by J. D. Robb
“Yeah, maybe. Sure, she’s fine. Just needed to rest. I hate that she’s missing it. It’s the ult party. Everything’s just frosty, and she was really looking forward to it.”
When Mavis started to water up, Eve crouched beside her. “Hey, don’t get upset. We’ll, um, we’ll put some cake away for her. And one of the favor things.”
“That’d be good. I’m never going to forget today, Dallas. Not if I live to be a zillion and five.”
“Just relax and enjoy. I’ve got to start the next round.”
Crazed game-playing females were slightly less scary than an emotionally wound-up, extremely knocked-up Mavis.
She got through the games, and with Peabody happily volunteering to deliver the booty, the party shifted to the present portion of the program.
Hoping to distance herself from the coos and squeals that broke out each time Mavis ripped at wrapping paper, Eve dropped into a chair across the room. Moments later, Mira joined her.
“Quite a celebration.”
“How do they stay so charged?” Eve wondered. “I was afraid I’d have to put on my riot gear.”
“Babies, particularly when they’re so wanted, bring unparalleled joy. And for us, for women—whether or not we choose to have them—we know we’re the only ones capable of bringing them into the world. We’re the power.” She patted Eve’s hand. “You’ve done a lovely thing for your friend.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off. Not sure I would have without Peabody cracking the whip. It’s been worth it.”
“Like sixteen hours of labor?” Mira said with a smile.
“Oh, God, why? Why do they revel in talking about all that? It’s creepy.”
“It’s the power, and the love. And each experience is unique, no matter how long the human race has propagated. It’s intimate and astonishing, and it binds us as women. One day, when you’re ready, you’ll know.”
“Seeing all this—and that birthing class I had to take—it’s pushed the idea—which is actually more of a concept—way, way down on my to-do list.”
“When you’re ready,” Mira repeated. “I like watching them. Women. The different sizes and shapes, the colors. The dynamics that form. Look at Louise and Nadine, sitting over there with their heads together. And Mavis’s friend Trina, huddled with those two women. Probably giving them hair and skin-care advice for during pregnancy. And Peabody, hauling gifts in her efficient way, so happy to be useful. Mavis on her throne—a charming concept, by the way—looking so healthy and vital.
“And here we sit, you and I. The observers.”
“A lot of it, for me, is like watching aliens. Still, not without it’s entertainment value,” Eve admitted. “Take that blonde over there, in the red dress. Her feet are killing her. But people complimented her shoes, and she claimed they were comfortable. Now she’s stuck. And the brunette—short, green skirt? She keeps wandering back to the food table. She takes this little sliver of cake each time. Hit it about a dozen times now. But she can’t just go and take a human-sized piece straight off. She tells herself the sliver doesn’t count.”
When Mira laughed, Eve relaxed into a game she knew how to play. “And Trina? First, let me thank God she’s been too busy to corner me about my hair. She’s soliciting clients—no point letting an opportunity like this go by. But at the same time, she’s rarely more than three feet away from Mavis. Watching out for her. Brought her a fizzy, some cake. Went with her every time Mavis made one of her countless trips out to pee.”
“She told me she had a new product that, quote, ‘Kicks the ass out of winter dryness.’ She even gave me a sample. Ah, Mavis is about to open Peabody’s gift. I can’t wait to see it.”
“She’s nervous. Peabody,” Eve added. “Standing there sweating, afraid Mavis won’t like it as much as she hoped. Giving gifts is torture.”
But when Mavis lifted the lid on the box, there was a stunned look on her face, followed by a collective gasp by those close enough to see the contents.
“Oh, Peabody!”
And the awed, almost reverent joy in Mavis’s voice told Eve her partner had hit the bull’s-eye.
She lifted out, gently, the little booties and hat done in a rainbow of pastels. It seemed to Eve every woman in the room went gooey. And when Mavis took out the blanket, there were exclamations, and fingers reaching out to touch and stroke.
“It’s lovely,” Mira commented. “Absolutely lovely. She’s just given Mavis an heirloom.”
