Bun in the Oven: The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag, #6

by Jennifer L. Hart

  Slowly, ever so freaking slowly, the pain dulled and then subsided. I opened my eyes to see Leo and Marty, Kenny, Josh and Atlas all staring at me.

  “Is it time?” Josh asked, a miniature version of his father the picture of concern.

  I nodded. “Better take me to the hospital.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What do you mean, false labor?” I glared up at my ob/gyn with dislike.

  Neil squeezed my hand as though he were the one with an excruciating backache. “It’s okay, Uncle Scrooge. It happens.”

  “It’s not okay. I want to give freaking birth already,” The words ground out from behind tightly clenched teeth. I had unclenched my jaw and refocused on the doctor. “Are you sure?”

  Dr. Tate was a small slim woman with a graying bob cut and cat eye glasses who I had felt comfortable with up until thirty seconds ago. “Well, you’ve been here for,” she checked the clock on the wall to confirm, “Six hours now. Your water hasn’t broken, the contractions aren’t any closer together than when you arrived and you aren’t fully dilated.”

  “But can’t labor take a really long time?” I could not leave the hospital still pregnant. I refused to do so. “Maybe Baby X is just slow off the mark. She might take after my side of the family.”

  “That’s true.” Marty nodded as though that would somehow help the situation.

  Dr. Tate patted my arm. “I can check you again, just to make sure, but at this point I’m fairly certain. You’re experiencing Braxton Hicks, not real contractions.”

  The backache was easing as though to agree with her and I fought the urge to cry. “So what do I do?”

  “Just think of this as a test run to get all the kinks out.” She patted my knee reassuringly and began removing the equipment that monitored the baby’s vitals.

  Freaking fabulous. A test run. Just what the doctor ordered, har har har. I closed my eyes and flopped back onto the pillow. I was ready, damn it. Poised and set to endure the agony of being split in half for the sake of a new life.

  “Maggie,” Neil smoothed hair away from my face.

  I turned my face into his touch. “This really sucks.”

  He put his head against my own. “I know, love. Come on, let’s go home.”

  Everyone left so I could use the facilities and slither back into my muumuu. Once dressed, I placed my hand over the baby bump. “You know normally I’m thrilled to be leaving the hospital. You sure about this, kid?”

  There was a slow push on the left side as though the “fake” contractions forced my little one to readjust.

  “Come on,” I coaxed. “It’s got to be pretty tight in there. We have a whole room, just for you. All you got to do is get in position and hit the eject button. I’ll do the rest.”

  Nothing happened so I was forced to make my way out into the hall where Neil and Marty waited.

  “Well that was a big waste of time.” Trust my brother to say the exact wrong thing for the sake of a laugh.

  I elbowed him in the stomach but couldn’t suppress a smile even as I mumbled, “Jerk.”

  “Want me to take your car back?” Marty offered.

  “Sure.” I checked my pockets, but he dangled the keys to show he still had possession of them.

  Marty trotted off, leaving the two of us alone.

  Neil, probably sensing that I was in no mood for reassuring platitudes, took a different tact. “How’s the pain?”

  “Better.” It was a grudging admission, one that meant the doctor was right.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  I shook my head, trudging slowly to the elevator. The walking eased the backache from excruciating to barely tolerable.

  We rode in silence down to the first floor. Through the windows in the lobby we could see the rain coming down in sheets.

  “I’ll get the car.” Neil sprinted off in the direction of the parking garage before I could protest.

  I sat in the lobby and watched as people came through the automatic doors, closing umbrellas and wiping their feet on the large rubber mats that had been laid down to make the hard floor less treacherous for the ill or infirm.

  My brain felt as though it was in hibernate mode. I had that zoned out feeling I sometimes got when the lines were ridiculously long and slow moving at Walmart. Like I was just an observer for everything going on around me, a witness and not really capable of holding a thought.

