Operation Wolfe Cub: A Chilling Historical Thriller (THE TIME TO TELL Book 1) (28 page)

When he reached the top, his paranoia was left on the beach. After that, he was riding high on a tide of cheerfulness. As he glanced down at the disappearing wreckage, he saw that it was almost entirely gone.

US-2’s body had departed so far out to sea, he could barely be seen.

Ceremoniously, Eddie gave him a departing salute goodbye. “God be with you, my pal…whoever you are.”

Major had no idea what his master was doing, but he did keep a close eye on the incoming weather from the East. He froze his four-legged stance as if he were seriously troubled.

Eddie looked down, then nudged him. “Come on, Major, what’s wrong? You can’t see the dead man anymore, can you? We’re doing the right thing…let’s go.”

He turned back around. “Come on, boy. What’s keeping you? We haven’t got all day now…chop-chop, let’s go.”

Finally he and Major moved along together. As they made their way back into the forest, Eddie continued muttering, “Wait ‘til we show you to Chantain! Boy, oh, boy, you’s a game-changer…wait ‘til you see your new mommy, eh? Oh, goodness, how this is going to change things. We have this house. I have this car that pops…yeah…..oh, boy…a popping car…hey, do you like the name “Coolidge?” That’s my name. You get to have it too…you see Major here? He’s my dog…no, I mean he’s
our
dog, yes…you know where we live? Oh, you don’t? We live here at Devil’s. Yes, we do…Devil’s. That’s where we live.”

Chapter 9

Eddie seemed to have a whole new outlook on life. With his newly discovered baby in hand, he broke from the tree line and back onto the property next to his house. Proudly, he marched right up the front steps as if he hadn’t a care in the world when suddenly, something out of place jarred his smile as he reached for the front door. He couldn’t quite figure it out until he looked back over his shoulder. “Pribil’s gone… your mom’s not here yet.” He looked at the baby and chuckled. “I know, we get to surprise her now…sound like fun?”

He continued opening the door, letting Major dog go in first while he flanked off into the living room. Though disappearing out of sight momentarily, he made a lot of racket to make up for it. In fact, he made so much noise that Major came out of the kitchen just to see what Eddie was up to. From the dog’s view, he saw nothing but the back of him wiggling as he rummaged around part way inside the hall closet.

Eddie yelped, as the dog did too. Apparently, he had hit the jackpot inside the closet. Out he came, tugging on a crib that was stuck in the clutter. It wasn’t the technologically advanced capsule the baby was found in, but it was quite functional, nonetheless. He pulled and tugged, until the crib, along with a whole slew of other items, came falling. Eddie didn’t care. Not even the spilled jar of pennies bothered him.

After he sat the crib down in the living room, he hobbled back to the closet area to rake all of the articles back into the closet the best he could.

His next task involved setting up the crib close to the sofa near the front door. First impressions must have meant everything to him because that was the first thing his incoming wife was going to see when she walked through the door. To give the impression even more impact, he quickly washed the baby up. After a thorough cleaning, he placed him in the crib with fresh, new linens and then decorated his pen with a broad array of little toys he’d dragged out of unexpected places.

Finally, the stage was set. He stepped back to see the results and breathed a sigh of relief, but he wasn’t done just yet. He looked around, wanting to speak, but Major was the only one looking at him. “There…it all looks like it belongs. Wouldn’t you say, Major?”

His fast work had taken its toll. Apparently, resting off his feet had never sounded so good. He plopped himself down on the sofa and waited, but the waiting lasted only a few seconds. Quickly, he jumped up as if he’d forgotten the most important detail of all. He barreled out his front door and turned around quickly, just to pause and face nothing but an empty porch.

His neighbor, Al Johnson, down the road, heard the slamming of Eddie’s door clear over from his house. This caused him to stand up from his porch chair to catch a distant glimpse of what looked like Eddie involved in some unusual behavior. He adjusted his thick glasses which may have compounded the problem as he muttered, “What in th’ world?”

Al may not have known what Eddie was up to, but in all seriousness, he had caught him rehearsing some sort of feminine walk convincingly similar to Chantain’s. Right there before Al’s nearsighted eyes, Eddie gathered up himself around his bosom, which didn’t look right at whatever distance. Eddie started up his steps and continued to the front door.