Obviously thrilled, Mavis managed to level herself out of the chair to grab Peabody in a giddy hug. Flushed and shiny, Peabody accepted the compliments.
“Um, since you’re up,” Peabody began. “You got one last gift coming from your hostess. Dallas?”
“Jeez. That’s my cue.” Eve set her drink aside, crossed the room. Since Peabody had nagged her brainless on just how it had to be done, Eve took one edge of the cover as Peabody took the other.
When they whipped it off the chair, Mavis actually slapped her hands to her heart. “Holy shit! Holy shit! It’s the exact one I wanted. Oh, oh, look at the colors! And I’ve been sitting in it this whole time. Dallas!”
It was Eve’s turn for a hard hug. “It’s the ult in rocker systems. The absolute! You didn’t have to give me a present. The party was enough.”
“Now you tell me.” It was the exact response needed to make Mavis laugh instead of cry. “Go ahead, take it for a spin.”
When it wound down and thinned out, and there’d been no catastrophes, no emergency child-birthing procedures, and happy faces all around, Eve figured she’d scored a winner.
She also figured on dumping herself into a hot jet tub with a double bellini until she was comatose.
“The guys are heading back,” Peabody announced. “They’re going to load up your haul, Mavis. Leonardo, McNab, and I will get it all up to your apartment.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Trina told her. The beauty consultant had her hair in a complicated pattern of braids and curls today, and in showy magenta. She turned her eyes on Eve. “You’re due for a treatment.”
“Don’t start on me. I’m riding on alcohol and sugar.”
“You did good. You get a break. Sit down, Mav, take a load off.”
“I’m too juiced. I can hardly wait till Leonardo gets a load of all this stuff. It was the best of the best, Dallas. And now I’ve got to ask you for something else.”
“We forgot something?” She glanced around. “There can’t be another baby item left in Manhattan.”
“No, it’s about Tandy. She’s still not answering. It’s like hours now, and I keep seeing her in her apartment, in labor. I want to go by. Would you come with me. Please?”
“You’ve had a really big day,” Trina reminded her. “You should go on home and rest.”
“I just can’t, not until I make sure she’s okay. She doesn’t really have anybody. And I…I’ve got so much of everything.”
Sensing a new jag, Eve stepped in. “Sure, no big. We’ll run by there, and I’ll take you on home after.”
Which meant a long delay in becoming comatose, but it got her out of hauling presents out of the house. Of course, it meant she was now solely responsible for a tired, emotional, churned-up pregnant woman.
“Don’t have the baby on my watch, Mavis,” Eve warned as she loaded her friend into her vehicle.
“I’m solid, don’t worry. Just a little tired. And I know I’m probably being a zero about the Tandy thing, but I can’t help it. She’s been like my knocked-up buddy for months now, and I talked to her just a couple days ago. It was all ‘I can’t wait till Saturday,’ and how she’d sprung for this new outfit for the shower. She wouldn’t have forgotten about it, Dallas.”
“Okay, so we’ll check on her. If she’s not home, we’ll talk to a couple of her neighbors. She went into baby mode, one of them probably knows.”
“Sure, sure. Could be she went to a different center for some reason. The midwives work at more th
an one. That’s probably it. Wow, she’s probably had her baby! Or she’s having it now.” Mavis began to rub her belly. “I might be up next.”
“Just not today, okay?” she slanted Mavis a leery eye. “Absolutely not today.”
“No way! I want time to play with all the gifts, and put all the little outfits away, and make it all abso perfect before little Roofus or Apricot come along.”
“Roofus? Apricot?”
“Just trying them out.”
Eve glanced at her friend. “My advice? Keep trying.”
12
AFTER SHE LED EVE TO TANDY’S APARTMENT door, Mavis shifted from foot to foot. “Gotta pee again. My bladder feels about the size of a chickpea lately, and what there is of it keeps getting kicked.”
“Just…think about something else.” Eve knocked. “Don’t bounce like that. It can’t possibly help, and you might shake something loose.”
“She’s not answering. I really, seriously, completely need to pee.”
