But Martin shook his head, reading my thoughts.
“You were out of jail when Regina had the baby?” I asked.
Rory looked as though a lightbulb were appearing over his head.
“No, ma’am. I was in the jail.”
“Was Craig in jail when Regina had the baby?”
“No, ma’am. Craig got out a few days before I did.”
“But Craig was back in jail for the past…?”
“Well, we got picked up again two weeks ago. About.”
I now understood why the police beat people who wouldn’t confess. I knew somewhere in that cute, empty head lay the truth. And I wanted it badly enough to extract it with red-hot pincers, or at least so I told myself. I could tell by the way Martin was clenching his hands that he felt the same way, and I was willing to bet that under other circumstances Martin could make Rory talk.
“We’ll have to talk about this more, later,” I told them both.
I’ve never been trained to be a detective of any kind, but I’m a reasonably observant person, and this money was not the jumble of rumpled bills of all denominations you’d get if you robbed a convenience store. This was the kind of money you’d get at a bank, two one-hundred-dollar bills, the rest in twenties: a compact little bundle, smooth and flat.
Chapter Five
Lunch that day was a real tense meal. I heated up soup and made grilled-cheese sandwiches, and we sat together at the kitchen table in uneasy silence. For once in my life, I wanted the phone to ring. Maybe the highway patrol would stop Regina’s car. Martin had asked Cindy to try to discover the name of the cruise line with which Barby had sailed, and getting Barby here would be a great relief. Or my mother might tell me more about John’s prognosis. I had so much to worry about my thoughts were running around inside my head like hamsters.
Just as I began the dishes, I heard Hayden stirring, and this time he woke up ready to raise the roof.
I put a bottle in the microwave before I left the kitchen. I was getting numb from the unaccustomed responsibility for this baby. I had never been so tired in my life, and every time I heard him tune up to cry, I leaped into action to stave off any more wailing. My stomach clenched every time he made a noise.
An hour later, I had changed Hayden, fed Hayden, burped Hayden-in short, fulfilled my part of the bargain. But he wouldn’t go back to sleep. In my opinion, he should be out of the picture until the next feeding-changing-burping cycle; but it was one he didn’t seem to share. Not knowing what else to do, I was holding the baby, sitting on the couch in the library, staring down at the round face with more than a little frustration. Furthermore, I had an awful feeling that the half-done dishes were still sitting on the counter in the kitchen.
“Listen, you need to give me a break,” I said. “Don’t you know I only have so many interior resources?” I definitely felt the cupboard was pretty bare in my interior resources closet.
Hayden regarded me wonderingly. He didn’t seem to be concerned that he was at the mercy of a totally inadequate caregiver. His arms waved around. He made little noises, “eh” and a kind of creaky grunt being the most popular. With my free finger I touched the round cheek. It was so soft. Through his thin down of fair hair, I could see the pulsing place on the top of his head where his skull had not yet joined, or so Lizanne had explained it to me. It made this small life seem incredibly vulnerable.
I had a sudden, strange impulse: I would call my friend and priest, Aubrey Scott, and have him baptize Hayden.
If my hands had been free, I’d have slapped myself after I ran that idea through my head a second time. Baptism wouldn’t put a protective candy coating on Hayden. He wasn’t an M &M. And to assume the responsibility of having this child baptized would indicate I had given up on Regina bobbing to the surface to reclaim him, a terrible admission.
But I knew I would’ve felt a lot better if I could have just eased into the church and sort of casually had Aubrey sprinkle some water over this kid. I figured that Hayden Graham, son of Craig and Regina-if that was indeed who this child was- needed all the help he could get.
Confident that no one could hear me, I whispered, “You is booful baby.” Hayden’s hazy blue eyes focused on me. He smiled. My heart pounded suddenly, as if I’d just fallen in love. I beamed back at him as exaggeratedly as a children’s TV show host.
Sally Allison said, “Your lips are gonna fall off if you keep that up.”
I jumped. “Why’d you go and scare me like that, Sally? Good golly Miss Molly! You about made me jump out of my skin!”
“Sorry. You and Tiny Tim here just looked so cute.” Sally bent over to get a close look at my lapful.
“You heard about our predicament, I guess.”
“Mild-mannered reporter Sally Allison sees all, tells most.”
“Got any news?” Having had her look, Sally threw herself in Martin’s luxurious chair while my blood pressure finally settled back down to normal.
“Hmmm. Well, police found Regina’s car.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Sally was carefully patting her right hand against her bronze curls, a gentle sort of pat that wouldn’t disarrange the perfect arc they formed around her head. She was checking for holes. Next, she’d pull her compact out of her purse and powder her nose; then she’d rummage for a lipstick and redefine her mouth. This was Sally’s personal checklist. As she opened her compact, she said, “It was just across the state line in South Carolina.”
“Any sign of Regina?”
Sally shook her head. “No, honey, I’m sorry. But on the big plus side, no bloodstains.” Sally carefully crossed her legs, smoothing the skirt of her expensive green suit.
Hayden smiled at me again, and it dawned on me that he didn’t smell very good. In fact, that was putting it nicely.
“I can’t imagine what happened,” I said absently, wriggling forward on the couch so I could stand with the baby. I managed this, and took him to the living room, which I’d definitely settled on as the best place to keep the diaper bag and the rubberized pad that you put under Hayden before you took off his diaper. (Experience had taught me the use of the pad.) With scarcely a fumble and no missed snaps, I wiped Hayden’s bottom and changed him. I dropped the soiled wipes in the dirty diaper before I rolled it up and retaped it shut, a refinement of which I was extremely proud.
“Good job,” Sally said approvingly, taking the used diaper from me and marching through the dining room to dispose of it in the kitchen. I heard the gush of running water as she washed her hands.
“I take it Martin knows about the car?” I called.
Sally gave me a funny look. I caught the tail end of it as she rejoined me in the living room. “Yes, the sheriff came to tell him. They’re out there talking in the yard.”
In the yard. Why would Martin talk to the sheriff outside? It was cold, and windy, and… oh shit. Where was our unwanted houseguest? That was why Martin was keeping the sheriff outside.
“What’s wrong?” Sally was paying attention, as usual.
“Nothing!” I said brightly. I was darting little looks out to the hall, the dining room, the kitchen, to see if I could spy Rory. When I looked back at Sally, she was looking skeptical, to say the least.
“And you say,” she began, her. voice an extension of that skeptical look, “that you have no idea what happened out here? Excuse me, Roe, but that’s hardly like you.”
“Listen here, Sally Allison, I have a lapful of trouble without you adding to it,” I said, to my own surprise. Then I burst into tears. If I’d been able to choose, I could hardly have picked a more effective diversion. While Hayden lay on his back on the coffee table, looking around him with increasingly heavy eyes, Sally patted my shoulder vigorously.
I found myself Telling Sally All About It, which means I was telling her my singular emotional reaction to the whole day yesterday, culminating with the appearance of my mother in the kitchen this morning with her own
