Mama Stalks the Past

by Nora Deloach

  Daddy threw back his head and laughed. “I’m with you, boy. Land like that needs cleansing.”

  Mama looked at Daddy, then studied Moody for a moment. “If you’re sure that you don’t want it, I’ll go with my first inclination. I’ll give it to the county, let them use it as a nature preserve, so everybody can enjoy it.”

  Moody smiled for the second time. “That’s fine with me,” he said, satisfied. “I’ve got enough taxes to pay on Grandma’s piece of property in Darien. Lord knows she’d turn over in her grave if she thought I’d sold that or lost it for taxes.”

  Kilroy reached for another giant helping of lemon cream pie. “Miss Candi,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve put in this food, but if it makes me sick, it’s worth every bit of the pain and the pumping of my belly.”

  Daddy started rubbing his stomach, like he does when it’s more than satisfied. He reached over and touched Mama’s cheek. “Baby,” he said, his voice warm, tender, “you’ve outdone yourself on this one, you’ve really outdone yourself this time!”

  And Mama smiled.

  If you enjoyed Nora DeLoach’s MAMA STALKS THE PAST, you won’t want to miss the latest mystery starring Candi Covington and her daughter Simone, MAMA ROCKS THE EMPTY CRADLE.

  Look for MAMA ROCKS THE EMPTY CRADLE in hardcover from Bantam Books at your favorite bookstore in December 1998.

  AND TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PREVIEW.

  MAMA ROCKS

  THE EMPTY CRADLE

  by Nora DeLoach

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I’d failed.

  Frustration hung over my head like a halo. The task hadn’t been hard. My boss had given me a routine assignment, one that normally took me less than a week to do. “Run a paper trail, find this witness; our client swears he exists,” he’d said. Then he gave me a name, a description, and an approximate age.

  When I didn’t come up with the person, my boss, one of Atlanta’s best defense lawyers, plea-bargained for his client. Then he boarded a plane from Hartsfield to take a European vacation.

  I sat, staring at a diploma that I’d taken so much pride in earning, and thinking about the day I’d interviewed for the position of paralegal in Sidney Jacoby’s research department. I’d already had five such interviews in less prestigious law offices without a hint of a job offer.

  Except for my urge to flick dandruff from his shoulders, I swiftly sized Sidney Jacoby up to be pretty cool. Sidney looked down at my résumé, then back up to meet my eyes. “Simone Covington,” he said, as if he liked the sound of my name.

  I nodded.

  “Graduated from Emory, I see.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you going on to law school?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I like the legal research.”

  Sidney laughed. “I like the research myself,” he admitted. “Did a lot of that when I was in law school.”

  “You were a paralegal?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” he said, shaking his head, his dark brown eyes twinkling in a way that made me sure he could be warm with compassion at one moment and cold at the next. He leaned back in his seat, and crossed his fingers in front of him. “Nobody can tamper with the truth,” he continued. “If you dig deep enough, peel off all the layers of appearances, cut away through the lies, and strip through the absurdities, you’ll find the truth, Miss Covington.”

  I smiled.

  “The adrenaline you feel from the experience is priceless,” he said.

  My eyes widened. I believed the man, believed he shared my passion for getting to the heart of things.

  “I suppose we have a gift,” I heard myself say.

  “Yes,” he agreed, as if I had said something profound. His eyes twinkled. “And don’t you ever take that gift for granted, Simone Covington.”

  The next day, Sidney Jacoby telephoned me and made me a generous offer.

  I’ve worked for Sidney for five years now, five years in which he had never taken a vacation. Oh, he’d planned to get away, all right—every detail of a six-week tour of Europe from the time the plane leaves Hartsfield until it lands in London, he had planned. But he had never done it.

  When I admitted that I’d come up empty-handed in my search for our witness, Sidney didn’t say much. But I was sure he was disappointed. I suppose that’s why I was thinking about the day he had interviewed me, remembering our mutual belief in digging until we got what we sought.

  Still studying my diploma, I reached for a box of Godiva chocolates and my phone and called my mama. “Sidney’s gone on vacation,” I told her.

