The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five)

by Abigail Padgett

  "No, the man I knew was flatly incapable of it," Madge said with conviction. "But then where did she come up with the story? Remember this was nearly forty years ago. Incest was not discussed at all forty years ago. We're never going to know what went on in Beryl's mind. And Bo?" The supervisor's smile was uncharacteristically impish.

  "Yeah?"

  "I wish you hadn't burned the original."

  Bo could feel the light in her own eyes. A EUREKA! kind of light. "I've got something even better for you," she said.

  Chapter 27

  “No, I'm not going to stay," Bo told the doctor who'd just quilted nine stitches into her right knee with unattractive black thread and fastened bags of frozen blue jelly to her left ankle with an Ace bandage. "This is nothing, trust me."

  "She's right," Andrew LaMarche smiled gamely from his post at the foot of her ER gurney. "Bo has taken harder knocks than this."

  "Whatever you say, Doctor," the young intern sighed in deference to Andrew's medical-fraternity seniority. "But don't let her put any weight on that ankle and remember the antibacterial cream for the laceration. It's pretty ragged. I'm afraid she's going to scar—"

  "She is right here in front of you and perfectly capable of hearing information about her own damn knee!" Bo seethed from her supine position on the gurney. "What is it about being a doctor that makes you incapable of talking to people? It's my ankle, my knee, get it?"

  "Got it," the intern agreed, casting a covert glance at Andrew. A glance which, Bo noted, dripped with sympathy.

  "Can you give me a ride, Andy?" she asked while struggling to fit crutches into the armpits of her baggy, coffee-stained Aran sweater. "After Madge phoned you, she ran by my place to get something and then went back to the office and arranged for a couple of the hotline trainees to pick up my car and drive it home for me. They'll leave the keys in my mailbox. So my only problem now is getting home."

  "Of course," he answered. "And we can talk."

  "I just saw a woman shot dead in an ugly housecoat, Andy. Do we have to talk?"

  "Yes," he said brightly.

  The substance of the talk involved, as Bo had known it would, the future. Their future. He was sorry he'd been condescending and controlling the night before. It was a slip. He'd work on it, never stop working on it. Could she overlook the incident?

  "Sure," Bo answered, squinting at her gaunt reflection in the visor mirror of his Jaguar. "I love you, Andy. It'll take more than one of your slips into male supremacy to change that. But I'm not sure I'm ready to move out to Del Mar. At least not quite yet. I may, I probably will, I love the apartment, but let's face it, it's a big step. No going back. That sort of thing. And right now I'm just not quite there."

  She had expected him to register dismay. Controlled, of course. But his gray eyes merely sparkled happily as he turned off I-8 and onto Sunset Cliffs Boulevard near her apartment.

  "Should I stop at the grocery?" he asked. "You're not going down those steps tonight, so we should get whatever you need now."

  "No, Eva's already there. I called her from the ER after Madge called you. She'll walk Molly for me and can get anything I need. Mainly, I want to talk to her about this case. She's discovered something interesting. But Andy, I thought you'd be disappointed about... you know ... my not moving right now."

  "I have confidence in your judgment, Bo, despite my momentary lapses," he smiled. "Besides, Teless and I had a long chat last night after we left your place. She told me about the ruse she and her friend Robby Landry cooked up to get her out here, and about the debt she owes her nannan. You helped her with that, Bo, spelled out her responsibility for her. She's found a part-time job waitressing in a restaurant in Del Mar and called her godmother to arrange for repayment of the bus fare. And I think I can pull some strings to get her enrolled in the local high school for the spring semester. I want Teless to stay until summer, Bo. And your apartment is perfect for her. Well, for me. I couldn't stand listening to that atrocious music she plays, and—"

  "Andy, that's terrific!" Bo broke in. "Janny will be able to see Teless, not lose another friend. You have no idea how hard that is on foster kids, the way the others just come and go. I approve!"

  "I thought you would."

  Eva Broussard was on the deck when Bo and Andrew struggled in, laughing from the exertion of getting Bo up the apartment stairs on crutches.

  "I brought quiche and a double-fudge layer cake for dinner," she said, shaking her head at Bo's injuries. "And an interesting book on saints."

  "I'm sure I must be scheduled for surgery immediately," Andrew hedged. "The cake's enticing, but I had enough of saints as a child. All those unusual tortures. I'll call you later, Bo. Stay off that ankle."

