Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,73
tell anyone, but Daddy saw the needle mark when he bathed me that night! But I didn't tell, I didn't!" Big tears rolled down Eve's cheeks.
"No one thinks you did anything wrong," I said.
I hadn't realized how tense she was until she relaxed.
"So Daddy found out. I think he went looking and found the paper Mama got from the doctor."
The lab results? A receipt for whatever Meredith had paid for the blood test?
"So the next night he said Mama needed a break and he was going to take us out."
"And you got in the car, right?" Chandler asked.
"Yep, me and Jane. I was buckling her car seat when Daddy said he'd left his gloves. He opened the trunk and got something out and put it on, and he went in the house. After a few minutes he came back out with something under his arm, and he put it in the trunk and we went out to eat. When we got home ..." Eve began to cry in earnest then.
Chandler slipped out with Emory's keys to open Emory's trunk. He came back in five minutes.
"I got some people looking and taking pictures," he said quietly. "Come on, sweetie, let's put you on a bed for a little while, so you can lie still."
Lou, who had tears running down her face, held out her arms to Eve, and Eve allowed Lou to pick her up and carry her off.
"What was in the trunk?" Jack asked.
"A clear plastic raincoat with lots of stains and a single-edge kitchen knife."
I shuddered.
Jack and Chandler began to have a very important talk.
Chandler called over to the men searching the house on Fulbright Street. In about thirty minutes, thin Detective Brainerd brought a familiar shoe box into the bedroom at the manse.
Jack put on gloves, opened the box, and began to smile.
Dill and Varena had taken Anna home long before, and I could assume they'd made a report to my parents about where I was.
Jack dropped me at his motel room while he went to the jail to have a conversation with Emory Osborn.
When he returned, I was still lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. I still had my coat on. My throat hurt.
Without speaking, Jack consulted an address book he fished out of his briefcase. Then he picked up the phone, took a deep breath, and began dialing.
"Roy? How you doing? Yeah, I know what time it is. But I thought you should be the one to call Teresa and Simon. Tell them we got the little girl ... of course I wouldn't kid about something like that. No, I don't want to call them, it's your case." Jack held the phone away from his ear, and I could hear Roy Costimiglia shouting on the other end. When the sound had abated a little, Jack started talking, telling Roy as much as he could in a few sentences.
"No, I don't know... they better call their lawyer, have her come down before they come down. I think there's a lot of steps to go through, but Osborn actually admitted it. Yeah." Jack eased back on the bed until he was lying beside me, his body snug against mine. "He delivered his own baby at home, and the baby died. I think there's something kinda hinky about that, it was a baby boy... and he definitely likes little girls. Anyway, he felt guilty and he couldn't tell his wife. He gave her a strong painkiller he'd been taking for a back injury, she conked out, he began riding around trying to think of how to tell her the baby didn't make it. He lived right close to Conway, and he found himself just cruising through Conway at random, he says. Yeah, I don't know whether to buy that, either, especially in view ... wait, let me finish." Jack pulled off his shoes. "He says he rode through the Macklesbys' neighborhood, recognized the house because he'd delivered a couch there about four months before. He liked Teresa, thought she was pretty. Suddenly he remembered that Teresa had been pregnant, wondered if she'd had the baby ... he watched the house for a while, says he was too distraught to go home and face his wife. Suddenly, he got his chance to make everything better. He saw Teresa come out onto the porch with the baby in her carrier, stop, put her down, and go back in the house. She was such a bad mother she didn't deserve