A Fool and His Honey

Chapter Nine

The surrogate mother theory explained a great deal.

Why Regina had stayed out of sight while she was pregnant. She wouldn’t have wanted to answer a lot of questions.

Why she had money in the diaper bag. She would have been paid for her pregnancy, and presumably she would’ve received money for expenses during it. That would be why she and Craig had been able to afford to live without government aid, even though neither she nor Craig held a steady job.

“I’d been thinking,” I said slowly, “that Craig had gotten involved with some drug deal or some scam of his that had gone wrong. But that didn’t explain all the facts.”

Margaret shrugged. “I’ve had a month or two to wonder about it. Regina’s attitude seemed so strange.”

“But why would someone kill Craig? And take Regina?”

“Maybe nobody took Regina. Maybe she went.”

“Leaving her baby?”

“People leave babies all the time,” Margaret said, her face grim. “Luke and I lived in Pittsburgh before we moved back here so Luke could help his mother out during her last illness. The first year we were married, before we were trying to have our own child, this woman in our apartment building left her baby right outside our door. She was thinking since we didn’t have kids, we would be ecstatic, I guess.”

“Oh my gosh! What did you do?”

“Of course we called the police, and they called the child welfare people. They had to take the baby to a foster home.”

“That’s so sad! What happened to the mother?”

Margaret shrugged. “Jail time, I think.”

It had certainly become a morning of mysteries to ponder. Why a woman would have a baby she didn’t want… why she’d leave that baby’s life to chance… and where was the father of the baby, all this time, huh? Why did his responsibility get to be voluntary, while the mother’s was mandatory? I thought of my father, who’d never sent child support; Regina’s father, who had vanished the minute the divorce was final.

Boy, in a minute I was going to be spitting fire because I wasn’t allowed in combat. I shook myself briskly, and asked Margaret Granberry if she’d seen the latest Harrison Ford movie.

Our husbands lurched up the driveway in their separate vehicles. We had quite a convention in front of the house now, with Margaret’s dark green pickup, Martin’s (leased, rented, or borrowed) Jeep, and Luke’s battered sort-of-white Bronco.

Luke hopped out of the Bronco and hurried to the front door, his face reddened by the cold. He was wearing a rugged coat that looked like sheepskin or some other animal hide, and he’d gone without a hat or gloves. Martin, who hated headgear-I suspected because it messed up his hair-was impressed enough by the cold to have put on a sort of Russian hat he’d had for years, and he’d worn the leather driving gloves I’d given him last Christmas. His arms were full of bags from the grocery.

“I got your message,” Luke told Margaret breathlessly. “Is everything okay here?”

“Yes, honey,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I left Luke a note about why I’d come over here,” she explained to me in an aside. “I didn’t want Luke to think I’d just ducked out on the firewood we were supposed to split this morning!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I interrupted your chores!” I had assumed that because it had snowed, everyone was on holiday, I realized. A legacy of my southern upbringing.

“No, no. We can just as well do it this afternoon. I’ve enjoyed the break in routine.”

Luke said to Martin, “My wife tells me you’ve had a prowler.”

“You wouldn’t think this was the weather for it, would you?”

“Mighty brave guy,” Luke commented in agreement.

“Or desperate.”

Martin went to put the groceries in the kitchen, leaving this little chilling statement hanging in the air behind him like an icicle from the eaves.

I smiled at the Granberrys, but I felt it was an anxious sort of smile. “I’ll go see if we can find some hot chocolate,” I murmured, and scooted into the kitchen after Martin.

“What are you in such a snit about?” I breathed at him. He was standing in his “I’m mad” pose, shoulders hunched up, hands in his pockets, staring out the window.

“I can’t track down that slippery little bastard,” Martin growled back. I assumed he meant Rory Brown.

I started to point out that this was no big surprise, but my better sense came to my rescue. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s serve the Granberrys some hot chocolate. After all, they came to help when we needed it.”»