  Bo fondly tossed a crutch at the closing door and sank into the couch. The afternoon was overcast and chilly, and Eva had turned on the wall furnace which was the apartment's only source of heat.

  "Shouldn't we open the door a little?" Bo asked, edgy. "My parents both died because of a faulty wall heater. Carbon monoxide poisoning, just like my sister, only they didn't intend—"

  "This one's electric, Bo," Eva pointed out. "And it sounds as though you may need to take a nap before I tell you my theory about Beryl Malcolm. You're stressed."

  "Probably," Bo answered, remembering a cheap bread knife descending. "But I'm dying to hear what you've come up with. Eva, that woman terrified her whole family for decades, had them in her thrall. And yet she was nothing but a common sociopath. It should have become obvious to her parents when she was still a child. And she should have wound up in prison as an adult like they all do."

  The bakery box on the counter had become irresistible. Bo hopped toward it, balanced on a crutch and the back of the couch.

  "Double-fudge layer cake reduces stress," she grinned. "Let's have some while you theorize, okay?"

  Minutes later Eva Broussard was pacing in front of the couch, holding a book featuring a stained-glass window on its cover and gesturing with her dessert fork. Bo could hear the fringe on her moccasins flapping softly as she paced. A comforting sound.

  "The key to Beryl, as to anyone, lies in the stories they use to make sense of life," she began. "And because of Jasper Malcolm's rather antiquated religious bent, she had access at an early age to some of the strangest, bloodiest tales available."

  "The saints," Bo concluded, nodding to the book.

  "Precisely. Beryl was unquestionably a sociopath, but she apparently inherited her father's knack for ritual and metaphor as well. As a child her demands for attention would have been insatiable, and her rage when those demands were not met, intense. A female, her most chaotic demands would have been directed at the male parent, and the mother perceived as an obstacle to his attention."

  “I can't stomach Freud, Eva," Bo muttered into cocoa-scented cake, "even though some of it makes sense."

  “I’m only dealing with the part that makes sense," the psychiatrist went on, her dark eyes flashing with an intellectual excitement that was contagious. "The child Beryl wanted her father's complete attention, but had no model for achieving that goal until someone—probably Jasper Malcolm himself—read her a story. A variant of one of the Celtic myths. Shakespeare used the myth in King Lear, and I've heard you relate another version, ‘The Children of Lir.' St. Dymphna's tale is merely one of many variants on this ancient story. Do you know it?"

  "No," Bo said, leaning forward. "I was raised Catholic, but that doesn't mean I've heard of every saint There are thousands, you know. Actually, all the graceful dead are saints. Millions."

  "The graceful dead?” Eva had to laugh. "Mon dieu!

  "People who've died in a state of grace, Eva," Bo grinned. "They get tie-dyed robes and six-stringed guitars instead of harps. So who's Dymphna?"

  "A pious Irish fifteen-year-old whose mother died, after which her grief-maddened father wanted to marry her because no other woman was like his dead wife. Dymphna of course fled her father's incestuous advances—"

&n
bsp; "That's where Beryl learned about incest at a time when it was not discussed. Wow!" Bo exhaled.

  "She fled to Belgium with her confessor, Gerebern, also sainted, as well as the jester from her father's court and the jester's wife."

  "Of course, the jester, just like in King Lear. Go on, Eva."

  "It gets better," the psychiatrist nodded. "Dymphna's father followed her to Gheel, Belgium, where she was hiding. There he killed the jester and his wife, and Gerebern. When Dymphna still refused his advances, he beheaded her as well. This was in the year 650. Some seven centuries later, when the bones of Dymphna and Gerebern were discovered, miraculous cures began to occur there, or so the story goes. The town became a mecca and a compassionate haven for people with psychiatric illness. It still is. But the fascinating dimension to this is the way in which Beryl, when her original plan failed, assumed the role of the murdering father."

  "I've heard about Gheel, and I think I'll just stick with my meds, Eva. But at least that clears up Beryl's motivation for pushing her mother down the stairs, doesn't it? Her mother was supposed to die so she could have her daddy, like in the story. But Jasper Malcolm knew. He knew Beryl had killed her mother, and he did nothing. He allowed a monster to grow to adulthood under his roof and did absolutely nothing to stop it."

