For the Sake of Their Baby

by Alice Sharpe

  “I was!” Emily agreed. “I thought he was locked away for good. I guess I kind of overreacted because of my own miserable marriage, but I know I shouldn’t judge every male by my own ex. Ron says you love Alex. He says if Alex says he’s innocent, I should listen.”

  “How kind of Ron,” Liz said, wondering anew why Alex had pushed her away a few moments ago. She’d been ready, more than ready, damn near brimming with pent-up emotion and desire, but he’d retreated. She knew him well enough to know he must have had a compelling reason.

  Whatever it was, she was thankful. She needed to keep a level head, she needed to think, not feel, not react, not lead him on, not hurt him any more than she already had. Making love to him would have been a mistake, it would have been a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  “Ron asked me to come with him to the party on Saturday night,” Emily continued, and Liz struggled to pay attention. “I don’t want to go if it would upset you or…your husband. I know this party is really for the office staff and not the store owners—”

  “Emily, please, I hope you decide to be Ron’s guest. It will be a wonderful opportunity for you and Alex to get to know each other better. Come.” Her attention was once again diverted because she’d gone to stand in front of the living room window and had found Alex across the street, talking to Harry Idle. Okay, talking at Harry Idle. She said, “Listen, Em, I really do have to go.”

  “But I haven’t even asked you how everything is going. How are you feeling? How is Sinbad?”

  “I’m doing well and he came home today.”

  “Home? Home from where?”

  Liz suddenly realized that she’d not told anyone about Sinbad. At first she hadn’t known how much to share and then events kept piling up. Reluctant to get into it but feeling guilty that she’d shut out a good friend, she said, “Sinbad was injured on our beach stairs the other day. He broke his leg.” At the sound of Emily’s inhaled breath, Liz hastened to add, “He’s okay, Emily, really he is. I mean, he will be once he heals.”

  “The poor baby,” Emily said. She’d always had a soft spot for the cat.

  Liz’s gaze drifted to Sinbad who was asleep and looked moderately comfortable on his blue towel. “You know what a little tyrant he can be. It’s strange having him so quiet.”

  “Alex must have been shocked when he found him.”

  “Well, Alex didn’t exactly find Sinbad. I did.”

  Another gasp and a cry of alarm. “You! Liz, what in the world were you doing on those rickety stairs?”

  “Saving the cat,” Liz said, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. She wanted to protest the word “rickety,” too, but kept quiet. “I’m sorry, Emily, but the rest of the story is going to have to wait, okay?”

  “I can’t believe you kept this from me! I can’t believe Alex let you go down the those stairs by yourself! That just seems irresponsible to me. Did you tell Ron about this?”

  Liz bristled at this comment and all its implications. She said, “Not yet. There hasn’t been time.”

  “You used to make time for your friends,” Emily said quietly.

  “Em, I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  As Emily finally hung up, Liz felt ashamed of herself. Emily had been a rock during the past few months and now Liz felt suddenly impatient with her friend’s passive-aggressive tendencies. Emily had always been this way. Why hadn’t it bothered Liz before? She chastised herself and promised that she’d be more patient in the future.

  Meanwhile, why was Alex poking Harry Idle in the chest?

  “WHY THE HELL didn’t you call me?” Alex demanded.

  Harry spread his hands. “How was I supposed to know you had problems last night?”

  Alex told himself to calm down. He knew he shouldn’t have jabbed at Harry’s tempting midsection—he blamed frustration for his lapse. “So you just happened to look out the window at two in the morning, saw a strange car outside and someone opening our garage and thought, ‘Oh, hey, just a burglar at the Chase house, no big deal’?”

  “I told you,” Harry said, eyeing Alex warily. “I saw the car on my way to the bathroom and thought maybe someone had broken down or got a flat tire and then on my way back to bed, I saw someone lift your garage door but I didn’t put the two together and I didn’t know that it wasn’t you over there getting in your garage and since when is that cause for alarm?”

