Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  Euphoria. By the time he snapped out of his version, she was barricaded behind the bathroom door. He could hear her humming something that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby.

  “Hand me that bottle of lotion from my dresser, will you? Second door to the left,” she called over the sound of rushing water.

  Well...not exactly rushing. Trickling would be more like it. He’d already noticed that up close, the house lost some of its bucolic charm and was just an old house, with worn floorboards, rattling windowpanes and a couple of wheezing window units fighting a losing battle to overcome the heat and humidity.

  He fetched her lotion, and while he was at it, he glanced around the bedroom. Just in case. Joe, after all, was a man with a mission.

  Seven hours later he was on his fifth cup of black coffee, which was the last thing he needed, when a nurse wearing scrubs came through to the waiting room. He stood, thinking it was about time, and she came on over.

  “Are you Joe?”

  “Has she had anything yet?”

  “Not yet. She’s asking for you again.”

  As frustrating as it was, Joe had figured it was only common decency to let her have her kid and catch her breath before he got down to business. Not that he’d had much option. Back at the house she’d been too distracted. While she’d timed her pains, he’d asked if she’d ever heard of a Ch’ien Lung vase, and she’d said, oh, that reminded her—she needed to feed her fish.

  She had a goldfish. Women were wacky, and broody women were worse than that. He’d given up on getting any reasonable answers and asked if there was anybody he could call for her.

  She’d said, yes, he could call her a cab because she might as well go in and stay instead of waiting until the last minute. So he’d made up his mind to stick it out. It wasn’t like she could run out on him, not in her condition.

  He’d stuck by her, and when the pains were eight minutes apart, he’d helped her climb into his truck, gone back and gotten her suitcase and driven her to the county hospital.

  After she was settled in her room and a string of folks wearing white or green had pulled the curtains shut and done whatever it was they had to do, he’d dragged a chair up beside her bed and helped her wait.

  He could’ve questioned her then, but he hadn’t. They’d talked about nothing in particular. Her goldfish. He was called Darryl. The weather. It was hot. Her garden—it needed rain. And then the pains started piling in on her, and he’d let her crush his fingers and wished there was more he could do.

  Not that it was any of his business, but she needed someone, and nobody else had showed up.

  “It won’t be long now,” he’d told her, hoping to hell he was right. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

  “I think I...left the...back door unlocked,” she’d said through clenched teeth.

  “I checked. It’s locked.” She had nice teeth. Not perfect, just nice and white and square. Joe tried to convince himself that she couldn’t possibly be involved. In the hospital gown, in spite of a few fine lines at the outer corners of her eyes and a few more across her forehead, she looked more like an overgrown kid than a woman in the process of having a baby.

  But she had the goods. She was fencing the stuff. None of the other women he’d talked to had been left with anything. The jerk had seduced them, promised them marriage, cleaned them out and left them, every last one Joe had interviewed, flat broke and either mad as hell or brokenhearted. Or both.

  This one was still in possession of the J. J. Dana jade collection. A collection that had been valued at a million and a half nine years ago when the old man had passed away and was probably worth a lot more now. And if she was carrying either a grudge or a torch for the jerk, she covered pretty well.

  Once they’d rolled her into the delivery room, Joe had returned to the waiting area. He’d considered going out and finding himself a hotel, figuring he could come back in a day or so, talk to her once she’d had time to settle down and wind things up. There was time. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  But he hadn’t. Instead he’d hung around some more. Waiting.

  “Are you the father?” Roughly an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. The woman in scrubs was back.

  Not about to get himself thrown out on a technicality, Joe cleared his throat and said, “He couldn’t be here. I’m standing in for him. Is she okay? Has she had it yet?”

  The nurse shoved a lank chunk of hair back up under her paper hat. “It’s a girl. Mother and daughter doing fine. She’s been moved to Room 211 and is resting now, but you can see the baby if you want to.”

  Joe didn’t know what to say. It seemed pretty callous to tell her he had no interest in babies, but the truth was, he didn’t. He’d delivered a few. Cops occasionally did. Sometimes he’d followed up with a visit, sometimes a donation, but it wasn’t his nature to get involved with the people he came into contact with through his work. Not that this case was work, exactly. It was more in the nature of a family obligation. Still...

  “Sure,” he heard himself saying. “Might as well.”

  Well, hell—somebody had to welcome the little tyke into the world. Once he’d done his duty he would check into that hotel and get something to eat. He’d had enough of machine food to last him a while. Candy bars. Peanuts. Barbecued pork rinds. One of these days he was going to have to get started on a health food and exercise regimen. Maybe after he wound up this business for his grandmother, Miss Emma, and returned home.

  Two

  She was no beauty, he’d say that for her. Practically bald, with a red face, fat cheeks and a sour expression, she looked like a bird that had fallen out of the nest about a week too soon. You had to feel sorry for something like that.

  “Hi there, Fatcheeks,” Joe whispered, after checking around to be sure no one was close enough to see him making a fool of himself. There was an elderly couple ogling the runt on the end and a man with his necktie dangling from his shirt pocket making googoo noises at the bundle in the crib three rows down. Assured that no one was paying him any mind, he relaxed. “You gave your mama a pretty rough time, you know that?”

