by Nancy Martin
“Fine,” I said, brushing out my hair. “Armand was wonderful.”
Michael looked blank. “Who?”
“Cannoli. That’s his name. Armand.”
“Really?”
“He’s been your friend for years, and you don’t know his name?”
“I guess I forgot it.” Michael was starting to look a little punchy. “He’s been Cannoli since we were kids when his dad was my father’s lawyer. Did the cops ask you questions?”
“No, there was a fire alarm that disrupted everything. I have to go back sometime. But I told them about Zephyr’s track record, so they’re going to be busy for a while.”
“And Rawlins?”
“They let Rawlins go tonight, too. They still don’t know who killed Swain Starr. Libby was there, and a girl whose boyfriend pulled a fire alarm—but that can all wait. Michael, why is your brother here?”
He sat down on the bed. “Because Dolph took my car and ran off with Zephyr.”
My hairbrush hit the floor with a clatter. “He did what?”
“Dolph quit and left with the supermodel. She said he was just her type and she couldn’t wait to be alone with him.” Dazed, Michael said, “They stole my car. I imagine they went off to find a hotel to consummate whatever they forged in the last twenty-four hours of staring across the kitchen table at each other. Personally, I think it’s only going to last until she sees what he eats for breakfast.”
In shock, I stood in the middle of the bedroom floor. “Dolph and Zephyr are an item? Did you warn him about her?”
“I did. He thought I was kidding. The cops showed up about half an hour ago, looking for her. Little Frankie had to hide under a bed while I reported my car stolen. The cops have escalated a full-blown manhunt for Zephyr. Dolph, too, now. Me, I just want my car back. Ironic, huh? Me getting my car stolen.”
“Michael.” I was dizzy, keeping it all straight. “Dolph and Zephyr?”
“Hey, I couldn’t stop them. There was lust in the air. Speaking of which—” He made a grab for my waist and pulled me to the bed. “Every time I saw you today, you seemed to be wearing less than the time before.”
“Your brother certainly got an eyeful.”
“My turn,” he said, tugging at my nightie while pulling me down onto the bed. “Right now I want to stop thinking about everything and just be with you.”
I managed to deflect his hands. “Michael, we have a lot to talk about.”
“Can it wait until morning? All I want is—”
His plan was interrupted by a little squall from the portable crib.
Michael sat up. “Max is back?”
“No,” I said. “This is someone new.”
I went to the crib and picked up the baby. He was wide-awake this time, kicking his way out of his blue blanket. He put his fist in his mouth and frowned when it wasn’t what he wanted. He had feathery fair eyelashes and the Blackbird dark blue eyes.
Michael stayed where he was, his face slack with surprise. “What the hell is this?”
“Emma’s baby.”
Michael couldn’t speak.
“His name is Noah.”
I sat beside Michael and showed him the little boy. “Emma gave him to me in the driveway. I called Hart to say his son was here with us, but he hung up on me. He said he’d call back, but I—well, he sounded very distracted.”
Michael still hadn’t touched the baby. He said, “Emma kidnapped him?”
“That’s what I thought at first, but now I don’t think so. Hart was abrupt on the phone just now, but he didn’t seem surprised or concerned really, just in a rush. There’s something going on, but I don’t know what.”
“Call him back. Call him now.”
“Okay, but—look, I think Noah must be hungry. Emma brought some milk. He has a delicate tummy, so we probably shouldn’t let it get too empty. Here, take him, will you? And I’ll make him a bottle.”
Noah was kicking up a fuss and gave a full-throated yell.
Michael didn’t take the baby from me. Instead, he said coldly, “Call the kid’s dad.”
“I will, but I can’t do everything at once. Take him, please?”
Michael moved back on the bed. He shook his head. “He doesn’t belong here, Nora. We need to get rid of him. Tonight.”
“It’s after midnight. We can keep him for a few hours.”
“No. Get him out of here.”
“Michael—”
“I mean it, Nora. For one thing, the police will have a field day. But more important, it’s not good for us having him here, even for a night. It’s going to get complicated—you know that.”
“It’s all right to have your brother downstairs, but not an innocent child? What’s wrong with you?”
He made a grab for his phone. “What’s Hart’s number? I’ll call him myself.”
I checked and gave him the number, but when Michael punched the keys and listened, Hart didn’t pick up.
“I’ll try Penny,” I said. “Hold the baby.”
“I don’t want to hold him.” Michael got up and backed himself against the dresser.
“What has gotten into you? You play with Max and Lucy all the time.”
“Max and Lucy are family.”
Noah might have been family, too. Maybe I hadn’t realized how hard the decision had been on Michael. His face was stormy.
“Okay, I’ll call Penny,” I said. “But I’m going to feed him first. I can’t talk to her on the phone with her baby crying in the background.”
One-handed, I found the milk in the diaper bag and carried it into the bathroom. I ran one of the half-frozen bottles under the hot tap until it was warm enough. By the time I managed to assemble the bottle, Noah was howling. Finally, I got everything right, and he seized onto the bottle as if he’d been starved for days. I carried him back into the bedroom and found my phone again. Michael paced the room while I tried searching for a number for Penny. But I couldn’t manage the baby and the phone at the same time. The cell phone slipped from my hand and fell on the floor.