  Alex took a deep breath. If Harry had only called, maybe Alex could have caught this shadowy someone. He said, “How about the car? Did you notice anything particular about it like the make or color or maybe the license plate?”

  “It was just a dark car, that’s all.”

  The sheriff’s car was white with a black and gold stripe and a big insignia on the door. On the other hand, if the sheriff had mischief or worse on his mind, would he have used an official car?

  “Did you look outside when it peeled out of here?”

  “I must have been back asleep by then. Didn’t hear a thing.”

  Alex said, “Why did Devon Hiller invite you to the party celebrating his mall’s twentieth anniversary party?”

  Harry took a moment to think as he produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one up. The ritual of popping a cigarette in his mouth, flicking a lighter, forming a small weather screen—all this focused Alex’s attention on Harry’s hands. It was impossible not to notice how big they were. No way could this man have stuffed those paws into the missing gloves.

  As the acrid smoke drifted upward, Harry said, “I go out sometimes with the gal who does his gardening. She wangled me an invite. Truth is, I wanted to go to that party and see where the old goat lived. Pretty fancy place he had. We left early so I missed your little woman telling him off. I ate as much as I could hold, drank a whole bottle of his champagne and left. Must have been cheap champagne, too, ’cause it gave me a hell of a hangover.”

  “When we talked the other day, why didn’t you tell me you were there?”

  “You didn’t ask,” Harry said as if explaining something elementary. He took a puff and added, “It’s cold out here. I know it’s not noon yet, but come on inside and I’ll make us a couple of hot toddies.”

  “I don’t drink, Harry. I’m sorry I got so steamed and…er, poked you.”

  “That’s okay.” Dropping the half-burned cigarette to the ground and grinding it out with the heel of his boot, he added, “Least you didn’t stab me, right?” He followed this awful joke with a hearty laugh that started a coughing spasm.

  Alex grumbled a goodbye and went home.

  IT HAD BEEN almost a month since Liz had actually been to the mall, choosing to take care of business by computer or over the telephone instead. The truth was that she had been having less and less to do with the place, giving Jane Ridgeway increasing responsibilities.

  As canned music filled her head, she felt the same indecision she always felt. This mall and her uncle’s house were pieces of her life, huge pieces in which she’d invested a lot of time and effort. It didn’t seem right to abandon them to strangers, to sell out, to move on. It didn’t seem right to turn her back on the two things that had formed the continuity of her existence.

  And yet, sometimes she ached to do just that.

  Alex had decided to stay in the food court with a couple of tacos and his cell phone. He had a list of friends to call with his new number, so Liz felt no need to rush. Apparently, Alex didn’t think she was in any danger while roaming around inside the mall with a few hundred anxious shoppers. Obviously, he’d never tried to cut through the line waiting for hot cinnamon rolls.

  At the Santa station, the mall split in two directions, and she followed the tiled floor to the right, feeling guilty that she didn’t foray to the left wing first to look in on Emily. Well, she’d see both Emily and Ron tomorrow night, she reasoned, and once this whole ordeal was over, she’d be the best friend they ever had.

  Meanwhile, she spotted two members of her security
department posing as shoppers, watching for shoplifters. Way to go, team!

  The new kitchen store was up and running and looked to be doing a rousing business. Liz knew how vital it was to the store’s success to take advantage of holiday sales and judging by the lines, things were looking good.

  She walked between rows of gadgets, pausing for a second to eye a potato masher, not because she needed one but because the thought of mashed potatoes reawakened the hunger the cinnamon rolls had kindled.

  “May I help you find something?” a pleasant woman in her early fifties asked. She was artificially blond, plump and pink, a candy confection of a woman. She studied Liz for a second and added, “Aren’t you Elizabeth Chase?”

  Liz admitted she was. She recognized the other woman as Marie Poe, half of the team who had opened the store. Ron had introduced them to Liz when they came in to sign their lease.

