A Fool and His Honey

Chapter Three

After an hour or two of the county cops coming in and out, I was so exhausted, angry, and horrified that I could hardly put two words together, much less come up with coherent answers. Martin was outside most of the time, but he came through the kitchen with Sheriff Padgett Lanier following close on his heels. They went into the study across the hall and didn’t come out for ages.

I passed the dreary time trying to resnap Hayden’s sleeper, holding him, and trying to burp him, something I recollected you were supposed to do to babies after you fed them.

“You need to hold him up a little,” said one husky young man in the khaki of the sheriffs department. “I got a four-month-old,” he added, to establish his credentials. I shifted the warm bundle cautiously, offering it to him.

“And you need to have a diaper over your shoulder,” he continued helpfully. I passed him a cloth diaper from the bag just in time. Hayden smiled and burped formula all over the diaper. The young man smiled back at him and handed the child to me. I held out my arms reluctantly. I was unused to the baby’s weight and my shoulders were already aching.

Then I was horrified by how spoiled I must be, since I realized I was angry at Martin because he was not somehow making this baby go away, or at least commiserating with me, or at the very least giving me tips on what to do, because after all, he’d had one.

I resolutely made myself feel sympathy for Martin, who had found a horribly dead man on our property, who was missing a niece suspected of murder, who wasn’t able to contact his sister and let her know about this situation; and on top of it all, he was still in wet clothes.

Once I rose out of my snit and channeled my thoughts in less emotional directions, I asked myself the obvious question: Was the dead man really Craig, Regina’s husband? I hadn’t seen Craig since the wedding. The dead man had been wearing jeans, a leather jacket… I couldn’t remember any more than that, but I knew I’d see his face again in my dreams.

When I mentioned the soggy note under the windshield wiper to one of the officers who passed back and forth in a steady stream, he said it had disintegrated when they’d tried to extricate it.

Gradually all the men and women left, and all the cars reversed, and I understood that the body had been removed and the last question had been asked. At least for tonight. I looked up at the clock. It was midnight, only two and a half hours since we’d left the Lowrys’ house. Hayden had at last gone to sleep, and I’d put him in the infant seat, grateful for the chance to rest my arms, which were definitely worn out from the unaccustomed burden.

I put my head down on the table. I must have dozed. When I looked at the clock again, it read twelve-thirty. Martin was standing by the table, looking at me.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said, his voice empty.

“We have to get the portable crib for the baby,” I pointed out, trying to sound practical rather than aggrieved.

He stared at Hayden almost in astonishment, as if he’d assumed the police had taken the baby with them, too.

“Oh my God,” he said wearily.

I bit my tongue to keep from speaking.

After what I considered more than enough time for him to volunteer, I said in a tight voice, “If you’ll keep an eye on him, I’ll go get it.”

“Okay,” said Martin, to my complete amazement. He sat in another chair and propped his chin on his hand, looking at the baby’s face as if he’d never seen one.

Gritting my teeth and simply ducking under the crime scene tape, I went up those apartment stairs once more, maneuvering carefully around the bloodstains and wondering who the hell would clean them up. Probably me, I figured. I was building up a good head of grievance.

It was a shock to see how messy the apartment was. Of course, they’d searched for evidence about the crime and Regina’s whereabouts. I don’t know why I’d assumed they’d leave it neat. I shook my head in disgust with my own naivetй and snatched up a flattened contraption I assumed was the portable crib. There were assembly directions on a white rectangle attached to the pastel bumper sort of thing. I was pathetically grateful.

I was so scared I wouldn’t hear the baby if he woke in the night that I laboriously assembled the crib right by our bed. Martin didn’t comment. At least he carried the diaper bag up after me, and at least I managed to lay Hayden down without waking him. I perceived Hayden as a baby-instead of a massive problem-for one moment, before exhaustion took over; for that moment, I saw the smooth pale skin, the tiny fingers, the sweet crease of the neck, and it took my breath away.

Then he was once more a terrifyingly fragile being who was (it seemed) my sole responsibility, and I was totally ignorant of how to take care of him. I sighed, pulled off my clothes, and tossed them into the wicker basket in the bathroom. I pulled on my blue nightgown, brushed my teeth, and sank into bed. I registered that Martin was turning out the light before I retreated into sleep.

“Was it our hatchet?” Martin was asking me.

“Uhmm?”

“Roe, was that our hatchet?”