Changing tactics, Eve turned and knocked on the door across the hall from Tandy’s. Moments later, the door cracked open to the security chain, and a woman peered out the crack suspiciously.
“What?”
“Hey, Ms. Pason! Remember me? I’m Tandy’s friend, Mavis.”
“Oh, yeah.” The eyes warmed fractionally. “You’re looking for Tandy?”
“Uh-huh. She missed my baby shower, and didn’t answer the ’link, so I was…Wow, Ms. Pason, I really have to pee.”
“’Course you do. Come on in and use the bathroom.” She unhooked the chain. “I don’t know you,” she said, pointing a finger at Eve.
“This is my friend, Dallas. She gave me the most magolicious baby shower today. I’ll be right back.”
Ms. Pason folded her arms as Mavis dashed off. “I don’t like letting strangers in.”
“I don’t blame you. I can wait in the hall.”
“It’s okay, this once, since you’re her friend. Tandy and Mavis are nice girls.”
“You seen Tandy lately?”
“Couple days ago, I guess. We left for work at the same time.”
“That would have been…”
“Wednesday, Thursday?” Ms. Pason shrugged. “One morning’s the same as the next. And I keep my nose out like I expect people to keep theirs out of mine.”
“Good policy.”
“Gosh, thanks, Ms. Pason.” Mavis beamed a smile when she came back in. “You’re a lifesaver. Did you maybe see Tandy today?”
“No. Couple days ago, like I told your friend here.”
“A couple days?” Mavis reached out, gripped Eve’s arm. “Dallas.”
“Stay calm. Anybody come see her since you saw her that morning?” Eve asked Ms. Pason.
“Didn’t notice. I keep—”
“Your nose out, yeah.”
“Dallas, we need to go inside. We need to go into Tandy’s. You could use your master.”
“Master what?” Ms. Pason demanded. “You can’t just go around going into people’s homes.”
Eve pulled out her badge. “Yeah, I can.”
“You’re the police? Well, why didn’t you say so? You think something happened to that nice girl?”
“No,” Eve said quickly. “But since she’s not answering her ’links or her door, and you can’t remember seeing her today, it may be best to check her apartment. Maybe Mavis can wait here.”
“I’m going with you.” Mavis clung to Eve’s arm. “I want to go in, make sure.”
“Fine, fine.” And if Tandy objected to having her premises entered without a warrant or probable cause, it was just as well to have Mavis there to run interference.
Eve knocked again, then pulled out her master. “Tandy, if you’re in there it’s Dallas, and Mavis. We’re coming in.” She uncoded the locks, eased the door open.
The room was the same size as the one across the hall, which meant it felt claustrophobic. Tandy had it spruced up in soft colors with ruffled curtains at the single window. They were open so that a couple of live plants in white pots could soak up the winter sunlight.
On the table in front of a small sofa was a box wrapped in white paper with purple cows dancing over the surface. It was topped by a huge purple bow.
“See, that’s my gift.” Mavis pointed. “I told her how cute that paper was when I was in the baby store a few weeks ago. Tandy! Tandy! Are you all right?”
The place was empty—Eve could feel it—but she let Mavis go in.
No sign of struggle, she mused as she scanned the area. No evidence of hurried departure. The place was neat, ordered, and organized.
“I’m going to check the bedroom. She’s using it for a nursery, too.” Mavis started for a door, but Eve moved past her, checked it herself.
The bed was neatly made, and beside it was a white cradle already dressed with blue sheets. A little stuffed lamb sat in it looking, to Eve’s mind, very out of place, and just a little creepy.
Why did people put farm animals in kids’ beds?
“She’s not here. And that’s her go-to-the-hospital bag.” Mavis pointed at a little tote standing next to the door.
Saying nothing, Eve moved into the bathroom. There was a white towel hanging over the shower rod. Bone dry.
As was the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom were spotless and organized. Spare would have been another word Eve would have chosen for it. Except for the baby gear, it didn’t seem as though Tandy was one for collecting things.
She had the basics, and coordinated them in a pleasing way, but there was none of the excess most people—and most women, to Eve’s mind—surrounded themselves with.
