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Chapter 41
Vera thought she heard Elizabeth cry. She opened her heavy eyes and listened. There was the cry again—but it wasn’t Elizabeth. It was something outside. A cat?
A loud banging at her door prompted her to look at her phone on the bedside table. Four o’clock. That couldn’t be good. Was she ever going to get some sleep this night? First, that odd dream, and now this. She reached for her robe, and her pulse quickened. She flew down the steps after reaching for her cell phone. It felt cold and hard in her hands. The blue light from her phone seemed more than enough to illuminate her way. She pressed the button for her mother’s phone number. She had yet to hit SEND when she heard a voice.
“Vera! Open up! It’s me, Bill.”
She unlocked the door. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered. She took one look at his red face, bloodshot eyes, and swaying body and knew he’d been drinking.
“Vera, darlin’, there’s a baby on your porch,” he said.
Behind him, a police car with flashing lights went by.
“What?” Vera wondered if she was still awake or if she was dreaming.
“Look,” he said and pointed.
Vera cricked her head out the door and saw something move on her porch swing. She stepped out into the cool November air. Everything held a blue cast, even the grass. Between the streetlights and the night sky, blue light imbued her surroundings. She could see dust—or was it insects?—flying in streams beneath the streetlights. But mostly she saw a small baby wrapped in a white blanket, one fist poking out toward the moon. Was that a hospital bracelet? It cried again. She reached for the baby and scooped it up to her chest. It was ice-cold. She opened her robe, placed the baby close to her skin, and ran back in the house.
“Bill, don’t just stand there. Call the police,” she said. “When you’re done with that, get a fire going and make yourself some coffee. You better get sobered up quick.”
Vera reached for an afghan that had been thrown across the couch and sat in her rocking chair next to the fireplace. She could hear Bill on the phone in the kitchen, rattling around the coffeemaker.
The baby fussed, as if she was going to cry a bit, but remained mostly quiet as she nuzzled into Vera, who was rocking her gently. She slid her hand over the baby’s arms and read the hospital bracelet—
BABY JANE DOE, EVIDENCE
. The baby was warming up quickly. Bill quietly wandered into the living room and started working on a fire. The fire ablaze in the fireplace, the room lit up from the glow, and the baby’s eyes closed. Her breathing was slow and steady.
BABY JANE DOE, EVIDENCE
. The baby was warming up quickly. Bill quietly wandered into the living room and started working on a fire. The fire ablaze in the fireplace, the room lit up from the glow, and the baby’s eyes closed. Her breathing was slow and steady.
Vera looked at her cherubic face and nearly melted from the sweetness.
It took only ten minutes for the police to arrive. Bill met them at the door and asked them to proceed quietly because there was another child upstairs, asleep.
“As I said, I was walking by and heard this crying noise. I thought for a moment that Elizabeth had gotten out,” Bill told Detective Bryant.
“And you picked up the baby and brought it inside?” Bryant looked at Vera.
“Yes,” she said, not looking away from the baby.
“Probably no evidence now,” he said, almost to himself.
“Sorry about that, but the baby was cold,” she said. “My first instinct was to warm it up.”
“It was a good instinct,” a slightly graying man told her, coming toward them.
“Hey, Doctor,” Detective Bryant said.
Vera thought she recognized him. Was he the ER doctor that worked on Beatrice’s neck?
“It’s cold enough for any baby to die of exposure outside, let alone this one. She did the right thing.”
“Yep, well, whatever,” Bryant said. Turning to Bill, he added, “I can smell you from here.”
“I was trying to walk it off,” Bill said. “And I was walking, not driving.”
The doctor came toward Vera and unwrapped the baby. He felt her pulse, listened to her heartbeat and lungs. “She seems fine,” he said with relief. “This poor kid. But I still don’t know how she got out of the hospital.”
“We have police looking over the security tapes,” Bryant said. “We were already out looking for her. One of the nurses realized she was gone.”
“I suppose I should take her back,” the doctor said reluctantly. “She’s a ward of the state, until things shake out.”
“What things?” Vera asked.
“Her parentage, for one. Who’s the father? And is her family capable of taking care of her? I mean, they’ve had nothing to do with this baby, as far as I know,” the doctor responded.
“Can’t you just run some of those DNA tests?” she asked, surprising herself that she was this sharp at this time of day, having been awakened in the wee hours.
