Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(76)

She stops moving so suddenly, the skin flies from her body. She stands before me, a bone-white skeleton, proud of her decay.

The look on her face is once more smug. “Then how did you get out? Or did you escape at all?”

Then she goes toe-tapping once again across that terrible, awful, moldering navy-blue rug. And now I shiver.


* * *



I WAKE UP to the smell of freshly mowed grass. For a moment, I’m completely bewildered. Thomas, I think. He must be outside, mowing the lawn. But then the ceiling comes into focus, as well as the framed picture of the moose hanging on the wall. I register the familiar feel of my favorite quilt against my fingerprints, but a strange pillow under my head.

The hotel room, of course. I blink a few more times, but the smell of cut grass remains. I sit up and find Tessa Leoni positioned in a chair, eyeing me intently.

“What are you thinking of right now?” she asks me.

I answer without thinking. “Thomas.”

“First thing you noticed about him.”

“His eyes. They’re kind.”

“Describe him.”

“Tall. Lanky. All arms and legs and thick dark hair that’s always rumpled. He has big hands, calloused, capable. You can tell just by looking that he knows how to do things. He’s strong.”

“First thing he ever said to you.”

“He didn’t. He watched me. But I didn’t want him to notice. I didn’t want him to see. Every now and then, though, I’d glance up and he’d be studying me. He would smile. And I’d feel . . . warm. Like I’d been cold for a very long time. But I always looked away again. Before we got in trouble.”

“Nicky, where are you?”

But I’m awake now, aware enough not to take the bait. Such as the answer is not New Orleans. It’s different, it’s earlier, and it’s a memory I’m still working on myself. I need to know what I need to know first, I think. Then, and only then—maybe then?—I will share it with others.

But Vero had been telling the truth; I can’t trust anyone, not even the cops. If they were so great, where were they thirty years ago?

“You bought a candle,” I say, finally having identified the source of the smell. There, on the round table in the corner of the room, a fat glass jar filled with light green wax sits, burning merrily.

“Yankee Candle Company,” she informs me. “They have a scent for everything. I brought you food, too. And some supplies.”

She lets me eat first. A Greek salad topped with grilled chicken. I didn’t realize how famished I was until I wolf it down. There are also new clothes, an oversize navy-blue pullover, dark ball cap, glasses. An ensemble meant to disguise rather than flatter. Finally there’s a large sketch pad topped with an assortment of pencils and pastels.

Tessa outlines the game plan, as the room steadily fills with the scent of freshly cut grass.

“I want you to draw. The house, room, yard, people, places, things. Anything that comes to mind, really. Just close your eyes, focus on the smell and sketch away.”

“You want to know if the dollhouse is real,” I tell her.

“I need you to make it real. Right now, you’re a woman with a history of brain damage and imaginary friends. If this investigation is going to get off the ground, we need details. You’re going to have to go to the places you don’t want to go, Nicky. It’s the only way.”

I understand. I’m even intrigued. Talking about the past is hard. Trying to get the memories to focus, then lock in my mind using words; I grow too tired and overwhelmed. But I’m an artist. I can draw. And maybe, much like muscle memory, if I just let my hand move across the page on its own . . .

I open the sketch pad. I pick up a charcoal-gray pencil. I get to work.

I close my eyes. Tessa’s right; it’s easier this way. I inhale deep, pulling the scent all the way into my lungs, into my stomach. I feel sun, the promise of an outside world. I feel the yearning of a young girl, locked up for too long inside.

My hand moves across the paper.

From time to time, Tessa asks me questions. She sits at the table across the room, leaving me be. I can hear the clack of a keyboard, her own fingers busily at work. But she’s in her world and I’m in mine, and even her questions blend with the pictures opening up before me.

“What are the names of the girls?”

“Vero, Chelsea, CeeCee, Renita.”

“How old are they?”

“CeeCee and Renita are older. Madame’s first girls. They scare us.”

“Why?”

“They’re . . . cold. Know things even we don’t know yet. Madame is hard on them. They’re getting too old for the dollhouse, and everyone knows it.”

“Do you talk to them?”

“Never.”

“Who do you talk to?”

“Vero tells stories. Of the time before. When she was a real girl and someone loved her. Chelsea listens. They hunker together in their side-by-side beds. They whisper and dream of Someday. Other Places. Outside. Then night falls. Madame unlocks their door. And it’s time again.”

I draw a room. Not the narrow bedroom, but a parlor. With a marble-trimmed fireplace and brass sconces on the wall. A room that had once been grand. But it’s worn now, frayed around the edges. Like Madame. Once beautiful, now clinging desperately to what used to be and might have been.