A Fool and His Honey

Chapter Seven

We had more company that evening. After a quiet afternoon we’d had a light supper. I’d just washed the supper dishes. Martin, in between trying to get in touch with the midwife and with Rory Brown (we’d found a working phone), had boiled a used batch of bottles and nipples and set them out to drain on a clean towel. I’d put a load of linens and a few clothes through the washing-and-drying cycle. The isolated position of the farmhouse had begun to make me think of us as cut off from the world, a not-unpleasant idea; so the sound of the car and the knock at the front door came as something of a jolt.

Martin walked through the living room to the front door and switched on the outside light. There wasn’t a peephole, and the door was solid wood with no glass window, so he just had to open the door on trust, a habit we’d discarded. Big-city crime was drifting from Atlanta through outlying suburbs like Lawrenceton at an alarming rate.

I don’t think Martin could have looked very welcoming, but the couple on the steps didn’t seem alarmed. They were smiling in a friendly way, and they maintained their smiles even when faced with Martin’s stern expression.

I ventured out into the living room when I heard the man say, “Hi! I’m Luke Granberry, and this is my wife, Margaret. We have the farm to the south of here.”

“Martin Bartell.” My husband held out his hand and Luke shook it exactly the right amount.

“We can just barely see the farm from our house, and we noticed more lights on tonight than there have been, so we felt we ought to check it out,” Margaret said. Luke Granberry seemed to be about thirty or so, and Margaret was within five years of that, more or less, I estimated. The closer I got to her, the stronger I was willing to bet on the “more.”

Hers was the most beautiful skin I’d ever seen, pale and smooth as silk, with fine webbing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her hair was red, flaming red, bushy and full. She wore it pulled back from her forehead with a cheap barrette. As she bent to shake my hand, I noticed she wore no jewelry besides her plain wedding ring.

“Please come in,” I said. “I’m Martin’s wife, Aurora.”

Martin stood aside to let the neighbors in. As Luke Granberry edged past Martin, I could see that our visitor was the taller and broader. He had huge shoulders and a mildly handsome face, distinguished mostly by high cheekbones that made his small brown eyes seem perpetually scanning the distance for some adventure. His dark hair and brown eyes made his wife look even paler.

“Regina told us about you,” Margaret said. “The aunt and uncle, right?”

“Yes, I’m Regina’s mother’s brother,” Martin said.

“Barby’s brother,” Luke said. He looked at Martin as if trying to see a trace of Regina in his face. “We heard a rumor that there was some problem…?” Luke spread his big hands in a gesture that seemed to imply that the Granberrys wanted to help, if only they knew how.

“Regina is missing,” I said. Unfortunately, because I didn’t know these people and so couldn’t burden them with our emotions, I sounded like Regina’s disappearance was just a little whim of hers. I was sorry the minute the words left my mouth.

“We’re sure she’ll turn up just any time,” Martin said, to give me some support. We really do care, we just have a positive attitude, his voice implied.

“Where are Craig and Rory?” Margaret asked, looking around the room as if she expected we’d stuck them in a corner.

“Please come in and have a seat,” I said, glancing anxiously at Martin. “I’m afraid we have some bad news about Craig.” I had no idea if these neighbors had known Craig well, and could not gauge how much preparation they needed for the bad news.

Since there was only the couch and one chair in the living room, seating was a pretty cut-and-dried process. The Granberrys took the couch, which I indicated with a hostessy sweep of my hand, and I perched on the edge of the chair so my feet could touch the floor, Martin standing just behind me. I looked back at Martin, but his face gave away nothing.

“Ah… Craig is dead, I’m afraid.” I gave them my most serious expression, which Martin always said looked as though I suspected I was having a heart attack.

“Oh, it’s true, he’s dead!” Margaret said. She turned to her husband, the thick red hair sweeping across her shoulders. Her white hands clutched his. “Luke!”

“I’m so sorry,” Luke Granberry said, in a slow and solemn voice that I thought would be perfect for reading Poe out loud. I hastily put a cap on that thought, since I’d actually opened my mouth to say it, and instead pursed my lips and shook my head, as if the tragedy were too horrible for words.

