She began to clear the few dishes off the table, and I began running hot water to wash them. As we washed, rinsed, and dried, Margaret told me about an art exhibit she and Luke had driven into Pittsburgh to see the week before, but I was still thinking about Regina.

Chapter Nine

The surrogate mother theory explained a great deal. Why Regina had stayed out of sight while she was pregnant. She wouldn't have wanted to answer a lot of questions.

Why she had money in the diaper bag. She would have been paid for her pregnancy, and presumably she would've received money for expenses during it. That would be why she and Craig had been able to afford to live without government aid, even though neither she nor Craig held a steady job. "I'd been thinking," I said slowly, "that Craig had gotten involved with some drug deal or some scam of his that had gone wrong. But that didn't explain all the facts."

Margaret shrugged. "I've had a month or two to wonder about it. Regina's attitude seemed so strange."

"But why would someone kill Craig? And take Regina?"

"Maybe nobody took Regina. Maybe she went."

"Leaving her baby?"

"People leave babies all the time," Margaret said, her face grim. "Luke and I lived in Pittsburgh before we moved back here so Luke could help his mother out during her last illness. The first year we were married, before we were trying to have our own child, this woman in our apartment building left her baby right outside our door. She was thinking since we didn't have kids, we would be ecstatic, I guess."

"Oh my gosh! What did you do?"

"Of course we called the police, and they called the child welfare people. They had to take the baby to a foster home."

"That's so sad! What happened to the mother?"

Margaret shrugged. "Jail time, I think."

It had certainly become a morning of mysteries to ponder. Why a woman would have a baby she didn't want... why she'd leave that baby's life to chance... and where was the father of the baby, all this time, huh? Why did his responsibility get to be voluntary, while the mother's was mandatory? I thought of my father, who'd never sent child support; Regina's father, who had vanished the minute the divorce was final.

Boy, in a minute I was going to be spitting fire because I wasn't allowed in combat. I shook myself briskly, and asked Margaret Granberry if she'd seen the latest Harrison Ford movie.

Our husbands lurched up the driveway in their separate vehicles. We had quite a convention in front of the house now, with Margaret's dark green pickup, Martin's (leased, rented, or borrowed) Jeep, and Luke's battered sort-of-white Bronco.

Luke hopped out of the Bronco and hurried to the front door, his face reddened by the cold. He was wearing a rugged coat that looked like sheepskin or some other animal hide, and he'd gone without a hat or gloves. Martin, who hated headgear—I suspected because it messed up his hair—was impressed enough by the cold to have put on a sort of Russian hat he'd had for years, and he'd worn the leather driving gloves I'd given him last Christmas. His arms were full of bags from the grocery.

"I got your message," Luke told Margaret breathlessly. "Is everything okay here?"

"Yes, honey," she said. "I didn't mean to scare you. I left Luke a note about why I'd come over here," she explained to me in an aside. "I didn't want Luke to think I'd just ducked out on the firewood we were supposed to split this morning!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry I interrupted your chores!" I had assumed that because it had snowed, everyone was on holiday, I realized. A legacy of my southern upbringing. "No, no. We can just as well do it this afternoon. I've enjoyed the break in routine."

Luke said to Martin, "My wife tells me you've had a prowler."

"You wouldn't think this was the weather for it, would you?"

"Mighty brave guy," Luke commented in agreement.

"Or desperate."

Martin went to put the groceries in the kitchen, leaving this little chilling statement hanging in the air behind him like an icicle from the eaves. I smiled at the Granberrys, but I felt it was an anxious sort of smile. "I'll go see if we can find some hot chocolate," I murmured, and scooted into the kitchen after Martin.

"What are you in such a snit about?" I breathed at him. He was standing in his "I'm mad" pose, shoulders hunched up, hands in his pockets, staring out the window.

"I can't track down that slippery little bastard," Martin growled back. I assumed he meant Rory Brown.

I started to point out that this was no big surprise, but my better sense came to my rescue. "We'll talk about it later. Let's serve the Granberrys some hot chocolate. After all, they came to help when we needed it." » Martin carried the tray with the four mugs out to the living room and set it on the battered table in front of the couch. The tray was clearly one of Regina and Craig's wedding presents, probably from Pier 1, a rattan and iron construction that would have looked charming in more congruent surroundings. "Do you have any idea how long you'll stay?" Luke asked, taking a mug of chocolate and dropping some miniature marsh-mallows on top. He seemed like a different person now that he was sure his wife was safe—relaxed and secure, even physically larger somehow.

I let Martin field that one.

"We have no idea," he confessed. "If Regina is found, and under what circumstances... if we can track down my sister Barby and her fiancé ... if we can find out if the baby is really Regina's ... All that will have a bearing." "What a terrible set of circumstances," Margaret said. She didn't seem inclined to repeat the ideas she'd voiced to me when we were alone, and I thought that was wise. I'd try to tell Martin when the Granberrys left. Luke was the first to hear yet another vehicle coming up the driveway.

"Expecting anyone?" he asked Martin.

"No." Martin went to the front window. "Blue Dodge pickup." To my astonishment, our newest set of callers consisted of the hunky Dennis Stinson, Cindy Bartell, and our erstwhile trip companion, Rory. This house had seemed isolated. Now it was beginning to feel like a social center. We should have charged for parking and hot beverages. I went to the kitchen to put some more water in the pot, found some cookies in the bags Martin had carried into the house, and put them on a plate. "The shop's closed on Saturday afternoons, so we thought we'd come out to check on you," Dennis said. He looked even larger in the layers of cold-weather wear. Cindy looked like one of Santa's elves next to him, with her pixie-cut hair and narrow face. She was in a red-and-green sweater, which heightened the impression. Rory wasn't smiling, or even wearing his usual look of amiable stupidity. On the contrary, he seemed sullen and stubborn. He didn't speak, but grabbed a cookie and ate it in one bite.

I sidled over next to him, since all the other people in the room were talking to each other and I had a little time on my own. "How come you're here?"

"That Stinson guy grabbed me," Rory said. He looked down at me, ran his tongue around his teeth to clean off the cookie remnants, and summoned back up his charm. "I oughta call the police," he said, all naughty. "I was just walking around downtown, minding my own business. Then I cross in front of Cindy's Flowers, and out comes this Stinson guy, and he grabs me, and tells me your husband is looking for me, and I gotta go with him. Then Mrs. Bartell, she says I got to go, too. Since it was her, I came without giving them no trouble." "Thanks, Rory. We really do need to find out more about what happened to Craig and why."