  “Good, then you can take some time off, too—come home,” she replied.

  “Just because Sidney is out of town doesn’t mean that there isn’t any work for me to do.”

  “It’s midsummer. Sidney needed a vacation and you do, too.”

  “When I told Sidney that I couldn’t come up with his witness,” I told Mama, “he stared like he saw something in me that he’d missed all these years—”

  “Simone,” Mama interrupted. “You’re doing it again. Overreacting. It’s normal for people to take vacations in the summer and Sidney is normal. Besides, if that witness existed, you would have found him. Sidney and I both know that!”

  I swallowed. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t push me to keep looking,” I said, my spirit lightening.

  Mama’s voice was softer. “Forget the case. Take a week’s vacation and come home—I need you.”

  “You want help to solve another murder?” I asked, and laughed.

  Mama laughed, too, a light musical sound. “Not this time,” she told me. “I’m scheduled for surgery first thing Monday morning.”

  I sat up straight. “What kind of surgery?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing serious,” Mama replied. “I’m just having bunions removed from both my feet. I’d planned for James to go with me to the hospital—”

  “Hospital?”

  “It’s outpatient surgery, Simone,” Mama said. “Anyway, you’d be a big help to me. With Sidney out of the country for six weeks, you can spare a week of your vacation, can’t you?”

  “Cliff—” I started to say.

  “You and Cliff will have at least two weeks left to do something together. But, tell you what I’ll do,” Mama said, and I knew I was about to be bribed. “You come home on Friday, you and I will shop and cook on Saturday, then Cliff can drive here and have Sunday dinner with you, me, and your father.”

  My boyfriend Cliff is a divorce lawyer who is working hard to become a partner in his firm. The thought of how much Cliff and I both loved Mama’s cooking whirled through my mind. “Cliff has been pretty busy with another one of his detachment clients,” I said.

  “Divorces seem to be plentiful these days,” Mama commented.

  I nodded although she couldn’t see me. “It’s worst when a client thinks her divorce lawyer should be at her disposal every minute of the day.”

  Mama didn’t say anything.

  “How long will you need me?” I asked again. My spirit rose at the thought of eating another one of my mama’s meals.

  “A week,” she said.

  “A week,” I repeated, thinking that Sidney would surely expect me to use some of my vacation time while he was gone, especially to take care of my mama.

  My mama’s name is Grace, but she’s called Candi because of her candied sweet potato complexion.

  My parents are originally from Otis, South Carolina. They got married right out of high school and my father joined the Air Force. After a career of thirty years and the birth of my two brothers (Rodney and Will) and me, Captain James Covington retired and he and Mama moved back home to Otis, a town of five thousand people.

  On Saturday morning, we were in Winn Dixie shopping for groceries when the baby’s wail rang through the aisles. It sounded like somebody had stuck a hand down the infant’s throat and squeezed its intestines.

  I flinche
d. Mama held her shopping list in one hand, a can of mushroom soup in the other. She was saying something about sodium when the child’s second scream broke her concentration. She glanced in the direction of the cry. “Something is wrong with that child!” she said, softly, putting the can of soup back on the shelf.

  A voice over the loudspeaker suggested that shoppers visit the produce section … watermelon, grapes, and peaches were on sale. Then one of my favorite songs by the Manhattans began to be piped through the store.

  Mama eased her shopping cart toward the juices; I hummed along with the music.

  The baby screamed again, the sound as sharp as a police siren. Mama looked at me; I threw her a look of reluctance, but it didn’t do any good. She was going to see what the matter was with that child and that was all there was to it. I shrugged, then followed her toward the noise.

  On the next aisle, near the canned vegetables, we spotted a woman who looked all of thirty years old, who smelled powerfully like the camphor used for canker sores. She was holding a baby and shaking it. The woman’s skin was dark. She had small eyes, and a very large nose. As we walked toward her, she looked scared, almost terrified.

  I glanced at the baby … it was beautiful, although its tiny face was as red as the labels on the cans of tomatoes that were on the shelf. It wailed again.