She moved back into the bedroom where Mavis stood hugging her elbows. “Dallas, I think—”
“Don’t think yet. There’s no sign of trouble in here, so you take that as a good.” She moved to the closet, glanced through Tandy’s wardrobe. Spare again. The basics in nice fabrics and colors, and nearly all of them clothes for the very knocked-up. No coat—and there’d been no coat on the chrome rack beside the front door.
There was a purse, a brown one, hanging in the closet. But it was empty. Eve recalled Tandy had carried a huge black one the night they’d met.
“No sign of her coat, her purse. Every appearance that she went out, and just hasn’t gotten back yet.”
“Then why doesn’t she answer her pocket ’link? Why didn’t she show at the shower?”
“Okay. Good questions. We’re not done yet.”
And the fact was there was a little twinge at the base of Eve’s spine. Something was off here, but there was no point winding up Mavis any more than she already was.
Eve walked back into the living room where the pretty box sat waiting on the table. She moved to the window and the pair of leafy green plants. When she tested the soil she found them like the towel in the bath. Bone dry.
She turned toward the kitchen, a smaller box off the box of the living room. Counters were clean and uncluttered. There was a white bowl holding three red apples, a smaller bowl, a mug, a small glass, and a spoon left to drain beside the sink.
Breakfast dishes, Eve concluded. Cereal, she decided after a glance in the cupboards, juice and herbal tea or a decaffeinated coffee substitute.
Eve took out a couple of bottles of pills.
“Those are her supplements for the baby. Like vitamins.”
“Okay. She’s got service for four—plates, flatware. She do much entertaining?”
“No. I don’t think. She had Leonardo and me over once, and we had her to our place a couple of times. She isn’t seeing anyone. Like a guy, I mean. She’s completely focused on the baby.”
Mavis shifted her own gaze as she saw Eve studying the wall. “Oh, that’s her calendar. Isn’t it cute, with the baby dressed up like a tulip?”
While Eve thought the idea of dressing a human, even a new one, like a flower was just plain silly, Mavis bubbled on. “There’s a different baby for each month, and…She didn’t cross off the
last two days.”
Eve had seen that already. There were red x’s in each boxed date, through the past Thursday. Mavis’s fingers shook as she curled them around Eve’s arm.
“She marked off each day, heading for B-Day. Baby Day. See, see? January thirty-first. She’s got it circled in a heart. She crossed them off every morning for the countdown. But not yesterday.”
Full of fear, Mavis’s eyes latched onto Eve’s. “Not today. And she’s got today marked with little raindrops and my name. Mavis’s shower. Oh.” Mavis pressed a hand to her side. “Oh.”
“You’re not going to do that. You’re not doing that now. Breathe or something.”
“Baby’s kicking, that’s all. And I guess I feel a little shaky in the knees. Maybe a little bit sick.”
Moving as fast as she dared, Eve hooked an arm around Mavis’s waist, moved her into the living area and a chair. “Just sit, close your eyes. Breathe. I’d suggest putting your head between your knees, but I think that’s physically impossible for you at the moment.”
It brought a half-laugh out of Mavis as she obeyed. “I’m okay, really. Just scared and worried. Something happened to Tandy, Dallas. You have to find her.”
“That’s what I’m going to do. She had ‘Max’ and ‘eight’ written on the Friday box. Who’s Max?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t seeing anybody. She’d have told me.”
“Listen.” Eve crouched down in front of the chair. “First thing, I’ll check the health centers, birthing places. I’ll get the name of her boss at the store, give her a call, see if Tandy was at work on Thursday.”
“That’s good. Maybe she went into labor at work, and they took her to the closest birthing place. That could be.”
“Sure. Simple is usually true.”
“But if that happened on Thursday, why haven’t I heard from her? Oh, God, what if she lost the baby!” Mavis reached out, gripped Eve’s hands with fingers that were like little vices. “Or she had an accident, and—”
“Or she had one of those sixteen-hour deals and is too whipped to talk to you, or anyone. Chill it out, Mavis.”