Death Come Quickly Page 4

  “Yes,” I said, understanding. “But.”

  Ruby frowned, puzzled. “But what?”

  “Just . . . but.” I looked at Sheila. “It wasn’t planned?”

  “Well . . .” Sheila gave a little shrug. “Not exactly. Of course we’ve talked about it. Both of us have always said we wanted kids someday.” She hesitated. “It’s just that . . . right now, well, it’s tricky.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Do?” Ruby repeated indignantly. “Why, she’s going to have a baby. That’s what makes the world go ’round, you know. People fall in love and have sex and then they get pregnant and then they—”

  “And then they have to fit the baby into their lives,” I said. “How’s that going to work for you, Smart Cookie?”

  Of course, both Sheila and I know that there’s no law that says you can’t be a cop and a mom-to-be at the same time. In fact, under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act), employers are required to treat pregnancy in the same way that they treat other health conditions that affect employees’ ability to work. The PDA was designed to ensure that women can participate equally in the workforce, without denying them the right to a full family life. It requires employers to treat pregnant women as well—or as poorly—as it treats other employees with health-related issues. But being Top Cop in Pecan Springs and being a mom might be a whole lot harder than Sheila thinks.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Sheila replied, raising her chin with a determined look. “Blackie’s telling McQuaid this afternoon. It may have an impact on their situation, too.”

  May have an impact? Of course it would have an impact. I had to smile at the thought of Blackie doing surveillance with a year-old child buckled into the car seat, or researching online while he gave his baby a bottle. We could give him a new title. Mr. Mom, Private Detective.

  Ruby stamped one orange-suede clog. “I do not understand this, girls. We are going to have a baby, and all you can talk about are details, details, details.”

  “Ruby,” I said patiently, “Sheila is the chief of a small-town police department in the middle of Texas. If there have been other pregnant police chiefs in this state, I haven’t met them. Or heard of them. Or read about them. We are sailing in uncharted waters here.”

  “Exactly.” Sheila picked her cop hat up off the floor. “There’s my pregnancy and my job. After the baby is born, there’ll be our baby, my job, and Blackie’s job, which sometimes requires him to be out of town for a week or more at a time. I’m sure we’ll work it out.” She sighed. “But first, I’ve got to review the police department’s policy on pregnancy. And the municipal policy, as well.”

  “Which—I’m guessing—is not too liberal,” I said. Pecan Springs is a nice little town and I love living here. But this is Texas, after all, and the city council has never been celebrated for its progressive leadership.

  “You got it.” Sheila made a face. “I meant to do it earlier—before this happened to one of my female officers. Now that I’m the one who is having a baby, it’s awkward. And it’s not like there are a couple dozen pregnant female police chiefs I can call up and ask for advice.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes, I see.” Ruby cleared her throat. “Well,” she ventured, “there’s Frances McDormand. In Fargo.”

  “Yeah, right, Ruby,” I said ironically. “A pregnant chief of police—in the movies. Somehow I don’t think a fictional character could offer Smart Cookie a lot of advice.”

  Sheila nodded. “I’m very happy about it, actually, when I’m not throwing up. We didn’t plan this baby, but now that it’s on the way, I’m glad. Most of the time.” Her smile was crooked. “Not when I think about the chief’s job, though. And not when I remember that Blackie left his job so I could keep mine.”

  That was the deal they’d made. Given the high divorce rate among police officers, not to mention the double risk of disability and death, they had decided to be a one-cop couple. Blackie gave up the job that had been in his family for decades, while Sheila kept hers. Now, confronted with the impending reality of motherhood, Sheila might be forgiven for wishing the decision had gone the other way.

  I felt a twinge—envy, was it? Or even, just possibly, jealousy. Or (if I was being honest) just plain wistfulness. One of my two best friends in the world was having a baby. I wasn’t. I had decided long ago that I was not cut out for motherhood, but that was before McQuaid came into my life, bringing his son, Brian, as well. And then Caitlin, my brother’s daughter. I now had two of the best children in the world, and I was a mother—but not really.

