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conjecture. Regardless, it unhinged him. He let his mind direct all its shock, trauma, and sense of loss at Ronny and the dummy and their twisted, unhealthy relationship. He needed to find a target for his despair and that was the dummy. By that point he’d already talked himself into the idea that it was some evil devil doll. But it was delirium, mania. That’s all.
    Yet…despite her very rational turn of mind, she wasn’t entirely convinced. If Bascomb was telling her the truth about the midnight sessions in the family crypt, then there was definitely something weird and downright scary going on with Ronny McBane. That he wasn’t right in the head, she knew from her interview with him, and that he had some inexplicable power over the dummy she had seen firsthand. But that didn’t necessitate anything supernatural. Something was going on here and that common thread led to the disappearance of her sister. She didn’t doubt that. But she wasn’t about to believe that Ronny McBane was anything more than deranged and Piggy was anything more than a dummy.
    Now it was time to turn up the heat and dig a little deeper.
    She’d hired a private investigator three days before and now it was time to find out what he had learned. And when she did, she’d act on it because that’s the kind of person she was. Her sister Gloria was hardly an angel. Kitty knew some of the dirt and it was pretty much the same old shopworn dirt that came with the entertainment business…but that did not make Gloria a bad person.
    Whatever had happened to her, she deserved better.
    She deserved to be more than a statistic in the police files.
    Kitty took out her cell and looked through her photos. Gloria, Gloria, Gloria. Funny, as a kid, she’d been so jealous of her she sometimes broke out in hives and now she languished over her sister’s photos on a daily basis. Gloria was older than she and far prettier. Just ask anyone. Maybe Mom would never admit it, in so many words, but Gloria got the attention because she not only looked good but looked good regardless of what she was doing. Peeling potatoes, doing the dishes…it didn’t matter: she had looks, grace, and poise. All Kitty ever wanted to be was Gloria because her face opened every door and warmed every heart, it brought the boys in slavering packs that she commanded with but one flick of her slender, graceful hand. It brought friends who wanted to be with her, to be part of her world, to bask in her glow that was golden. It was pure sunshine.
    Kitty could remember on her fifteenth birthday, crying in her cake, hating the braces in her mouth (Gloria had naturally model-perfect white teeth) and the hair on her legs (Gloria never shaved her legs because hair didn’t dare grow on those long golden limbs) and her face (no pouting lips or high cheekbones like Gloria) and her eyes (definitely not crystal-blue like Gloria’s) and just about everything.
    “Come now,” Mom had said. “Your sister’s pretty, but so are you. Gloria has the kind of pretty that’s going to get her in trouble, mark my words. But you got the kind the boys respect.”
    Kitty only wanted to be disrespected and have the wrong kind of pretty. Gloria went away to college and a pall fell over the house. Nothing Kitty did could warm up her parents the way Gloria did just by walking in the door. Whenever Gloria came home, they perked up and their blood started running again. Suffice to say, Kitty never formed a close bond with either her mother or her father. She cried only the acceptable amount when they passed within a week of one another via twin coronaries. As much as she seethed with envy over her older sister and boiled with jealousy, Gloria lit her up as much as anyone else. When Gloria came home, she did not ignore Kitty. She always made sure they had special time together. They watched movies, they shopped, they went to restaurants. Gloria always made sure Kitty felt special. Unlike everyone else, she never forgot