Ooh Baby, Baby

by Diana K. Whitney

  Why was it in her bedroom? Even more perplexing, why was she lying beneath it fully clothed?

  Mystified, she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, rubbed her eyes and allowed the events of last night into her foggy brain. The last thing she remembered was settling down on the sofa to watch an old movie.

  With Travis.

  Peggy moaned, embarrassed to realize that she must have fallen asleep. Poor Travis. He hadn’t even had his dessert, a custard pie she’d baked especially in his honor. Even worse, he’d probably been deeply insulted.

  “Face it, Peggy-girl,” she muttered aloud. “A gracious hostess does not snore in the presence of guests.”

  Spearing her fingers through her tangled hair, she glanced back at the afghan. A clue. The afghan had been in the living room. Peggy had been in the living room. Now both were in the bedroom, and the only available person who’d been large enough to accomplish that feat had been Travis.

  He’d actually put her to bed.

  Oh, Lord. If humiliation was poison, she’d have died on the spot. What must he think of her? But along with embarrassment, a warm sweetness flowed through her veins as she imagined him lifting her into his arms, laying her gently on the bed, fussing to smooth the coverlet over her sleeping form. She felt a twinge of regret that she hadn’t been awake to enjoy the delicious luxury of being so well coddled.

  A second wail joined the first, reminding her that both babies were now awake and quite ready for breakfast. “Mommy’s coming,” she mumbled, then shuffled to the nursery, stifling a yawn.

  The morning routine was conducted smoothly, and with the efficiency born of practice. Feeding times had been halved when Peggy had discovered that with the help of a few well-placed pillows, she could nurse both babies at once. The twins seemed pleased by the arrangement, and mommy didn’t have to suffer the stress of listening to one hungry baby scream while she was busy with the other.

  Even with the streamlining of certain functions, however, motherhood was a time-consuming and exhausting business. By the time the twins had been fed, bathed and dressed, a saffron sun had risen from early morning gray to clear, blue daylight. Peggy poured a cup of instant coffee and had just settled down to watch the late morning news on television when a special bulletin sent chills down her spine.

  “According to inside sources, the Grand Springs police department has requested an autopsy on Mayor Olivia Stuart’s body. Results are expected to be made public by tomorrow morning. Miss Stuart was pronounced dead on Friday evening. Cause of death was listed as a heart attack. The coroner refused comment, and a police spokesman indicated only that the case was under further consideration, though our sources indicate that homicide is suspected.

  “In other news…”

  Coffee splashed over the mug rim, burning Peggy’s thigh. She set the mug down quickly, staring at the screen in disbelief.

  Possible homicide. That meant that Jessica Hanson must have been right. Maybe Olivia hadn’t had a heart attack at all. Maybe she’d been murdered. Murdered.

  Peggy was sickened by the thought. Who on earth would want to hurt Olivia? Everyone liked her. Of course, not everyone agreed with her politics. The strip-mine controversy had become a volatile issue over the past months, but even with the peculiar circumstance of the mayor’s last word, Peggy couldn’t believe that anyone would stoop to murder over a stupid lump of coal.

  But now it seemed that someone had wanted Olivia dead.

  Peggy was chilled to the bone wondering how Jessica Hanson could have possibly known about the murder when the supporting evidence had only surfaced in the past few hours.

  The answer seemed obvious. And it was chilling.

  Chapter Eight

  Sue Anne plopped a heaping bowl of greens on the patio table, then scraped a disgruntled glance across the tree-shaded yard. “Look at them, four grown men hunkered over those babies like ticks on a hound.”

  Peggy, who’d just emerged from the Conway kitchen carrying a pot of German potato salad, smiled at the cooing group gathered around the double stroller where the twins were supposedly napping. “T.J. and Virginia have gotten used to being the center of attention.”

  “Humph. The only thing those tadpoles are used to is the shock of seeing an ugly, grinning face every time they open their eyes.”

