“That’s a big question.” Margaret Granberry hunched her head to her shoulder to push her flaming hair back behind her ear while she continued to feed the baby. “Were-are-you and Regina close?”
“No. I hardly know her.”
“In that case… I’ll tell you, I never could quite figure out why Regina and Craig got married. Their friend Rory was here all the time, and between you and me, I think there was something of a mйnage a trois going on… strange though that is to think of in Ohio farming country!” She laughed, and I tried to politely join in.
Margaret noticed my lack of enthusiasm. “I’m sorry,” she said, a smile belying her contrite words. “We tried that Missionary Bible Church last weekend, and the people there were so fire-and-brimstone, the contrast with our lovebirds out here was really sharp.”
“Martin’s parents went to that church,” I said. “At least, his stepfather made Martin and Barby go after he married their mother. They had a terrible experience there.”
“I heard about it from one of the women in my book readers’ club,” Margaret said. “His sister Barbara, Barby? She got pregnant, right? and they drove her out. I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up. It’s a famous piece of local history.”
“That was after Martin’s mother died, and Barby was just sixteen or fifteen, very young. Isn’t it just bitter, when you can’t conceive, how easily other women can?” I made myself drop that line of whine. “Martin’s stepdad got up in front of the church and denounced Barby and asked the congregation to pray for her.”
“What happened?” Margaret’s light eyes were bright with interest.
“Martin punched out his stepfather,” I admitted. “Then he joined the army.”
“What happened to his sister?”
“She was put in a home for unwed mothers, I believe.” When Martin told me the story, and it was one he hated to remember, it was because he was explaining why his family farm was in the hands of a man who hated him.
“You don’t know the rest of the story?”
“No. Martin was hazy on that part, because he had left for boot camp. I never had the nerve to ask Barby. She and I aren’t good friends. Besides which, I know that had to have been terribly painful.”
“Giving up your baby? I can’t imagine that.”
“But then, what kind of childhood would that baby have had in a household run by Joseph Flocken? Mothered by a sixteen-year-old?”
“Good points. Ones I should’ve considered, since my own husband was an adopted child. His parents were just great.”
“I’m glad for him. It must be a consolation, to know you were wanted enough to be selected over others.”
Margaret shrugged.
“Where do you think the footprints lead?” I asked, standing up to look out the side window. I hadn’t wanted to frighten Margaret, but it would have been wrong to ask her to come over because I was anxious without telling her why.
“Unless they go across the fields all the way to our farm, I think they’ll end in that little grove of trees in that hollow,” she said. She’d gotten up with Hayden propped upright on her shoulder, and she was patting him so he’d burp.
“Why?”
“Because that’s the only place big enough to hide a truck or car,” Margaret said practically.
I hadn’t thought about it, but if a prowler didn’t want to freeze his booty off, he’d have to have come in a vehicle, and that vehicle would have had to be parked somewhere unobtrusive. My neighbor was right.
“So how did the car, if there was one, get to the grove?”
“There’s a little turnoff from the highway there, and a dirt lane runs between the fields.”
“Oh,” I said lamely. Margaret knew her local geography. “Is that your land?”
“That’s the boundary between the farms. Regina would walk from there and back to the house every day. I guess she was exercising because she was pregnant.”
“And you really didn’t suspect?”
Margaret looked embarrassed. “I never said I didn’t know, exactly. I guess I did think she was expecting. But I had no idea she was as far along as she was.” Margaret wrinkled her classic nose. “I guess now… I should have asked her about it. But I didn’t think it was any of my business. The past three months, I didn’t see her to talk to that often. Where shall I put the baby?” Hayden had fallen asleep.
“I’ll carry him up.” Margaret eased the baby over to me, and I carefully navigated the stairs with his heavy little body clutched to my chest. My guest had helped herself to another cup of coffee by the time I came back down. She was looking out the window of the living room, and I joined her. The Granberry’s dark green Dodge pickup was parked to one side of the front door, and we stood side by side contemplating it. Margaret was about eight inches taller than I, and broad shouldered, but there was an air of feyness, of frailty, about her.
“I just can’t understand why Regina wouldn’t tell everyone she was pregnant,” Margaret said, her head moving gently from side to side in an amazed negative.
According to Margaret, Regina
“Why indeed,” I murmured, mostly to myself. The only reason I could think of… Oh, ew, no. I winced.
“You had a thought?” Margaret asked. “You look like you just ate a lemon.”
“What if she didn’t plan to keep the baby?”
“You mean, give it up for adoption?”
“Maybe. But I was thinking…” I just hated to voice the thought, and I couldn’t even formulate why I found it so loathesome.
Margaret was looking down at me expectantly. “What?” “What if she was carrying the baby for someone else?” “You mean, got pregnant on purpose? On commission, like?”
“Or got inseminated with someone else’s sperm, so the baby would be the true child of half the couple.” At least Margaret seemed to be able to follow my sometimes fractured thinking process. She was nodding.
“You may have something there, Aurora,” she said. “But I find it makes me think much less of Regina, that she would exploit someone’s infertility for her own support.”
She began to clear the few dishes off the table, and I began running hot water to wash them. As we washed, rinsed, and dried, Margaret told me about an art exhibit she and Luke had driven into Pittsburgh to see the week before, but I was still thinking about Regina.
Chapter Nine
The surrogate mother theory explained a great deal.
Why Regina had stayed out of sight while she was pregnant. She wouldn’t have wanted to answer a lot of questions.
Why she had money in the diaper bag. She would have been paid for her pregnancy, and presumably she would’ve received money for expenses during it. That would be why she and Craig had been able to afford to live without government aid, even though neither she nor Craig held a steady job.
“I’d been thinking,” I said slowly, “that Craig had gotten involved with some drug deal or some scam of his that had gone wrong. But that didn’t explain all the facts.”
Margaret shrugged. “I’ve had a month or two to wonder about it. Regina’s attitude seemed so strange.”
“But why would someone kill Craig? And take Regina?”
“Maybe nobody took Regina. Maybe she went.”
“Leaving her baby?”
“People leave babies all the time,” Margaret said, her face grim. “Luke and I lived in Pittsburgh before we moved back here so Luke could help his mother out during her last illness. The first year we were married, before we were trying to have our own child, this woman in our apartment building left her baby right outside our door. She was thinking since we didn’t have kids, we would be ecstatic, I guess.”