It didn’t sit well with Al at all. He quickly called his wife, who was minding her own business inside the living room. “Hey, Julie…come see this…I think Eddie’s turning fairy ’r somethin’.”

Eddie did a fantastic acting job. He wanted to perfect it, so he did it again. With all his embellishments of what he thought Chantain should do, he casually opened the front door and swaggered into his own living room. If that wasn’t bad enough, he preposterously grabbed his mouth, as if expecting Chantain to be shocked and delighted by such a surprise. His final act ended with a staggering fall onto the sofa. As he lay there in a daydream, he smiled up at the ceiling.

Al shriveled in disbelief as Julie scratched her big hair curlers. “That’s bad. No wonder their marriage is fallin’ apart…what’s gettin’ into that man?”

Al shook his head. “Don’t know. Thought I saw him carryin’ some kind a’ baby earlier…Maybe he was pretending that too. Sure confusin’ me now. It’s a real baby or he’s gone fruity, I know that.”

“
Nah
, it can’t be that bad. Maybe I should have a talk with Chantain ’r somethin’.”

Al guided Julie back inside their house. “No, no…don’t do that, we ain’t got all th’ facts yet. He ain’t turnin’ fairy on me yet. I’m supposed to go over there, remember? I’ll talk to him then.”

Back at Eddie’s house, Eddie didn’t calculate just how long he’d have to wait before Chantain actually arrived. In the process, he slipped into a light sleep on the sofa, but the little infant, who kept watching him from the comfort of his crib, did a little acting of his own. He warmed up with a whimper before blasting out, crying as loud as he could.

Eddie jumped off the sofa. “What?
Oh-ho-ho
, you must be hungry.”

He rushed into the kitchen with his cane clattering alongside him. Other things clattered while he was in there: bottles, tin cans, pots, pans, and more. Finally, he returned to the living room with nothing but a single baby bottle of warm milk in hand.

KirPop!

Eddie thought he heard a backfire come from outside. Quickly, he glanced out the living room window. Chantain had just pulled into the driveway. Somehow she had managed to park the car, kick open the car door, and shut the motor off all at the same time. Eddie watched as she walked toward the house with an armload of grocery bags blocking her view. This gave her about as much grace as being blindfolded in high heels. Through some miracle, she managed to get up to the porch in one piece without falling down.

Opening the screen door was a bit of a challenge for her, but nothing her delicate shoe couldn’t handle. With a poke and nudge, she found her way inside. She barely glanced over the bags as she meandered right past Eddie and the crib and into the kitchen without incident. Then she quickly became involved with putting away her groceries.

Eddie scratched his head, wondering where he had went wrong when he heard Chantain from the kitchen. “I noticed you haven’t started the tree-cutting outside yet…I almost ran into it with that ugly car of yours.”

Eddie perked up. “What tree? Oh yes, I guess…it fell from the storm last night.”

Silence broke out in the kitchen when she suddenly stopped what she was doing. “No kidding, Eddie. I thought it fell on its own…”

“Don’t worry, honey. I’ll get to it right away.” Eddie, wishing to buy a little more time, picked up his newspaper and
ruffled the pages. He figured that sooner or later, his busy wife might look around.

Chantain stopped again in the kitchen, pausing in silence before carefully speaking. “Are you babysitting Arlis for the Johnsons next door again?”

Eddie held back his laugh, “No, what gave you that idea?”

Chantain’s high heels came knocking up to the entryway into the living room then she stopped to glance at Eddie with his face hidden behind the newspaper. She glanced over to the crib before huffing her way back into the kitchen. As she took her time pouring herself a cup of coffee off the stove, she leaned back against the counter and stared at the refrigerator. “I seeeee…well if it’s not Arlis, then who is it?”

Eddie turned another page of his paper. “I don’t know the baby’s name yet. Why don’t you come out and have a seat.”

“I’m fine right here where I am. Just answer…kids just don’t pop out of the sky, you know. Who is he—or
she
? Is it a boy or girl?”

Eddie put his paper down and stared at the floor, as if thinking things might not be going the way he’d planned. Sadly, the excitement of his surprise soon drained all the way from his face. All too quickly, he rubbed the nape of his neck and blew through his cheeks. “
Whew
…he’s ours?”

“Ours? Don’t be funny. So he’s a boy, is he not?”