  “I think it’s kind of sweet,” Peggy said, arranging the hot potato salad on a patio table bulging with goodies. The twins were a month old now, and Peggy was secretly pleased that Travis and the Conway men continued to shower her babies with attention. In a sense, they were joint father figures, for which she was deeply grateful.

  The role-playing was just temporary, of course. Clyde would eventually come around to take over his position as permanent, full-time father. Peggy believed that with a fervency born of desperation despite the indisputable fact that he hadn’t responded to either the pictures she’d sent or to her many pleading emails and voicemail messages.

  “Travis said there have been folks looking at the duplex.”

  “Hmm?” Peggy blinked up, momentarily bewildered.

  “Folks looking at the duplex,” Sue Anne repeated, adjusting her tight T-shirt over hips that were a tad too large. “Figured you might be having new neighbors soon.”

  “Oh, that.” Peggy shrugged, propping a hip against the picnic table. “I doubt it. They haven’t even started repairing the storm damage, except to board up the windows. There have been a few real estate agents sniffing around, though, so I hope the management company is getting ready to make the place habitable. It would be nice to have neighbors again.”

  But Sue Anne wasn’t listening. She reared up and emitted a piercing whistle. “Hey! You guys stop fussing with them babies, hear? They need their rest.” She folded her arms and flopped into a chair. “Men. Sometimes I wonder why we bother with ‘em.”

  Peggy agreed under her breath and allowed her mind to wander back to her ex-husband. With memories came anger, seething resentment that a failure of birth control had led to abandonment, betrayal and a disillusionment that shattered any love she’d had for Clyde. But her feelings for him were ambivalent, because without him, she wouldn’t have her precious babies, babies who deserved the nurturing love of both a mother and a father.

  So she swallowed anger with optimism, and prayed each sunrise would herald the day Clyde would decide to accept his parental responsibilities for the sake of their children. But each morning passed quickly, quietly, until lengthening shadows slipped into silent sunsets, smothering darkness. Hope faded into despair, then surged with the dawn, a cycle that had taken a physical and emotional toll Peggy refused to acknowledge. To do so would concede futility, failure.

  Because Peggy’s mother had made that concession under similar circumstance. It had broken the poor woman’s heart and her spirit, left her an embittered shell, unwilling to trust, unable to love. She’d been there physically for her daughter, but her emotional wounds continued to bleed, and as soon as her only child had mastered the skills necessary for survival, she’d given in to the despair. The day after Peggy’s college graduation, her mother’s broken heart simply stopped beating.

  And Peggy had been alone.

  “Hey, what a grip!” Peggy glanced up as Travis’s head popped out of the male huddle. “T.J. grabbed my finger,” he hollered, elbowing Ted to provide Peggy a clear view. The infant, nested in the double stroller beside his snoozing sister, was indeed clutching the digit in question. Travis was clearly thrilled. “Man, the kid’s got real power. If that’s not the grip of a born bull rider, I’ll eat my boots.”

  Jimmy, crouched in front of the stroller, acknowledged that with a definitive nod. “Yep, he’s a tough one, all right.”

  “Sh,” Danny hissed, skewering his startled father with a hard stare. “You’re going to wake Ginny up—” An irritated wail had him rolling his eyes. “Aw, now look what you’ve done.” The boy bent over the stroller, his hands fussing with the blanket. “Hush, sweet thing, you
r Uncle Danny’s here.”

  Ginny shrieked.

  “Typical female reaction,” Ted drawled, “to the sight of your ugly face.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Danny slid his brother a sly glance. “So which one of us has a date tonight, hmm?”

  “In your dreams, geek man.”

  “Marta McKnight must like geeks.”

  Ted’s jaw drooped. “That big-eyed brunette from the Dairy Freeze?”

  “The one and only.” Danny blew on his fingertips and slicked back his hair. “Said she appreciated a sensitive, intelligent man after all the muscle-bound jerks who’ve been hounding her.” Danny glanced up, feigning innocence when Ted narrowed his eyes. “Oops. I flat forgot that you asked her out last week. Turned you down, didn’t she?”