“So you’d already heard?” Martin asked.

“The counterman at the hardware store said he’d heard it from Hugh Harbor, yes. But we didn’t think we knew the Harbors well enough to call and ask them what the facts were. We heard Hugh is really sick… and we didn’t see Craig’s funeral announcement in the paper.”

“The body hasn’t been released by the medical examiner yet,” I said, finally managing to strike the right tone. Sober concern, that was appropriate. For the first time, I realized I was sleep deprived in a serious way. As if hearing his psychic cue, Hayden began to make noises upstairs. It was amazing how clearly his little voice came over the receiver, which I was clutching in my left hand. I’d been afraid to put it down.

I half turned to Martin, said, “I’ll check, honey,” (as though Martin had moved). I plodded up the stairs, to see the little arms and legs nailing above the edge of the bumper pads.

He wasn’t crying, so I figured he wasn’t hungry. Maybe you were supposed to hold off on the bottle until they asked for it? Since the only way for a baby to ask for a bottle was to cry, wasn’t that kind of mean? On the other hand, sticking food in their mouth every time they were awake would create a bad pattern… Gosh, there was nothing easy about this. You might as well get your answers by interpreting the pattern of chicken bones tossed under the full moon. I propped Hayden back on his side and began to pat him. To my pleasure, he went back to sleep.

While I’d been tending to Hayden, the Granberrys had been establishing common ground with Martin. I’d hoped they’d be a source of information about Regina and Craig, but I knew we’d have to let a polite conversational time lapse before questioning them. They’d been talking about the possibility of snow during the night, and I came in on the tail end of the weather discussion.

Margaret liked babies. I could tell by the way her eyes latched onto the nursery monitor as I came into the room.

“I didn’t realize you and Martin were parents,” she said slowly. “How old is your baby?”

Martin, who’d gotten a straight chair from the kitchen, looked resigned.

I said, “He isn’t ours.” After they refused a drink, I eased back into the chair, tired as I’d ever been in my life.

“You’re baby-sitting?”

“This is Regina’s baby,” Martin said.

“Regina’s baby?” If such a thing were possible, the pale Margaret, whom I was beginning to warm to, turned a shade whiter. She stared at us, stunned.

Even her next-door neighbors hadn’t known Regina was going to have a baby? My doubt that Regina had ever given birth was beginning to consume me.

“Regina’s baby?” Luke asked. He seemed just as startled as his wife. “Where on earth has it been?”

“With Regina missing and Craig dead, we had to step in,” Martin said smoothly, as I opened my mouth to tell them the whole story.

“That was the best plan,” I said, just to justify my open mouth.

Obviously, the Granberrys were curious, but too polite to ask any more questions. After some idle talk about how long we might stay, and a polite offer on our visitors’ part to help in any way they could, the Granberrys rose to leave. Margaret was holding Luke’s hand, and I thought that was sweet. I love to see people who’ve been married a while still act like lovers.

Though, I considered, she might actually need the support. Margaret was looking a little shaky.

“We didn’t know Regina was going to have a baby,” I said, kind of throwing out a line, as Luke and Martin were shaking hands.

Margaret nodded. “She was very secretive about it, apparently. Listen, if you get lonely, give me a call? Our number’s in the book. If Martin has catching up to do with friends here in town, you may be at loose ends. Or maybe you’ll need me to baby-sit.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call you. And thanks for coming to check on the house. We appreciate your being concerned.”

“We’ve tried to keep an eye on the house since we heard about Craig,” Luke said. He looked from Martin to me, to make sure we both understood his sincerity. “If you need anything, anything, while you’re here, just let us know. We’ll be glad to see you.”

As I gave Hayden his bottle later, I said, “They seemed nice, Martin. I think we should try to get together with them again and see if they know any more about Craig and Regina than the little we know. It sounded to me like they saw them fairly often. What do you think?”

“They seem too damn trusting,” my husband said. “Coming all the way over to what they think may be an empty house at night, to check on lights. What if we’d been burglars?”

