Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey (20 page)

“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.

I went in the kitchen to face what looked like an interrogation. Martin and Karl had taken the paper bag from Rory, and as I entered they dumped it on the table.

I gasped. Besides the usual deodorant and razor, underpants and condoms, the bag contained packages of bills. Just like the one in the baby’s diaper bag, the one I’d discovered in Lawrenceton.

“They were under the sheet on the crib,” I said, into the silence.

“It’s mine,” Rory said sullenly. “As long as you can’t find Regina, it’s mine. She shows up, I share it with her. But we owe some of it to the midwife.”

“Where’d it come from?” Martin asked. It was the opening salvo in a long bombardment.

An hour later, no one had gotten anywhere, except me. I’d looked up Bobbye Sunday’s address in the telephone book, which covered several small towns in the area. The midwife lived in Bushmill, and she wasn’t answering her phone. I’d tried her number several times while Martin and Karl questioned Rory. Rory, who was wily if not intelligent, had made up his mind he wasn’t going to tell anyone anything. I felt like I was some kind of civil rights observer, there to make sure Rory wasn’t thumped by an increasingly exasperated Martin. Karl seemed to consider this Martin’s show, but he contributed to the atmosphere of menace by smoldering at Rory, with some effect.

“I never meant to hurt Therese,” the boy blurted out of the blue.

Karl slammed his palm against the kitchen table with explosive force. “I told you never to say her name!” he said. Then he turned to me. “Therese is simple,” he said bluntly. “She can cope with life, but just barely. Then this guy shows up, tells her after one date he loves her, gets her knocked up. I have to take Therese for an abortion. Phoebe’s young enough to have one of her own if she wants, we don’t want to raise Therese’s kid and it’s not our job. She can’t raise a kid, he can’t raise a kid, he doesn’t even want to marry her. But he had a fit when she had the abortion, which left her crying for weeks. He had a use for the baby, but not for Therese, who hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”

I looked at Rory in a new light. Rather than a passive accomplice to a plot not yet determined, he was an instigator of a subsidiary plot. Not a very efficient instigator, since Therese’s father had taken care of the situation, and would have outfaced Rory under any circumstances. . .

I was sick of trying to figure out what had happened in this farmhouse in the past few months.

“I’m going to take a ride,” I said abruptly.

“You’re going to drive in this snow?” My husband looked amazed, and that was all it took to make me grab my coat. I’d been dragged along on this, outvoted by my husband as to the wisdom of bringing Rory back to Corinth, stuck with the care of Hayden, forced to consort with Martin’s ex-wife. I was in a royal snit compounded of grievance and self-pity.

“Yes, I am,” I replied briefly.

Even as my better sense—and I did have some—told me to stay at the farmhouse, I grabbed the keys from the counter and my purse from the table and rode the crest of my snit out to the Jeep. I climbed into it, and switched on the engine.

It would have served me right if the engine had refused to start or I had driven into the fields on my way to the county road, but to my surprise I got to Route 8 just fine. I paused at the end of the driveway for a minute or two, looking at the map I’d yanked out of the glove compartment.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sky outside was about to loose its load of snow. I wished I could close my eyes or wiggle my nose and make the kitchenful of men disappear.

Then I could go back to the farmhouse without losing face.

But I turned right, on my way to the tiny town of Bushmill.

It was easy, after all, to find Bobbye Sunday’s office. It was the little building with the snow all over the blackened and broken roof. The trailer parked behind it didn’t look damaged, but the snow around it was unbroken.

I looked out of the foggy window of the Jeep, shivering despite its efficient heating.

The nearest convenience store was manned (and I’m using the word loosely) by an adolescent male with acne and chin-length hair parted down the middle. It was not a flattering style, but I told myself that was just because I was old, and feeling older by the minute.

I smiled as winningly as I could. “Can you tell me what happened at the office down the street?” I asked.

“Which one?” he asked indifferently.

I will not snap, I told myself. I will not snap and snarl. “The burned one,” I said gently.

“It burned,” he said, smirking at the points he was scoring off the old dame who was at least in her thirties. I wondered if he would think it was as funny if I kicked him in the groin. I took a deep breath. Overreaction.

“When did it burn? Was anyone hurt?”

At least he didn’t care why I wanted to know. “I guess it was a couple nights ago,” he told me finally. “Someone broke in after midnight, the police figure. Stole some computers and stuff, set a fire. I bet she had some painkillers and stuff in there, someone could sell around here.” He smirked again. I felt like giving him a little pain.

“But Miss Sunday is all right?”

“Yep. She was at home when the fire started. She went down there in her nightgown, I heard.” Another smirk.

I turned to leave the store, lost in thought.

“Don’t you want to buy something?” the boy asked pointedly.

“I do want to find where Bobbye Sunday lives.”

“I already told you a lot of stuff,” he grumbled. “You need some gas, some cigarettes?”

“No, thank you,” I told him, out of all the things I could have said.

It had just dawned on me that I probably knew where Bob-bye Sunday lived; the small trailer behind the little office.

The woman that answered my knock was in her early thirties. She was plump and had hair the color of a rusty chrysanthemum. It was either a very inept or a very avant-garde dye job. Either way, it was notable. The cut itself was conventional, short and curly. But her ears were pierced at least four times apiece. Then again she was wearing nurse whites and orthopedic shoes.

Miss Mixed Signals.

“Bobbye Sunday?” I asked.

“Yes.” She didn’t invite me in, but she didn’t bar the door. “Have you come about the fire, are you from the insurance office?”

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.” I tried smiling, but she didn’t respond. “Could you tell me what happened?”

“Why should I talk to you?” she asked. She slammed the trailer door in my face. Bushmill was chock-full of reticent people.

I trudged back to the Jeep through the snow, feeling my blue jeans brush against my boots with the heavy feel of wet material. My feet were warm and dry, at least, and I made myself stamp the snow out of the treads of my boots before I hoisted myself up into the Jeep.

“Wait!” Bobbye Sunday slogged through the snow, holding her hands out for balance.

“I’m sorry I was so short with you,” she said, when she’d reached the side of the Jeep. I’d shut myself in, but rolled down the window. “I lost so much in that fire,” the midwife continued.

“My patient records, the computers and software I’d just gotten ...”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“I keep telling myself that.”

“Sometimes that’s not much consolation, I guess.”

“If you aren’t from the insurance company . . .”

“I just wanted to ask you about a patient you had, a baby you delivered, around three weeks ago? Here, at your office.”

“Oh, I can’t tell you about that,” Bobbye Sunday said firmly. “That’s private.” She hesitated.