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turned, as if responding to the soft entreaty, and Claire saw her clearly for the first time. The girl’s face split into a broad smile, and Claire’s breath caught. Everything around her seemed to still. The noise from the street faded, and the palm fronds and banana trees in a nearby courtyard stood motionless in the heat, as if nature itself was holding a breath.
    And then Claire exhaled in a painful rush. It wasn’t Ruby. Of course it wasn’t Ruby. But for that one fleeting moment when their gazes touched, Claire had a glimpse of what it might be like to see her daughter’s face again after all these years.
    The girl’s attention moved past her and she waved at someone behind Claire. Someone who had called out her name.
    Megan. The girl’s name was Megan. Not Ruby.
    Claire glanced at her reflection in a store window, saw the pinched look on her face, the whitened knuckles where her hand gripped her purse strap, and slowly she let out another breath.
    Ruby was dead and she wasn’t coming back. She’d been taken from the sidewalk in front of their home while riding her bike, the victim of an abduction that had never been solved. Claire knew the statistics. Her daughter had probably been dead within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after she’d been grabbed, her body discarded in some remote field or shallow grave, where she had been lying all these years. Alone.
    Claire put a hand to her mouth. Tears scalded her eyes, but she held them back as she scoured the street in front of her. The girl and her friends had scurried beneath an awning to get out of the drizzle. Claire deliberately turned and started walking in the opposite direction.
     
     
     
    “Did you hear about the body they found in the Quarter?” Charlotte LeBlanc asked casually when she and Claire met a few minutes later at their designated rendezvous.
    “I saw it on the local news before I left the house this morning. Do the police know who did it?”
    Claire’s sister was an assistant D.A. for Orleans Parish and usually had an open pipeline to the police department, but she shook her head. “They think it was probably drug-related. So far they haven’t even been able to identify the body. Poor bastard was sliced up pretty bad. All his fingers were missing.”
    Claire shuddered. “I don’t know how you do it, dealing with that kind of violence on a daily basis. I think it would start to get to me after a while.”
    “I think it would, too, but I’m not you. And someone has to keep the baddies off the street.” Charlotte snapped open her umbrella as the drizzle turned into a full-fledged shower and the gray clouds over the Gulf vibrated with lightning. Within a matter of moments the city was soaked and dripping, and as they walked along Decatur, Charlotte tried to hold the umbrella over both of them.
    “Here, let me,” Claire said as she took the handle. “I’m taller.”
    “Okay, but just make sure I’m covered. I’m wearing silk. Damn. ” Charlotte swore as she stepped in a puddle. “And these shoes are brand-new.”
    Claire glanced down at her sister’s high heels. The delicate footwear had obviously not been designed for wet weather, but certainly looked elegant and sophisticated on Charlotte’s dainty feet.
    Claire felt a stab of envy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d splurged on a pair of expensive shoes. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed any indulgence whatsoever, but with her divorce nearly final, she had to keep her belt tightened. Now was not the time for extravagant purchases.
    Although Charlotte would argue that designer shoes were not an extravagance, but a necessity. Image was everything and nothing screamed success like a good pair of shoes. Unless, of course, it was her gorgeous leather handbag, the one that had come with a four-figure price tag in roughly the same amount as Claire’s new central air-conditioning unit.
    Her grandmother’s old house