“He had a rifle in the gun rack in the cab of his pickup,” I said, moving Hayden to my shoulder to burp him. “I noticed, because it made me feel right at home.” In Lawrenceton, everyone seemed to own a gun, a rifle, or a shotgun, whether or not they hunted. Martin had a gun himself; Martin had not always been a business executive, as I would do well to remind myself.

This day had contained more than its fair share of hours. I was ready for it to be over. The ancient dryer was taking too long to dry the newly washed sheets. Martin occupied Hayden while I went in search of more. I was surprised and relieved to find another set in the upstairs bathroom closet, and it took me a minute or two to remake the bed. I had to put on the same blankets and bedspread, but I resolved to wash them in the morning.

I knew, as I scrubbed quickly in the ancient bathtub, that any mild obligatory affection I had had for Regina had ebbed away with this close examination of her marriage. I loathed her life. I loathed her little mysteries. But most of all, I loathed the nasty situation she’d dragged to our door, because I had a deep conviction that Regina had known exactly how imperiled she was when she’d driven from Corinth to Lawrenceton. If she’d been open with us, if she’d been frank, everything that had happened since then-and I visualized a long set of dominos, one toppling against the other-could have been prevented.

My distaste and disapproval for a member of Martin’s family made me feel like a bad Christian and a bad wife. I’d often thought being a Christian meant by definition being a bad one, since nothing is more difficult than Christianity, so I was more or less used to that feeling. But I was not used to being a bad wife.

Maybe I could make it up to Martin, a little.

He was dozing when I crawled in the bed next to him. I’d switched off the light in the bathroom off the landing, and making my way to the bed was something of an adventure. But once there, he wasn’t hard to find. I slid down, down under the covers. Martin made a startled noise. But it was definitely on the happy-startled side.

Afterward, when he held me and kissed me, he murmured, “Oh, honey, that was so good.”

“I hope I haven’t made you crazy today,” I ventured.

“You’ve made me crazy from the moment I laid eyes on you,” he told me, his voice drowsy with sleep and satisfaction.

I snuggled into my pillow, praying for a Hayden-less night.

“I love you,” Martin said suddenly. “I have a feeling that’s gotten shunted to a sidetrack the past few days.”

Past few months, more like.

“I know you love me,” I whispered.

“When we got married…”

I was so exhausted I had to force myself to listen. None of the Advice to the Lovelorn columns told you that some days you’d be too sleepy to listen to a declaration of love.

“… all I wanted was to protect you from any harm. To make you safe. Not to let anything worry you… frighten you… and make sure you never wanted for anything.”

Bless his heart, that was just not possible. But it was the most attractive illusion in the world, wasn’t it? What had I wanted to give Martin in return? I remembered hazily that I’d resolved to help him in his career by being a good hostess and a good guest, attending every event promptly and in appropriate clothes, expressing appropriate sentiments. I’d wanted to provide him with a house that was a home: clean, comfortable, good cooking smells in the kitchen, laundered clothes.

But after a while I’d felt compelled to work at least part-time, to go back to the library, because I loved the job and the books and the people. And there were days I had indulged myself by reading rather than doing the laundry, talking to my mother and my friends rather than starting preparations for an elaborate meal. And since I had a big contrary streak running all the way through me, I had sometimes rebelled in my own tiny way by wearing bizarre glasses to a Pan-Am Agra wives dinner, or by saying what I actually thought rather than what people wanted to hear.

“So,” I said suddenly, “have I been the wife you wanted?”

“I didn’t want ‘a wife,’ ” he muttered, clearly putting the phrase in quotation marks. “When I saw you standing on the steps in front of that house with the wind blowing your hair, looking so anxious, in that suit… I remember the color…” “You thought, Gosh, I want to marry her and keep her forever?”

“I thought, God, I want to get in her pants…”

I began to giggle, and Martin’s hand came out of the darkness and stroked my cheek.

“Good night,” he said, on the edge of sleep. “You have never disappointed me.”

“Good night,” I answered, and let go of the day.

My little traveling clock on the night table told me it was seven-thirty, and the wailing from next door told me Hayden had started his cycle.

