Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle (4 page)

I smiled, knowing Mama meant what she said. She never could bear to see anyone suffer.

“You know, Simone, both her mother and father died in a car wreck when she was only two years old. Oh, she’s got plenty of family to look after her, but she was a very lonely young woman. The day after Morgan was born, I visited Cricket at the hospital again. She confided in me that she’d deliberately stopped taking her pills and gotten pregnant because she wanted somebody to share her life with. She felt that now that she had given birth to Morgan, she would never feel alone again. That’s why I know she was a good mother. I know she’d never deliberately mistreat her baby.”

“There’s something else bothering you, Mama, isn’t there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Something that’s not related to Cricket’s death, or Morgan. Before James left for work this morning, he told me that Midnight brought something home.”

“That crazy dog is always bringing things here that don’t belong to us, and—”

Mama interrupted. “Midnight brought home a baby’s skull.”

I shuddered. “Maybe he’s been digging in somebody’s cemetery,” I said.

Mama pushed her tray toward me. “James is taking the skull to Abe for him to send it to Columbia to have it examined by the state forensic lab.”

I picked up her tray and headed for the door.

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s where Midnight got that skull,” Mama said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t think Midnight visits cemeteries at all …”

Mama is fifty-three. She works as a caseworker at the county’s Department of Social Services. While many things that arouse the mind don’t excite Mama, she becomes euphoric when her mind is deducing. Long ago, Mama decided that if she could get at the truth of a problem, she would have made her contribution to humankind.

Mama and I have been playing detective since I was a little girl. Our game has only two rules: First, we protect each other. Second, we can always count on the other being around to help when needed.

I put the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, poured in the Cascade, and pushed the on button. That look in Mama’s eyes told me that she had been bitten by what she called “the sleuthing bug.” Cricket’s murder and the skull Midnight had brought home would have her undivided attention until she found out the truth behind them.

By the time I was headed back into her bedroom, Mama was trying to stand up. I got to her side just in time to keep her from falling.

“Mama, you’re supposed to stay in bed,” I reminded her.

“We’ve got things to do,” she insisted, leaning against me and pulling her nightgown over her head. She didn’t say any more. Her silence told me that she was thinking. I helped her wash up and put on clean clothes. Finally, when she was sitting at her
dressing table, she spoke. “You’ll be here for a week. You can help me in and out of the car,” she said.

“Mama,” I asked, suddenly remembering Cricket’s baby’s bewitching eyes. “Is it hard to raise a child?”

Mama stopped combing her hair. “Simone, sweetheart, I believe that the secret to raising children is in doing three things: First, set the example for whatever you want them to be. Second, love them unconditionally. And, third, accept them for their own uniqueness.”

“That’s all to it?” I asked.

Mama smiled. “If you get that right, honey,” she said, “most other things will fall into place.”

M
ama and I stepped out on the front porch. Now the moisture in the morning’s air was a warm drizzle, no more than a mist.

There was an odd expression on Mama’s face as she slid into the passenger’s side of my Honda. For a second I suspected that she was having second thoughts about being taken to the Cherry Ridge apartment where Cricket had been murdered, but I knew that if she was uncomfortable with the idea, she’d never admit it.

I put the key into the ignition and started the car, swung off Smalls Lane where my parents had built their ranch home years earlier. I pulled onto Highway 3 and headed east.

Mama was silent. I drove slowly but when she winced, I asked, “You okay?”

She nodded, slowly. “Yeah, but I suppose I should be home with my feet up.”

“Let’s go back,” I urged.

Mama held up her hand. “No,” she said. “Drive me to the Cherry Ridge Apartments. I’ll stay in the car, you can bring the neighbors to me.”

“Perhaps this trip wasn’t the thing for you to do,” I argued.

“I will be all right,” she said firmly, determined.

The Cherry Ridge Apartments consists of two long brick buildings facing each other and separated by a promenade of a paved street. Each building has six apartments in it. Behind the complex is a small wooded area. The complex looks like an oasis in the middle of a forest. In the front of the building on the right there is a large Dumpster for tenants’ garbage.

Everything was quiet. The only sign that death had visited the area was the yellow ribbon marking off the first apartment on the left side of the road.

I pulled up in front of the yellow ribbon. Nobody and nothing moved. Then, a screen door opened. A woman eased onto the small stoop of the apartment next to the one in which Cricket’s body had been found. The door to Clarence Young’s apartment was closed tight and padlocked.

Mama beckoned to the woman. “Koot,” she called.

Koot Rawlins eyed Mama, then she walked toward us. I took a deep breath, remembering how
difficult it was to be around this woman for long because her gas usually came from places other than her mouth.

Koot belched. “What you doing out here, Candi?” she asked, once she had propped herself against the Honda’s front fender.

“I just heard about Cricket,” Mama said.

“Pitiful,” Koot said, between belches.

“What do you know about her?” Mama asked.

“Nothing,” Koot answered. “Ain’t seen nothing, ain’t heard nothing.”

“Was Cricket known to hang around these apartments a lot?” Mama asked.

Koot shook her head. “I ain’t seen much of that gal around anyplace,” she said.

I heard a noise behind me and glanced at my rearview mirror. A battered red car was pulling up into the complex.

“Oh, no,” I moaned.

Mama nodded a greeting to Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls as the red Buick LeSabre passed us and parked in front of my car. A small line formed at each corner of Mama’s mouth.

