EIGHTEEN

SUSAN HAD PLANNED TO GO OVER THE TWO LISTS-THE ONE she had been given and the one she had stolen-first thing in the morning. And she did, although “first thing” in this case described 3 AM rather than her usual wake-up time four hours later. She had arrived home to find a nervous Shannon, two babies with what experience suggested was garden-variety colic, Chrissy frantic with worry that the new pediatrician didn’t know what he was talking about, and Jed and Stephen enjoying a pepperoni, mushroom, spinach, and extra garlic pizza-which didn’t, as she had expected, keep either man from sleeping right through the night.

One baby crying is difficult to ignore, two even more difficult, but Susan had been making an effort to do so when there was a knock on the bedroom door. Jed’s response was to move one leg a quarter of an inch closer to the edge of the bed and ratchet up the volume on his snoring. Susan got up, grabbed the robe she had left on a nearby chair and, gently nudging Clue out of her path, left the room, closing the door behind her. The hallway was deserted and she hurried to the nursery, praying nothing was seriously wrong.

Nothing, she discovered, was wrong with Ethan or Rosie. Both twins were drifting off to sleep, bottles of formula in their mouths. As Susan had planned, the matching rocking chairs were being used by Shannon and Chrissy. But nothing else in the room looked as she had planned it. The wastebasket was on its side, tissues spilling onto the floor. The diaper pail lay nearby; fortunately Susan had purchased one with a tight top. Receiving blankets were tossed around the room as though someone had been playing a game with them. Dirty baby clothing overflowed the pretty wicker hamper and CDs had not been returned to their spots on the shelves. In fact, Susan wondered if someone had misplaced all the CDs as the music coming from the high-tech speakers sounded more appropriate to a college dorm room than a baby nursery. “Someone knocked on our door. Do you need me for something?” she asked.

“We thought we needed someone to help heat more formula, but I think they’re going to sleep now.” Shannon could hardly be heard over the base beat of the music.

“Then I’ll go back to bed,” Susan said and started to do just that.

“Mom.”

Susan, recognized the exhaustion in her daughter’s voice and turned around at once. “What?”

“I have a sore throat.”

Susan started into the room and would have been at her daughter’s side immediately if she hadn’t stepped on a large stuffed animal. “Oh… What in the world is this?” she asked, bending down and picking up a large black-and-white stuffed animal. “Some sort of zebra?”

“Oh, Mother, it’s not a zebra! It’s a polar bear! Those aren’t stripes-they’re letters. If Ethan and Rosie are exposed to letters right from the start, they’re more likely to read at an early age.”

“Couldn’t you just wrap them up in yesterday’s New York Times?” Susan muttered, feeling a bit cranky. It was, she thought, awfully late for educational lectures. But back to the business at hand. “If you’re not feeling well, I can give Rosie the last of the bottle and you can go back to bed.”

“Ethan. Not Rosie. And I don’t want you to take care of him. I want you to bring me a cup of peppermint tea. You know the kind you used to make me when I didn’t feel well?” Chrissy added plaintively.

Susan had no idea whether that brand of peppermint tea-which she herself thought absolutely disgusting-was still made, but she’d grow the herb and dry it herself before she refused this request. “I’ll just run down to the kitchen and see what I can find. Would you like some, Shannon?”

“Once the babies are settled, I’ll make myself some tea. Thank you, though. “

Shannon sounded even more exhausted than her daughter, and Susan went down to the kitchen determined to find a snack as well as those tea bags.

Fifteen minutes later she was back in the nursery carrying a tray loaded with a plate of blondies, mugs of tea, cream, sugar, and a hastily assembled bowl of fruit salad. Everyone in the room was asleep. The twins had been placed together in one crib, all the dirty clothing and bedding tossed into the other, and, apparently too tired to drag themselves the few feet to their own bedrooms, Chrissy and Shannon were dozing in the rocking chairs. Susan smiled and returned to her kitchen with the snack.

She had put the envelope from the real estate agency in her desk drawer and now, after making herself a cup of decaf, she sat down to examine the papers. The Christmas card list was long and must have included everyone who had ever known the Baineses-or else Nadine and Donald were more popular than Susan had ever imagined. She counted. Three hundred and nineteen names. No wonder Nadine had thought sending the cards out was such a chore.

The list was alphabetical and it took Susan a while to weed out the people who had lived in the same town as Nadine and Donald before their move to Hancock. But she finally came up with thirty-nine names and addresses. She would, of course, wait until daytime to call, but operators (and their computer equivalents) worked all night, so she spent some time collecting phone numbers. Thirty-nine information-only calls later, she had thirty-two numbers. She then turned her attention to Donald’s phone message list.

The messages from his mother interested her the most so she saved them for last.

There were five messages of condolence and Susan cross-checked them with the list of former neighbors. Two matched and she decided she would call them first in the morning… well, later this morning. Three messages were from clients, one seeming to think that the murder might bring down the price of real estate in Hancock. There was a message from someone called Daria, who suggested that dinner at her town house just might assuage his grief. A brief “call me ASAP” from someone named Connie. And those puzzling messages from his mother.

Susan read through the list:

11:45 am-Your mother called and asked that you call her as soon as possible.

1:00 pm-Your mother called again. Says it’s important that she talk with you today.

4:00 pm-Your mother says it is urgent that you call.

Susan stared down at the paper and wondered again why Donald’s mother would call him at his office rather than his home. Of course, they might have kept their personal lives and professional lives separate by calling at the office concerning business affairs and at home when the topic was personal. But such a division seemed awkward and these three messages, all variations on the “call me” theme, sounded more personal than business.

But if the calls had been business related, why hadn’t she mentioned it? Explained that Blaine Baines Executive Homes and Estates was about to buy a house or sell one or something similar and that the deal rested on something that must be done right away?

On the other hand, if the calls were personal, why call the office at all? Why not call his home or his cell phone? Or had she tried that and Donald hadn’t answered or responded? Well, without access to his home answering machine or his cell, she had no way of knowing any of this. Susan picked up a slice of pineapple from the tray she had fixed, then munched and thought.

She was still thinking and munching-in fact, the plate was almost empty-when she heard footsteps on the stairs and Shannon appeared in the doorway.

“Hi.”

Susan swallowed the raspberry she was eating before responding. “Are the babies still asleep?”

“Yes. And Chrissy has gone to bed, too. I have this”- Shannon pointed to a baby monitor tucked into the pocket of her robe-“in case the situation changes.”

“Would you like a cookie? I’m afraid I’ve eaten most of the fruit.”

“Yes, I’m starving. And I’m going to make some tea, but I need to talk to you as well.”