Blue-Eyed Doll Read online

  “Hey, what are they going to do, arrest me?”

  “No, but they might arrest me if links to those websites and files were found on my computer,” Belle told him.

  “Don’t worry. I covered my tracks completely.”

  “The larger issue is, we still have no idea why Candy would use Kasey’s name in place of her own while reserving a hotel for the night,” Anna sighed.

  “If it was really her who made the reservation,” Belle commented.

  “I’m positive it’s her. We saw her go into the hotel room.”

  “It is a mystery, that’s for sure,” Harlem agreed. “I’m not entirely sure the heart attack was natural,” he suggested, moving through one of the empty chairs and eventually sitting on it.

  “Not natural?”

  “I have a hunch that—”

  Harlem didn’t get to finish his sentence before there was a knock on the apartment’s outside door.

  “Who the heck could that be?” Belle wondered out loud, pushing her chair back from the table and standing up.

  “The mailman, maybe?” Anna offered.

  “He usually just leaves things at the front door of the restaurant, not at the side door of the apartment.”

  “Could be a new guy?”

  Opening the door, Belle was surprised to see a delivery man in a brown uniform. “Sarah-Belle Francis?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I have an urgent package for you. Will you sign?” He held out the electronic pad with a green screen.

  “Of course.” She quickly took the plastic pen and signed.

  “Here it is,” he announced, picking up a medium sized wood crate and handing it to her.

  It was surprisingly light. “Thanks. Have a good day.” Once he was gone, she moved toward the table and set it down, taking a moment to analyze the label.

  “What is it?” Anna pressed, eager to see what this mystery item could be.

  “I have no idea, but look at this. There are specific instructions on the label for the delivery man to come to the side door.”

  “He said it was urgent?” Harlem chimed in.

  “Guess we better see what’s inside.” She pointed toward the kitchen sink. “Anna, I think there is a hammer in there that we can pry this open with.”

  “On it,” Anna agreed, quickly retrieving the hammer and handing it off.

  Taking it from her sister, Belle got to work prying off the lid. Pulling it free, they saw that the top of the box was layered with straw packing. Pushing the straw aside, Belle revealed the contents.

  Instantly, all three of them gasped.

  In the bottom of the box was rosy cheeked and antique looking porcelain doll.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  The doll’s eyes were closed since it was laying down. Its face was framed with locks of beautiful blonde hair, and it wore a blue satin dress with a floral pattern.

  “It can’t be,” Anna spoke first.

  “This isn’t the doll, is it?” Belle whispered, reaching inside to lift it from the box. As she did, it’s eyes opened, staring at her. She hated to admit it, but those glassy domes chilled her to the bone. This was the exact reason she always steered clear of doll themed horror movies. These things gave her the creeps.

  Underneath the item was a slip of paper. Picking it up, she read the lettering. “Holy cow.”

  “What is it?” Anna asked, standing up.

  “This is the documentation of authenticity, and it states that this antique porcelain doll is appraised for thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  As quickly as she’d stood up, Anna slumped back into her chair. “Thirty-five thousand dollars. Holy smokes, that is a lot of moola.”

  Belle looked at the doll again. “But why? Why is the doll here?”

  “There is something else in there,” Harlem pointed out.

  Sure enough, a small envelope was tucked along the side of the box. Eagerly ripping it open, Belle realized it was a hand-written letter. “It’s from Coraline Danvers.”

  “What does it say?”

  Belle proceeded to read it out loud, “Dear Belle, if you are reading this, it means that I am already dead.”

  “She knew someone was after her,” Anna whispered.

  “Unfortunately, out of everyone in my recent life, you are the only one I can trust. You are a kind-hearted girl who came and spent time with an old woman. That is why I am sending you my most prized possession, this antique porcelain doll. Her name is Candy, the same name as my dear sweet beloved daughter.”

  The sisters looked at one another. “That’s weird,” Anna admitted.

  “I know many people, particularly one, will be after this prized item. I cannot let it fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, I must ask you, beg of you, do not sell this to anyone. For the sake of an old woman, and an old friend, please keep her safe for me. Sincerely, Cora.”

  “So, this is it. This is the reason she was murdered,” Anna said.

  “Wait, there’s one more line. P.S. Don’t be worried about her strange behavior. Candy has a mind of her own.” Belle looked over at the doll sitting on the table with its eyes wide open and staring and shivered.

  “Wait. Does she mean the doll or her daughter?”

  “Her daughter, of course,” Belle argued, trying to convince herself of the truth. She hated the idea of a creepy haunted doll in her apartment.

  “Well, there goes my theory about being able to pin the murder on Don Delta. Now we know he doesn’t have the doll in the back of his truck.”

  Suddenly, Belle had a light go on in her head. “Maybe not, but I have an idea about how we can still use this doll to draw in the killer.”

  “How is that?” Anna asked.

  “We put it up for sale.” Belle smiled like she’d just said the most brilliant thing ever.

  “Put it up for sale? That’s the exact opposite thing that Cora asked you to do. How can you call her a friend and then turn around a disobey her dying wish?”