  Sheila’s pager began to chirp. She took it off her belt, looked at it, and put it back, suddenly all cop, all business. “I really have to get back to the office.” She glanced around at the wreckage. “I’m sorry about this mess. You won’t mind if I leave you with it?”

  “Not in the slightest,” Ruby said. “We’ll take care of it.” She raised her voice as Sheila put on her hat and went out the door, carrying the bag of emergency anti–morning sickness supplies I had given her. “See you tomorrow for lunch.”

  “Got it,” Sheila said without turning around. “But tell Cass that she can forget the roses, as far as I’m concerned.”

  • • •

  “CAITLIN,” I called. I put the big yellow Fiesta ware serving dish in the middle of the kitchen table.

  Thursday nights, we usually have a skillet supper. Tonight we were having zucchini out of the garden (where there is much too much of it), with chicken, rotini, and roasted garlic, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheese. “Time to set the table for supper.”

  Upstairs, Caitlin stopped in the middle of her third rendition of “Clair de lune,” her summer violin recital piece. A moment later, light footsteps clattered on the stairs.

  Twelve-year-old Caitlin joined our family two years ago. Biologically speaking, she’s my niece, my brother Miles’ daughter—my half brother, actually, but that’s a whole other story. Tragically, she lost both of her parents before she was eleven. She’s my daughter, now, and McQuaid’s.

  Caitie is small for her age and fragile looking, with pixie-cut dark hair and large dark eyes, not as sad as they used to be, I’m glad to say. That’s partly because McQuaid, Brian, and I have taken her into our hearts, helping her to feel loved and secure. But it’s also due to her violin, her chickens (known familiarly as “the girls”), and her scruffy orange alley cat, Pumpkin.

  My mother, Leatha, gave Caitlin the violin I scorned when I was her age, and she immediately fell in love with it. She’s studying with Sandra Trevor, who teaches strings at CTSU and says that Caitie has a fine talent. “I’m not sure I’d call her a prodigy,” Sandra told McQuaid and me when she suggested that Caitlin enter the Young Classical Artists Competition sponsored by the university. “But she is certainly exceptional. I’m sure she’ll do well.”

  She did, placing at the top of her age group. McQuaid and I do what we can to encourage our daughter’s remarkable musical talent—and to make sure that she leads a normal life, in spite of it. Which is where the cat and the chickens come in.

  “Hey, Mom.” Caitie bounced into the kitchen, followed by Pumpkin, who had already squandered eight of his nine lives in riotous living before he showed up on our doorstep and announced that he had arrived and would someone please warm up a saucer of milk because he had come a long way and he hadn’t happened on anything much to eat in the last hundred miles or so. Oh, and a bed would be rather nice, too, thank you very much.

  “How about a sweet, fluffy kitty instead?” I’d asked, when Caitie begged to adopt him. But the scruffy, down-at-the-heels tomcat had already clawed his way into her heart.

  “He’s just like me when I first came to live here,” she’d said, clutching him in her arms. “He doesn’t have any family. He needs somebody to adopt him. He needs me.” The cat, knowing a very good deal
when it bumped into him, had powered up his pussycat purr, unpacked his bags, and moved right in.

  Pumpkin and Caitlin’s girls are the only resident creatures at our house these days, except for a few of Brian’s fugitive lizards, the ones who were absent on safari under the refrigerator or in the laundry hamper and hence could not be located when he decided to release their friends and relations back into the wild. I don’t miss the lizards and I cheered (under my breath, of course) when Brian sold his tarantula, Ivanova, to another arachnid collector.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t take you to college with me,” he’d explained to Ivanova as he packed her up, with her terrarium habitat and hides and toys. “And if I asked Dad and Mom to take care of you, they might let you get loose.” I shuddered at the thought.

  But all of us do miss dear old Howard Cosell, McQuaid’s ancient basset. Howard went to the happy hunting grounds a few months ago, after a brief illness. He was well loved and deeply mourned. But he’d had a long life and a happy one, especially since we moved to the country. True to his inner basset, he loved chasing rabbits and squirrels. He never caught one, of course: they were much too speedy for him. But he once managed to corner an armadillo against the stone fence and took a bite. McQuaid and I still laugh when we remember Howard’s surprise and disgust when he actually got a taste of the creature. There’s probably another dog in our future, but we miss dear Howard too much to think about that just yet.

