High Noon

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 Mac Namara.
     
    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,