Chapter 30
It was several minutes before the glassiness in Sarah’s eyes dissipated. She remained standing by the car, frozen in place by visions and voices no one else could see or hear. And then she blinked and she was Sarah again, looking around as if wondering where she was and why she was there.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted as she climbed into the car. “I’ll explain later. Right now we need to leave.”
Jolene helped me into the backseat before sliding into the driver’s seat. “Maybe we should go home….”
“No,” Sarah said. “I’m fine. I have a lot of voices in my head right now and I’m trying to figure out stuff. And I only have until I leave on Sunday, so I don’t want to waste any time.”
“What did you mean by ‘Find the stones’?” I asked.
Sarah turned to look at me. “What?”
“That’s what you said—when you got to the car. You were looking at the box in the backseat, and that’s what you said. But it wasn’t your voice.”
She returned to facing forward, her gaze on the windshield in front of her.
“I don’t remember,” she said quietly. “But I thought we already found the stones. In your backpack.” Sarah leaned her head back.
“Apparently those aren’t the stones we need to figure out whatever it is we’re supposed to figure out.
” She paused. “I think we should call Beau for backup.”
“Between you, me, and Jolene I’m sure we can figure this out without him. Besides, I’d rather set my hair on fire than ask for his help.”
No one spoke on the drive to Esplanade, the only sound that of Jolene’s cassette tape of Dolly Parton’s greatest hits playing through the car’s speakers.
Beau called twice, but I silenced my phone and let his calls go to voice mail.
I still hadn’t heard from Cooper, but instead of being disappointed I was grateful for the reprieve.
I considered calling Alston to get any background on Lilly Hoffman, but decided against it just in case Cooper hadn’t told his family.
As angry as I was, it wasn’t my secret to share.
Jolene parked at the curb in front of the house on Esplanade Avenue. I hadn’t seen it since the windows in the upstairs room had shattered for no known reason, and the boards temporarily nailed across them gave the house a shade of ominous neglect.
I wasn’t one to feel negative vibes from a house, and I hadn’t felt anything but hopefulness about this one since I’d first seen it.
Maybe it was the dumpster at the side of the house that tinged my feelings now; it was filled with old plumbing fixtures and outdated lights and other detritus of past lives.
More than likely it was the evil entity whose presence at the side of the house had been captured in a photograph.
And the creepy baby doll that we’d found in the house—and that seemed determined to go where it wanted to—most definitely altered my perception.
It was clear that the doll was trying to tell us something.
I only hoped we could figure it out before someone had a heart attack looking in their rearview mirror.
Sarah was the first to get out of the car.
While she helped me out of the backseat, Jolene retrieved the doll from the trunk.
As we made our way to the front door, she held the doll at arm’s length as if it were covered in wet paint, then dropped it on the porch so she could open the door with the key I’d given her.
“Do you smell that?” Sarah whispered.
I nodded. “Youth-Dew perfume. A bottle of it was found in the armoire. Joan told us that it’s the same perfume her stepmother, Sybil, wore.”
Sarah nodded. “The one who was murdered here.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “Is she alone?”
Sarah gave an abrupt head shake. “They’re all here.”
The door swung open and the three of us peered inside.
Drop cloths covered the wooden floors, and abandoned ladders and construction tools sat scattered around the front room.
Formica countertops from the kitchen were stacked against a wall, ready to join their out-of-date friends in the dumpster.
Sarah picked up the doll and led the way into the house, with Jolene and me following close behind.
Sarah’s gaze was focused on the doorway leading to the kitchen, from which a staircase rose to the upstairs room. “He doesn’t want us here,” she whispered. “Sybil is keeping us safe, but we don’t have much time.”
The sound of small feet scampered across the floor above us.
I froze, listening as a footfall above followed and an icy chill blew through the room.
“We have to hurry.” Sarah began walking quickly through the kitchen to the back bedrooms as the small running footsteps came down the stairs. “Stay here.”
“Not while I’ve got breath in my body,” Jolene said as she followed Sarah and I hobbled after both of them. I looked over my shoulder toward the stairs as I passed, telling myself that the dark cloud forming at the top was only in my imagination.