Eddie used all of his cane to stand up. He then put one hand in his pocket and rocked back and forth, figuring to say, “No, really…I found him while treasure hunting.”

For a long five seconds, silence ruled inside the Coolidge house. That is, until Chantain dropped a single spoon inside the kitchen sink. She rushed out of the kitchen and then rushed straight over to the crib. “
Ah
, you’re right. It isn’t Arlis.”

She seemed bewildered all right, but not in the way Eddie had hoped. Still, he came over to her side and tried to put his arm around her. “It’s true. I was walking along the cliffs at Port Rock when I saw a wrecked boat. You know, below. Someone wrecked out at sea or in the rocks. I couldn’t figure which.”

Chantain backed away from the crib. “What about his parents? What-what? Was anybody there?”

Without hesitation, she ran for the phone in the kitchen. “We have to call the constable right away. The poor mother must be sick with worry for heaven’s sake.”

Eddie was behind her every step of the way. Gently, he reached over her shoulder and took the phone out of her hand to hang it back up. “They’re gone.”

“You mean—you mean you saw them? They’re gone? We still have to call the constable right away.”

Eddie leaned back. “It’s no use. They must have passed away in the storm. I saw one dead body float away…it was a man.”

“What about the mother? Did you see a woman?”

“There were no others, Chantain.”

“People don’t just vanish like that. What about footprints? Maybe she went for help. I mean—I mean, did you see any footprints? Footprints don’t lie. Well, did you?”

“No, I thought about that right away. My footprints were the only ones.”

Chantain blinked rapidly before blindly backing against the counter, where she stopped to support herself. She grabbed her coffee cup securely with both hands and held it against her chest. Without saying another word, she put her coffee cup down and walked unsteadily back into the living room, ever so cautiously. If one didn’t know any differently, she looked as though she expected to see varmints lurking underneath the furniture.

At the end of her path, she slowly approached the crib, ratcheting her empty eyes down.

The baby, on the other hand, couldn’t have been brighter. He was lying there, blanketed in the purest sense of bliss imaginable, just begging with his arms to be picked up and loved.

Chantain flipped around so fast that even Eddie seemed to question the authenticity of her smile that came from nowhere. She quickly asked, “Is it okay to pick him up? Is he okay, I mean?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Ever so carefully, she picked him up. “Oh, he’s a boy all right. I knew it, I could tell.”

“Oh? How could you tell?”

“We just know these kinds of things. We’re supposed to be moms, you know.”

Eddie let out a huge gasp of relief as he let himself fall back onto the sofa.

Chantain came around to sit down next to him with the baby. She rocked and cuddled him, talking sweet nothings into his ear, but suddenly, without warning, she looked mildly bothered. “It’s a miracle he’s alive, I guess.”

Eddie seemed anxious to explain, “Oh, you’ll never know. It was awful. The boat…there was nothing left. I mean it was
gone
. The place was crazy dangerous too. Me and Major almost never got down there to save him. You wouldn’t believe what happened next.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah! The dreadful dead man…
uh
, then I got sick! I hadn’t got that sick in a long time…oh and
uh
—then there was the
um
—”

Chantain inched closer. “Yes, go on. I’m listening. What happened next?”

“Then—something strange happened. Yes, I remember, something strange.”

“What was that? It can’t be any stranger than finding a baby from a shipwreck.”

Eddie stared out the living room windows in a mystifying daze. “Oh, the baby? He was safely wrapped in this like—crate thing.”

“Crate thing? Oh, you mean a
crib
. What’s so strange about that? They really make them good these days.”

“Good these days? Oh yes, good these days…it was a real good crib…made of Lucite or something—I think. Yeah, it protected him good.”

“Really? Maybe we can go back and fetch it then.”

Eddie flinched. “No! We can’t go back. I mean, the tide came in. It’s all under at least ten feet of water now.”

“Really? Are you sure, Eddie? Because—”

“Yeah…there was this deep crevasse. I barely got out in time with the baby. It must have floated away. Yeah, it floated away—never to return. I mean it sunk, maybe under the sand and seaweed or
uh
...”

Chantain calmed him down, “Okay, I get the picture. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a crib…I didn’t want to walk that far anyway. Whoever heard of Lucite? The wooden ones are the best.”