I considered, my head still pillowed on my arms. I felt warm and comfortable, but as soon as I really woke, misery was just waiting to pounce.

I rolled over, snuggled up to my husband.

“I don’t know,” I said against his chest. Martin sleeps in pajama bottoms only.

He put his arm around me absently, his chin gently rubbing the top of my head. “I hope it wasn’t,” was all he said.

“She didn’t do it.”

“Why do you think that?” He didn’t sound upset, just curious.

“She wouldn’t leave her baby, right? And she wouldn’t leave all her stuff, either,” I said more firmly.

“But her car is gone, not the one Craig came in.”

“That was Craig’s car?” Martin didn’t bother answering: Of course, Craig had gotten here somehow; he hadn’t dropped from the sky.

Not that the scenario was unknown to me; a body had dropped from the sky into my garden the year before. But it seemed unlikely it would happen twice, even to me.

So, I reasoned, Craig had come after Regina. He’d been in his own car. Maybe Regina had left him and Craig wanted her to come back. They quarreled and Regina took the hatchet that… How did the hatchet enter the picture? Where had it been before it landed in the middle of Craig’s forehead?

Okay, ignore that mental image. Say Craig had been threatening Regina with a hatchet he’d gotten out of his own car- “Come back to me or I’ll kill you”-and she got it away from him and killed him with it.

While he stood passively below her on the stairs?

And then she wrote a note to her uncle and fled, leaving her baby to the care of whoever walked in the apartment door?

Okay.

Craig had brought a friend with him, who had taken a letch to Regina. This friend got a hatchet and killed Craig and abducted Regina, but didn’t want to be burdened with Hayden. Or the friend didn’t even know there was a baby, so to save the child Regina had snatched a moment to stash Hayden under the bed.

I thought that scenario covered everything. I relayed my theory to Martin.

“That would exonerate Regina,” he said, sounding as if that was a very remote possibility. He seemed a smidge more hopeful, though. “I’m sure she left because someone forced her to. I can’t believe she’d leave the baby unless she was under duress.” Martin kissed my forehead to say thank you, but the arm beneath my neck felt like a log, it was so hard with tension.

I decided to relieve his stress in the happiest way. I nuzzled his nipple. He drew in his breath sharply and his unoccupied hand found something pleasant to do.

“Eh!” said a little voice behind me.

I shrieked.

“It’s the baby,” Martin said, after a fraught moment. “In the crib. By the bed.”

“Eh!” said Hayden. I rolled over, to see two tiny hands waving in the air.

“Oh, no no no,” I moaned, all thoughts of sex flying out of my head like rats leaving a sinking ship. “I don’t know what to do. You had a baby, you have to help.”

“Cindy took care of Barrett when he was a baby.”

Why was I not surprised?

“I was always… too scared to do things for him. He was so little. He was three weeks premature. And by the time he was large enough, when I was sure I couldn’t hurt him by accident, Cindy and I had gotten into the habit of her taking care of him, bathing and feeding and diapering.”

Absurdly, it was not Martin’s ignorance of baby care that made tears spring to my eyes as I dragged myself from the bed. It was the thought of Martin and Cindy’s shared experiences: the birth of Barrett, the concern about his health and fears for his survival after the premature birth, his slow growth and improvement with Martin and Cindy watching as parents. All this he’d had with her, and would never have with me.

I hadn’t ever been jealous of Cindy before, and I’d certainly picked a bad time to start.

Already feeling tired, I hoisted Hayden from his portable crib-surely he’d gained weight during the night?-and laid him on the bed beside Martin while I found my bathrobe. When I turned back, Martin was propped up on one elbow, looking down at the baby, his finger extended for Hayden to grasp. The baby was regarding Martin solemnly. I stood for a long moment looking, feeling my heart break along several different fault lines.

I turned away to pull my mass of wavy hair back into a ponytail and secure it. Hayden had showed a tendency to grab and pull the night before, and I hadn’t enjoyed the experience. I tied the sash of the black velour robe and cautiously bent down to lift the infant from the bed.

“How old do you reckon he is?” I asked, startled to think I didn’t even know this child’s age.

“I have no idea.” Martin stared at the baby, running some comparisons in his head. “He seems a little smaller than Bubba and Lizanne’s kid.”

He did to me, too. “Maybe-a month?” I hazarded.

He shrugged his bare shoulders.

“People will ask,” I said, and to my own ears I already sounded tired. “People always do.”