Martin carried the tray with the four mugs out to the living room and set it on the battered table in front of the couch. The tray was clearly one of Regina and Craig’s wedding presents, probably from Pier 1, a rattan and iron construction that would have looked charming in more congruent surroundings.

“Do you have any idea how long you’ll stay?” Luke asked, taking a mug of chocolate and dropping some miniature marsh-mallows on top. He seemed like a different person now that he was sure his wife was safe-relaxed and secure, even physically larger somehow.

I let Martin field that one.

“We have no idea,” he confessed. “If Regina is found, and under what circumstances… if we can track down my sister Barby and her fiancй… if we can find out if the baby is really Regina’s… All that will have a bearing.”

“What a terrible set of circumstances,” Margaret said. She didn’t seem inclined to repeat the ideas she’d voiced to me when we were alone, and I thought that was wise. I’d try to tell Martin when the Granberrys left.

Luke was the first to hear yet another vehicle coming up the driveway.

“Expecting anyone?” he asked Martin.

“No.” Martin went to the front window. “Blue Dodge pickup.”

To my astonishment, our newest set of callers consisted of the hunky Dennis Stinson, Cindy Bartell, and our erstwhile trip companion, Rory.

This house had seemed isolated. Now it was beginning to feel like a social center. We should have charged for parking and hot beverages. I went to the kitchen to put some more water in the pot, found some cookies in the bags Martin had carried into the house, and put them on a plate.

“The shop’s closed on Saturday afternoons, so we thought we’d come out to check on you,” Dennis said. He looked even larger in the layers of cold-weather wear. Cindy looked like one of Santa’s elves next to him, with her pixie-cut hair and narrow face. She was in a red-and-green sweater, which heightened the impression. Rory wasn’t smiling, or even wearing his usual look of amiable stupidity. On the contrary, he seemed sullen and stubborn. He didn’t speak, but grabbed a cookie and ate it in one bite.

I sidled over next to him, since all the other people in the room were talking to each other and I had a little time on my own.

“How come you’re here?”

“That Stinson guy grabbed me,” Rory said. He looked down at me, ran his tongue around his teeth to clean off the cookie remnants, and summoned back up his charm. “I oughta call the police,” he said, all naughty. “I was just walking around downtown, minding my own business. Then I cross in front of Cindy’s Flowers, and out comes this Stinson guy, and he grabs me, and tells me your husband is looking for me, and I gotta go with him. Then Mrs. Bartell, she says I got to go, too. Since it was her, I came without giving them no trouble.”

“Thanks, Rory. We really do need to find out more about what happened to Craig and why.”

“I told you everything I know!”

“That’s hard to believe,” I told him, surprised at my own directness. “You were living out here with Craig and Regina, weren’t you? Isn’t that your stuff up there, in one of the extra bedrooms?”

Rory gave me a fleeting look: bright eyed, hard. “What we did here isn’t any of your business,” he told me, with some justification.

“Don’t speak to my wife like that,” Martin said coldly. He had appeared by my side with his usual silence. “We don’t care about your love life. We just want to find out where Regina is, and whose baby this is.”

“Whose?” Rory looked down at his feet. He didn’t seem to understand what Martin meant, and I thought, That could mean two things. “Well, as long as that baby is here, anyone could claim it, couldn’t they? Anyone could say anything about that baby, who’s gonna say no? Nobody knows nothing except me.”

That was a real conversation stopper, and it got the attention of almost everyone in the room.

The silence was broken by Karl Bagosian’s entrance through the kitchen porch. I was so surprised to see him, I involuntarily said, “Where’d you come from, Karl?” Then, shaking my head at my own rudeness, I said, “Excuse me! It’s good to see you again so soon! Would you like some coffee or hot chocolate?” I registered the fact that Karl wasn’t wearing his prosperous midwestern car-salesman clothing anymore, but some very practical cold-weather wear.

Karl was looking at Rory Brown with the coldest, most assessing look I’d ever seen. If I’d been on the receiving end of it, I’d have been as silent as Rory, and just as scared.