By this time Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls had gotten out of their car. Sarah Jenkins, her frail body draped in a white dress that seemed to be one continuous piece of cloth from her neck down to her ankles, tried to smile. It took all of Annie Mae Gregory’s energy just to ease her large body out of the car and stand up on the pavement. Carrie Smalls, whose jet black hair swayed in the
slight breeze, walked toward us briskly. Her two companions followed her.

“Candi,” Carrie Smalls began, without acknowledging me. “How’s those feet of yours doing?”

“I’m a little uncomfortable,” Mama admitted.

“I’d better take you home—” I said, turning the key in the ignition.

“Before you go running off,” Sarah Jenkins said to me, “I need to tell Candi about Cricket’s baby.”

“What about Morgan?” Mama asked.

“She’s been stolen,” Annie Mae Gregory answered.

I switched off the ignition.

Carrie Smalls took up the reporting. “We saw that deputy of Abe’s come hurrying out of Kelley’s Print Shop over on Main Street about an hour ago.”

“Something up, I thought to myself,” Sarah Jenkins continued. “Sure as I’m born to die, I said to Carrie and Annie, something is up for Rick Martin to be coming out of Kelley’s in such a hurry.”

“She was right,” Annie Mae confirmed. “Sarah knew what she saw.”

“I’ve got an eye for seeing things that ain’t quite right,” Sarah said proudly.

Carrie Smalls continued. “After Rick cleared out, we went inside and talked to Pete Kelley.”

“I like Pete. He’s always ready to talk,” Sarah interjected.

Annie Mae Gregory took a deep breath, then spit the words out fast, as if to keep her two friends from cutting in. “Pete told us that Abe had sent Rick to his shop to make picture posters of Morgan Childs. Told
us that nobody in either Cricket’s family or that good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers, Timber, has seen that baby since yesterday morning, hours before somebody sliced up Cricket over there in Clarence Young’s apartment,” she said.

Mama turned to me. “Take me to Abe,” she said, her voice anxious.

I started the car again. “We’ll be by to see you later,” Carrie Smalls promised as we pulled away from the curb.

The front door of the jail opens into a small foyer. On the left side there is a door that leads into a room which has one large desk, one small desk, two executive chairs, two file cabinets, a water cooler, a small table with a coffee urn on it, and four wooden chairs. This is the domain of Sheriff Abe Stanley and his deputy, Rick Martin.

On the other side of the foyer is a door that leads to three holding cells, residence for those who break Otis’s laws.

“What’s this I hear about little Morgan being kidnapped?” Mama asked, no sooner had she shuffled into Abe’s door and sat down on one of his wooden chairs.

Abe Stanley, a man whose facial expression changes with his every thought, grimaced. “It’s a fact, Candi,” he said, almost apologetically. You see, the sheriff and Mama had developed a friendship that most of the time ensured Mama would get that
kind of information direct from him. The fact that she knew about the murdered woman’s missing baby before he’d had a chance to call and tell her himself seemed to embarrass him. “How did you find out about it so quickly?” he asked.

“Sarah, Carrie, and Annie Mae,” Mama answered. “They saw Rick leave Pete Kelley’s print shop. Pete told them that you’d ordered posters to be printed of Morgan to spread around the county because she’s missing.”

Abe stuck a Camel in the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t light it. Earlier on, Mama had told him that she couldn’t take the smoke. “A couple of hours ago Rose, Cricket’s sister, came by here. She told me she hadn’t seen Morgan since yesterday morning when Timber came and picked that baby up to take to his mama’s for a visit. So I called Timber’s mama, Dollie Smith. She told me that Timber came home around ten o’clock yesterday morning and he didn’t have Morgan with him. Said he slept until around six, then left. Said she asked him about Morgan and he just said that Morgan was getting good care. Dollie assumed Timber was talking about Cricket, so she didn’t ask him anything else about the baby. I told Dollie to check with the rest of her family, to see if Morgan was with one of them.” He shook his head. “Dollie called me back an hour ago. Nobody in her family admits to seeing that child for at least two weeks.”

Abe slouched in his chair. “The way I figure it, that baby is still alive, ’cause if she was dead we’d have
found her body alongside her mama’s, don’t you think so, Candi?”

Mama let out a breath, like she had been holding it, afraid. “I certainly do,” she replied. “So, until we’ve got reason to believe otherwise, Morgan is alive and we’ve got to find her before—”

“Rose Childs told me,” Abe cut in, “that after she got the word that Cricket had been knifed to death, she tried to get in touch with Timber but she couldn’t reach him.”

Abe took a book of matches out of his pocket, looked at it, then put it back in his pocket. “Candi, if you’d seen the room that poor girl was butchered in, you’d have thought you was in a hogs’ slaughtering house. There was blood all over that place—floor, walls, bed, everywhere. Poor Cricket must have gone down fighting. I think she died on the rug, and her body was put on the bed later. She took five stabs with a butcher’s knife, but they didn’t kill her. Whoever did it must have gotten mad ’cause Cricket wouldn’t die easily. He finally put his hands on her throat and squeezed it until she died.”

Mama shuddered. “Was there blood in any of the other rooms in the apartment?” she asked Abe.

“All the other rooms in Clarence’s apartment were undisturbed. In all my days as sheriff of this county, Candi, that bedroom is the worst crime scene I’ve ever seen. I can just imagine what that poor girl went through before she left this world.”