I hung the green terry robe in the downstairs bathroom and Rory scooted in. A few minutes later, his clothes were deposited discreetly outside the bathroom door, and I went to the washer and dryer closet at the rear of the house in the kitchen to start a load. There was always something in the laundry basket I could throw in with a small bundle of clothes.
Martin had gotten the portable phone and was punching in a series of numbers, peering at a page in his personal address book. He looked up at the kitchen wall clock as he listened to the ringing at the other end. "Hello," he said. I thought he sounded uncertain, which was rare for Martin.
"Cindy Bartell, please."
I began to load dishes into the dishwasher - anything to stay in the room and keep working without making it obvious I was determined to listen to this conversation.
"Cindy? This is Martin. Have you been doing well? Barrett told me you'd taken a partner on ... yes, he called me at work last week." Barrett hated to call here because I might answer the phone.
"I'm glad you're finally getting some free time. Who'd you ... ?"
Martin's face underwent the oddest change.
"Dennis Stinson," he said. "Hmmm." He looked as if he was restraining all kinds of comments. I gathered Dennis Stinson was not unknown to Martin; but frankly, Cindy's business dealings were not my prime concern at this point in time. I just barely heard Hayden whimper upstairs, and I cringed. I went up the stairs so fast I wished I'd had Martin clocking me. I stood by the portable crib and held my hands up in a soothing gesture, as if that would calm the baby back into sleep. I noticed that my hands were shaking, and I was saying, "Sshhhh! Sshhhh!" in a kind of frantic way. Hayden's blue-veined eyelids fluttered once more before he settled back into sleep.
Feeling as though I'd just avoided a herd of stampeding buffalo, I shambled back down, the stairs and collapsed into the chair across from Martin. I slumped over the table, burying my face in my folded arms. After a moment, I felt Martin's fingers in my hair. He stroked my head the way a man absently pats a dog, but I was so tired by my unusually prolonged turn at being the strong one that I found even an offhand caress comforting.
"So, have you seen Regina lately?" Martin said into the telephone.
I could hear a tinny buzz that was Cindy's answer. "Not in five months? Did you notice, the last time you saw her, that she'd gained some weight?"
Buzz, buzz.
"She had a baby," Martin said.
I heard a kind of shriek coming from the other end.
"Yes, really."
I raised my head to look at Martin, but he was scowling at the stove while Cindy kept talking.
"I can imagine you'd want to talk to her, but the fact is... she's disappeared."
Buzz.
"Well, no, I can't contact Craig to ask him where she is because Craig is here. I guess the sheriffs department here will have arranged to tell his brother and the Harbors by now. This is bad news, Cindy. Craig is dead, murdered." Buzz, buzz.
"No, it wasn't over drugs." Martin raised his eyebrows to me, indicating that we had learned another fact about the deceased Craig. "We don't know what happened, exactly, but Regina is gone, Craig is dead, and we have the baby." Then Martin had to tell Cindy that Barby was out of touch on a cruise, and that we didn't know what to do with Hayden.
"Yes, I guess we could," Martin said cautiously. Cindy was offering some advice, I gathered. "Yes, I guess we could do that. Well, we'll talk about it, and if we decide to come, I'll give you a call when we get there." He hung up a moment later. "Before Rory gets out of the shower," he said, keeping his voice low, "Cindy says she had no idea Regina was pregnant, and she bets no one in Corinth knew about it. Cindy said Craig had been in jail for one or two things: possession of marijuana, bad checks, that kind of stuff. His friend Rory was almost always involved with Craig's law problems, too." "Are we going to call the sheriff about him?" I asked, tilting my head toward the bathroom door as if Martin had a choice of subjects. We could hear the pipes groan as hot water gushed out of the showerhead. The