  “If you’re not too busy, I’d like to talk to you and Doris. Is she here?”

  Marie looked over her shoulder. “She’s behind the cash register.”

  “You’re really busy,” Liz said. “This doesn’t concern mall business, so maybe I should come back—”

  Marie patted Liz’s tummy. “Honey, you don’t look as though you have coming back in you. I’ll get one of my daughters to stand in for Doris. Excuse the pun, but we’ll wrap while we rap. Hold on.”

  Marie disappeared into the crowd and Liz made her way to the back of the store, pausing only slightly to look at a gizmo that promised to puree everything from apples to zucchini, creating natural, healthy baby food. Hmm—

  Within a few moments, the two co-owners showed up. They produced a stool for Liz while they stood around a butcher block table normally used for cooking demonstrations, but commandeered now for a wrapping station. They both immediately chose what appeared to be already purchased gifts and tore off sheets of their trademark glossy red paper. Liz asked them about the night her uncle died.

  “Oh, dear, such a shock,” Marie said as she folded and taped the end papers over a huge box that held a food processor. “Doris and I left right after the altercation between you and your uncle and your husband.” She looked embarrassed and glanced at her partner.

  “Exactly at nine forty-five,” Doris said. She had embraced her gray hair, cut it short, wore it severe. The lines on her face suggested she was a lifetime smoker. “The cops pinned us down on this right after it happened,” she said. “Marie, hand me that tape.”

  Liz bit her lip as she thought. That put them at the party and potentially on scene. Who was to say if they left when they said they did? They were obviously close and might cover for each other or even commit a crime together.

  But what about her scarf? Could she have left it at her uncle’s house? Might they or someone else have used it simply because it was handy? It didn’t explain the sabotaged stairs, but maybe the two events weren’t connected.

  Thinking now of motive, she said, “I think I remember you guys had a store downtown several years ago.”

  “Kitchens Etc.,” Doris said, slapping a silver seal on the finished product, attaching the receipt and starting in on another.

  “The funny thing is,” Marie added, “your uncle more or less killed our business, didn’t he, Doris?”

  “He opened up this mall and no one came downtown anymore.”

  “I hated him back then,” Marie said. “It wasn’t bad enough he took all our business away, but he was so dadburned nasty about it.” She appeared to suddenly realize to whom she was talking and turned as red as the wrapping paper. “I’m sorry. I know he was your uncle. Especially since your husband killed him, you must have a lot of sad feelings about…everything.”

  “Marie,” Doris said. “Honestly.”

  “It’s okay,” Liz told them. “You were at the party, you heard the words we exchanged. And, as a matter of fact, my husband had nothing to do with his death.”

  Boy, did that feel good to say. She could see curiosity written on both of their faces. They’d have to live with it; she shouldn’t have mentioned Alex’s innocence to them and she wasn’t going to compound the damage by explaining herself.

  “The thing is,” Marie said as she chose a set of steak knives as her next project, “that both of us gave up working when we went belly-up. Doris went back to school and got her business degree and then opened Landers Title Company. I started having babies, five of them in eight years. Best time of my life. So, by the time Doris sold her business for a tidy profit and I inherited a small trust from my father, we realized how much we owed your uncle for forcing us to take different paths that ultimately led us right back to the beginning. We actually got along with him pretty good this time around. After all, he did own the mall, or he did until he died. Isn’t that right, Doris?”

  Doris shrugged.

  Liz wondered at the shrug but said, “I don’t suppose you saw something at the party, something, oh, I don’t know, suspicious or out of place?”

  Marie said, “Besides the big fight?”

  Doris added, “The only person we knew was the leasing agent, Ron Boxer.”

  “And his sister,” Marie said.

  Frowning, Liz said, “Emily Watts wasn’t at the party.”

  Doris nodded. “That’s what I keep telling her.”

  “And I keep telling her,” Marie said, “that she was. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know it was Emily at the time. We hadn’t actually met. That didn’t happen until later when she opened the yarn shop and started attending the store manager’s meetings. It took me a few minutes to remember where I’d seen her before.”