  Caitlin went to the table, leaned over to peer into the casserole dish, then looked up at me in pretended alarm. “Mom, that’s not—”

  “No, of course it isn’t,” I said, going to the fridge. “You don’t think I would do such a thing, do you?”

  “Just checking,” Caitlin said cheerfully and threw me a dimpled grin. Her girls—three white hens and three red hens—live in the palatial plywood edifice that McQuaid and Brian erected in the backyard. The girls proved to be astonishingly productive, once they got the hang of it. They deliver an average of five eggs a day, seven days a week, forty-plus weeks of the year. Caitie (who bought her chickens out of her babysitting money) sells some of her eggs to us and the rest to our neighbors, bringing in enough to cover the cost of chicken feed and retire the debt they accrued in the months before they started laying. She says she is thinking of doubling her flock in the fall, with the idea of using the money for a new full-size violin. Leatha has offered to buy the violin for her, but Caitie, who is an entrepreneur at heart, wants to earn the money herself.

  I pulled the salad fixings out of the fridge: purslane from the sunny corner of the backyard; and from the garden, some Malabar spinach, a few green onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and two cucumbers. I feel virtuous when I feed the family at least one dish that we grow ourselves. And even more virtuous when one of the greens is a weed. (That is, a plant with a bad reputation.)

  “Jake’s coming for supper,” I told Caitlin. “Her parents aren’t back from their field trip yet. So set the table for five, please.”

  Jake is Jacqueline Keene, Brian’s girlfriend and—coincidentally—the sister of one of the documentary filmmakers that Ruby had mentioned to Sheila. Dr. Keene, the girls’ father, is on the anthropology faculty at CTSU. He and their mother, Annie, a high school teacher, were supervising a group of students doing a dig in the remote jungles of Belize and wouldn’t be back for another week or so. Jake is a great kid, and she and Brian have been going together so long, and so comfortably, that McQuaid and I view her almost as a member of the family. There’s a certain danger in this, I suppose, but all we can do is trust to the good judgment and common sense of both kids. McQuaid has made sure that Brian knows and respects the facts of life, and Annie tells me that she’s had the Conversation with Jake. Teen sex is not a subject that any of us take lightly.

  Things will change in a big way at the end of the summer, though. Brian has been accepted at the University of Texas at Austin. Jake, who decided that she would rather attend a smaller, more familiar school, will be at CTSU. Both their worlds will widen out to include new ideas, new places, new people. By this time next year, they may find themselves going in very different directions.

  Caitie got the silverware out of the drawer. “Guess what,” she said.

  I hate “guess what,” which always strikes me as a not-so-subtle one-up. When an adult pulls it on me, I never bite. But this was Caitie, and she’s special. I played along, frowning, pretending to think.

  “Well, how about this? Pumpkin chased a desperately hungry coyote away from your chicken coop, while the girls cowered in the corner, quaking with fear.” Pumpkin is perfectly capable of this. He is one fierce cat. And we do have coyotes—not to mention bobcats, and mountain lions.

  “A good guess but wrong.” Caitie giggled. “Guess again.”

  I pressed a forefinger against my forehead, frowning, pretending to think very hard. “You won four gold Reading Circle stars at the library, which is twice as much as anybody else.” Actually, I knew this for a fact, because Jenni Long, the children’s librarian, had stopped at the shop to tell me. The kids get a gold star for every five books they read this summer. At twenty and counting, Caitlin was far ahead of the pack.

  “How did you know that?” Caitie exclaimed.

  “A fairy whispered it in my ear,” I said. “She also said, ‘Tell Caitie that’s quite an achievement.’”

  Caitie giggled, that sweet little-girl giggle that always goes straight to my heart. “Thank you. But it wasn’t what I was thinking. You have to guess.”

