"Martin thought a fabulous outfit for the doll might diminish some of the creepiness," Rombo had explained, "and I agreed. Janny loves it!"
Bo had nodded enthusiastically, secretly envying the doll its stylish little cape. She wondered if Rombo and Martin would be insulted if she contracted with them to create an identical one for her, in an Irish tweed. She and Rombo had discussed Janny's presence at the party in a long phone conference earlier. Teless wanted Janny to come and Janny wanted to come, Rombo had said. He'd be responsible for her on her "furlough" from the hospital. A happy evening would be good for her.
"I agree," Bo concurred, taking the leap. After all, what was the point of a Christmas party from which the one most needing warmth and friendship would be excluded? Bo was sure Irish tradition would support her decision, if San Diego County's Department of Social Services would not.
"Mr. Man Deer," she began from the bathroom where she'd taken the portable phone. "I received a message from the hotline that you'd called."
"I want to speak with you, Ms. Bradley," he said urgently. “Tonight if possible."
"I have some friends here at the moment, a tree-trimming party. They'll be leaving at around nine, so we could talk then. Do you mind my asking why this can't wait until tomorrow? What's happened?"
There was a silence in which Bo imagined the burly Indian glowering at the phone in his hand.
"I have seen wikwisiyai," he said softly, "the rattlesnake shaman. I saw him in the river gorge, from a distance, after Mary and I returned today. I had gone there to walk as I often do."
"Yes?" Bo answered. Something in his voice demanded respect.
"He had covered himself with dust and carried bundles of white sage in each hand."
"He was 'smudging' something, purifying it with smoke from the sage," Bo offered.
"There has not been a rattlesnake shaman in a hundred years, Ms. Bradley."
"Then he was a ghost."
"He was a warning. I must see you tonight"
"Things will have cleared out by ten," Bo said, giving him her address. "I'll see you then."
Man Deer's language hadn't seemed strange at all. It had reminded her of her grandmother.
"Okay, let's plug her in!" Pete Cullen yelled as Bo joined the group on her deck. Janny Malcolm made one last adjustment to a swirl of gold ribbon, and everyone broke into "Oh, Tannenbaum" in English and German simultaneously as a thousand white lights blazed from the tree. Bo felt Andrew's arm circle her waist and leaned against him.
"Oh, Andy," she whispered, "it's so bright even Caillech Beara can see it from out in the fog!"
"What?" he said, nuzzling her cheek.
"This is her feast, you know, or was before Christianity. In the longest night she gives birth to the sun, year after year. But in her travail she's especially dangerous, and so we mortals cluster around light during her season, where she can't approach."
"I wish I'd known your grandmother," he smiled. "What a heritage she left you!"
"Now, food!" Teless announced, drawing everyone immediately to the kitchen counter, where a pot of Cajun jambalaya sat steaming beside a warm stack of Martin St. John's famous whole wheat yeast rolls. Bo had sliced the apple pies and warmed them in the oven. A gallon of homemade French vanilla ice cream brought from San Diego's trendy downtown Gaslamp district by Deb and Dar Reinert waited in the freezer. There was plenty of wine, and somebody had started coffee. Bo observed her guests from the deck door and felt a rush of contentment. The party was a roaring success.
Curling on the arm of the recliner, she slid an arm over Estrella's shoulders.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Great! For some reason I have all this energy all of a sudden, and so does the baby."
Estrella pulled Bo's free hand to her beach-ball-shaped abdomen. There were thumps and thuds of surprising strength, Bo thought. The last one had been a kick, no question. Es and Henry's new offspring seemed to be enjoying the party, too.
"The baby can hear the voices, the music, especially the bass notes because they vibrate," Estrella explained. "I feel like dancing myself."
“Try some of Teless's jambalaya instead, Es. Let me get you a bowl."
"I've already had two," Estrella admitted. "And pie. Ravenously hungry, for some reason. Think I'll grab the bathroom while it's free.”
"And have you noticed your shrink tonight?" Es grinned as Bo helped her from the overstuffed chair. "She always looks stunning, but do I detect a special glow on those Iroquois cheekbones?"
