reasoning with one part of my mind that nothing could be worse than what I had already seen.
The floor was empty, but the folds of the quilted paisley bedspread were moving, down at the carpet level. I dropped to my knees and bent over. Holding my breath, I lifted the skirt of the bedspread.
Under the bed, kicking his legs and waving his hands, was the baby. He was just beginning to get upset that his mother hadn't picked him up after his nap. He looked perfectly all right, and his red sleeper was pristine. So Regina's car was missing, and Regina wasn't anywhere in the apartment.
* * *
I was certainly thinking without clarity. At first, I thought the baby's presence and wellness were good news. And they were good news, of course, but they were only part of Martin's concern. When I came to the top of the stairs and called down to him that the baby was fine but Regina was gone, the look on his face reminded me that someone had murdered the young man on the stairs, and the vanished Regina was by far the most likely person to have wielded the hatchet. Martin was standing passively, leaning against the garage, his arms crossed over his chest. His hair and his coat were dark with rain. His alien behavior struck me like a fist to the chest.
"You have to call the police," I reminded him, and I saw the anger flare in my husband's face. He didn't like being told to do that. My presence obliged him to do the right thing. He'd been thinking of concealing this, somehow, I could tell. It was the pirate side of him coming out. There was something stuck under the windshield wiper blade of the strange car, which I noticed had Ohio tags. I could hardly get much wetter, so I carefully eased down the stairs and over to the car. I touched the sodden mass with a finger. It was a folded piece of paper, a note. I could see the streaks that had been blue ink. A note: to whom, about what, I'd never know. The baby began to scream. His cries carried on the chilly night air. I expected someone to pick him up and tend to his needs, and when that didn't happen, I had what Lizanne calls a Real Moment. Hayden's mother had vanished; Hayden's father Craig (and I was pretty sure the corpse was Craig, though I'd only met him once at the wedding) was lying before me dead. The baby's grandmother, who ought to be willing to take charge, was on a cruise with her boyfriend. I, Aurora Teagarden, was (at least temporarily) responsible for this baby, unless Martin acted. Staring at my husband, I saw how unlikely that was. Instead of feeling elation - finally, a baby! - I felt an almost bottom less dismay. The rain pattered to a halt.
I turned and once again mounted the stairs to the garage apartment. I squatted and eased Hayden out from under the bed. With effort, I rose from the floor holding him. It was shocking how much he could wiggle, how hard it was to hold on to him, especially when he arched his body with rage. I was trembling, and it wasn't for the dead man on the stairs. Somehow, I made it down the stairs and across the walkway, passing a still-silent Martin without saying anything. After unlocking our house, I reached for the security pad, only to find that it had been turned off. Of course, we hadn't told Regina how to set it... at least, I hadn't. I called 911 from our kitchen telephone. I jiggled Hayden with one damp arm while I dialed with my free hand. I could barely hold him, but I couldn't put him on the kitchen floor. He was screaming so loudly by now that I had to repeat myself twice. At least Doris wasn't still on duty, and the dispatcher didn't seem to know that I'd already had county police at my house that day. After I hung up, I could put off tending to Hayden no longer. I had no idea what to do.
As Hayden's need, whatever it was, wasn't met, he screamed more. Too frightened and uncertain to leave him by himself, I staggered back out into the night, toting the increasingly heavy baby, and edged once again past the awful thing on the stairs. Its horror was actually paling in