The doctor chuckled. “Yes. But this isn’t some television show. And which man in Cumberland Creek should we get DNA from? Besides, it takes a lot longer than you think—especially when there’s no insurance to speak of—since so much is up in the air. Hospitals. Insurance. What a pain. I remember when you could really practice medicine, back when my dad was still working.”
“Mine too,” Vera said. “He worked right down the street.”
The physician’s head tilted. “That’s right. You’re Doc Matthews’s daughter.”
“You knew my father?”
He nodded. “Of course, and my father practiced in Bluestone.”
“Dr. Green? Yes. I vaguely remember him,” said Vera. His father was one of the few physicians her father had befriended. Her father thought very highly of Dr. Green and his family. They were similar to her own family, if she remembered correctly. They had only one child, and it also came later in life. Doc Green’s wife was a chemist.
“Maybe we can break this little reunion up and get out here and leave these good people to get some rest,” the detective said sarcastically, leaving Vera to wonder where his “bedside” manner was—or if he even had any.
“Why don’t you leave her here?” Vera said. “I mean, she’s sleeping so soundly, and I still have a bassinet in my room.”
“She’s a ward of the state,” Bryant replied.
“I think it would be fine, as long as you bring the baby back later this morning,” the doctor said. “Medically speaking, I think sleep is the best thing for her. I need to get some vitals, but I don’t think that’s even going to wake her up. She seems to be sleeping so soundly.”
“The doc’s orders trump mine,” Bryant said, looking at the sleeping baby. A softness came over his face that almost left Vera breathless. “Bring her to the hospital later this morning.”
Chapter 42
After finally falling back asleep, Annie dreamed of Detective Bryant again. It was an unsettling dream.
They were searching for a map, looking through piles of papers and books. The map was a life-and-death matter.
“Don’t worry,” he said more than once in the dream.
When the alarm buzzed and she opened her eyes, she was surprised by the light. Her dream was set in a dark and dusty place. A cave? A basement? Her arm reached across the bed and hit the alarm.
Okay, shake it off,
she told herself
. It’s time to get up and get breakfast going for the boys.
Okay, shake it off,
she told herself
. It’s time to get up and get breakfast going for the boys.
“Late night, huh?” Mike said when she entered the kitchen. He was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and eating toast. He’d make himself breakfast, but make the boys breakfast without being asked? Well, that never occurred to him.
She grunted, reached for a cup, and poured herself some coffee. She sat down at the table. “I stopped by to see Beatrice last night. I had quite a day.”
Obviously not paying any attention, he lowered his newspaper. “What did you say?”
She looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Never mind,” she said and smiled. “I should just keep my mouth shut until I have at least one cup of coffee, especially when you’re reading the paper.”
She saw movement out of the window on her front porch. It was Sheila in her bright red jogging suit, her hair needing to be brushed, and her lipstick smeared. Annie opened the door.
“Good morning, Sheila. What’s up?”
“Vera has the baby,” she said.
“What baby?”
“Sarah’s baby. They found it on her porch last night. Someone took it from the hospital. And they don’t know if they put the baby on her porch specifically or if the person who took the baby became scared when they saw the police.”
“The police?” Mike said, coming up behind Annie.
“Yes,” Sheila replied. “Someone stole the baby from the hospital, and the police were out last night looking for it.”
Mike looked at Annie, eyebrows lifted.
“No,” Annie said. “I didn’t know anything about this one. My eventful day had nothing to do with this incident. I was visiting Mary, then interviewed Rebecca’s mother, stopped by Sheila’s, then went to visit Beatrice. I was out late, but I don’t recall seeing any police.”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” Sheila said. “This was at three in the morning. Can you believe it? If you want to see the baby, you should go on over there. She’s got to take it back this morning.”
“At three I was waking up from a nightmare,” Annie said.
“You too? Vera had a doozy last night about dancing on a stage that was a book. Or something. See you,” Sheila said and started to leave. “Come to think of it, I had a strange dream, too. It just came back to me. I’ll tell you about it later.”
That was weird. That three women all had strange dreams last night. Was there a full moon?
Mike sighed.
Annie cringed.
“We agreed that this job would be perfect because it was freelance and wouldn’t take too much of your time. Damn, Annie,” Mike said.
“I know, Mike. But it comes in fits and spurts, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to gauge it.” Annie paused. “I’ll go over after I get the boys off.”
