of duct tape across its mouth. Red paint was splattered and smeared over the doll to simulate blood.
"Oh my God, Phoebe!"
Phoebe held up a hand, continued to study the doll. "Carly? Mama?"
"Carly slept through it. I told Essie it was nothing, and you were staying down just a little while in case those kids came back so you could give them a scare and a piece of your mind."
"Good."
"That horrible thing." Ava laid the ball bat she'd snatched out of her son's closet on the table beside it.
"Honey, why don't you get me the camera from the server drawer? I want to take some pictures for my files."
"But shouldn't you call the police?"
"Ava, you're always forgetting I am the police."
"But-"
"I'll be taking it in, but I want my own pictures. Don't worry, whoever did this isn't coming back tonight. He delivered the message. And don't tell Mama about this," Phoebe added as she went into the tool drawer for a measuring tape. "Not yet."
"Of course I won't tell her. Phoebe, I wish you'd call Dave. I wish you'd call Dave right now and tell him someone put this thing that's meant to be you right on the doorstep."
"I'm not going to wake Dave at this hour. There's nothing he can do." Phoebe rubbed a hand on Ava's arm as she walked back to the table. "But I'll talk to him about it, I promise. Get me that camera now, all right?"
She measured, took pictures, then double bagged the doll in plastic, tucked it into a shopping bag and stowed it in the