I hopped out of bed before I was fully awake, and the cold of the floor gave me a nasty shock. Our house in Lawrenceton had hardwood floors too, but they never felt this cold. I slid my feet into slippers as I headed for the door, and I crossed over to the “nursery” with the soles slapping the floor pleasantly. The house seemed very quiet, except for Hayden, who was red faced and sobbing when I got to him.

He’d slept all night.

“Mama’s here,” I said, my voice still thick with sleep. “Don’t cry, baby!” I scooped him up from the crib, after figuring out how to lower the side. I only knew cribs had sides that lowered because I’d watched my friend Lizanne do the honors on her baby’s bed. For mothers less than five feet tall, the lowered side was an essential feature. Not that I was a mother! I warned myself, catching my error.

“Heat a bottle, please, Martin?” I called down the stairs as I changed Hayden on our bed. He definitely didn’t like the cold air smacking his damp bottom, and I didn’t blame him. He was overdue for a sponge bath, but I dreaded giving him one in this chilly house.

Down the stairs we went, Hayden still complaining but not as frantically.

The kitchen was empty. Far from coffee waiting for me and a bottle awaiting Hayden, everything looked boringly like it had the night before.

The door to the back porch opened. Martin stepped in, stamping his feet, and stood on a little rug by the back door to take off his boots. He stepped through to the kitchen in his stocking feet.

“Look outside, Roe!” he said, with the grin of a twelve-year-old.

For the first time I glanced out of the windows; and I realized why the house had seemed so silent. The fields and the driveway were covered with snow.

“Oh my God,” I said, stunned. I stared at the heavy white coating. “Oh. Wow.” From one horizon to the next, it was the same. “I’ve never seen that much snow in my life.”

“I almost wish we had a sled,” he said.

“I almost wish I had a cup of coffee.”

“Coming right up.” Martin was awful damn cheerful. Who could have guessed snow would have that effect? I sat there in a semiconscious lump while Martin heated the baby bottle, started the coffee, and made toast with a beautiful toaster that had to have been a wedding present for Regina and Craig.

Martin even hummed. He is not a hummer.

He took Hayden and gave him his bottle. “Look out there, fella. Snow everywhere! When you get bigger you can bundle up and go out there and make snow angels and pee in the snow and make a snowman…”

I sensed a theme.

By the time Martin had wound down, I had had time to pour two cups of coffee down my throat and eat my toast, too.

“Can we get out of here?” I asked. I took my third cup with me to the window. “I mean, can your car get out of the driveway?”

Martin looked serious, all of a sudden. He loves that Mercedes, for sure.

“I’ll call Karl,” he said, and vanished.

I tried to remember Karl from our wedding, which Martin had assured me Karl attended. I was drawing a blank. Of course, I’d been so nervous I was surprised I’d gotten the responses right.

I occupied myself by spreading towels by the kitchen sink to give Hayden that quick sponge bath I felt obliged to give him. He hated it just as much as he had the last time I’d tried this process, maybe even objecting more loudly because it was so cold. I’d already had dark doubts about this little ritual, which Amina had assured me was obligatory. After all, how dirty could Hayden get? I cleaned his bottom every time I changed him.

But I dutifully soaped the hands that never grasped food, and the feet that never took a step. At least, I told myself bracingly, all this complaining would surely wear out the baby, resulting in a good nap.

“Karl’s coming out,” Martin told me.

“Great. Remind me about Karl?”

“Karl Bagosian, whose family was Armenian a couple of generations ago. He went to school with me, though he’s a couple of years older.”

“So what does Karl do now?”

“He owns the Jeep place.”

I nodded wisely. It was all becoming clear.

“So you fellas were buddies through school?”

Martin shrugged. “Yeah, we were. We were on the football team together. We went hunting together. He dated Barby for a while. We joined the army together.”

“Speaking of high school buddies, what’s the story on Dennis Stinson?”

“I always hated that son of a bitch,” my husband said, with very little change in his voice.