“Hey, Mr. Bagosian,” Rory said finally. “How you doing? How’s Therese?”

“Don’t speak her name.” How theatrical the words sounded, and yet none of us even thought of laughing. Karl was deadly serious.

Therese? I searched around the corners of my brain, finally remembered Therese was Karl’s middle daughter.

“I need to talk to you for a minute, Martin,” Karl said. “In the kitchen.”

Talk about your social challenges.

“Rory,” I said brightly, “wouldn’t you like to go upstairs and gather your things together? Then you wouldn’t have to make another trip out here!”

To my relief, he took the verbal shove and went up the steps. Somehow, Rory looked much more at home in the house than I did. I fetched a baggy old sweater with big pockets I’d draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Karl and Martin were deep in conversation, so I didn’t speak to them. I’d had the sweater on under my coat this morning when I’d gone out in the snow and seen the tracks, and the nursery monitor was still in the left-hand pocket.

I glanced back through the doorway at our uninvited guests, who took the hint and began making small talk. Hayden, who’d been up for a few minutes, had been deposited in his infant seat by Martin, and of course he came in for a share of the conversation. The nightfall of snow was another hot topic, and after that, odds and ends of town gossip that were as boring to me as Lawrenceton gossip would be to any of these people. I was able to gather from the snips I caught as I refreshed mugs and fetched napkins that Margaret had once been a schoolteacher, Dennis Stinson supported the Dallas Cowboys, and more snow was expected today.

The hoot of a horn attracted my attention, and I went to the front door to see an old black pickup with an attachable sign that said U.S. MAIL sitting on the roof. The mail carrier was leaning out of the passenger window, a box and some envelopes in her hand.

“Hello,” I called, and stepped out with only my sweater for warmth. The receiver for the nursery monitor, stuffed down in one of the big pockets, banged as I walked. I was glad I had my boots on. I crossed my arms over my chest as the breathtaking cold dove into my lungs.

“You the new people?” the woman asked. She was round all over and had a very misguided haircut, kind of a poorly done old-fashioned shag. She reeked of cigarette smoke.

“We’re staying here temporarily. We’re the owners,” I said, close enough to the windows to lower my voice. The chug of the engine was loud in the snow-induced hush.

“Just wanted to check. I have a package here for the renter. You want to accept it? You want me to hold it until she comes back?”

It was a box from Victoria’s Secret. Good Lord.

“I’ll keep it for her,” I said reluctantly, and tucked the box under my arm. The mail carrier had thoughtfully put a rubber band around the package to hold the envelopes to it.

“What’s your name?” the carrier bellowed.

“Teagarden, and my husband’s name is Bartell, but I don’t think we’ll be getting any mail here,” I explained. “Do you just leave it in the mailbox out by the road?”

“Yes, normally, but this box wouldn’t fit, and when I saw tracks going in I thought I could be sure someone would be up here,” she said. “Well, nice to meetcha.”

I thanked her, and clutching the package across my chest and shivering, the heavy pocket of my sweater banging against my stomach, I darted back into the house.

“That was Geraldine Clooney,” Margaret said with some amusement. “What did you think?”

“She’s one of a kind,” I said.

Cindy and Dennis laughed. Luke wasn’t in the room. Karl was pouring himself another cup of coffee, and Martin was coming down the stairs. The baby wasn’t in his infant seat. Martin must have put him in his crib.

I wondered why Rory hadn’t come down with his things.

I wondered what Karl and Martin had been talking about in the kitchen.

I wondered at the officiousness of Dennis and Cindy. Telling Rory that we wanted to see him was one thing; bundling him up and practically kidnapping him was another. If Dylan or Karl had brought Rory out, I wouldn’t have wondered, but Cindy and Dennis?

As often happens to me, my mind began drifting along its own path. There’s nothing like being alone in a crowd to spark a really interesting little thought pattern. I wondered how the Corinthians dug graves in the snow. Did the ground actually freeze, like the tundra? Would I get to see a snowplow? Did snowplows clean driveways, too?