  It occurred to him that looking after a newborn infant wasn’t going to be any cinch for the Bayard woman. Did she have any friends? Any family? What would she have done if he hadn’t happened along when he had?

  She’d have gotten along just fine, he told himself quickly, because he needed to believe it. She didn’t strike him as the helpless type. She wasn’t neurotic. She wasn’t sleeping under a bridge out on I-40. He’d learned a lot about her while she talked her way through labor. She’d grown up in an orphanage. Still—if things got tough, there were agencies she could call on. She was bound to have somebody. Nobody was completely alone.

  So he’d wait until she caught her breath, and then he’d ask her how the devil she’d come to be in possession of a valuable jade collection that belonged to a woman in Texas, and why she was selling it off, piece by piece. And while he was at it, he’d find out what her connection was to the joker who’d cut a swath across the south, leading women into one indiscretion after another, cleaning them out and skipping town.

  And he’d get his answers, too. Not for nothing had he been called the Inquisitor, with a capital I, back at DPD.

  He waggled his fingers against the nursery glass and whispered, “Yeah, life’s a pretty tough gig, kiddo, but with a little luck you’ll come through it just fine.” It didn’t particularly bother him that he sounded like a nutcase. The baby couldn’t hear him through the glass. Couldn’t even see him. Her eyes were swollen shut.

  “What you want to do is find yourself a nice farmer and settle down out here in the country where it’s pretty and peaceful, make a few babies, have yourself a few laughs—stay out of any major trouble and chances are pretty good you’ll make it through okay. Most folks do. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s the truth.”

  The infant labeled only Bayard Girl puckered up and began to wave her
fists and kick her tightly bundled feet. She opened her mouth, as if she was expecting a worm to be dropped in it, and, feeling helpless, Joe left.

  He needed a real meal, a bath and a three-day nap. Then he was going to get to the root of this business before the Bayard woman figured out what he was after and dug in behind her defenses.

  It was a wonder she couldn’t tell just by looking at him that he was a cop. Most folks could. His youngest sister, Donna, said it was attitude. Said it stood out all over him, even after he left the force.

  But then, both his sisters had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they were lousy judges of men.

  “Ms. Bayard—when can I see her?” he asked a nurse at the station.

  “Are you family?”

  He nodded. He was his sisters’ brother and Miss Emma’s only grandson. “I was just down the hall looking at the baby. She’s really something, isn’t she?” Which wasn’t an outright lie, either.

  “Then you might as well go on in if the door’s open. Supper trays’ll be coming around any minute now. After that, they’ll bring the babies around.”

  On the way to Room 211, Joe lined up his questions in firing order. If she was feeling up to it, he figured there was no real point in postponing the inevitable. The first round would have to go right to the heart of the matter, though, because once she tumbled to the reason he was here asking questions, she’d clam up, guilty or not. One thing he’d seen happen over and over again—a woman who’d just been made a fool of didn’t like to talk about it. Protecting her pride, she could come across as guilty as sin. On the other hand, a woman who really was guilty as sin could act as innocent as a preacher’s maiden aunt.

  In other words, there was no understanding a woman.

  “You awake?” He whispered. Her eyes were closed, but Joe had a feeling she wasn’t really asleep. He told himself she should have looked like hell, considering she’d just delivered a baby that weighed in at nine pounds, seven ounces. She did look tired, but mostly she just looked vulnerable and innocent and guileless.

  He studied her features, telling himself it wasn’t really an invasion of privacy because he’d announced his presence. At her best, Sophie Bayard was probably one damned good-looking woman. She wasn’t at her best, but there was still something about her worth noticing.

  Personally Joe had always preferred peppery little brunettes. Had married one, in fact. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a big, easygoing, sweet-smiling blonde when he happened across one in the line of duty.

  Sophie knew he was there. For some reason, she didn’t want to face him yet. She felt...raw. But she opened her eyes and even managed a smile. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired in her entire thirty-four years. Or hurting the way she’d just hurt. They said she’d forget the pain in a matter of days, that new mothers always did, but she hadn’t forgotten it yet.

  Besides, she was embarrassed. She’d panicked, which wasn’t like her. Normally she was calm and levelheaded to a fault. Everybody said so.

  How on earth could she have allowed a perfect stranger to mop her off, change her clothes, drive her to the hospital and sit with her all through her labor? She’d practically broken his fingers, hanging on to him while she waited to be wheeled into the delivery room.

  So much for her independent, self-sufficient new life-style.

  “I thought you’d be gone by now,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. She had a dim recollection of yelling a lot when the pain wouldn’t go away. She didn’t recall it helping much.

  “Nope. Still here. How’re you feeling?”

  “I hurt,” she said, which wasn’t what she’d intended to say at all.

  “You want me to call somebody?”

  “No, just pour me some water, will you?”

  He did, and then held her head up off the pillow so she could sip from the straw. “Where does it hurt?”

  “Everywhere, mostly. My toenails. My hair really hurts. My...well...like I said, mostly everywhere, but it’s getting better.”

