Motherhood Is Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

To Do:

1. Stake out Celia.

2. Build up milk supply.

3. Buy Laurie swing contraption thing (like baby Amanda) for two-month milestone.

4. Research safety re: computers in nursery.

5. Look up Business and Professions Code, Article 6.

“He wants you to work for him?” Paula asked.

“I don’t know if I can do that, though, ethically, you know?” I was seated at her dining room table nursing Laurie.

Paula had swaddled Laurie in a special swaddling blanket with Velcro closures on the sides and around her belly. When I complained and told her Laurie had outgrown the swaddle, she’d pooh-poohed me and told me that babies slept much better swaddled. I could hardly argue as apparently Laurie had been sacked out since I’d left.

I rubbed Laurie’s cheek and secretly thought the swaddle looked like a straitjacket. “I’ll break you out of it as soon as we leave, Sugarplum,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m an expert in breaking out of Velcro.”

Paula was working furiously on a scrapbook of Danny’s first year, and Danny was running back and forth between the dining room and his bedroom bringing us Lego pieces, one at a time.

Each time Danny returned from his room, he’d hand me a piece saying, “ ’Go piece.”

I’d say, “Yes! Lego piece,” then oohed and aahed as he attached the piece to the tower he was building.

Paula gave me a dismissive wave. “Come on, Kate. You know I’m the last person you should be discussing ethics with. Take the money! Of course you should work for him.”

“But that would be double billing or something like that.”

Paula laughed. “Well, duh. That’s the beauty of it.”

I sighed and helped Danny connect a piece to the tower. He yelped with happiness and then charged back to his room.

Paula scrunched her face. “I promised myself I would finish this darn book before the baby came. I can’t have Danny’s first year looming over me when I have the other one’s first year to capture. But I swear I hate this scrapbooking.”

“You do? But you’re so good at it.”

“Why would you think I’m good at it? I never do it.”

I looked around the table. She had neatly arranged the photos in one stack, stickers in another stack, and colored paper in a third stack. “Well, look at all the organization and care you’ve put into it.”

“It’s all a façade,” Paula said.

I laughed. Danny zoomed back into the room and handed me a Lego piece. “Danny’s good at building—why don’t you let him put it all together?”

Paula sighed. “The end result would probably be the same.”

At home, I fussed with dinner. On the drive from Paula’s I thought I’d had a wonderful time-saving idea. Crock pot cooking! Just throw all the ingredients into a pot and voilŕ—dinner!

When I got home, I realized that would mean I actually had to have the ingredients on hand, not to mention the six-or seven-hour lead time for cooking.

While inventorying the fridge, I grabbed a piece of cheese and popped it into my mouth. Then, I looked in the cupboard for some crackers.

Hmmm, did we have any wine?

I found a bottle and opened it, pouring myself a glass.

I had recently read an article online that allowed breastfeeding moms one to two glasses of alcohol a day. What a hoot! I thought I wasn’t supposed to have any alcohol. Well, everything in moderation. Certainly the occasional glass of wine wasn’t going to hurt Laurie. And definitely the last few days had been trying. I needed something to take the edge off.

I continued my search for crackers.

Maybe I could make a little appetizer plate for Jim and me—cheese, crackers, nuts, and fruit . . .

My daydream was cut short with the discovery that we didn’t have any crackers, nuts, or fruit.

Man! I had to get to the store.

I took a sip of wine, sliced another piece of cheese, and ate it anyway. Didn’t wine count for fruit?

I cracked open the file from Gary. It was a transcript of Inspectors Jones and McNearny questioning Bruce. Only they hadn’t been able to ask him much. Gary had coached Bruce and he’d only made a small statement about being grieved over his wife and shocked about the incident at his house. He repeated the same statement to most of the questions until Gary put a sudden stop to the questioning by quoting a statute and ending the interview.

Short and simple, they needed to officially charge him if they were going to get any answers. And without evidence, they couldn’t charge him.

I grabbed the phone and dialed Margaret. I got no answer but left her a second message. Where was she? She was supposed to be at her mother’s but there was no answer there either.

What kind of investigator can’t get in touch with her client?

I heard the front door creak open and knew my time for dinner prep had run out.

I’m a failure as a housewife.

Jim clunked down the hallway and peered into the kitchen. He inhaled deeply. “Hi, honey.”

“What’s wrong?”

He let out his breath and dropped his briefcase on the floor. “My client put a hold on the project.”

“What does that mean?”

“Did you watch the news today?”

I shook my head.

“The market’s crashed. People are kind of freaking out. So, Dirk wasn’t able to secure funding for the project.”

My mind flashed on Bruce Chambers. His clients would be scared, too.

“What does it mean for us?” I asked.

Jim shrugged. “Well, we don’t have much in the market, so in that regard we’re fine. But if they don’t get funding for my project, that means I’m out of work again.”

During my maternity leave from my corporate job, Jim had been let go from his. He’d been able to land a freelance client and the income had been large enough, or so we thought, to last us awhile so I had left my corporate gig.

I felt my heart constrict. “They gave you a retainer, though.”

Jim closed his eyes. “That’s not a guarantee. My contract states that if the project moves forward, I apply it to the cost of the project. If they back out in the first sixty days, I have to return fifty percent.”

I grabbed the stovetop for support.

He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into him. “Don’t worry, honey. Things will be okay. If this falls through, I’ll find something else.”

I wanted to say that I would go back to my secure corporate income, but I choked on the words.

There was no way. I couldn’t go back now. I had tasted the freedom and excitement of entrepreneurship. Even with doubts surrounding a steady income stream, nothing could bring me to sacrifice myself to the doldrums of my office job again.

Could it?

Laurie squeaked from the nursery. She had been asleep for about an hour in the crib and that was the maximum she had ever slept at the dinnertime hour, what Jim and I were beginning to call the “witching hour.”

“I’ll get the squirrel,” Jim said. As he left the kitchen, he asked the inevitable, “What’s for dinner?”

“Nothing,” I called after him.

Jim laughed. “Okay, open a can of soup. We’re on austerity anyway.”

I groaned. “But I’m nursing and I’m really hungry.”

Jim returned to the kitchen with Laurie bundled in his arms. “Okay, screw it. Let’s order a pizza.”

I squinted at him and bit my lip. “I may have good news.”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “Good. Something to celebrate. What is it?”

“I got a pseudo-job offer today. I think it will keep up our income stream anyway.”

Jim held Laurie out to look into her face. “Mommy got a job offer,” he said.

Laurie was holding her head so well these days we no longer cradled it. Yet as Jim was holding her up and she was looking at him happily and gurgling, her head started to wobble and she suddenly pitched herself headfirst into Jim’s chest.

“Whoa,” Jim said. “She’s excited.”

We laughed.

“What kind of offer?” he asked.

I filled him in on the details.

His face displayed an array of emotions as I recounted Gary’s offer. I left out the girdle-popping incident—no need to sound like a complete moron in front of my number one fan.

When I’d finished talking, he was silent for a moment.

Finally I asked, “So do you approve? Can I take him up on it?”

He shuffled Laurie from one shoulder to the other. “Kate, I don’t ever want to keep you from doing something you want to do.” He wrapped his free arm around me. “I just want you to be safe. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

I kissed him. “I promise.”