  “No, no, you have it all wrong. I’m not saying we actually sell it. I’m saying we put up an ad for it online, maybe even e-mail it to a few key suspects.”

  Anna leaned forward on the table. “Sorry, I still don’t follow.”

  “We ask for double the price.”

  “Are you nuts?” Anna exclaimed.

  “No, no. You see, we ask for local buyers only. Then, whoever shows up and is willing to buy the doll for double the price is probably the murderer.”

  Anna sat and considered this new theory. “What if the murderer decides they don’t want to pay double and instead wants to kill us off and just take it?”

  “She has a good point,” Harlem commented. “You don’t want to put yourselves in unnecessary danger. This is really a matter for the police, isn’t it?”

  “We just have to be prepared,” Belle insisted.

  Anna bit her bottom lip. “I’m still not sure it’s a great idea. We should call Dan.”

  Belle put her hands on the table. “I’m doing it. I’m going to put up the ad saying any interested buyers should meet us here tonight after the movie ends. You call Dan and tell him to meet us here around that same time.”

  “With what explanation?”

  “Tell him the truth. Say that we think we might have new evidence about the murder case to share with him.”

  “Belle?”

  “Just trust me.” She walked out of the room into the projection booth where her computer was.

  “Aren’t you going to do something, Harlem?” Anna begged, still feeling extremely uncomfortable with this set-up. She would have preferred to call Dan first and get his input on the situation before rushing into something.

  Harlem was carefully stroking his pencil mustache with two fingers while he thought. “I’ve got go back to the plantation and see something for myself, that may help us learn about what is really going on here,” he informed her.

  Anna scowled. “Fine. Both of you run off and do what
ever it is you want. I’m calling Dan and telling him what’s happening.”

  “I promise, as soon as I learn anything, I’ll be right back.” Floating through the wall, he disappeared.

  “Great,” she mumbled. “If no one else is going to be responsible about this, I am.” Pulling out her cellphone, she dialed Chief Bronson.

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  Harlem didn’t want to spook the girls, but he had a hunch that could add a macabre twist on this whole murder case. While his knowledge of voodoo magic and practices wasn’t perfect, he knew that Coraline Danvers had been into some form of it.

  The skull, flowers, and altar were enough to show him that.

  The real question now was, what kind of voodoo was she doing? Was it just a homebrew protection spell for the doll—a family heirloom? Or worse, was she doing something more dark and sinister, like murder?

  Floating wasn’t much faster than walking, but at least he could travel “as the bird flies” by moving through objects.

  After about twenty minutes he arrived on the plantation. The once magnificent home looked derelict with its windows all blocked up with piles of collected junk. The hanging moss seemed to encompass most of the building in shadows. To top it off, an X of yellow police tape had been placed directly over the door, sealing it off.

  Of course, what was to stop someone from just waltzing inside? It wasn’t as if they even had a guard posted. Even though Harlem had never personally met Chief Bronson in life, he knew very well that he was a hardworking, intelligent, and capable officer—even if he was getting up there in years and couldn’t always remember every detail.

  Secretly, Harlem was glad Anna had called Dan. While he still hardly knew these two sisters, he had quickly found himself growing very fond of them, their quirks, their arguments, and most of all, their compassion. He absolutely hated the idea of anyone trying to harm them.

  This was exactly why he was here at the plantation. He had a hunch that there may be something even stranger going on than anyone could have ever expected.

  Floating easily through the police tape on the front door, he found himself in the darkness of the old house.

  The first thing he did was float back to the study to get a better look at the little burlap doll there. Floating inside, he spotted the item in question on the chair. Sure enough, it looked like Don Delta. The combination of the dead bird and this doll made Harlem uneasy. “Had she been planning to kill him?” he wondered. In his experience, he knew that black voodoo dolls were almost always used for death rituals.

  Without hesitation, he made his way down the skinny hallways and into the kitchen at the back corner of the building.

  The police had left the shelf pushed aside and the cellar door open, not that having either one closed would have stopped Harlem. Moving onward down the steps, he felt a moment of strangeness as he considered his own existence.

  After all, he was a ghost inside a creepy cellar. What could be more stereotypical than that?

  Shaking the thought away, he concentrated on the problem at hand.

  The table against the far wall was in the same spot and appeared in nearly the same condition. The only difference was that the glass case, presumably where the doll had been housed, was now missing. The police had most likely taken it in for fingerprinting.

  Fortunately, Harlem wasn’t so much interested in the glass case as he was in the other items on the table.

  The flowers which had been there before were now mostly wilted, indicating they had been fresh earlier in the day. He wondered if Coraline Danvers replaced the flowers on the table every day. In addition to the flowers was a skull, a few candles, and a little white burlap voodoo doll. This was most certainly an altar of some sort, as he had first assumed.

  The item that interested him most was the little white voodoo doll. It was a ratty thing with frayed ends and loose stitching. Voodoo dolls were almost always supposed to represent someone in real life. As far as he knew, when a doll was white like this, the purpose of the item was to either bring good fortune or to create a barrier of protection.