  Ted hooked his arm around his brother’s head and wrestled him to the ground. As the boys tussled around the grass, grunting and exchanging rough scalp noogies, a clearly disgusted Travis swung the stroller away from the sibling battle. “Fine example you’re setting for the young’uns,” he muttered.

  Jimmy merely straightened, scratched his armpit, then ambled over to retrieve a beer from the ice cooler.

  Sue Anne also ignored the melee, calling out to her husband, “You’d best be getting that grill lit. These burgers aren’t going to cook themselves.”

  Jimmy nodded, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and amiably followed his wife into the kitchen while their sons continued to wrestle in the grass.

  Peggy smiled and leaned against the table, musing how her life had changed since the blackout. Then again, life had changed for just about everyone in Grand Springs. Residents had faced adversity with courage, making great strides in rebuilding the town they loved.

  Beyond the physical hardships, however, citizens still mourned the loss of their mayor. Olivia Stuart had been the linchpin of city government, earning admiration and grudging respect even from those who disagreed with her politics. The town had been deeply saddened by her death, but had accepted it. What the town hadn’t been able to accept, and what had divided much of its citizenry, was the shocking discovery that Olivia had been murdered.

  Peggy’s own turmoil had been deepened by Jessica Hanson’s revelation the day before the terrible news was made public. Only when she’d seen her friend in the company of Stone Richardson, a homicide detective whom Peggy had met during contract negotiations with the police union, was she convinced that Jessica’s information must have come from sources within the department rather than a nefarious, firsthand knowledge of the crime.

  Still, the frenzy of speculation and suspicion following that gruesome discovery pitted neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. It was, Peggy thought, a sad legacy for the woman so committed to maintaining quality of life in the town she loved so dearly.

  But if the town’s outlook was bleak, Peggy’s had brightened considerably. Her friendship with Sue Anne had blossomed, and the Conways had become a second family. As for Travis, well, her relationship with Travis was confusing. Every time he showed up, her heart beat a little faster. When he left, she felt empty, as if an integral part of her had been surgically removed. Deep down, she secretly believed that she’d never see him again, that each time he walked out the door would be the last.

  And yet he always returned, dropping by almost every day with small gifts for the twins, or a bag of groceries and a hungry expression. They had shared so much over the weeks, both quiet times and hysterical moments, such as their midnight rush to the hospital when Virginia developed severe heat rash, and their adventure with an overflowing sink that forced Travis, who barely knew the difference between a pipe wrench and pliers, to perform sink surgery. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to turn off the water first, resulting in a flood of near biblical proportions.

  They still laughed about the incident—or, more precisely, Peggy still laughed about it. Travis simply reddened around the earlobes, muttering that if the good Lord had wanted cowboys to fix pipes, he wouldn’t have created plumbers.

  “What’re you grinning about, woman?”

  Peggy glanced up as Travis wheeled the stroller onto the patio. “Fond memories. You really are quite adorable with water dripping off your nose.”

  He yanked down his hat and swore softly. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

  “Nope, never. Too bad I didn’t get photos.”

  “There is a God,” Travis muttered, eyeing the scrumptious repast laid out on the patio table. “When are we going to eat, anyway? I’m so hungry I could chew the horns off a Brahman.”

  Peggy patted his hand, which was protectively curled around the stroller handle. An odd tingle tickled her palm where her skin touched his. “Soon,” she assured him, withdrawing her hand. The tingling continued. “Sue Anne’s giving Jimmy last-minute grill instructions as we speak.”

  Judging by his puckered brows, that news didn’t appease him. “Shucks, if Sue Anne’s wound up with one of her lectures, we won’t be having supper until it’s danged near time for fireworks.”

  “Oh, well.” Peggy reached to straighten a toppled salt shaker and knocked a serving spoon off the table. She knelt to retrieve it, stood too fast and steadied herself on the table until her head stopped spinning. She’d been feeling weak all day. That, coupled with a vaguely familiar chest tightness reminiscent of stress-induced asthma from her childhood, was unnerving, although Peggy managed to convince herself that the heat and shift in wind conditions had merely caused a flareup in the allergies that occasionally plagued her with headaches and general malaise.