“Oh,” Sheila said. “Of course. And here’s some muffins DeeAnn sent over.”
“You’ve seen DeeAnn already today?”
“Oh yes,” Sheila replied. “And I bought you this to look at.” She walked in the house and placed a cloth bag on their kitchen table, just as Sam was making his way to the table. “Good morning,” Sheila said to him. “Muffins?”
He smiled sleepily and reached for a muffin.
“Chocolate raspberry,” Sheila said and smiled.
“Miss you, Mommy,” Sam said, attaching himself to Annie and pulling on her already divided heart. Mike’s eyes connected with hers—she knew what he was thinking.
“What’s in the bag?” Ben said as he tumbled in, looking over the muffins.
Sheila handed him one. “And this is for your mama.”
“What is it?” Annie said, reaching into the bag.
“It’s Cookie’s scrapbook,” Sheila said. “We gave up our investigation. It led to nothing.”
“Oh, I’ll look at it later,” Annie said. The next thing she knew, Mike was kissing her good-bye, the boys were yammering for juice, and Sheila was gone—back to her daily run around the neighborhood, though Annie wondered how much running she actually got done between muffin stops and delivering news and scrapbooks.
Suddenly it was just her and her chocolate-smeared boys.
“Chocolate for breakfast?” she said and smiled.
“I think we should have it every day,” Sam said.
“Me too,” Ben said.
“Don’t get used to it. Tomorrow it’s back to eggs or oatmeal.”
Later, after the boys left for school and she emerged from the shower, feeling like she could face the day, she spotted the bag on her table. What was so special about the scrapbook? she wondered, and glanced at the clock. She better get moving if she was going to meet the baby.
Chapter 43
Beatrice awakened with a book spread over her chest. Oh, bother, she had fallen asleep with
Leaves of Grass
again. The phone rang—and she let it ring. Whoever it was would surely leave a message if it was important.
Leaves of Grass
again. The phone rang—and she let it ring. Whoever it was would surely leave a message if it was important.
She felt the hard edges of the book and reached for her glasses. She vaguely remembered taking them off at some point. She sat up a bit on her pillow. Where had she left off?
Just then the phone began to ring again. She sat up all the way. “Damn,” she said, reaching for her bedside phone, then seeing Vera’s number on the display.
“What?” she said into the phone.
“That’s no way to answer the phone,” Annie said.
“What’s going on? Why can’t people just leave me alone?”
“Have you had your coffee yet?” Annie said, ignoring her question.
“No, I’m just getting up.”
“There’s plenty here, at Vera’s. She has Sarah’s baby.”
“What?” Beatrice’s heart leaped, and she hung up the phone.
Hmm.
Where was that blue sweater? And where were her sneakers? She desperately wanted to see that child.
Hmm.
Where was that blue sweater? And where were her sneakers? She desperately wanted to see that child.
When she finally arrived on the scene, Beatrice smelled the undeniable scent of buckwheat pancakes. Pungent. Delicious. She couldn’t wait to taste some. She was pleasantly met with a fresh stack of them on the table. Bill was cooking.
“Help yourself, Bea,” he said, smiling at her.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, grabbing a plate and heaping pancakes on it. “Now, where’s this baby?”
“Here she is, Mama,” Vera said, coming up behind her.
Elizabeth was toddling beside her and reached up for her grandmother. Beatrice placed the plate on the table and held Elizabeth. “Good morning, sweetie.” She buried her head in the mess of little girl in her arms. When Beatrice lifted her head from Elizabeth, she saw the baby looking up at her out of the cradle of Vera’s arms. She gasped. “Lawd,” she said. “I’ve never seen such blue eyes.”
“I have,” Annie said, coming up beside Vera. “On Luther.”
“Humph,” Beatrice said. “You don’t think that . . .”
“Who knows, Mama? You never know. We’ll surely find out after the DNA tests are done.”
“DNA?” Beatrice said, sitting down at the table, in front of the plate of pancakes. She spread butter over them, then looked back at the baby, who had an unnervingly mature look to her and seemed to like watching Beatrice.
Annie nodded. “Yes, they’re testing so they can find out the parentage of this baby.”
“You know, I had the weirdest dream last night,” Vera said after a minute. “I think it was all related to that scrapbook.”
Annie’s head cocked. “You know, I did, too.”
“I always have odd dreams, and the older I get, the worse it gets,” Beatrice said. “Last night was a doozy.”