“Oh, God.” Martin rolled onto his back, pressing his hands against his face as if to guard it from the world.

“You’d better call Cindy,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Regina halfway implied they were close. Maybe she can tell us some more about this baby. Maybe she knows how to contact Barby.”

I went down the stairs carefully, holding up the nightgown and bathrobe with one hand while pressing Hayden to me with my free arm. I was relieved when I reached the bottom safely, and felt foolishly optimistic at this good omen.

There was a discreet tap at the kitchen door. Now, this knock was unmistakable. My mother.

I canceled the security and opened the door.

My mother, Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland, is fifty-seven and stunning. She is Lauren Bacall on a good day. She is sharp, smart, and by her own efforts she’s amassed a small fortune. I love her. She loves me. We live on different planets.

“Have they found the girl?” Mother stepped inside.

“The girl” would be Regina. “No. Not that we know of. I just got up,” I explained unnecessarily.

“Martin still in bed?” She glanced up at the clock. It was already nine-thirty.

“We had a late night,” I reminded her. I’d called Mother as soon as I could after the police arrived so she wouldn’t hear our news from someone else.

Mother held out her arms and made a peremptory gesture. I gave her the baby. Mother had three step-grandchildren now, and to my amazement she was very fond of them.

Mother looked down at the boy, who looked back, for a wonder in silence.

“Maybe two, three weeks old,” she said briefly, and put him in his infant seat, still in the middle of the table. “Got formula?”

“Regina mixed some up before she…” I trailed off into confusion. Before she murdered her husband and ran? Before she was abducted by aliens?

“You need a nurse for that baby,” my mother observed. Her voice was absolutely matter-of-fact; she judged me totally incompetent at child care, which wounded me somehow. But then, why should she have any faith in my ability to take care of a baby? I never had before.

It was funny what hurt, and what bounced off. This really hurt.

“You’d better call your friends and see if you can find a temporary baby-sitter,” Mother suggested.

I stared at her. She wasn’t offering to do it for me, or rather to have her office manager do it? It dawned on me that all was not well with Mother. I’d been so absorbed in my own problems that I hadn’t even looked at her with much attention.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I hated the quaver in my voice.

“John had a mild-well, maybe a heart attack-last night, about two hours after you called,” she said.

“Oh, no,” I said, my eyes filling with tears immediately. I was fond of John Queensland, having been his friend before he dated and married my mother. I took a deep breath. Mother wasn’t crying, so I couldn’t cry. “How is he doing?”

“I’ve moved him to Atlanta. They’re doing tests right now,” she said, and I could read the exhaustion in her face, and the fear.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly. “What can I do to help you?”

“You have your hands full,” she said, looking out the kitchen window. It was another windy, overcast day; a leaf from the gum tree whirled past. “It’s just a lot of hospital sitting, and you can’t help me sit.”

I thought of Martin, the baby, the missing woman, the dead man.

My mother finally needed me and I couldn’t help.

“Are Avery and John David there?” I asked. These were John’s two sons, both in their thirties and married.

“John David flies in this morning. Melinda’s going to meet him at the airport and get him to the hospital. That’s something she can do with the kids in the car,” she said. Mother smiled briefly, and I saw with a kind of unworthy pang that she had become very fond of Melinda, Avery’s wife.

“What’s the prognosis?” I asked, dreading the answer. Behind her back I noticed Martin standing in the doorway. I didn’t know how long he’d been there.

“We don’t know yet,” Mother said quietly. “He’s been conscious, off and on. He’s in some pain.”

“Don’t worry about us, Aida,” my husband said. He moved until he was by Mother’s side, and he gripped her shoulder. Her hand came up briefly to cover his, and then they both retreated back into more comfortable personas. “We’ll be fine, we just have to get this straightened out.”

“Roe,” Mother said, as she picked up her purse and went to the door. “This is just an awful lot of trouble at one time.”

I realized she was half apologizing for focusing on her husband, or at least extending her regrets that my trouble was not her only concern.

“We’ll all get through it,” I said briskly, trying not to cry. “I’ll be checking with you later. Tell John I’m thinking of him.”

She nodded. She’d scrawled John’s hospital room phone number on a sheet of paper, and she handed it to me. I stuck it on the refrigerator with one of the magnets Martin loathed.

After Mother left I sank down into a chair and put my head in my hands. If the baby started crying, I just couldn’t bear it.

The baby started crying.