Bo glanced around for Eva Broussard, found her leaning against the edge of the deck doorway, her arms crossed elegantly across the beadwork of a chamois blouse she'd worn with a long, slender skirt. Eva held a glass of wine that punctuated her conversation with reflected light as it moved. Pete Cullen stood with his back to a bookcase, towering over the lithe and muscular woman who was both friend and psychiatrist to Bo. Above him on the bookcase a pottery vase shaped like a parrot seemed to smile.
As Bo watched, Eva laughed and then leaned to touch her head lightly against Cullen's chest. A universally understood womanly gesture of affection and interest, it had apparently escaped the hidebound ex-cop's lexicon of experience. He lurched backward against the bookcase as though Eva had attacked him, dislodging the Mexican vase and a slipcased collection of the novels of Rumer Godden, in paperback. The vase bounced off his shoulder and landed on the carpet, unbroken, as Eva Broussard shook her head.
"I'll be damned," Bo whispered to Estrella. "Eva likes him."
"It's perfect," Estrella agreed. "He'll never know what hit him. Boy, I feel funny, Bo. Will you wait right here while I use the john?"
"Sure," Bo answered as Teless and Janny approached with the glazed eyes of teenagers-who-have-a-plan.
"Could we just walk up to Goblin Market for about a half hour?" Janny began. "We can walk from here and I really want Teless to see it. I mean, she's never seen a Goth club, I guess they don't have them in Louisiana, and we could, you know, borrow some black clothes from you and stuff. You have to wear black, Teless. Mr. Perry said to ask you what you thought, Bo. But I mean, he doesn't really know what Goth's about, and you do. So what do you think?"
"No way, Janny," Bo answered. "I don't think it's a good idea."
Neither girl seemed surprised.
"We figured you'd say that. But what about if Mr. Perry and Mr. St John go with us?" Teless suggested. "They'd be like escorts. And we won't stay long."
Bo regarded Janny Malcolm, a "mental patient" on furlough from a psychiatric hospital where Christmas would involve red and green Jell-O in Styrofoam cups instead of the usual orange Jell-O. A mental patient with no mental illness except that created by lies and silence. Janny Malcolm smiled expectantly.
"If you can talk Rombo and Martin into it, why not?" Bo gave in. "I'm not really in charge of your case anymore, anyway. With Rombo right there, what can happen?"
The psychiatric social worker had been a boxer in his troubled youth, but pugilistic skills were not what Bo had in mind. He was also one of the most competent and compassionate professionals with whom she'd ever worked. Rombo Perry would look after his young charge with the zeal of a mother elephant. The girls would be perfectly safe.
"Bo?" Estrella called from behind the partially opened bathroom door. "Wow, oh, madre de dios. Bo, I think this is it! Can you get some towels? And you'd better get Henry!"
Towels? Bo remembered the facts of reproduction, the little sea in which each mammal swam until its lungs were ready for air. Then the sea broke and rushed away, signaling the time for birth.
Bo pulled open the door to her linen closet, grabbed every towel there, and handed them to Estrella.
"Oh, Es, the baby's coming, right?"
"Definitely," Estrella grimaced.
Bo pondered logistics. Dar Reinert would have a pop-on flasher in his car; all the cops carried them. He and Deb could lead the way to the hospital, a police escort Henry and Estrella would follow. There was
plenty of time. But the scenario didn't include a role for Bo, who suddenly felt excluded. She'd stay behind and phone Estrella's sister, she decided. Except she wanted to be Estrella's sister, be included.
"Henry," she whispered to the blond naval officer stirring hazelnut creamer into a cup of coffee, "don't panic, but Estrella will need to go to the hospital now. The baby's coming. I'll ask Dar to give you an escort."
She wasn't surprised when Henry dropped his coffee on the little kitchen's tile floor. It was fine. She'd always hated that cup anyway. Deb Reinert hurried to clean up the fragrant spill as Bo urged Dar into his shiny blue cop jacket Then she wrapped Estrella in her own black coat and kissed her friend on the cheek.
"Break a leg!" she said because she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Bo, I want you to be there!" Estrella insisted. "You're the godmother, you have to be there. Eva and Rombo and everybody can stay here and finish off the party, okay?"
"Absolutely!" Bo agreed.
"I'll drive you, Bo." Andrew LaMarche joined in. "You'll be too nervous to drive."
"We're going to take the girls up to this vampire thing," Martin St. John called from the bedroom where he was tying Bo's best black silk scarf into a cravat. "But we'll be back, so call as soon as junior arrives!"
Bo heard the phone ring as she hurried to the door, and saw Eva Broussard move to answer it. It couldn't be anything important she thought. And even if it were, it would have to wait.
Forty-five minutes later Bo was dressed in scrubs and escorted by a deliriously happy Henry Benedict to a delivery room where Estrella lay with her feet still in stirrups, holding something wrapped in a small cotton blanket. Estrella's smile, Bo thought gave new depth to the term "radiant"
"Es?" she grinned as tears spilled down her cheeks, "can I see?”
"You're not going to believe this," Estrella beamed, pulling an edge of the soft blanket aside to reveal a tiny pink face topped by damp strands of carrot-colored hair. "Meet Patrick."
Bo felt her heart melting, felt the entire configuration of the world shift in some indefinable way. He was perfect, he was without guile or artifice, and he deserved the best. She would do her part, give him her best. She would care for him and bring him gifts. But most importantly, she would be the one to tell Patrick Benedict the stories which would frame his understanding of life.
"Red hair, Es!" she cried, touching a damp curl. "And 'Patrick.' It's an Irish laddie you've got, then!"
"The hair's just Henry's blond and my dark, mixed, I guess," Estrella smiled. "But his name is for you, Bo. An Irish name."
"Aye," Bo said as the baby wrapped an incredibly tiny hand around her little finger. "And to you, wee Padraig," she whispered, pronouncing his name in Gaelic, "the blessing of light be on you, without and within. And all the strength of heaven to bear you on your journey. Welcome!"
"Bo?" Estrella said, something dark in her eyes. "He's a boy. You don't think... he can't, he can't turn out like my brother, can he?"
"Not Patrick," Bo assured her friend. "We won't let that happen."
"Okay," Estrella sighed, closing her eyes. "Thanks, Bo."
In the hallway Bo and Andrew watched as Patrick was wheeled to the newborn nursery in a glass basket labeled benedict, boy, seven pounds. Estrella would sleep while Patrick's first hours were carefully observed by professionals trained to recognize the slightest hint of trouble. There would be no trouble, Bo thought. The baby was robust But at least Estrella could get her last full night of sleep for a long, long time.
"Ms. Bradley?" a nurse's aide called. "A Dr. Broussard phoned and asked that you call her immediately. She said it was an emergency."
Bo knit her brows and hurried to the maternity waiting room pay phone.
"Eva," she said when the psychiatrist answered immediately. "Patrick has arrived, seven pounds and healthy. Es is fine. What's the emergency?"
"Pete got a call just as you were leaving, Bo. Tamlin Lafferty was murdered early this evening. Someone crushed the back of her skull with a shovel as she was praying alone in the chapel at St. Dymphna's."
"I'll be right home," Bo said. "And Eva, are the kids back from Goblin Market yet?"
"No," was the answer.
Chapter 22
Eva Broussard was alone when Bo and Andrew returned to Bo's apartment, her face a mask of concern.
"Rombo, Martin, and the girls haven't returned," she announced. "I phoned Goblin Market and had Rombo paged, but there was no answer. The music was so loud I doubt that any of them could have heard a page, so it may mean nothing.
"They're probably just enjoying themselves," Andrew suggested. "Nevertheless, I'm on my way there now. Bo has told me enough about the Malcolm case to convince me that an upsetting sequence of events may have begun, potentially involving Janny and, by association, my young cousin."
Eva glanced uneasily at a thickening cloud layer which obscured the moon, then sniffed the air. "Rain," she said. "And I'm afraid there's more to be upset about. Pete left immediately after the call regarding Tamlin Lafferty. Apparently he's part of a loosely organized task force of retired police who're working with the FBI on some longitudinal tracking of various criminal activities, including a child-pornography ring which uses baby dolls as subjects in grossly pornographic photos. The dolls are actually advertised in ordinary magazines and newspapers as collectibles. Only certain key phrases in the ad text alert cognoscenti to the unwholesome industry flourishing beneath. The dolls are Jasper Malcolm's designs. Yesterday the authorities were able to arrest a key figure in the pornography distribution ring on unrelated charges. Pete feels that this arrest has frightened Malcolm, sent him over the edge. He's certain that Malcolm is Tamlin's murderer, that he's hell-bent on destroying what remains of his family before he's arrested and destroyed himself."
Bo searched for a raincoat in the closet, found one. Shiny blue plastic with a strawberry design on the lining. Undignified, but it would have to do. She wondered if Cullen had warned Beryl Malcolm.
"Pete Cullen is convinced that Jasper Malcolm murdered his wife, molested his daughters, terminally battered one of his granddaughters, and grew rich on porn photos of his dolls," Bo conceded. "And he may be right, although I'm not entirely convinced. But that doesn't mean Jasper had anything to do with Tamlin's murder or that Janny is in any danger from him. Cullen's just too sure. He thinks Malcolm eluded him thirteen years ago and he's determined to even the score."
"Cullen seems quite competent," Andrew said, dismissing Bo's point. "And Bo, I want you to stay here. There's no sense in both of us running around on a dark beach in the rain."
"It isn't raining yet and it's my beach," Bo pronounced through clenched teeth. "I live here. More importantly, I'm responsible for Janny being here. So is Rombo. Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Andy. You're out of line."
"I'll stay here," Eva concluded neutrally. "And Bo, Pete seemed to feel that you'd find this interesting. Tamlin's face had been dotted with ink, as if someone had randomly pressed the point of a pen against it. A black ballpoint according to the medical examiner."
"Where's Pete now?" Bo asked as Andrew scowled in the doorway.
"I'm not sure. He may have gone to view the crime scene at St. Dymphna's. He was quite agitated and left after the call came from the Backcountry Sheriff's Department. Apparently he'd left a message on his machine at home indicating that he could be reached here."
"Whatever," Bo replied, wondering if she should try to contact Dar Reinert, ask for a police presence at the club. If Cullen were right, Jasper Malcolm might just be there, waiting for a moment alone with his last granddaughter. But the scenario seemed out of character for the old dollmaker. Best just to get Janny back to the hospital and analyze the ramifications of Pete Cullen's theory later.
On an end table beside the couch Bo noticed Janny's doll, discarded as it should have been years in the past. Happy among friends, the teenager had momentarily escaped whatever curse lay over her.
&nb
sp; Goblin Market was well patronized but not yet crowded as Bo and Andrew hurried past the empty lifeguard station and across fifty yards of clammy sand to its entrance. The fog, Bo noticed, lay over the beach in odd clumps that blew apart and re-formed in the growing wind. In places it was possible to see breaking black waves, far out at low tide. In others there was nothing but roiling clots of mist.
Bo felt the eerie Goth music pulsing from the club before she could understand the words accompanying it. That simple four-chord progression born in folk music and worked to death in the fifties, half buried beneath snatches of film noir choirs and echoing industrial electronic effects. The sound track for a cartoon version of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," she decided. The music managed to convey both an
adolescent silliness and its concurrent longing for immutable meaning.
"What is this place?" Andrew muttered as a girl in military jackboots and a yellowed wedding dress hurried past, her black veil hanging in shreds.
"A stage on which alienated people merely pretend to be alienated," Bo said, molding her answer from the remarks of a long-ago Marxist professor who was now, she'd heard, selling dental equipment in Miami. "Try to look as though you understand the decay inherent in technology."
"What?"
"What ends when the symbols shatter?" asked the voice of a British singer over a merging of creep-show musical artifacts. "What ends..."
Bo tried to ignore the question as she scanned the assemblage of vampires and Miss Havisham lookalikes for Rombo, Martin, and the girls. They weren't there.
"Check the tables on the beach," she told Andrew. "I'll look on the patio."
The boy named Gunther was there, dressed in a black jester's tunic.
"Have you seen Janny, er, Fianna tonight?" Bo asked him.
"Sure. And her friend, too. There were two guys with them, but one had to leave or something. She and her friend just left with the other one. Is she okay? Fianna, I mean? She looked pretty okay."
"She's fine," Bo said. "Thanks, Gunther."
The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) Page 20