  I gave her a quick hug. “That’s for the gold stars. But that’s it for me, I’m afraid. I’ve totally run out of ideas. What is it I’m supposed to guess?”

  “Mrs. Banner is going to have a baby.” She began laying out the silverware on the table. “She said so when I took her my eggs.”

  “That is totally wonderful,” I said enthusiastically, reaching for the salad bowl, which lives on the second shelf in the cupboard. The Banners are our neighbors up the lane. Sylvia raises sheep and sells their fleece, online, to spinners and weavers. Tom does oil and gas consulting and builds birdhouses for a hobby. They’re a nice couple, in their late thirties and married only a couple of years. This will be a first child for both. “A boy or girl or do they know yet?”

  “A boy. They’re going to name him Thomas, after his daddy. Mrs. Banner says I can come and help her take care of him, but he will be too little for me to babysit—at least for quite a while.” There was a brief silence. “Mrs. Banner is kind of old for babies, isn’t she?” Caitie asked. “I mean, she’s got gray hair. Not as much as you have,” she added thoughtfully, eyeing the gray streak in my brown hair. “But some.”

  “Gray doesn’t mean ancient,” I said defensively. “And older women do have babies.” Was this a teachable moment? “In fact,” I added, “you can conceive a baby right up to the time your periods stop.” We had discussed periods several times recently, and while Caitlin is still maybe a year away from the big day, her supplies are already stashed in her bottom dresser drawer. I believe in being prepared.

  “I read about that in a book I got at the library,” Caitlin informed me. She put her head on one side, her dark eyes serious and intent. “Have your periods stopped, Mom? Could we have a baby?”

  Talk about teachable moments. I was considering how best to reply to this when the screen door banged and I was saved from saying anything at all. Brian barged into the kitchen, followed by Jake. Brian—dark haired, blue eyed, remarkably like his dad—towers over me now. When he comes into the room, it feels crowded. Jake is tall, too, thin and cute and lively, with steady gray eyes and a bouncy blond ponytail. She isn’t quite as tall as Brian, but almost. And they’re both athletic: Brian lettered in baseball, and Jake played basketball and trombone in the Panthers marching band. All-American kids. There are moments when I would like to stop the clock and tear up the calendar and keep them both—and Caitie, t
oo—just as they are, forever young, sweet, and innocent, before sex and all that jazz. Thank goodness that’s not in my power.

  “Ah, chicken for supper,” Brian said, with an approving glance into the casserole on the table. His voice is past the squeaky stage now, and reliably deep. “Hey, Cait. Have you counted your girls lately? I was out there a few minutes ago, and I only saw five. Three white ones and two—”

  “You lie!” Caitlin shrilled furiously. But she banged down the silverware on the table and sprinted through the door, nearly smacking into McQuaid, coming up the back steps.

  “Whoa, there,” McQuaid cautioned. “Watch it, kid, or you’ll end up on your nose.”

  “I gotta go count my girls!” Caitie cried and rushed down the steps.

  Jake smacked Brian on the arm. “Brian McQuaid, that was so mean. You go out there right now and apologize to your sister.”

  “Ditto that, Brian,” I said sternly, tearing the Malabar spinach into the large bowl that already held the washed purslane leaves. Teachable moment or not, I was glad to be off the hook, at least for now. “You know how Caitie feels about those chickens.”

  Jake picked up the silverware and began to arrange it beside the plates. “Go, Brian,” she commanded.

  “You’re ganging up on me,” Brian protested, scowling.

  “You got it!” Jake and I said together, and Brian went.

  “We need to keep this girl around,” McQuaid said to me, slipping an arm around my waist as I stood at the counter, mixing the greens. “She manages that boy better than we do.” He kissed the back of my neck, then headed for the fridge.

  I shivered. McQuaid is a big man, six feet, one-ninety-plus, with the broad, muscled shoulders of an ex–college quarterback who is still in very good shape. Even after years of sleeping with him, some of them blessed by matrimony, my body is still very much aware of his body. It’s an awareness that often feels almost electrical, as though the voltage just got tweaked up a notch or two.