“He seemed nice to me.” I tried to look innocent. “Just because he’s moved in on your ex-wife…”

“Cindy and I have been divorced for a long time,” Martin said. “I don’t think it’s that… or maybe, not much. And he tried to copy off my paper in geometry.” I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. Martin had the grace to look abashed. “Dennis just… I wouldn’t have minded Cindy living with someone, if it had been Karl. But Karl went and got himself married to a girl that just got out of college, right about the same time you and I got married. He’s got kids older than her, I think.”

If the amazing Karl was going to bring us a Jeep, I needed to get dressed. Jeans, a sweater, and boots seemed to be the uniform of the day, judging by Martin, who seemed to be more relaxed than he’d been in days. He even laid Hayden in the middle of our bed and brushed my hair for me, a pleasant pastime we hadn’t had a chance to indulge in lately.

Since Hayden remained content, I called my mother, but missed her both at her house and at the hospital. I left a message on her answering machine, and talked to John’s oldest son at the hospital. He said his father was on the upswing, that they hoped to take him home the next day, and he knew my mother would want to tell me all the details. He further informed me that my mother was holding up just fine, which I hadn’t doubted for a second.

Next I called Angel and Shelby to ask about the baby, found out little Joan was perfect in every respect, and Angel was recovering from the birth in record time.

I handed the phone to Martin so he could call the Pan-Am Agra plant, but he told me he’d already talked to his second-in-command that morning. I glanced at my watch and winced. If you wanted to work for Martin, you had to get up early and be bright the minute you slid from between your sheets.

“But I do need to talk to David in Receiving,” Martin decided. He punched in numbers wearing his business face, so I went downstairs and poured another cup of coffee.

Just then I heard a chugging noise, and looking out the window I saw a bright red Jeep coming through the snow. I could only assume it was on the driveway.

A man hopped out and began slogging his way to the front door.

Karl Bagosian was about Martin’s height, maybe five-nine or five-ten. His head was bare, and I saw that his hair was very thick and coarse, very dark, though graying, an attractive complement to his olive complexion. Martin was still on the phone, so I unlocked the door and threw it open.

“Hello,” Karl said, looking up at the sound. He gave me a comprehensive but brief scan, and lowered his eyes to make sure he’d stamped all the snow off his boots. Satisfied, he pulled off the boots and left them by the door, padding further into the living room unself-consciously, and I began to see this was the protocol in snow country.

“I’m Aurora. Thank you for bringing the Jeep. Martin says he’s known you forever.”

“Just about.” Karl had finished divesting himself of several layers of outerwear, and finally looked me in the eyes.

Karl Bagosian had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen on a man. On anyone. Large, oval, very dark, fringed by eyelashes most women could only dream of, those eyes could speak to you long enough to talk you right out of your clothes and into Karl’s bed.

“Well, I feel like a female peacock,” I said, mildly disgruntled. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please,” he said, after a surprised hesitation. Karl preceded me to the kitchen, and I had to remind myself he’d been here many times before… before I was born, no doubt. Karl had thickened a little with middle age, and he had white teeth that gleamed like an actor’s. He sat at the kitchen table watching me, while I poured a mug of coffee and placed it before him with milk and sugar handy.

“If you haven’t had breakfast I would be glad to make you some toast,” I offered. “Martin’s on the phone; he’ll be down in just a minute.”

“This is southern hospitality, the kind I keep hearing about, I guess.”

“It’s just hospitality. How else would I treat you?”

He had no answer for that. “This is some mess about Regina, huh?” he asked, looking up at me with those gorgeous eyes. He poured sugar in his coffee with a liberal hand. I watched in amazement as he did the same with the milk. It hardly looked like coffee anymore.

I propped myself against the kitchen counter. “Did you know Craig?”

“Yeah, he stole a car from my lot.”

“What did you do?”

“I went after him and got it back.” And the large dark eyes didn’t look so gorgeous anymore. In fact they looked downright scary. I realized I was very glad I hadn’t been there when Karl had gotten his car back.

“Mr. Vigilante,” Martin said from the doorway. He meant to be smiling when he said it, but the smile came off lame. He’d heard the whole conversation.

Karl got up and shook Martin’s hand, and they did the shoulder-patting ritual. Deep affection.