  “Birdie Smiley, what’s wrong with that baby?” Mama demanded.

  Birdie stammered but she didn’t stop shaking the baby in her arms. “I-I had no business—”

  Mama interrupted impatiently, “That’s Cricket’s baby, Morgan. What have you done to that child?”

  Birdie didn’t look up. Instead, she began shaking the baby harder. The baby screamed.

  “Stop that!” Mama shouted, then she snatched the crying baby from Birdie’s arms. “If you keep that up you’ll knock the wind out of her—she’ll stop breathing!”

  Birdie’s body was trembling. Beads of sweat were on her forehead. “I-I ain’t got no business keeping her … ain’t got no business letting her come with me … I just remembered, I ain’t got no business keeping nobody’s baby!” The words poured from her mouth like a hot flood.

  Mama was cradling the sobbing baby in her arms, looking down into its wide-open eyes. “Now, Morgan,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be all right!”

  “I ain’t got no business keeping a baby,” Birdie stammered. “Doctor told me I ain’t got the nerves for it … ain’t got no business … can’t take care of no baby … won’t do it again!”

  The baby hiccupped and stopped crying. “I was at the hospital the day this baby was born,” Mama said, as if talking to herself. “She had the brightest eyes, and when you talked to her, she paid attention like she understood exactly what you were saying.”

  I looked closer at Morgan. She was indeed enchanting. For a moment, I felt a strange inkling, like the prickle of an unfamiliar emotion. Morgan’s eyes charmed me, too.

  “Is Birdie some kin to Morgan?” I asked, thinking that such a nervous woman had no business taking care of this delightful baby.

  “I don’t think she is,” Mama answered. “Cricket Childs, Morgan’s mother, is one of my clients.”

  Mama works for the Social Services Department. “Then this beautiful child is the other side of the coin of a single-parent home,” I said.

  “I suppose,” Mama replied, in a tone that told me that she didn’t think my statement was relevant.

  As long as Morgan held on to my eyes, I had to agree with Mama. This captivating baby girl looked almost a year old. She had thick black hair and a flawless milk-chocolate complexion. Her eyes were dark and bright, her mouth small and round. She smelled of Johnson’s baby powder. But cuteness wasn’t all there was to this little girl. There was something bewitching about that child’s gaze.

  Mama smiled down at Morgan, clearly having fallen in love. This baby’s bright beckoning eyes had that kind of power. “I can’t imagine Cricket leaving you, sweet child,” Mama whispered.

  Birdie Smiley stood anxiously rubbing her arm and staring at Mama and little Morgan when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls eased up quietly beside Mama. In Otis, these three women are jokingly called the “town historians” because they go out of their way to know everything about everybody in Otis. Mama actually finds them helpful. She calls them her “source.”

  I was surprised to see the ladies, but Mama glanced at them as if she’d known all along that they were in the store. “Ladies,” she said, without taking her attention from the smiling baby, “it’s good to see you.”

  “I told you,” Sarah Jenkins said, her voice strong despite her pasty complexion and constant preoccupation with her health, “that was Cricket’s baby hollering.”

  Annie Mae Gregory is an obese woman, whose body is the shape of a perfect oval and who has dark circles around her stonelike eyes; Annie Mae always reminds me of a big fat raccoon. When she looks at you a certain way, she appears cross-eyed. She asked Mama, her jaws shaking like Jell-O, “Candi, what are you doing with Cricket Childs’s baby?”

  “I ain’t got no business—” Birdie Smiley muttered, as if talking to herself again.

  Mama glanced up. “Now, Birdie, Morgan is just fine now.”

  Carrie Smalls is a tall woman with a small mouth and a sharp nose. She holds her body straight, like she’s practiced so that her shoulders wouldn’t slump—I’ve told Mama more than once that it’s Carrie Smalls who gives strength to the three women’s presence, who gives a measure of credibility to what these three say. Carrie Smalls looks the youngest; she dyes her hair jet black and lets it hang to her shoulders. Now she looked down into Mama’s arms at the baby girl. “Where’s Cricket?” she asked, in an authoritarian tone.

