Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle - Hardcover

Deloach, Nora

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553107038 ISBN 13: 9780553107036

Verlag: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

I usually go home when I need some truly soul-satisfying eating. But this time I was heading back to Otis to help Mama after her bunion operation. I had no idea we'd end up knee-deep in somebody else's trouble....
It all seemed to start when Mama and I were shopping for groceries and crazy old Miss Birdie stole Cricket Childs' tiny baby, causing a scene between the two women everyone in town heard about. It wasn't twenty-four hours later that Cricket, known as a lady who liked wild times and wilder men, turned up murdered in a fellow's bed. Even worse, Cricket's baby had vanished.
To add to the chilling events, my Daddy's wandering dog Midnight dug up something shocking: an infant's skull. And not long after Mama rushed it over to Sheriff Abe's office, Midnight brought home another.
So no way Mama wasn't going to start snooping. And with the doctor ordering her off her feet, I ended up doing some legwork. But it's a good thing I still had two good feet, because before long, I was running for my life...as babies' cries and women's tears mingled in a crime fueled by motives as ancient as human memory - greed, jealousy, and old-fashioned revenge.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nora DeLoach is an Orlando, Florida, native presently living in Decatur, Georgia.  She is married and the mother of three.  Her novels include three previous Mama mysteries.  She is at work on her fifth.

Aus dem Klappentext

on the case, sniffing out dark, tragic secrets...and a killer.<br><br>Not much happens in Otis, South Carolina (pop. 5,000) that Mama, a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, doesn't know about. Mama's given name is Grace Covington, but everyone calls her Candi--for the honeyed color of her complexion, not her cooking (which is second to none from Otis all the way to Atlanta, where I work as a paralegal). I usually go home when I need some truly soul-satisfying eating. But this time I was heading back to Otis to help Mama after her bunion operation. I had no idea we'd end up knee-deep in somebody else's trouble....<br><br>It all seemed to start when Mama and I were shopping for groceries and crazy old Miss Birdie stole Cricket Childs' tiny baby, causing a scene between the two women everyone in town heard about. It wasn't twenty-four hours later that Cricket, known as a lady who liked wild times and wilder men, turned up mu

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My mama's name is Grace, but she's called Candi because of her candied sweet potato complexion.

My parents are originally from Otis, South Carolina.  They got married right out of high school and my father joined the Air Force.  After a career of thirty years and the birth of my two brothers (Rodney and Will) and me, Captain James Covington retired and he and Mama moved back home to Otis, a town of five thousand people.

* * *

"Okay," I told Mama, "but I want you to cook roast pork, fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, string beans and new potatoes, rice and okra.  And, for dessert, I want carrot cake and sweet potato pie."

* * *

On Saturday morning, we were in Winn Dixie shopping for groceries when the baby's wail rang through the aisles.  It sounded like somebody had stuck a hand down the infant's throat and squeezed its intestines.

I flinched.  Mama held her shopping list in one hand, a can of mushroom soup in the other.  She was saying something about sodium when the child's second scream broke her concentration.  She glanced in the direction of the cry.  "Something is wrong with that child!" she said softly, putting the can of soup back on the shelf.

A voice over the loudspeaker suggested that shoppers visit the produce section. . . watermelon, grapes, and peaches were on sale.  Then one of my favorite songs by the Manhattans began to be piped through the store.

Mama eased her shopping cart toward the juices; I hummed along with the music.

The baby screamed again, the sound as sharp as a police siren.  Mama looked at me; I threw her a look of reluctance, but it didn't do any good.  She was going to see what the matter was with that child and that was all there was to it.  I shrugged, then followed her toward the noise.

On the next aisle, near the canned vegetables, we spotted a woman who looked all of thirty-five years old, who smelled powerfully like the camphor used for canker sores.  She was holding a baby and shaking it.  The woman's skin was dark.  She had small eyes, and a very large nose.  As we walked toward her, she looked scared, almost terrified.

I glanced at the baby . . . it was beautiful, although its tiny face was as red as the labels on the cans of tomatoes that were on the shelf.  It wailed again.

"Birdie Smiley, what's wrong with that baby?" Mama demanded.