Without a word, Michael finally took the child from me.
Unencumbered, I rapidly went through my phone and flipped through my old day planner before I found a viable number for Penny. I dialed.
She picked up on the fourth ring, sounding sleepy.
I gave her the same quick explanation I had given Hart. “I have Noah here,” I said. “He’s safe and sound.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
“Would you like to come get him?”
She yawned. “No. Not right now.”
Whatever was going on in her household, I couldn’t imagine. I must have said something about talking again in the morning, but she only sighed and hung up.
I tried Emma’s cell phone. She didn’t answer.
I sat down on the bed. “I think Emma’s with Hart.”
Michael didn’t argue with my theory. “Where?”
“I don’t know.” I looked over. Michael had Noah in the crook of his arm, and the baby was still sucking down milk like a pro. I said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t imagine what anybody is thinking.”
“They’re not thinking,” Michael said. “They’re certainly not thinking about this kid.”
He still hadn’t called Noah by his name.
Michael’s cell phone jingled.
Sounding a little chilly myself, I asked, “What’s going on that you’re getting phone calls at this time of night?”
“It’s a thing,” he said, easing Noah into my arms. “A thing I have to do for Little Frankie.”
“Because he lent you money?”
Michael didn’t answer me. He went down the hall before he took the call.
By the time he came back, I had fed and burped Noah a
nd put him back down to sleep. I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. I could have crept downstairs and found the shopping bag from the drugstore. I wanted to take the pregnancy test. But I’d have to make my way past Little Frankie. And tonight really didn’t feel like a night for celebrating anything.
And I wondered if Michael would welcome the news of a baby. His reaction to Noah’s appearance in our home worried me.
I put my phone on the night table in case Hart should call. Or Penny. Or Emma. Anyone who could explain what was going on with the baby in our midst. I turned off the lamp. I was half asleep when Michael slid into the bed and pulled me close.
“You okay?” he murmured.
I sighed, unable to express how many ways I wasn’t okay.
He kissed the back of my neck. “I’m sorry about the kid,” he said in my ear. “It’s just—it’s dangerous, him being here.”
“Dangerous?”
Gently, Michael said, “I don’t want you getting your heart broken, Nora.”
I turned into his arms, grateful to hear his words. He kissed my mouth and found a warm spot with his fingertips, and I felt my whole body grow languid at his touch. In a while, he rolled me onto my back and whispered that he loved me. I let him have what he wanted, felt his mouth on me until I gasped, both of us forgetting the complications, the tensions. For a while, we were slow and quiet with each other.
“Better?” he asked when he had finished.
“Yes,” I whispered in his arms. “And no. In the morning, we’ll talk. Can we talk?”
But Michael was already asleep.
It occurred to me that he had been using sex to try to make everything better, to make me happy. It was his way, like cooking me enormous quantities of comfort food, I thought fleetingly as I drifted off to dreamland. It was easier for him than talking things through.
Noah did not turn out to be a champion sleeper, after all. He woke us up at five, wanting breakfast. I slid out of bed and made him a bottle, but he wasn’t satisfied with food alone. He wanted to be entertained, so I took him down the hallway to another bedroom to rock him. He knew my face wasn’t familiar, but he studied me and listened to my voice. Finally, when I was singing “Little Bunny Foo Foo,” he rewarded me with a big, toothless smile that melted my heart, and I knew what Michael had meant. I was getting attached already.
So I put Noah down in the portable crib and tried to go back to sleep. But he was soon crying again, and this time Michael got up and walked him around while I zonked out for another hour. Eventually I figured it was time to give up on sleep. I dressed, tucked my phone into the pocket of my jeans and took Noah downstairs, tiptoeing past Little Frankie snoring on the sofa.
While I warmed a bottle and toasted the last of the artisan bread, I tried to find the drugstore bag with the pregnancy test inside. I couldn’t locate the bag anywhere in the kitchen or the scullery or the laundry room. I began to think somebody had thrown it away. Noah was happy to be carried around, though, and eager for his breakfast. I tried to feed him slowly and burped him twice to ease his digestion. After we ate, I put on the old jacket I kept on a peg at the back door. I wrapped Noah up in a towel from the laundry room and grabbed the jar of maraschino cherries from the fridge. Then we went outside to look for Ralphie.
The pig was nowhere to be found. I left a trail of his favorite treat on the ground, hoping to draw him out of the woods, if that was where he’d gone.
I even walked to the back of the pasture. Emma’s ponies, curious about where I was going, followed me along the fence, butting one another, and I fed them each a cherry, too. At the back of the property—where Blackbird Farm’s border ran along Sheffield Road—I came upon a muddy set of tire tracks. A vehicle had parked there, I thought, while people walked around. I could see many footprints in the mud, none of them distinct. The scene worried me.