  When the dizziness passed, she wiped her moist brow and issued a thin smile. “Even if we miss tonight’s event, there’ll be another Fourth of July next year. We’ll catch it then.”

  Travis, who’d been too busy watching the babies to notice Peggy’s dizzy spell, was clearly distressed by the prospect. “We can’t miss fireworks,” he insisted. “I promised the twins. Told ’em all about the big booms and how there’d be pretty colors all over the sky. They’re looking forward to it.”

  Peggy wasn’t the least bit certain that the babies would be particularly impressed, especially by the “big booms,” but she was most definitely amused by Travis’s insistence that they’d be disappointed, primarily because she knew that he sincerely believed it. Travis was absolutely convinced that T.J. and Virginia were the most brilliant babies on the face of the earth, possessing the geniuslike ability to understand every word said in their presence.

  Which is why he’d nearly come to blows with a bigmouthed redneck who’d used inappropriate language to express displeasure with the length of the checkout line. It was the last time Peggy had allowed Travis to accompany her to the grocery store.

  “It’s okay, darling,” Travis murmured as Virginia started to fuss. “You’re going to see fireworks tonight even if I have to starve to get you there.”

  Peggy emitted an exaggerated sigh. “Such selfless generosity cannot go unrewarded. Here—” she forked a fat, steaming potato chunk out of the bowl and held it up to his mouth “—try this.”

  “Mmm.” His eyes lit up as he chewed. “Tangy. Good.”

  “I’m overwhelmed by the praise.”

  “Real good.” He whipped the fork out of her hand and helped himself. “Tastes kind of bacony.”

  “There’s bacon in it, along with vinegar, sugar and a handful of secret spices. It’s an old family recipe, handed down to my Irish grandmother from her German uncle.” She held up a palm when he eyed her strangely. “Trust me, the genealogy is too complex to explain.”

  Travis shrugged, scooped up another man-size bite and nearly choked on it when T.J. emitted a squeaky sneeze. Travis coughed, swallowed, wiggled a finger at the stroller. “Did you hear that? He sneezed.”

  “Umm, yes, I heard it.”

  Instantly Travis crouched beside the stroller and laid a worried hand on the baby’s head. “He feels warm.”

  “I imagine so. It’s ninety degrees out here.”


  “But he’s all drooly, too.”

  Peggy was already reaching for the towel tucked over the stroller handle. “Babies drool, Travis. It’s one of the few things they do really well.” She dabbed T.J.’s chin, and he instantly turned a greedy mouth toward the towel.

  Travis was delighted. “Look at that! What a smart little duffer.”

  “For trying to suck on a towel?”

  “For letting you know he’s hungry,” Travis explained patiently. “Most babies would just lie there and cry.”

  “He’s certainly been known to do that.”

  “But he’s figured out a better way. That takes real brainpower.” Grinning like a proud papa, Travis rubbed his index finger on T.J.’s palm, then let out a hoot when the baby grabbed hold. “Man, isn’t that something? He’s near strong enough to pull himself right out of that stroller.”

  “He can’t even lift his head, Travis.”

  “I’ll bet he could if he wanted to.”

  Suddenly too weary to respond, Peggy sat on a nearby chair and fanned herself with her hand. It really was hot. She wondered if she should take the babies inside.

  But Travis, still squatting beside the stroller, had launched into a discussion about the significance of Independence Day with the twins, both of whom appeared to be watching him intently. “And so every year, we celebrate with fireworks to re-create the night when all those bombs were ‘bursting in air’ so America could be a free, independent nation. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Virginia whacked her little fists as if agreeing, which tickled Travis immensely. Then, with an expression of exquisite joy and pure love, he brushed a knuckle over the infant’s furry little scalp. “That’s my girl,” he whispered so softly that Peggy could barely hear.

  But she did hear. And the wall around her heart was cracking.