  Protection, that word stuck in Harlem’s mind. Maybe this doll was made back when Candy had been kidnapped and used as a way to keep her safe until she was found. That would explain why Coraline had been so calm when she went to the police—as if she wasn’t afraid that her daughter would be harmed.

  Harlem stroked his chin and nodded. Things were starting to make more sense.

  However, the one thing that was still confusing him was, why create an altar with an antique doll as the centerpiece? Was the doll, as he had first theorized, haunted in some way? Perhaps this particular voodoo ritual was a way of keeping the doll’s spirit sealed away inside—so she couldn’t do any harm.

  It would explain Cora’s concern about the doll falling into wrong hands, but what made Belle’s hands the right ones? Belle had no real knowledge of the occult, or of voodoo practices. How could she possibly be held responsible for keeping and protecting a haunted doll?

  He glanced at the white voodoo doll again.

  Additionally, if this altar was meant as a barrier, why was the white protection doll included? It wouldn’t aid in sealing a spirit away.

  Or maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe the white doll was, in fact, being used to protect the antique heirloom—not keep its spirit sealed away.

  A doll named Candy.

  Suddenly, an idea popped into Harlem’s head. His jaw dropped open as he looked from the voodoo doll, to where the glass case had been, and back to the voodoo doll again. If he was right in his next assumption, it added a whole new twist to this case.

  He couldn’t wait to tell the girls.

  Moving quickly up the stairs and out the front door of the house, he made a B-line through the trees to get back to the drive-in.

  However, one more thing made him pause, right at the thickest section of the trees. A large trunk of an oak tree had something nailed to it. On closer inspection, it appeared to be the decaying remnants of another voodoo doll, a black one. If he was not mistaken, it appeared as if the doll had been outside for a number of years, exposed to the harsh elements.

  Most interesting of all was the placement of the nail—straight through the heart.

  Harlem suddenly felt his energy run cold. “Oh, no,” he whispered.

  He needed to get back to the girls as fast as possible.

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  Belle and Anna were in the restaurant’s kitchen getting some things done before the hard work that evening when the heavy knock came on the back door.

  Anna, who was taking inventory of the pantry items, raised a curious eyebrow and looked at her sister. “Who could that be?”

  Belle had on long yellow gloves and was scrubbing down the grill, something she did at least once a month. “I don’t know, maybe Val forgot her key. Can you get it? I’m kind of elbow deep in grime at the moment.”

  “On it,” Anna noted, setting down her clipboard and pen. She had a good idea who it might be, but didn’t want to tell Belle for fear she would get upset.

  Unlatching the bolt, Anna opened the door.

  “Where is it?”

  “C-Candy,” Anna exclaimed, honestly surprised to see her. It wasn’t at all whom she had expected to be out there. “It is Candy Danvers, right?” she asked, just wanting make one-hundred percent sure she was on the right track.

  “I’m sorry to bother you ladies at this early hour, but I believe you have something that belongs to me.” She pushed passed Anna and into the room without answering the question.

  “Excuse me?” Anna grunted.

  “Now, what exactly is going on?” Belle asked, stepping back from the grill.

  “The doll, ladies, the doll. I know my mother sent it here.”

  Anna and Belle gave each other knowing glances. “So, you are Candy Danvers.”

  “Why else would I be here asking for my doll?”

  Belle slipped
the large gloves off and hung them over the sink. “Your doll?”

  “Yes, mine. Now, where is it?” she demanded.

  “If I’m not mistaken, your mother left that doll to me, not you.”

  Candy’s face flushed. “I am her daughter and everything in or on that plantation belongs to me.”

  “But the doll isn’t anywhere near the plantation. It’s mine.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to come to you. That was a mistake,” she spoke through barred teeth.

  Anna was beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable about this whole situation when another knock came on the door. Oh, thank heaven, she thought, running to answer it.

  Again, it wasn’t who she expected. “Shelly?”

  “Hi, girls,” she exclaimed with a happy smile.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I saw your ad online, and I just had to come over and see the doll for myself. I know your posting said to meet tonight, but I couldn’t wait.”

  Again, Belle and Anna glanced at each other.

  “Also, I felt it necessary to apologize for the way I acted yesterday and hoped you would forgive me, of course.”

  “The doll is not for sale, it belongs to me,” Candy shot in.

  “Oh, Candy, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother,” Shelly consoled her, stepping into the kitchen.

  Her nose twitched in a sneer. “Thank you, I’m fine.”

  “You sure got into town quickly. You must have taken an overnight flight when you heard what had happened.”

  “Actually, she’s been here since at least yesterday,” Belle pointed out.

  Anna widened her eyes at her sister. Why would she say something like that?

  “Oh?” Shelly asked inquisitively.

  “Can we get on with things?” Candy barked.

  “I’m sorry, Candy, but if you want the doll you’re going to have to buy it,” Belle said firmly.

  “Oh, I don’t want to buy it,” Shelly chimed in. “I’d just love to see it before it’s sold off.”

  “Enough of this.” Candy reached into her purse and pulled out a revolver.