I walked Noah back to the farm and left the empty cherry jar on a fence post before walking down to the end of the driveway where Michael’s crew was making a shift change. The new guys came armed with coffee and bagels. A couple of them wandered over and made goo-goo sounds at the baby while their less-social compatriot spat on the road. Noah was fascinated. I asked them if they’d seen Ralphie. They expressed so much concern that I felt reassured they hadn’t whisked him off to be barbecued.
As I was starting to walk back to the house, a state police cruiser pulled up next to the mailbox. I went over just as the driver’s-side window rolled down. I recognized Ricci.
Almost friendly, he said, “Whattaya got there?”
“My sister’s son.”
I showed him Noah, and Ricci took off his sunglasses to get a better look. “He’s a cute little bugger. I have three boys. With a daughter on the way.”
The idea that Ricci could have a home and a family—including a pregnant wife who must worry every time he went to work—hadn’t really been a thought that took root in my head before, but it did now. It was a nice change of pace to think of him as a human being.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“You don’t have any kids of your own yet?”
My heart gave a flutter of hope. “Not yet.”
Ricci nodded and resumed his cop face, devoid of animation. “Well, be careful what you wish for.”
Where had I heard that before? The words sounded prophetic.
I said, “Did you solve the problem with the fire alarm?”
He made a grimace but didn’t apologize for inconveniencing me. “Yeah. It was a bozo. He’s in custody now.”
With a pang in my heart, I thought of a young mother going into labor without the support of the child’s father.
Ricci didn’t notice my reaction. “Look, I just stopped by to say thanks for the information about Zephyr Starr.”
“Have you found her? Or Michael’s stolen car?”
“Not yet. But we did some checking. Her history is certainly interesting. And the arson investigation team has been looking at Starr’s Landing. They found a gas can and plenty of accelerant evidence.”
I hadn’t decided what to do if directly questioned about the fire. I knew I couldn’t protect Emma from what she’d done, but technically, Ricci hadn’t posed a question. Feebly, I said, “Everything on a farm burns quickly. Hay, straw.”
“Yeah. But somebody took the time to make sure the animals were all safely somewhere else before splashing around the gasoline and lighting it up. We’re thinking that sounds like Zephyr. She’s a big animal lover, right?”
Carefully, I said, “I know she’s a vegetarian.”
Ricci wagged his head. “Crackpots. You never know what they’ll do. Anyway, thanks for your information. The other thing is, we’ve had complaints about a kid driving erratically in this neighborhood. He was stopped once, so we know who he is. Porter Starr. Has he been harassing you?”
I felt harassed from a lot of sources, but not particularly from Porky. I shook my head. “I know him slightly. He hasn’t bothered me.”
“Well, he’s around. Neighbors have seen him acting suspicious, but we haven’t been able to spot him a second time. I guess your security team will keep him out of your hair, but just in case. Be aware.”
“Thank you.”
We hesitated, neither one of us quite ready to say good-bye. Ricci was taking a good squint at Michael’s crew of misfits, as if trying to match descriptions with known criminals.
“Do you have a minute?” I finally asked.
Ricci switched his attention back to me. “What’s up?”
“We’re missing a pig. He’s a pet, actually, but I—I can’t help remembering that at the Starr’s Landing party, Swain Starr and his former brother-in-law, Tommy Rattigan, argued about another pig that had disappeared. They were partners in raising hogs for restaurants, and Tommy—no, it was his sister, Marybeth, who accused Swain of stealing
an important animal.”
Ricci considered that tangle of information for a moment. I thought he was going to laugh me off, but at last he said, “So in addition to a stolen car, we now we have two missing pigs? What are you thinking—bacon rustlers in the neighborhood?”
“I know it sounds silly, but—”
“I’m not really pulling your leg,” Ricci said with kindness. “Got any evidence?”
I pointed. “Back on Sheffield Road, I found some tire tracks and footprints. Maybe—”
He cut me off at the mention of Sheffield Road. “Hop in. We’ll take a drive.” He popped the lock on the passenger door.
I got into the front seat with the baby. “I suppose we need a car seat.”
Kind again, Ricci said, “We’ll be careful.”
He was true to his word, driving very slowly as I directed him up the lane, past the house. We got out of the cruiser and walked the rest of the way across the pasture. I showed him the muddy mess I had discovered on the back road.
He crouched down to examine the footprints. He pointed. “Is this what a pig footprint looks like? Or is this a deer?”
I bent over his shoulder. “I think that’s a pig. A deer’s hoofprint is more rounded and doesn’t have these little impressions behind the big ones.”
“Lots of boots were here, too. Plus these tire tracks.” Ricci frowned at the scene for a long time. When he finally got to his feet, he nodded. “Well, I think your pig has been stolen, all right. And if I had to guess, I’d say he put up a fight. How much did he weigh?”
“A lot,” I said, dismayed to hear the trooper use the past tense. “He’s a pet, but he’s big. His name is Ralphie.”
Ricci looked into my face and must have seen the distress I was trying to tamp down. He said, “I’ll make a report, start a search. We’re busy looking for the model, but I’ll check the rendering plants, butchers, meat processors. They don’t do much business except during hunting season, so—hey, look, I didn’t mean he’s, you know, dead or anything.”
I wiped a big tear from my cheek. “I’m okay. Just a little emotional. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”