“Roe? Roe?”

“Yes?” I gasped.

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said, concern in her voice. “But I was telling you that we were going to be going now. You seemed so out of it.”

“Just daydreaming, I’m afraid,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue this morning.”

“I think I left my purse in the kitchen.”

“Of course, let me go get it.” I scooted into the kitchen. There was a rifle leaning against the wall by the back porch door. I absorbed all of this in one comprehensive glance, snatched up Margaret’s purse from the counter, and handed it to her in the living room within seconds.

“I don’t see Karl’s transportation out there, Aurora,” Margaret said. I looked up at her and shrugged.

“You got me,” I said cheerfully. “Men are strange.”

Amusement crossed the pale face. “Come see me,” she said warmly, and waving good-bye to the others, she and her husband made their way through the rutted snow to their vehicles.

Well, that was two fewer things blocking the view down to the little copse. I was loading the tray with used cups when I heard a strange little rustling sound. The oddest thing about it was that the sound seemed to be issuing from my appendix.

I thought about it as I carried the tray to the kitchen, sliding it carefully onto the counter. I looked down anxiously, I admit, and felt like a total idiot when I realized the sound had been issuing from the nursery monitor. Hayden must be moving around in the crib, I figured.

But… rustling? Karl came in just then, politely bringing an empty Equal packet. He looked around, spied the trash can, and dropped in the bit of paper. Since he was a courteous and orderly person, he tried not to ask me what I was doing staring at a nursery monitor as if it were communicating with me, but since he was also the man who’d been outside toting a rifle, he had to ask. Picking up on my concentration, he simply pointed a finger and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Listen,” I whispered, as if the receiver could also be broadcasting what I said. I held it up to his ear. Karl’s dark face looked puzzled. The rustling had been succeeded by a series of baffling little noises, a little whump!, small rattling sound, the unmistakable tiny noises of a baby fussing in his sleep. Then footsteps, getting a little fainter.

“Eh!” said Hayden, so I knew he was all right. Following the sound of the footsteps, I looked out of the kitchen across the living room to the stairs, down which Rory Brown came, carrying his backpack and a paper bag full of clothes.

“He took something out of Hayden’s room,” I said. I was across the rooms and up the stairs before I knew what I was doing, and passed Rory without so much as looking at him.

Hayden was still asleep, restlessly, and the sheet on his crib mattress had been taken off and then replaced. Since it had been a regular flat bedsheet, much folded to fit the crib mattress, I’d noticed how it’d been tucked before, and I knew that it had been removed and refolded. The receiving blanket I’d covered the sheet with had been placed back on top, but it was wrinkled and crooked. As long as Hayden was all right, I couldn’t see that any harm had been done, but I was mighty puzzled.

When I came slowly down to the living room, I saw that Cindy and Dennis were about to go.

“Rory’s going to stay here for a while,” Martin was saying smilingly. “I’ll get him back into town.”

Cindy looked doubtful. “Are you sure, Martin? It looks like it’s going to let go any minute.” The sky looked heavy with snow, the fields and the sky blending into one big sheet of dirty white. Dennis, his hand holding Cindy’s, was looking over his shoulder at the horizon, and he was clearly anxious to be gone.

“C’mon, Cindy, we’ll see Martin later,” he said. “And thank you, Aurora, for the coffee. You’ll have to tell Cindy how you do it. Her coffee is not her strong point.”

I thought of barfing all over his boots, but decided that was a little extreme. Cindy was red. I met her eyes, and elaborately drew my finger across my throat and made a choking noise. She laughed, a little reluctantly, but laughed. This confused Dennis-of course, it would.

“See you!” Martin called from the kitchen, where he and Rory and Karl were standing in a somewhat strained grouping.

“Good-bye,” I said brightly, ready for them all to be gone. Something was fishy, and the sooner Dennis and Cindy pulled away, the sooner I’d find out what it was.