He answered on the third ring, and instead of hearing the soothing sounds of the sixties and seventies in the background, what sounded like the squeal of an electric saw accosted her ears.
“Declan?”
“Hey, hi. How are you?” he asked, sounding flustered. The grinding noise stopped.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Hm? Nothing. They’re doing some construction next door.”
“You’re outside?”
“Hm? Oh. Yep. What’s up?”
“Oh. Things have gotten complicated here.” She paused a moment, weighing the pros and cons of sharing her trip to jail and decided to come clean. “I spent the day in jail.”
“What? Did you say jail?” he asked as the sound of a saw pealed again.
“Yes, but it was a misunderstanding. We think my aunt might be coming back to this area to look into a missing baby case. It’s crazy. Someone stole someone’s baby and replaced it with a blind one.”
“Uh-huh.”
Charlotte didn’t feel uh-huh was the appropriate response to her news. The construction had to be getting to him.
“How about I call you later when you’re home and it’s quiet?”
“Right.”
“Right, what?”
“Right, uh...” Declan paused. “I’m not sure. I’m sorry. I’m a little distracted—”
“I can tell. That’s why I said I’ll call you later.”
“Oh. Yep. That would be better. It’s crazy noisy here.”
“I can hear that. Okay, so I’ll talk to you—”
“Hey, can I ask you a quick question first?”
Charlotte watched the osprey dive. “Sure. It’s not noisy over here.” Quite the opposite. The place was tranquility personified. “I can’t promise you’ll hear my answer, though.”
“I’ll put my finger in my other ear. Do old men check the weather every morning?”
“What?” As promised, Charlotte heard every word he said, but the question didn’t make a lot of sense.
“I said, do all old men check the weather in the morning? Is it a thing?”
Charlotte laughed. “Yes. It’s like a full time job after retirement. Especially in Florida where it changes every five minutes.”
Declan made a noise that sounded something like a growl and a grunt had a baby.
“Why?” she asked.
The saw wailed again, as a hammer sang backup.
“Nothing. I’ll talk to you later. Be careful. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Charlotte hung up and leaned back on her hands to watch a paddle-boarder paddle by. She waved and the woman waved back.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head to catch the last of the day’s winter sun.
Now she had three mysteries to solve. The location of her mysterious aunt, the location of the missing baby, and what the heck Declan was up to.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kim watched Josh bounce the fussy baby on his knee.
Their baby might have been blind, but this child was fussy.
No.
Worse than fussy. He was some sort of demon child.
I am being punished.
There was no doubt of that.
Josh Jr. had been sweet. She could tell he had a really good heart. And, most of all, he’d been her baby.
She felt the tears welling up in her eyes for the hundredth time and turned so her husband wouldn’t see.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Josh.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Nothin’. Hormones.”
Josh shook his head and handed the baby to her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. All he does is cry now.”
She bounced Josh Jr. up and down against her chest to get him to settle.
Except it isn’t Josh Jr., is it? You terrible, terrible woman.
She walked to the window to turn her back to Josh.
Why did I do it? What was going through my head?
It was a mistake. She knew that now. She didn’t want this woman’s devil baby, she wanted her baby. It didn’t matter that he was blind. Josh would just have to deal.
She turned and glared at the side of her husband’s head as he watched ESPN, beer in hand.
This is all his fault.
She would have never traded her baby for another if she hadn’t been so terrified of Josh finding out his precious sports-star son was blind.
What now?
Josh looked at her as if he’d felt her hate burning into the side of his face. “Can you shut him up or take him—” His frown deepened. “What’re you lookin’ at?”
“Nothin’,” she muttered. She headed toward the bedroom.
“I swear, you’re like a crazy woman lately,” she heard him call as she left.
She flipped the door shut behind her and sat on the edge of the bed to bounce the baby on her knee. She stared at him as if he were an alien, her teeth clamped so tight her jaw began to hurt.
I want my baby back.
Chapter Thirty
Hunter made a looping arc to head the opposite way on her paddleboard. She saw the young woman at the end of the dock, apparently still on her phone call.
Here we go.
She knew when she saw Angelina gather the girl from jail, she’d have to talk to her. How did this girl know Angelina? What were the chances someone staying at the Loggerhead Inn would be involved in the case she came to solve?
Life was starting to get pushy. It’d felt like a sign when she saw the missing baby case happened in Jupiter Beach. Or, maybe she forced herself to believe it was the universe sending her a message. Swapped babies wasn’t quite the sort of case she usually sank her teeth into.
But now, to have someone from the hotel involved...
The universe was getting a little heavy-handed.
She looked up at the blue sky.
I’ll go home when I’m ready, dammit—
The