“So we all had weird dreams last night about the scrapbook?” Sheila said, looking them all over. “I dreamed a wild dream about being back in art school, and Cookie was there, talking to me about art one minute, and the next minute I was absolutely naked in a cave and being chased by a huge scrapbook. The cave was so lovely, with lush moss and sparkly rocks.”
“Sparkly rocks? Calcite?” Beatrice said, remembering that there was calcite in the caves she loved in her youth.
Bill walked back into the room just as DeeAnn and Paige were coming in the front door, loaded down with breakfast food, murmuring hellos.
“What I want to know is what any of it has to do with the murders,” Bill said while pouring a cup of coffee.
“Any of what?” Sheila said. “We’re talking about dreams.”
“I thought we were talking about this baby and DNA?” Bill said.
“Keep up,” Sheila said.
Annie said to Bill, “Maybe the father of this baby knows who killed her mother. Or worse. Maybe he’s the one who killed her.”
“But why would he kill Rebecca and then try to kill the baby? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Bill replied.
“Murders rarely make sense,” Beatrice said. “And most criminals are not very bright, in any case. That’s why lawyers make such a damn fine living.”
He rolled his eyes.
“How is Cookie?” Beatrice asked him.
He looked away from her.
“Bill?”
“I don’t know, Bea. I’ve not seen her in a while.”
“What? You’re her lawyer!”
“Yes, but she’s refused to see me for the past several days.”
“And they are not letting anybody else in,” Annie said.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” Bill said after swallowing some coffee. “It doesn’t look good. I can’t defend her if she won’t talk to me.”
“I agree, Bill,” Sheila said after a few minutes. “Cookie is not the person we thought she was.”
“Now, hold on,” Annie said over the baby’s fussing. “Why would you say that, Sheila?”
“She doesn’t know,” Beatrice said to Sheila. “She doesn’t know about the scrapbook.”
Sheila said, “We found this scrapbook—”
“The one you were looking at last night? The one in the bag at my house?” Annie said.
“Yes. It’s beautiful. Obviously not done by a newbie,” Sheila said, crossing her arms.
“So, do you think that proves anything about Cookie being a murderer?” Annie said. “Honestly, I don’t believe you could turn on Cookie so quickly because of a stupid scrapbook.”
“Now, wait a minute. Nobody’s turned on her,” Beatrice said. “We’d all like to prove her innocence. But things don’t add up. That scrapbook is a work of art, and she claimed to know nothing about scrapbooking.”
“There could be a thousand reasons for that,” Annie said.
“Like what?” Bill said.
“Maybe she just wanted to fit in,” Annie said.
“Unlikely. She doesn’t seem to care about fitting in, walking around claiming to be a witch,” Beatrice said.
“What are you saying, Bea? Do you think she’s a likely suspect?” Bill said.
Beatrice paused and thought about it. “No, I don’t. But I’d bet my life that there’s more to her than what we know.”
“That could be said about anybody,” Sheila noted.
Beatrice thought that was an odd statement coming from the Scrapbook Queen of Cumberland Creek.
“Indeed,” Annie said. “Everybody in this room has had secrets or has one now. Cookie is human. She is entitled to a private life, just like the rest of us.”
Annie looked around the room at the other women. Sheila looked away; Beatrice looked straight at her, white eyebrows lifted; Vera looked at the baby; Paige, at the table, was looking deep into her pancakes. DeeAnn shrugged as she sipped her coffee. All of them had gathered this morning to get a look at the mysterious baby.
Sheila finally said, “Annie, I think you’re not seeing things clearly—”
“What is there to see?” Vera interrupted. “Who cares about the scrapbook? Okay. It’s odd. But we know Cookie. We know she didn’t kill anybody. That’s the important thing.”
“We don’t know her,” DeeAnn said, standing closer to Sheila. “I’m sorry. Just because she’s hung around here for about a year doesn’t mean we know her. We have no idea where she’s from or who her people are.”
Beatrice groaned. God, she hated that turn of phrase.
“Well, you know what? You could almost say the same thing about me,” Annie said, then turned and walked out of the house.
“Annie!” Vera called to her and followed her to the front porch, but as far as Beatrice could tell, Annie was gone. Beatrice turned back to her pancakes and looked back up at the baby. Annie was right about one thing. The baby had eyes just like Luther’s.
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