I forced myself up and to the refrigerator, thinking (as I pulled a bottle from the shelf and popped it into the microwave) that I was almost willing to forgive Regina for everything if she would just return and leave again with the baby.

Martin had made coffee. I noticed he was dressed in khakis and a sweater, about as casual as Martin gets in day wear. He was staring out the window sipping from a mug, looking like a Lands’ End ad. I was still in my velour robe, my hair was trailing down my back in a cascade of waves and tangles, and I was in a very tense mood. Hayden, still dressed in the same red sleeper and a diaper that was undoubtedly dirty, was yelling.

“Pick up the baby,” I said to Martin.

“What?” he said, turning to me with an automatic smile. “I can’t hear you, the baby’s crying.”

I hadn’t had a cup of coffee.

“Pick… up… the… baby,” I said.

Martin was so surprised he put down his mug, picked up the baby.

I took the bottle from the microwave and shook it. I tested some formula on my arm. It was the right temperature, as far as I could tell. I handed the bottle to Martin, who had to free his left hand to take it.

I left the room.

I stomped across the hall, or at least I tried to, but stomping is uphill work in fuzzy slippers. I stuck John’s hospital phone number by the desk telephone. I flung myself down sideways on the red leather sofa, my back braced against one armrest, and stared out the window at the nasty gray cold windy day. That was exactly how I felt inside, I fumed, nasty and cold and gray. Maybe not windy... Then all my rage turned into something much more immediate as a head appeared between the back of the couch and the window. It was the head of a young man, a blond and handsome young man, and his expression was groggy.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re Aunty Roe? I thought you’d be old. Where’s the kid?”

I shrieked and set a record for bounding off red leather couches.

Martin was hampered in his rescue attempt by the baby. He looked ready for action when he appeared in the doorway, but the effect was spoiled by the feeding Hayden. Martin shoved baby and bottle into my arms and stood waiting. He was spoiling for a fight, which the young man was just perceptive enough to see.

“Hey, man, it’s okay, didn’t Regina tell you I was here?”

We stared at him.

It gradually sank into his dim consciousness that something was drastically wrong.

“So, where’s Craig?” he asked uncertainly, working his way out from behind the couch. He proved to be not much over five-eight, and he was wearing ancient blue jeans and a none-too-clean flannel shirt hanging open over a T-shirt. A golden stubble made his face look dirty. But he didn’t look threatening. He had an aura of amiable stupidity that I came to learn was, to some extent, quite accurate.

Martin and I exchanged glances.

“Did you come here with Craig?” Martin asked, as if the answer were not important.

“Sure, didn’t he tell you?”

“Was Regina expecting you?” I asked next.

“Well, no. She didn’t expect Craig to get out early, but the jail got real crowded, and Craig really toes the line when he’s in, so they released him early.”

There was so much in this sentence to absorb that we just stood and stared. Visibly unnerved, the stranger tried to fill the silence with chatter. “See, after we stopped for some beer at that liquor store on the main drag, we had to help this lady who was having trouble with her car. And then we got here, but all of a sudden I was feeling really really tired. I never felt anything like that. So we came over here to this house, and Regina was in the kitchen with the baby, and she and Craig started fighting right away, you know, and I could see this couch across the hall while I was standing there listening to them, and I was so sleepy I just came in here and lay down. That’s the last I remember, except I had a dream about hearing someone scream, and I musta hid.”

We exchanged glances again.

“Ain’t you ever going to say nothing? You are Regina’s aunt and uncle, right? Though I got to say, lady, you don’t look old enough to be anyone’s aunt.” He grinned at me, or tried to, but by now it was so obvious something was wrong that his grin was only a shadow of what it could be.

Martin scowled. I am less than thirteen years younger than he, but I look even younger than that. The same genes that are keeping my mother’s skin smooth at fifty-seven are being equally kind to me, and I’ll never be taller than my present inadequate height.

Hayden finished the bottle. I put him up to my shoulder to burp and began patting, trying to think of what to say next.

“Martin is Regina’s uncle and I’m Martin’s wife Aurora,” I said cautiously. “Last night some things happened here.”

“Don’t tell me Craig hit Regina or nothing like that.”

“Could you tell us who you are?” Martin asked, trying to sound very calm.

“Sure, man. I’m Rory Brown, Craig’s buddy. We’ve been best friends forever.”

“Then I have bad news for you… Rory.”

“Craig’s back in jail?”

I had to sit down. This was going to be worse than I thought.

“No,” Martin said. “He’s dead.”