“The little sumbitch-‘scuse me, Aurora-is just lucky I didn’t fix his wagon for good,” Karl said, white teeth gleaming.

“I only laid off because he was your niece’s husband.”

“This was since they got married?”

“Yeah, in fact this was last week. Right before he showed up on your doorstep down in Georgia, dead. Maybe he wanted to drive down in a jeep.”

“The police know about this?”

“Yeah, I told ‘em after I heard Craig got killed. Told ’em I had a key to the house here. They come out here to take a gander.”

Karl Bagosian looked so exotic I found I had expected him to have a foreign accent. It was a little shocking to hear a homely midwestern voice coming from his mouth. I thought of him in harem pants. I clamped my lips together.

“What are you smiling about?” Martin asked from my elbow. I jumped.

“Would you like some more coffee, honey?” I asked.

“Lord, she’s no bigger than a flea, Martin.”

I particularly dislike to be talked about as if I weren’t there. But this was Martin’s friend.

“Small but mean,” Martin said. I looked up, startled, and he was smiling… Lucky for him.

“Was the house very different than it is now? When you brought the police out here?” I asked Karl.

He took a swallow of coffee, raised the cup to me in appreciation. Since Martin had made it, that compliment wasn’t due me, but I nodded anyway.

“Yes, the house was a mess,” Karl said bluntly. “All I did was hang up the clothes and vacuum, run the dishwasher. That made a big difference.”

“Thank you,” I said, impressed at his enterprise. “Did the police seem to think anything had happened here in the house?”

“It was just like they’d gone shopping,” Karl said, shaking his head. “Like they were both going to be back any moment. Oh, I forgot to empty the wastebaskets that day, I just recalled. Sorry. Darlene was with me, but that girl is bone lazy.”

“How old is Darlene now?” Martin pulled out a chair, settled in opposite his friend.

“She’s twenty-six.”

Martin was seriously shocked. “Not… your daughter, Darlene? Is twenty-six?”

Karl nodded. “And she’s my youngest. Darlene is responsible for every one of these gray hairs.”

“How old are your others, now?” Martin sounded apprehensive.

Karl cast his eyes up, as if the answer would be written on the high ceiling. “Lessee. Gil is thirty, ‘bout to be thirty-one. Therese is twenty-nine.”

Martin looked at me, horrified. I shrugged, smiling. The difference in our ages had always bothered Martin more than me. Martin, who worked out and played killer racquetball, had always had the body of a younger man. Not that my experience was that broad… but he’d always pleased me, and he knew it. As far as mental attitudes went, Martin and I had our differences, but no more than any two people have.

“How old are you, Aurora? Martin’s looking worried.” Karl was not a man who would miss much. “My wife Phoebe is just a kid, too; she’s twenty-five.”

“I’m older than your wife and your children.” I gestured toward his mug, asking if he wanted a refill.

“No, thanks,” Karl said. “Martin, you ready to run me back into town?”

“Thanks for bringing the Jeep out, Karl,” I said. I perceived that it was mano a mano time, and I was being left behind.

“Do you need me to get anything while I’m in town, Roe?” Martin was already putting on his coat and sliding the cell phone into his pocket. I sighed, but tried to keep it silent. Tracking down a scrap of paper took a minute, but I quickly made a list of things we’d neglected to get the day before.

In the back of my mind was the fear the snow would get worse, and we’d be marooned out here. What if we lost our heat?

What if whoever had killed Craig came here looking for Regina?

This was a thought so sudden and shocking that I really regretted having it, especially since I was watching the bright red Jeep recede down the driveway with Martin and Karl inside when the idea came to full bloom in my mind.

I paced around the house distractedly, trying to rid myself of the fear. It hardly made sense that whoever killed Craig in Georgia would come looking here-and that was assuming the killer hadn’t been Regina herself. I managed to talk myself out of the worst of my funk, but a quarter of an hour later I was still padding around the house in two pairs of socks, staring out the windows at the snow.

After checking on the now-napping Hayden, I pulled on my boots and stuffed the baby monitor in my coat pocket. Gloved and hatted, I stepped out the south-facing front door and watched my boots sink into the snow.