  Just about that time, Koot Rawlins, a large woman known for being full of gas, swung into the aisle and belched. Koot’s shopping cart was full of lima beans, rice, fatback bacon, and Pepsi. She nodded a greeting but kept walking.

  I went back to staring down into little Morgan’s face. “My friend Yasmine, the beautician, she had a party a few weeks ago—a young woman named Cricket was there who told me she lived in Otis. Could she be this baby’s mother?” I asked.

  Mama’s attention shifted back between me and the baby as if she was surprised. “There’s only one Cricket Childs that lives in this town, and she’s Morgan’s mother, yes.”

  Annie Mae Gregory shook her head impatiently. “Where in the world is Cricket now?” she snapped.

  Sarah Jenkins looked around. “I declare, Cricket’s got her share of faults—”

  “Whatever Cricket’s faults,” Mama interrupted, “she’s a good mother. I can personally vouch for her devotion to this child.”

  Carrie Smalls shrugged. “I reckon you think ’cause your job throw you to be with her that you know her better than anybody else. My question now is where is Cricket, and why is she letting her baby cause so much confusion in this grocery store?”

  “Cricket isn’t far,” Mama said, convincingly. “She must have left Morgan with Birdie for just a few minutes.”

  Carrie Smalls motioned to her two companions that it was time for them to leave. “You work for the welfare, Candi,” she told my mother. “You know better than anybody else that if Cricket doesn’t take better care of her child, it’ll be your place to take her away from Cricket and put her in a home where she’d be properly taken care of. A grocery store ain’t no place to drop off a child—”

  “I don’t think it’s fair to say that Cricket dropped Morgan off in the store,” Mama pointed out. “Birdie is taking care of the baby.”

  Carrie Smalls responded sharply, “There are times when Birdie can’t take care of her own self, much less take care of a hollering baby!”

  I watched the three women shuffle down the aisle toward the fruit and vegetables. But Mama ignored them. She was still staring at the baby in her arms. “Well find your mama, sweetheart,” she whispered. Her words seemed to hold the child’s attention.
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br />   Suddenly, I decided I shouldn’t be a part of this scene. Let me explain. I-I … well, I just don’t have a very strong maternal instinct. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t like babies—it’s just that they don’t turn me on like I’m told they are supposed to do!

  Birdie Smiley, whose bottom lip trembled and who hadn’t spoken since Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls had moved on, now stepped backward, knocking down a few cans from the shelf.

  Mama didn’t look at Birdie. “Morgan,” she was saying, “you are a pretty little thing, now aren’t you?”

  I remembered I wanted some Famous Amos so I turned and walked toward the cookie row.

  A few minutes later, I was standing in the ten-items-or-less checkout line when I saw Sheriff Abe, his deputy Rick Martin, and Cricket Childs run into the store like they were going to put out a fire. Something was wrong.

  In the back of the store, a crowd had formed around Birdie, Mama, Morgan, Sheriff Abe, Deputy Rick Martin, and Cricket. I had to push past Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls just to get next to Mama, who still held Morgan. Snatching the baby from Mama’s arms, Cricket was glaring at Birdie Smiley as if she knew it wasn’t Mama who meant her baby harm. “You’ve got a serious problem, crazy woman!” Cricket yelled.

  Birdie’s slightly-crossed eyes had a pitiful look in them.

  Cricket tapped her forehead. “You stole my baby from my car in broad daylight!”

  Mama’s eyes widened. “You didn’t ask Birdie to keep your baby?” she asked Cricket.

  Cricket’s nostrils flared; she held her baby close to her breast. “She stole Morgan from my car when I went into the Shell station to pay for gas! Thank goodness the lady in the store recognized Birdie’s station wagon. And thank goodness Miss Blanche drove up and told us that she’d just seen Birdie walk into this store with Morgan in her arms!”

  Sheriff Abe motioned to his deputy to disperse the gathering crowd. “Okay, folks,” Rick Martin said, his voice rising above the loudspeaker music, an old Beatles song. “Things are under control now. So go about your business, go on with your shopping.”