Birdie stammered but she didn't stop shaking the baby in her arms.  "I-I had no business--"

Mama interrupted impatiently, "That's Cricket's baby, Morgan.  What have you done to that child?"

Birdie didn't look up.  Instead, she began shaking the baby harder.  The baby screamed.

"Stop that!" Mama shouted, then she snatched the crying baby from Birdie's arms.  "If you keep that up you'll knock the wind out of her--she'll stop breathing!"

Birdie's body was trembling.  Beads of sweat were on her forehead.  "I-I ain't got no business keeping her . . . ain't got no business letting her come with me . . . I just remembered, I ain't got no business keeping nobody's baby!" The words poured from her mouth like a hot flood.

Mama was cradling the sobbing baby in her arms, looking down into its wide-open eyes.  "Now, Morgan," she whispered.  "Everything is going to be all right!"

"I ain't got no business keeping a baby," Birdie stammered.  "Doctor told me I ain't got the nerves for it . . . ain't got no business . . . can't take care of no baby . . . won't do it again!"

The baby hiccuped and stopped crying.  "I was at the hospital the day this baby was born," Mama said, as if talking to herself.  "She had the brightest eyes, and when you talked to her, she paid attention like she understood exactly what you were saying."

I looked closer at Morgan.  She was indeed enchanting.  For a moment, I felt a strange inkling, like the prickle of an unfamiliar emotion.  Morgan's eyes charmed me, too.

"Is Birdie some kin to Morgan?" I asked, thinking that such a nervous woman had no business taking care of this delightful baby.

"I don't think she is," Mama answered.  "Cricket Childs, Morgan's mother, is one of my clients." Mama works for the Social Services Department.

"Then this beautiful child is the other side of the coin of a single-parent home," I said.

"I suppose," Mama replied, in a tone that told me that she didn't think my statement relevant.

As long as Morgan held on to my eyes, I had to agree with Mama.  This captivating baby girl looked almost a year old.  She had thick black hair and a flawless milk-chocolate complexion.  Her eyes were dark and bright, her mouth small and round.  She smelled of Johnson's baby powder.  But cuteness wasn't all there was to this little girl.  There was something bewitching about that child's gaze.

Mama smiled down at Morgan, clearly having fallen in love.  This baby's bright beckoning eyes had that kind of power.  "I can't imagine Cricket leaving you, sweet child," Mama whispered.

Birdie Smiley stood anxiously rubbing her arm and staring at Mama and little Morgan when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls eased up quietly beside Mama.  In Otis, these three women are jokingly called the "town historians" because they go out of their way to know everything about everybody in Otis.  Mama actually finds them helpful.  She calls them her "source."

I was surprised to see the ladies, but Mama glanced at them as if she'd known all along that they were in the store.  "Ladies," she said, without taking her attention from the smiling baby, "it's good to see you."

"I told you," Sarah Jenkins said, her voice strong despite her pasty complexion and constant preoccupation with her health, "that was Cricket's baby hollering."

Annie Mae Gregory is an obese woman, whose body is the shape of a perfect oval and who has dark circles around her stonelike eyes; Annie Mae always reminds me of a big fat raccoon.  When she looks at you a certain way, she appears cross-eyed.  She asked Mama, her jaws shaking like Jell-O, "Candi, what are you doing with Cricket Childs's baby?"

"I ain't got no business--" Birdie Smiley muttered, as if talking to herself again.

Mama glanced up.  "Now, Birdie, Morgan is just fine now."

Carrie Smalls is a tall woman with a small mouth and a sharp nose.  She holds her body straight, like she's practiced so that her shoulders wouldn't slump--I've told Mama more than once that it's Carrie Smalls who gives strength to the three women's presence, who gives a measure of credibility to what these three say.  Carrie Smalls looks the youngest; she dyes her hair jet black and lets it hang to her shoulders.  Now she looked down into Mama's arms at the baby girl.  "Where's Cricket?" she asked, in an authoritarian tone.

Just about that time, Koot Rawlins, a large woman known for being full of gas, swung into the aisle and belched.  Koot's shopping cart was full of lima beans, rice, fatback bacon, and Pepsi.  She nodded a greeting but...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bantam Dell Pub Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0553107038
• ISBN 13: 9780553107036
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 196
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar