amid the wrapping was a porcelain doll with features fixed in a scream. The red-rimmed mouth was wide open and the glass eyes horrified. It was grotesque, but Terrence Simnic was actually smiling.
He twisted something on the back of the doll and all at once the face turned. A new expression appeared, happy, and then he turned a knob again and a sleeping face appeared.
“German. Late nineteenth century. Mint condition.” He mumbled the words, and Kate wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. He lumbered to his feet, cradling the doll in his massive arms. It wore a nightgown of yellowed white lace and he stroked the cloth.
“She’s my latest. Do you want to see the others?”
Kate hesitated, wanting to issue a polite demurral, but Terrence Simnic was leading the way to another room. “It’s in here,” he said. “Mother always kept them in the dining room.”
Reluctantly, Kate stepped after him. The dining room was papered in deep red with little crescents of gold that had faded over time. It was peeling at the corners of the high ceiling and there was water damage in one spot, spreading in concentric brown circles. A dusty, oval-shaped walnut table and six chairs stood in the center of the room, but the focal point was really the antique curio cabinets lining the wall. They were made of oak or mahogany and didn’t all match, and every shelf was literally crammed with antique dolls.
“Mother would have loved you.” Terrence crooned to the doll. He carefully unlocked one of the oak cabinets and shifted two frilly dressed baby dolls so that his newest acquisition could sit between them. “There you go, little one, there you go.”
It was spooky, the faded room and the shelves filled with dolls. There was dust everywhere but on the curio cabinets, which looked as if they were cleaned every day. They smelled faintly of furniture polish.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” This time Terrence Simnic’s question was directed at Kate. She struggled to think of something to say, but he seemed to take her silence for awe, nodding with a goofy smile on his face.
“It’s something, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes.” That she could be honest about it. It was certainly something.
“Mother took such pride in her collection,” Terrence said. “She had such a good eye and I’ve tried to match it. I’m very particular about what I buy. Every doll has a complete history and the most damage I’ll accept is a single, hidden, hairline fracture.”
A phone rang somewhere in the house, a loud, jangling old-fashioned sound that made both Terrence and Kate start.
“That’s for me,” he said. “You need to leave now.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Kate walked quickly back to the front of the house while the phone continued to ring, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder until she reached the door. When she looked back into the gloomy, dusty house, she could see Terrence Simnic standing in a doorway at the other end of the dining room, an outdated phone, complete with long cord, in one large hand. He stared at her and she fled out the door.
Chapter Six
Kate crossed the yard back to her own house feeling as if she were being watched. Grace was playing the piano. A haunting melody floated out the window, stopping abruptly as Kate came in the door.
“That was lovely,” Kate said, pausing at the entrance to the living room. Grace looked up from the keyboard and scowled.
“It sucks. I can’t get it right. It’s too fast and it lacks feeling.”
“It sounded good to me.”
“That’s because you don’t play the piano, Mom.” Grace turned her attention back to the score in front of her, and Kate knew she was being dismissed. While this behavior annoyed Ian, Kate chose to ignore it and was even, secretly, amused by it. She saw herself in this devotion to one’s passion, and even though Grace’s snotty attitude wasn’t pleasant, Kate could still understand and respect her daughter’s devotion to her music.
Kate made her way to the kitchen to prepare dinner, listening to the music start again. She moved about easily in the large kitchen, so much larger and newer than their old one. So why did she miss it? The kitchen in their apartment had been galley style and they’d remodeled it, on the cheap, two years before Grace was born. This kitchen was wide and spacious, with solid wood cabinets and granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances. Everything she’d lusted after in magazines, and yet now that it was hers, all she could think about was the edge of the old laminate countertops where they’d marked Grace’s height in pencil.
She reached up to take a pot from the rack hanging above the center island, and caught a glimpse of Terrence Simnic’s house through the window. The lights were on in the back of his house, and she wondered if he was cooking dinner. It was impossible to tell, because old curtains hung in the windows back there just like in the front of the house.
He was a strange man, but they’d dealt with strange neighbors before. Kate remembered the old woman who’d lived in the apartment below theirs and regularly cooked tripe, the awful smell invariably sliding up and under their door and lingering for days despite their best efforts to shoo it away. Or the shifty-eyed, pock-marked man two floors down, who’d worn a full-length fur coat in the middle of July and had screaming matches in some Slavic language with a string of anemic-looking bottle blondes.
Compared to these neighbors, Terrence Simnic with his doll collection really wasn’t that bad. She turned away from the window and concentrated on what to make for dinner, but she couldn’t shake the crawly feeling being in his house had given her.
Ian arrived home shortly after six, dumping his briefcase in the hall and coming straight through to the kitchen with a troubled smile on his face.
“God, it’s good to be home,” he said, pouring a glass of the South African white wine that she’d opened.
“Long day?”
“That doesn’t begin to capture it. Did you hear the news about Lily Slocum?”
Kate shook her head, concentrating on chopping tomatoes to add to the salad. “Has she been found?”
“No, but they found a photo of her.” Ian took a sip of wine. “Apparently she’s dead.”
The knife slipped in Kate’s hand and she narrowly missed slicing her thumb. “What? That’s terrible!”
Ian described the photo found in a local shop, and Kate thought of the poor girl’s parents getting the news. She rinsed the cutting board, the red smears from the tomatoes suddenly making her queasy. “Are the police even sure this photo is real?”
“They’re not saying much, but since it’s not the first time this has happened, everybody seems to think it’s real.”
“What do you mean it’s not the first time?”
Ian put down his wine and pulled a copy of the Wickfield Gazette from his briefcase. “Here, you can read about it yourself. Copies were distributed at the emergency meeting I got called to with the university president and provost, as well as another meeting with legal office representatives and public relations folk.”
Kate