  A television was on in a waiting room off to one side. I could see the screen mounted on the wall from my position. Eric’s smirking face appeared alongside a pretty dark haired woman. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing the Juice Jet commercial.

  Numbers flashed across the screen, a phone number to call and order now. Did people actually buy crap via phone anymore? It seemed like such an old fashioned way to do business in the electronic age. Were operators really standing by to fulfill emergency juicing needs?

  Eric smoldered at the camera, just as tall and buff as he’d been in my memory. The screen changed and I saw a picture of Franklin White. He wore humongous ugly swim trunks and a white wife beater. Clothes specifically designed to enhance his size. The screen split with an image of Eric in a black tank and jeans, looking more like an advertisement for an all-male review than a kitchen gadget. The men looked enough alike that someone not paying close attention could mistake them for the same guy.

  The pictures were replaced by the brunette who was demonstrating the ease and efficiency of the Juice Jet. In went the carrot, out came the juice, wham, bam, thank you ma’am. A mess of pulp and fibrous carrot remains spit out the side. She handed the cup to Eric, who downed it and then smiled to show the audience that no, it didn’t taste like crap.

  “You ready?” Neil had arrived at my side and offered me a hand.

  I looked up at him blankly for moment, having forgotten where I was and why. Then I nodded and got to my feet. “I was watching Eric’s commercial. It’s weird to see him so alive and then remember he’s dead.”

  Neil said nothing, just held his jacket so it covered both of us and ushered me out into the rain.

  He got me settled and then ran around to the driver’s side.

  “Detective Capri called me today.” He said as he circled the roundabout at the edge of the hospital drive.

  “What? Why?” And how come I felt like a kid who hadn’t been doing her homework all of a sudden.

  “She said you reported a B&E next door, but then changed your mind when she showed up.”

  “It was Marty.”

  “He broke into Sylvia’s house?”

  “He still had a key. I guess he left some stuff there and thought it would be a good idea to go in and get it.”

  “Marty talked to Sylvia?” Neil blinked. “Did you know they’d kept in touch after they moved?”

  “It’s not my business.”

  “Did he say what it was he wanted?”

  “Who knows with Marty? What does it matter?”

  Neil drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Maggie, think for a second. Marty’s been back here at least twice since they moved. Plenty of opportunity to drop in next door and get whatever it is they were missing. Also time to return any keys he might still have had. So why would he wait until Eric’s been found dead in the garage and Sylvia was missing to retrieve something from their place?”

  I’d just chalked it up to my brother’s horrific sense of timing, but Neil had a point. “It is a little odd that he didn’t come to our house first. He didn’t even tell me he was coming.”

  Neil braked for a light then looked over at me. “I don’t think he went in there for himself. I think he needed to get something for Sylvia.”

  Something like a big wad of cash to pay the hitman who’d taken Eric out. Or maybe her passport. I opened my mouth to order Neil to drive faster so I could get home and confront my brother, but then snapped it shut without speaking.

  “What?” Neil asked.

  I shook my head. “I can’t co
nfront him about it.”

  “Why the hell not?” Light streamed through the rain spattered windshield, highlighting the tightness of my husband’s jaw.

  “Because she didn’t come to me, she came to Marty. And if she had Eric killed, he’s an accomplice.”

  “All the more reason to say something.” Neil urged. “Talk to him, convince him to go to Capri with what he knows. You trust her, right?”

  When I nodded he continued. “Maybe she can convince Sylvia to come in out of the cold. If she had Eric murdered she needs to stand trial.”

  I shivered at the thought of Sylvia, fresh from labor and delivery, incarcerated. Or convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. “What about Astrid?”

  “She’ll go to a relative. Hell, we’ll take her in if there’s no better option.”

  I blinked at him. “You’d be willing to do that? But when she offered us the baby before you didn’t even want to consider it. What’s changed?”

  Neil snorted. “Other than everything? For starters, Astrid’s innocent in all this. And if her mother goes to prison for having her father killed, she’ll need a good home with supportive people.”