I’d seen ice, I’d seen sleet, and one memorable January we’d had three inches of snow and been out of school for two and a half days. But I’d never in my life seen white stuff this deep, probably six to eight inches. I knew from what Martin had said about his childhood that it was likely this snow wouldn’t melt for weeks, but only be deepened by subsequent storms.

The sky was an oppressive leaden gray, just like yesterday. It seemed quite probable to me that-amazing though the thought was-it was going to snow again. If we’d been on a vacation in a ski lodge with lots of fireplaces and smiling servers, that would’ve been one thing. But out here in Farm Country, with the fireplace in the living room that at least also served our bedroom upstairs, we’d have to do a lot of the fetching and carrying if our electricity went out. The other rooms would be icy. I made a mental note to use the stove to prepare as many bottles of formula as I could, while I had the wherewithal.

Since I wanted to stay close enough for the monitor to work, I’d been tramping around the house in a circle. I’d noted with relief that there was a woodpile in the western side yard, the one furthest from the road, and I’d even brushed some of the snow off the wood to check that the pile was as large as it seemed.

But as I prepared to slog off and finish my circuit, I spied something I hadn’t noticed earlier. There were other footprints in the snow, prints that had been made some time in the night, since they were half filled in. Though it was a little hard to tell the heel end from the toe end, there was no mistaking these prints for deer tracks, or the trail of any other kind of wildlife.

Feeling like Hawkeye, I visually followed the marks. The prints approached the front-facing kitchen window from the south, across the fields, and then circled the house; just like my path, but closer to the windows, so the owner of the prints could look into the rooms.

Or maybe the steps left and returned? But that was crazy. Why would Martin climb out the window to leave the house? He’d entered at the back porch door this morning. I could see his tracks, still crisp and clear, and I recognized the tread of his boots. He’d come out that back door, tromped over to an oak tree, walked even further west away from the road, rotated in a tight circle to take in the view, and made his way back to the same door.

I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat.

Someone else had been lurking around the farmhouse. I tried like hell to think of another reasonable-or even unreasonable-explanation, but I could think of none, not a single damn one.

The snow had done such a great job of cheering up Martin that I hated to deflate his balloon. But I decided I had to tell him about the tracks. I cut short my expedition and stomped my boots on the back steps as Martin had done, leaving mine on the little rug where his had rested earlier, right inside the door. On the kitchen counter close to the dining table, Martin had left the little Corinth phone book open to the yellow pages (Car Dealerships) and I spared a moment to be deeply thankful that Regina and Craig had had phone service.

The man who answered agreed to go see if Karl and Martin had made it into town yet.

“Yes?” Martin asked crisply, after a lengthy pause. He was using his business voice.

“Martin, someone was outside during the night,” I told him.

This was what I loved about Martin. He didn’t say, “Are you sure?” or “That’s ridiculous!” He asked, “How did you find out?”

After I described the footprints and my line of reasoning, there was another appreciable pause.

“I guess the light wasn’t good enough this morning for me to notice the tracks. You’re locked up now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Baby asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Then go upstairs, look in my suitcase, and get out the gun.”

“Okay.” Jeez, I hated guns. But I was scared enough to listen.

“It’s loaded. You remember how I showed you how to take off the safety, how to fire?”

“Yes.”

“If the footprints are blurry, there’s nothing to worry about. Whoever made them is long gone. But just in case, it would be good if you had the gun handy. Wouldn’t it make you feel better?”

“I guess so.”

“Okay, now. You call the woman who was over last night, Margaret what’s-her-name, see if she can come stay with you. I’m going to do a couple things here in town and then I’ll be right back out.”

“Okay.” What could he have to do in town? Maybe Martin had thought of something to improve the farm’s security. What we needed out here was a large ferocious barking dog, I decided.

After a few more exchanges, we hung up. I hightailed it up the stairs and rummaged through Martin’s suitcase for his automatic. I hated to even touch the thing, but stronger than that loathing was the desire to protect myself and the baby in this Ohio farmhouse.