Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey (5 page)

Nothing.

The little sound went on and on.

Finally I stepped in, looking repeatedly from side to side. Martin called from below, but I didn’t answer. My breath was coming too unevenly. The rain began to fall more heavily and the drumming of the raindrops on the stairs made the little apartment feel more isolated.

The closet door was open. Clothes, I assumed Regina’s, had been hung inside. Her suitcase was on the dining table, open. Clothes that appeared to have been tossed in rather than packed were flowing over the sides. The bathroom door was flung wide and I could see a jumble of makeup and toiletries on the counter by the sink.

The only area not visible from my position by the door was the floor on the far side of the bed. And that was where the sound was coming from.

I went around the bed, reasoning with one part of my mind that nothing could be worse than what I had already seen.

The floor was empty, but the folds of the quilted paisley bedspread were moving, down at the carpet level. I dropped to my knees and bent over. Holding my breath, I lifted the skirt of the bedspread.

Under the bed, kicking his legs and waving his hands, was the baby. He was just beginning to get upset that his mother hadn’t picked him up after his nap. He looked perfectly all right, and his red sleeper was pristine.

So Regina’s car was missing, and Regina wasn’t anywhere in the apartment.

* * *

I was certainly thinking without clarity. At first, I thought the baby’s presence and wellness were good news. And they were good news, of course, but they were only part of Martin’s concern. When I came to the top of the stairs and called down to him that the baby was fine but Regina was gone, the look on his face reminded me that someone had murdered the young man on the stairs, and the vanished Regina was by far the most likely person to have wielded the hatchet. Martin was standing passively, leaning against the garage, his arms crossed over his chest. His hair and his coat were dark with rain. His alien behavior struck me like a fist to the chest.

“You have to call the police,” I reminded him, and I saw the anger flare in my husband’s face. He didn’t like being told to do that. My presence obliged him to do the right thing. He’d been thinking of concealing this, somehow, I could tell. It was the pirate side of him coming out.

There was something stuck under the windshield wiper blade of the strange car, which I noticed had Ohio tags. I could hardly get much wetter, so I carefully eased down the stairs and over to the car. I touched the sodden mass with a finger. It was a folded piece of paper, a note. I could see the streaks that had been blue ink. A note: to whom, about what, I’d never know.

The baby began to scream. His cries carried on the chilly night air. I expected someone to pick him up and tend to his needs, and when that didn’t happen, I had what Lizanne calls a Real Moment. Hayden’s mother had vanished; Hayden’s father Craig (and I was pretty sure the corpse was Craig, though I’d only met him once at the wedding) was lying before me dead. The baby’s grandmother, who ought to be willing to take charge, was on a cruise with her boyfriend. I, Aurora Teagarden, was (at least temporarily) responsible for this baby, unless Martin acted.

Staring at my husband, I saw how unlikely that was. Instead of feeling elation—finally, a baby!—I felt an almost bottom less dismay.

The rain pattered to a halt.

I turned and once again mounted the stairs to the garage apartment. I squatted and eased Hayden out from under the bed. With effort, I rose from the floor holding him. It was shocking how much he could wiggle, how hard it was to hold on to him, especially when he arched his body with rage. I was trembling, and it wasn’t for the dead man on the stairs. Somehow, I made it down the stairs and across the walkway, passing a still-silent Martin without saying anything.

After unlocking our house, I reached for the security pad, only to find that it had been turned off. Of course, we hadn’t told Regina how to set it... at least, I hadn’t. I called 911 from our kitchen telephone. I jiggled Hayden with one damp arm while I dialed with my free hand. I could barely hold him, but I couldn’t put him on the kitchen floor. He was screaming so loudly by now that I had to repeat myself twice. At least Doris wasn’t still on duty, and the dispatcher didn’t seem to know that I’d already had county police at my house that day. After I hung up, I could put off tending to Hayden no longer.

I had no idea what to do.

As Hayden’s need, whatever it was, wasn’t met, he screamed more. Too frightened and uncertain to leave him by himself, I staggered back out into the night, toting the increasingly heavy baby, and edged once again past the awful thing on the stairs. Its horror was actually paling in comparison to my frenzied desire for Hayden to shut up.

I wished Martin would stir himself to help me, but he was standing with his hands on the Mercedes hood, looking out into the night, that odd introspective look still on his face.

The baby’s diaper bag, feeling considerably lighter, was lying on its side in the middle of the floor. I was glad to see it. I looped the strap over my shoulder and carried the shrieking Hayden on yet another trek into our house. I was utterly unable to think of what to do next.

But Hayden wouldn’t stop crying.

I tried to reason through all the noise. He must be wet, or hungry, right? Or both. Wasn’t that generally what was wrong with babies?

I opened his diaper bag and pulled out one of the disposable diapers Regina used. Then I had to figure it out, since I’d never even examined such an item, much less put one on a baby.

When I thought I understood the thing, I ripped a paper towel off the roll and spread it on the kitchen table where we ate most of our meals. I plopped Hayden down on the middle of the towel and began to unsnap his sleeper, which seemed incredibly complicated. I extricated his kicking legs with great difficulty, peeled open the tabs holding the diaper shut.

Whew. He did need a fresh one.

I had to clean him off. What with? I couldn’t take my hands off him. What if he rolled off the table? This problem absorbed me so thoroughly that the sirens of the arriving cars were only background noise. My free hand found a plastic box in the diaper bag. I flipped it open and found premoistened towelettes inside. Yahoo!

After a few more strenuous minutes, Hayden was clean and rediapered . . . more or less. He was whimpering now, and I knew he’d break out into screaming again if I didn’t solve whatever other problems he had. Hunger seemed the most likely, and I remembered Regina preparing the bottles that afternoon. God bless her, I thought. If she left me bottles for this baby I’ll forgive her, no matter what else she has done.

There were four bottles in the refrigerator. I heated one up in the microwave as Regina had shown me, and I wondered if she had foreseen her departure when she made such a point of telling me how to prepare the bottles, how to test them for temperature.

The idea that Regina might have known she’d be leaving was so unpleasant I was sorry I’d thought of it. I put Hayden in his infant seat, which I found in the living room and carried back into the kitchen, and held his bottle to his mouth. Hayden did the rest. I slumped in a chair, my forehead resting on my hand, my other hand holding the bottle in the right position (I hoped).

I heard feet tramping up the steps to the kitchen door, and I knew it was time to answer questions. I looked down at Hayden who was pulling on the bottle as if it were the answer to all the troubles of the universe.

I wished I could have one.

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 naiveté 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.