  “What about Baby X, though?” I asked rubbing my belly.

  He shrugged. “They’ll grow up together, like twins born a few days apart.”

  I swallowed past the lump that had formed in my throat. “You make it sound really simple.”

  “It is really simple. This is a police matter and who cares if you have a little egg on your face for protecting your brother.”

  “I don’t want Marty to get in trouble. He just got promoted and he’s starting this new job.”

  Neil laid a hand over mine and squeezed. “We’ll talk to him, Uncle Scrooge. Together. Find out how much he knows and take it from there. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  UNFORTUNATELY BY THE time we arrived home Marty was gone.

  “Leo drove him back to Boston.” Josh said. “They left about ten minutes ago. Uncle Marty said you guys were on the way. I thought the baby was coming?”

  “Not yet, Scamp.” I murmured as I exchanged looks with Neil. I could tell he was thinking the same exact thing I was.

  Damn you, Marty. My brother was far too sneaky for his own good. Or in this case, Sylvia’s.

  “Try Leo’s cell.” My husband urged.

  I did, but it went straight to voicemail. “He shut it off.”

  “No, his cell phone died. Grandma called the house because she wanted news and said she couldn’t get a hold of Leo or Dad.”

  “Left mine at work.” Neil admitted. “When I got Leo’s call earlier I rushed out of there so fast I didn’t even realize it.

  “So that’s it then.” I trudged over to the couch and eased myself down. “Nothing more we can do.”

  “Josh, head to bed buddy.” Neil ruffled his son’s hair and waited until the door to the boy’s room closed behind them before sitting beside me. “You can still call Capri. Tell her it was Marty who was in the Wright’s house.”

  I shook my head. “We don’t know how deeply involved Marty is. He might not even know where Sylvia is. For all we know he’s leaving her stack of cash in a bus station locker and maybe he didn’t know about the murder until I told him. It’s one thing to convince Marty to go to Capri and another entirely to fink on him.”

  Neil stood up and started to pace. “Maggie,”

  “Neil,” I said in the exact same tone. “He’s my brother. He has a solid job and is the provider for a wife and child. You can talk until you’re blue in the face but you won’t change my mind on this.”

  “If Capri finds out you covered for him, she could charge you with obstruction of justice.”

  I lifted my chin and set my jaw. “I don’t care.”

  He threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. I’m going to bed.”

  “Fine.”

  He reached down to give me a hand but I shook my head. “I’m not tired. Think I’ll watch some T.V.”

  “Have it your way,” Neil stalked off, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “You always do.”

  I channel surfed with a vengeance, not tracking what scrolled across the screen, not looking for anything in particular, mad as hell and with no real outlet. Atlas scrambled up on the couch beside me. He sighed and flopped his big head onto my leg.

  Stupid Neil. Stupid Marty. Stupid Sylvia for rekindling a relationship with stupid Eric who’d gotten his stupid self murdered. Stupid me for thinking I was in actual labor.

  Nothing was coming up laundry hag lately.

  I refocused on the T.V. The Juice Jet commercial came on, this time from the beginning.

  “Shut it off,” I told myself. Instead, I cranked up the volume. I never had been a great listener.

  “Can’t argue with these results.” The brunette said in a cheery voice. “Let’s talk to Eric, whose life changed dramatically after he invested in a Juice Jet.”

  The camera panned out, showing a clapping audience as Eric strode into the little faux kitchen. He mugged for the camera and smoldered at the hostess. For a moment my mind juxtaposed his smiling features with the frozen expression I’d seen.

  Frozen. Solid. Eric had been frozen solid.

  I sat up abruptly, staring at the industrial sized freezer on the set behind the two of them.

  Part of me wanted to rush down the hall to tell Neil, but the other part, the pregnant part, knew I wasn’t in any sort of shape to rush anywhere. Instead I reached for my cell phone and dialed Mackenzie.