  She remembered making an attempt to braid her hair at some time during the procedure, but then the pains had started piling in hard and heavy and she’d let it go.

  “Thank you for staying. You really didn’t have to. We’ll be just fine now. But thank you.” That sounded like a bread-and-butter note written by a second-grader. Her brain was functioning, only she couldn’t seem to hook it to her tongue.

  “You feel like talking?”

  She didn’t, but said she did because he’d been so nice and he seemed to want to tell her something. And she owed him, because if he hadn’t happened along at the right time she might have had her baby right there in the garden between the onions and the butter beans.

  No, of course she wouldn’t have. There’d been plenty of time. She would have called a taxi. She would have gotten over her momentary panic and handled everything just fine.

  “Have you seen her yet? Isn’t she beautiful? I still haven’t settled on a name.” As tired as she was, she felt all warm and glowy, just thinking about her precious little daughter.

  “Yeah, she’s really something. Listen—” He looked so fierce. She’d noticed that about him right off, even when she’d been all wrapped up in her own situation. He had a hard face, not a handsome one. Not like Rafe. “Are you up to answering a few questions?” he asked her, and she nodded, wondering how many times his nose had been broken.

  “Sure. My mouth’s about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as having a baby can make you feel like you’ve been in a car wreck? Especially my feet.”

  Joe reached down and jerked the crisp white spread loose from the mattress. “Your toes are bent. Hospital corners. Always hated ’em, myself.”

  “Oh, that feels better.” She wriggled her toes and smiled at him. “Go ahead, ask away. I’ll tell you anything I can, but if it’s about—”

  The clatter that had started down at the far end of the hall grew louder and stopped right outside her door. Someone brought in a tray, plopped it on the stand at the foot of the bed and left without a word.

  “Sink or swim, huh?” Joe said as he rolled the stand into position and then cranked the bed up a few turns.

  “They don’t have much help. I’ve been considering maybe applying for a job here myself, once the baby’s a little older.”

  “You a nurse?”

  “No, but I can do office work. I can use a computer. I could even help in the kitchen.”

  “You’re out of work?”

  “No, not quite. But I’m ready for a change, and they have a nursery here. That’s a big plus.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Joe lifted the cover off the plate. He knew hospital food. Texas or North Carolina, it didn’t make much difference. Meat loaf was meat loaf. Vanilla pudding was vanilla pudding. “You want me to cut anything up for you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my hands. But thanks. I don’t usually act this way, you know. Helpless, I mean. I’ve been looking after myself ever since I left school, and I’ve hardly been sick a day in my life. Maybe that’s why all this threw me.” She took a bite of meat loaf, grimaced and looked for the salt. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

  She threw him off stride. She was supposed to be evasive. Instead she was asking for it, which screwed up his theory.

  So he dragged up a chair, sat down and lined up his questions, but before he could begin, she asked one of her own.

  “Why did you stay? You don’t know me—you certainly weren’t under any obligation. Are you from the home? Should I know you? It’s been so long... I’ve kept up with a few classmates, but they’re all girls. Well, women, now.”

  She sipped her coffee, and Joe made a few mental notes and got set to try again.

  And again, she beat him to it. “Want my corn bread? It’s dry, but there’s some...well, I don’t suppose it’s butter, but it’s something, anyway. I could ring for a nurse and see if she could bring
you something to drink.”

  So they talked about the food and whether or not caffeine was any worse than decaf. Joe still hadn’t managed to get around to asking her if she was the brains behind Rafe Davis’s long string of robberies, or if she’d only acted as his fence when a woman in a lab coat came in and asked him to step outside.

  He did, feeling frustrated, but as soon as he went back inside and started to question her again, someone else came along with a clipboard, and he gave up.

  Forty minutes later, he had checked into a hotel, ordered room service, set the air-conditioning on max and run himself a tubful of hot water. He’d waited this long. He could wait a few more hours.

  The next morning Joe slept through the alarm. Slept until a crack of sunshine sliced through the drawn draperies and drilled through his eyelids.

  He ordered pizza for breakfast, did a few of the exercises the physical therapist had promised would put him back in peak working condition and then eased the resulting kinks out of his carcass under a hot needle-spray shower.

  He thought about riding out to the house while it was still empty, going over it with a fine-tooth comb and then facing her with the evidence. They could cut through a whole lot of crap that way.

  But he didn’t. Instead he called his grandmother and asked how she was feeling, and what she’d been up to. Frowning, he listened to her lethargic responses. “Well, look—I’ll be headed back in a few days. Right now I’m going to go by the hospital and check on Sophie and the baby. Remember, I told you about her last night? You wouldn’t believe how homely she is. The baby—not Sophie. I thought all babies were supposed to look like the kid in the toilet paper ads.”

  Sophie didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but then, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something she didn’t want to do. At least this time she had a good reason to get up. They were going home. She was taking Iris Rebecca Bayard home, and then they’d see how much of her old training from the Children’s Home she remembered. She used to be pretty good with the babies but that had been a long time ago. Nearly eighteen years.