  “You asked Emily and she told you she wasn’t there,” Doris insisted.

  “But I saw her admiring that fantastic curio cabinet in your uncle’s study. You remember the one, Liz.”

  “I remember it,” Liz said. As soon as her uncle’s estate was settled once and for all, she would have to catalogue his possessions. The thought was staggering—her uncle had been quite a collector.

  For now, she made a note to ask Emily about the party, but it seemed to her that Marie must be mistaken, just as Doris said she was. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to clear it up.

  Liz put a hold on the gadget that pureed baby food and left the store, making her way past the Santa and the crowd of wiggling children waiting to sit in his lap, past the athletic shoe store and the card shop, stopping for a second to admire the array of lovely green and red satin dresses she was still months from being able to squeeze into, moving at last to Nature’s Knits.

  Emily’s store was one of the narrow ones, most of the front taken up by a large window and a glass door. The window was filled with knitted articles of clothing and toys, all done in beautiful rich colors seemingly plucked from the earth, the air, the sea. In deference to the season, a few crocheted white snowflakes the size of dinner plates were suspended in among the sweaters and caps.

  A newcomer to Emily’s staff was behind the counter, wrapping a gift for an elderly man who leaned on his cane. They both looked up when Liz entered. The man smiled and the woman nodded a greeting. She had a pierced bottom lip and spiked orange hair and couldn’t have looked more out of place in a store specializing in vegetable-dyed yarns than if she’d just fallen off a spaceship. When Liz asked to speak with Emily, the girl shrugged.

  “The boss left early,” the salesgirl said as she taped the plain brown paper in place. Liz knew Emily liked to keep her wrappings simple to complement the earthy theme of her store. It made the wild-looking clerk’s presence that much more interesting.

  “I can tell her you came by if you want to write your name down,” the woman said as she bound the package with several twists of twine, fastened a cinnamon stick on top with a casual bow, and stuck a green-and-gold store sticker in place. She presented it to the man who tucked it beneath one arm.

  Liz couldn’t stop staring at the bolt of twine. Natural colored twine.

  Her head said twine was everywhere and nine-tenths of it had to
be this color.

  Her heart skipped a few beats.

  “Want to leave a message?”

  “Uh, no,” Liz said. “No thanks.”

  She turned to leave, and then, feeling like a traitor to her friend, picked up two skeins of beet-dyed yarn and asked for them to be gift wrapped.

  USING TWENTY FEET of his trusty rope, Alex dropped from the last remaining landing onto the rocks below. He knew he didn’t have a lot of daylight left to find the piece of twine Liz had thrown toward the beach, but he had to try.

  He flashed on the image of her approaching through the food court, her face so pale it was almost translucent. She’d frantically told him about Emily being at her uncle’s party—maybe—and the twine in the yarn shop.

  He’d told her twine was everywhere, and it was. But if he could find the piece that had been used on Sinbad, they could compare it to Emily’s, a sample of which Liz had procured by having something wrapped. He had no illusions of being able to declare unequivocally that it was the very same twine from the very same spool that had been used to anchor Sinbad to the stairs; his hope was that the differences would be vast enough to show that it wasn’t the same.

  Time was ticking away.

  Liz was inside the house with the doors locked. She’d protested him coming to the beach alone; he’d circumnavigated her worries by waiting until, exhausted, she’d fallen asleep. He’d left her safe in their bedroom.

  He scampered over the rocks and despite everything, felt a sense of joy and freedom at being this close to the cold Pacific Ocean. Icy spray tingled on his skin. The wind blew through his hair, its fingers cold and invigorating. Waves broke on the rocky beach and washed away with a rumble he loved. He came across a wide rock hidden by the curve of the land and recalled the moonlit night he and Liz had made love on the spur of the moment, seduced by the sounds and smells of the sea, seduced by their love for each other.