We found Sarah sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the armoire, the doll cradled against her chest. I watched the reflection of her face in the full-length mirror appear to shift as if I were seeing through raindrops on a window.
Her eyes darkened as she leaned forward, her lips moving silently.
Jolene looked at me, and I held my finger to my lips and shook my head.
I’d seen Sarah converse with empty rooms and vacated corners ever since she was a baby.
I watched small puffs of white escape from her mouth as she spoke through pale blue lips. Jolene’s teeth chattered as she pulled off her coat and draped it around my sister. Sarah didn’t move.
“What key?” Sarah asked, her voice barely audible. Another footfall came from above, followed by a creak. I found myself wishing it were a living, breathing intruder’s footfall rather than the alternative.
“What key?” she asked again, her voice more urgent. She looked over her shoulder toward the doorway. She closed her eyes, listening to something no one else could hear. Her eyes snapped open and she jumped up. “We have to leave. Now.”
The air in the room had chilled so much that frost had formed on the mirrors and the window glass. Without waiting to be told twice, Jolene took one of my crutches and made me lean on her as she propelled us quickly toward the back of the house.
“Don’t you need to leave the doll here?” I called to Sarah.
She didn’t turn around or slow down but headed toward the back room and the door to the outside. She flung it open and ran out into the small backyard, Jolene and me following like a pair of ungainly ducklings looking for their mother.
Sarah continued moving, through the small side yard and toward the front of the house, not stopping until she’d reached the car.
“If you can make it on your own, I’ll meet y’all at the car,” Jolene said. “I need to lock up the house, although it’s unclear to me if I need to keep people out or in.”
I nodded, then hobbled the short distance to the curb. When I reached Sarah we were both out of breath and my ankle was throbbing, meaning that there was a reason why I was supposed to be resting and keeping it elevated. Like I had a choice.
“What just happened?” I asked. I immediately regretted my harsh tone when I saw that Sarah was close to tears.
“I’m sorry, but the woman told me we needed to go because we were in danger.”
My breath stilled. “From whom?”
“From him.” She indicated the house with her chin.
“He won’t come farther than the front porch now, because he doesn’t want to leave the woman and the child.
They’re giving him his strength, which is why he’s keeping them here.
And because they know his secret.” She paused.
“He will do anything to make sure we don’t discover what it is. ”
I looked down at the doll. “Why didn’t you leave that in the house?”
“Because he wanted me to.”
Nothing else she could have said would have chilled me as much as that.
Jolene’s phone rang as she reached the car. She answered it as she slid behind the wheel and slammed the car door behind her. Her greeting was followed by a long silence. “All right. We’re on our way now.”
She tossed her phone into her handbag before facing me.
“That was Beau. He’s been trying to reach you.
He went to the apartment to talk to you and found that the alarm was sounding and the back door had been forced open.
The police are on their way, but he already checked to make sure no one was inside.
He thinks the alarm scared whoever broke in, because it doesn’t look like anything’s been disturbed. ”
Jolene turned the key and Bubba rumbled to a start.
“That’s a relief,” I said. “I hate to think of some stranger pawing through all our things. But what on earth were they thinking they might find of any value? It’s not like we’re in a high-rent building.
I mean, when I showed my family a picture of the outside, Mama thought we were living in the projects. ”
I sat up. “Oh, no. The rings. Adele’s wedding rings. Beau gave them to me for safekeeping.”
Sarah turned to face me. “Don’t worry, Nola. They’re safe. I put them where nobody would ever think to look.”
I tried to think of a secret hiding place in the apartment and could come up with only the obvious. “The freezer?”
“Of course not. That’s, like, Burglary 101. Everybody thinks that’s the safest place to hide valuables, but every robber knows that now, thanks to all the true-crime shows, so that’s the first place they look. I’m a lot more creative than that.” She turned back around, a smug grin on her face.
“You hid them in the Barbie head, didn’t you?” Jolene asked.
Sarah jerked her head toward Jolene. “How did you know?”
“Who do you think drilled that hole in the bottom? It’s where I used to hide my favorite lipstick from my little sister because she kept borrowing it and wouldn’t return it.”