  Eva leaned against the wall, thinking.

  "He probably tried, Bo, in that isolated way of artistic people. It would never have occurred to him to seek help from social or criminal justice agencies, and when his wife was murdered there were none of those for children in any event. What could he have done nearly forty years ago except to abandon Beryl at an orphanage and flee? He had no recourse but to mythology, religion. You forget how very thin is the scrim of 'enlightenment' about the brain and human behavior which characterizes our time. You don't know that as recently as your own birth, it didn't exist, and that even now most people would prefer any explanation for a sociopath like Beryl than the truth that such creatures occasionally occur."

  "So he raised his monster, earning a living with his dolls and praying around the clock," Bo thought aloud. “Tamlin escaped into an immature marriage as soon as she could at eighteen, producing Jeffrey and then the twins. That's when Beryl went off, when her father created the new line of collectible baby dolls modeled on the twins. She said as much when she was trying to kill me. But Eva, I still don't understand why she went to the beach cottage that night and grabbed those little girls from their cribs. What happened to make her do that, and what about Kimmy's death triggered the final sequence of murders? She said Kimmy was supposed to stay a doll and the other one, meaning Janny, was not supposed to be seen. I don't get it."

  Eva Broussard eyed the beach below Bo's deck with interest, then stretched.

  "Everyone who might have provided answers to those questions is now dead, Bo. Beryl's distorted thought processes are lost forever. The important thing is that you worried this case like a terrier, wouldn't let it go, and saved Janny's life. Because Beryl would have killed her, Bo. I'm sure of that."

  "There's someone else who reached out to save Janny," Bo mentioned softly. "Reached out in images that were all she'd known for most of her life—just a dreadful sense of waiting in a place with no sound but the clicks and hisses of life-support systems. A place like a subway station, long abandoned, where one last train is expected…"

  "Arguably, the dream you named 'The Station of the Dead' was connected in some way to Kimberly Malcolm," Eva agreed. "But the mechanisms of psychic phenomena are notoriously resistant to analysis, so I advise restraint in thinking about it, Bo. These phenomena cannot be understood; it's best not to try. And Molly and I are going for a long walk. I suggest that you rest until dinner, after which I have what promises to be a challenging engagement, but I'll be back later to check on you and walk Molly a last time before I go home."

  "What challenging engagement?" Bo asked, lurching toward her bed.

  "A seminar on enhanced verbal communication," Eva laughed. "I've invited Pete Cullen."

  "Aha," Bo teased, but woman and dachshund were already out the door.

  Later Bo cocked an ear at a message from Estrella on the answering machine, but didn't get up to answer the phone. The christening would be on March seventeenth, Es reported happily. St. Patrick's Day. Plenty of time for Bo to get a new coat. Sometime after that Molly began leaping against the side of Bo's bed, indicating their return from the walk. Then Bo heard a knock at the door, answered by Eva.

  "Thank you, I'll sign for it," she said.

  "What is it?" Bo yelled.

  "A registered overnight delivery from the Palm Valley Doll Works," Eva answered, bringing the large envelope to Bo. "Curious."

  "I don't believe this!" Bo gasped, pulling a glossy color photo onto the bed.

  The photo was of a doll, a Jasper Malcolm collectible. An auburn-haired baby doll with mischievous green eyes and a smattering of freckles across its nose. Topping its ivy-green velvet dress was a collar of Irish lace, matched by the trim on its white tights and booties. And tucked under its arm was a bright-eyed dachshund puppy, done in bronze velvet. In the curve of the doll's lower lip and in its cheekbones, Bo remembered the dollmaker's hand touching her face, and saw herself.

  "Prototype, Final Jasper Malcolm Doll, 'Bo’,'" someone had written in the photo's margin. "Per Malcolm's instructions, prototype to be shipped to Bo Bradley at this address as soon as replicated. ETA—March of next year."

  The doll was adorable, Bo thought, blushing. The first one she'd ever seen that didn't give her the creeps.

  Postscript

  Only a few miles away in an attractive Point Loma neighborhood, a woman with snowy hair held by a tortoiseshell clip played with a gray cat. On the floor beside the pair were a catnip mouse and several balls of yarn, unraveled.

  "It's going to be fine, Bede," the woman said softly. "For once Bo was right. You're much better than the picture!"