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 foyer closet.
Essie called out softly as Phoebe passed her bedroom door. "Honey? Everything all right?"
"It's fine." Phoebe stopped in Essie's doorway. Her mother looked so young and vulnerable in the big old bed. "Excitement's over for the night. You going to be able to get back to sleep?"
"I think so. Kids pulling pranks. What are you going to do?"
"Don't let them know it bothered you. 'Night, Mama."
In her bedroom, Phoebe set the alarm for six. She'd take the doll into the precinct, file a report, be home again before anyone knew she'd gone out. She'd ask Sykes to look into it. He was solid and smart. If the doll could be traced, he'd trace it.
Nobody, nobody was going to upset her family.
As she lay sleepless in the dark, already knowing she wouldn't need the alarm, she wondered where Arnie Meeks had been at three-fifteen. It had been enough to see the lights come on in her fancy house. Flash, flash, flash. Enough to see that before he'd bolted into the park, into the trees. Into the dark.
But it had been even better-a nice bonus-to see her open the door and pick up her little present. Worth the time, worth the trouble, yeah, to see her come out for his gift.
Just some foreplay, bitch, he thought as he drove home. Just a little tickle before the main event.
He wasn't nearly finished with Phoebe MacNamara.
She'd have canceled the date if it wouldn't have made the incident the night before too important. And if canceling wouldn't have meant answering a dozen questions from her mother, and even from Carly.
She'd already answered her share that morning as it had taken her longer than she'd hoped to deliver the evidence, make a report, get home again on the damn CAT. At least she'd had the foresight to wear sweats so she could use the excuse-simply lie, Phoebe admitted-and say she'd gone for an early run in the park.
Then, of course, Carly had walked her feet off during the afternoon. The battle of wills over the purchase of the "cutest" outfit had tried her patience so that she and her daughter were not on the best of terms when they'd returned home-Carly to sulk in her room and Phoebe to escape to the courtyard chaise with a broad-brimmed hat on her head.
Now she had to go out to dinner, she thought, as, after refusing all opinions, she pulled out her all-purpose black dress. If it was good enough for weddings, funerals and the occasional cocktail party, it was good enough for a dinner date.
The fashionista gene had skipped a generation, she decided with some irritation, along with the curls and dimples.
She started to put her hair up, but fiddling with it made her think of the rudely shorn hair on the doll. She left it down. And while she knew her family would have preferred a little time to grill her dateand for Phoebe to make an entrance down the stairs-she made sure she was in the parlor well before seven.
And at the door first when the bell rang. "Hello, Duncan."
"First let me say: Wow. Then, hello, Phoebe."
She stepped back, raised her eyebrows at the nosegay of pink rosebuds he carried. "You already sent me flowers, which are gorgeous, by the way."
"Glad you liked them. This isn't for you." He glanced around the foyer. "I like your house."
"We do, too."
"Phoebe, aren't you going to invite the man past the foyer, introduce him?" Essie stepped out of the parlor, aimed a smile at Duncan. "I'm Essie MacNamara, Phoebe's mother."
"Ma'am." He took the hand she offered. "It sounds like a line, but has to be said anyway. I can see where Phoebe gets her impressive looks."
"Thank you. I'm pleased it had to be said. Come on into the parlor.
My son and his wife aren't here, but I'll introduce you to the rest of the family. Ava, this is Phoebe's friend Duncan."
"I'm so pleased to meet you."
"Phoebe didn't mention so many beauties in the family. She did mention you." He smiled over at Carly. "I went for pink." He held out the flowers.
"Isn't that sweet!" Essie had already melted. "Carly, this is Mr.
Swift. And I believe those are your first roses from a gentleman caller." The sulky child tumbled into a coy female. "They're mine?"
"Unless you hate pink."
"I like pink." She flushed nearly the color of the buds she took from him. "Thank you. Gran, can I pick a vase for them myself? Can I?"
"Of course you can. Mr. Swift, can I offer you something to drink?"
"Duncan. I-"
"We should go," Phoebe interrupted. "The dazzle in here's getting blinding." She picked up a jacket from the back of a chair. "I won't be late."
"Ouch," Duncan said. 84 I