Page 98 of The Lady on Esplanade
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.”
Relieved, I sat back against the box and looked out the window to prepare what I was going to say to Beau.We were passing Café Degas, where I’d gone with Beau and Cooper, when I spotted a gray sedan parked facing away from us on the adjacent perpendicular street.I might not have even noticed it except for the recognizable South Carolina license plate.
“Turn the car around!”I shouted.“I just saw the Honda!”
Sarah’s screams and mine intermingled with honking horns and screeching brakes as Jolene took an immediate illegal U-turn over the neutral ground before bumping over the curb to travel down Esplanade in the direction we’d just come from.
“Slow down,” I said as she approached the intersection.“It was parked right there.”I pointed to the now-empty curb and the equally empty street.“Turn here,” I instructed, belatedly remembering that Jolene’s focus behind the wheel didn’t include other vehicles.