  She picked up on the first ring. “Great timing, I’m falling asleep here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On a stake out. What can I do you for?”

  “Did you get a time of death on Eric Wright?”

  “Yup. It was 11PM the day he went missing. Why do you ask?”

  “He didn’t freeze to death, but he was frozen solid. Why would someone do that?”

  Mackenzie didn’t think about it for more than a few seconds before she came back with, “To store the body for later disposal. Corpses smell real bad, real fast.”

  “Okay, so someone abducts him from the house or somewhere within walking distance, shoots him and then stuffs him into a freezer, planning to return his body to his own house for some unwitting person to find. Right?”

  “I’m with you so far,” Mackenzie said. “What of it?”

  “Jamie Greer was shot execution style and left floating in his own pool. So if the plan was to shoot Eric and stuff him in his own freezer, why would the killer take him somewhere else to be frozen? I mean, if he was alive they would risk him escaping, right? Wouldn’t it be better than transporting the body, maybe even twice? Once to get him out of the house alive during daylight hours and then again once the deed was done?”

  There was silence for a long moment, then. “Hot damn, girl. You are good. So we need to look at people with access to industrial strength freezers large enough to fit a full grown man. Restaurant owners, hotels maybe and building cafeterias that service a lot of people.”

  My gaze slid back to the television where the brunette flirted and Eric swilled the carrot excretion. “Or maybe the set where Eric filmed the Juice Jet infomercial.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Neil found me at the kitchen table, staring at my laptop screen. “You didn’t come to bed at all?”

  I shook my head. “I had something of a breakthrough in the middle of the night.”

  Neil strode to the coffee pot and rummaged for the filter and grounds. “Catch me up.”

  It was probably a good sign that he was interested enough to ask. So, I shut the laptop and filled him in on my conversation with Mackenzie ending with, “She was in the middle of a case last night but she was going to send me a list of all the people who had access to the Juice Jet set after hours, around 11 PM, when Eric was killed.”

  “So why don’t you seem more happy about this?” Neil asked.

  “Because she
just texted me to say that my theory didn’t flesh out. The Juice Jet set is just that, a set. That wasn’t an actual freezer in the commercial.” I rubbed at my tired eyes. “Here I thought I was so smart, that I’d figured out something the cops hadn’t. Of course if the freezer had been real, Capri would have had the thing examined to within an inch of its life.”

  Neil came up behind me and started to massage my shoulders. “It was a good idea, Maggie.”

  I let my head loll forward as tension I hadn’t even realized was there left me. “I need Grace back.”

  Neil’s hands stilled. “I thought we were over that.”

  I turned in the seat to look at him. “I’m not trying to upset you, but Grace grounded me. She forced me to focus on myself and Baby X. She was my guide and I’m lost without her. Please, Neil. I don’t want to do this without her.”

  He searched my face. “What about another doula? Maybe your doctor could recommend one—”

  I shook my head. “I’m comfortable with her, she knows how to talk me down. It’s taken you over a decade to figure that out.”

  His lips twitched and I pressed my advantage. “What are the chances we’ll find someone else with that skill set at the eleventh hour?”

  He turned away, walked toward the sink, braced his arms on either side and hung his head. I wondered if he was thinking about Bradley Patterson or any of my other misadventures, when I’d almost been lost to him forever. Or if he was cataloging all the times I’d pushed and prodded until he finally caved. Whatever it was, his was the posture of a man at war with himself.

  “Think about it.” I rose and headed down the hall to the bathroom so I could sneak my shower in before Kenny and Josh got up.

  Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to ask Neil to go against his instincts. Of course I believed Grace posed no threat to me or Baby X, but that didn’t mean Neil would be comfortable having a murderer’s daughter in the delivery room when our vulnerable child was born. But I kept thinking about my false alarm, the panic that had seized me both when I’d thought the time had come and when I realized it hadn’t. Grace would have been timing my contractions. She might have realized they weren’t getting any closer together.