A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch (The Wyandot County Mysteries #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Babies are disgusting. Oh, I know we’re all supposed to think they’re adorable and cuddly and ‘don’t the tops of their heads just smell marvelous.

’ But the reality is different. They never sleep when you want them to—they’re meant to sleep at least fourteen hours a day (look it up on Yahoo!

it’s correct), but somehow it’s never a convenient fourteen hours.

They’re constantly crying for at least fifteen of the ten hours they’re awake and, worst of all, when they are awake it’s mostly about sour smelly stuff going in and sour smelly stuff coming out.

Repeatedly. Over and over again. Every. Single. Day.

Honestly, I don’t understand how humankind has survived this long, given the temptation to put the baby down, walk away, and never think about them again. Oh stop, I wouldn’t actually do it… But my god, the temptation!

I guess we’d have gotten less help if my Nana Cole wasn’t still iffy on her feet.

She’d had a stroke last spring, which might or might not have been my fault, and had never fully recovered.

There was the very real possibility she’d drop the baby into a pot of boiling water.

Everyone thought that was a bad idea—even me.

Usually, we had help in the afternoon for three or four hours, which meant I could take a nap. Which is what I was doing that day in late January, sleeping on my stomach, snoring lightly, drool running down my cheek, when my cell phone chirped.

“It’s Ham.”

“Mmmghhh…”

Ham was Hamlet Gilbody, a private eye with an office down in Grand Rapids. I’d kind of saved his life when he was in Masons Bay the previous September, and he’d offered me a part time job. Since I’d been planning to head back to Los Angeles—and still was—I’d turned him down.

But then my mother pulled her disappearing act and abandoned my sister—words like that annoy my Nana Cole, so I use them as often as possible.

She prefers words like ‘left’ or ‘entrusted’: My mother entrusted my sister to our care.

I prefer dumped, flaked, bailed, took a powder, and most reliably, abandoned.

When she abandoned my sister, I was forced to stay at the farm, at least a little while longer, so I contacted Hamlet Gilbody, PI, around Thanksgiving and accepted his offer.

“Were you asleep?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“There’s a baby in the house, remember? I have to sleep when I can.”

“Oh. Well. Can you work? I have a job for you.”

“Yeah, I can work. What’s the job?”

There was no way I was turning it down. It was the first one he’d offered.

Really, I thought he was never going to call again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… it would probably be difficult to juggle the baby and my grandmother and the job, but I needed to do something that brought in money and didn’t include changing diapers or watching Hannity I actually was very excited. I was going to be an investigator. Like Angel on TV. Except not a vampire. And hotter. In a boyish way. I did hope I could wrap this up in a well-structured hour—and then charge for six.

In the kitchen, Nana Cole sat with Bev and Barbara.

Both were close friends of hers. Bev was younger than Nana Cole, had steel gray hair like a brush and a sharp nose that might cut you if you got too close.

Barbara was closer to my grandmother’s age, with wispy hair and a sweet personality.

Bev was jiggling Emerald in her arms and trying to get her to take a bottle.

It was a chore. Lately, Emerald had been pushing the bottle away.

Not because she wasn’t hungry, simply because she could.

Frustrating people seemed to delight her.

“Here comes the choo-choo train,” Bev said, adding in a few sounds that distracted Emeral enough to get the bottle into her mouth.

We’d started out trying to keep her on a strict feeding schedule, Nana Cole’s idea, feeding her every four hours, which meant seven, eleven, three, seven, eleven and most nights 3 a.m. That schedule crumbled quickly, and feedings happened willy-nilly.

When she cried or otherwise fussed, I had a three-word mantra: stinky, sleepy, hungry.

If she’d slept recently and didn’t need a diaper change, then she was probably hungry.

I glanced at the clock which said 4:34. See what I mean? Willy-nilly.

“I got a job,” I announced.

“A what?” Nana Cole asked.

“Why did you get a job?” Bev asked. “You have a job. You said you just needed a break to take care of Emerald.”

I did, in fact, say that. Mostly because I didn’t want to work for the Wyandot County Land Conservancy anymore. It turns out tromping around fields with grumpy farmers isn’t my idea of fun.

“I’m going to be a private investigator.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Nana Cole said. “You’re the last person—”

“Excuse me. You paid me to find out who killed Reverand Hessel.”

“And how well did that go?”

“It’s complicated.”

I did find his killer. Sue Langtree. But she’d framed her granddaughter’s rapist, Donny Hyslip, so I left it alone.

Or at least I did for a while. Last fall, I gave Detective Lehmann a tip that led to her arrest, but Nana Cole didn’t know any of that.

All she knew was that I hadn’t caught Donny Hyslip, and I hadn’t caught Sue Langtree.

“Emma, you should be proud of Henry,” Barbara said. “He does try. And he’s so good with little Emerald.”

I could tell Nana Cole wanted to snort, but she restrained herself. “I suppose this job is through that Hamish fellow down in Grand Rapids.”

“Hamlet.”

“I can’t imagine why he thinks—”

“I saved his life. He owes—”

“Oh, pishposh. That’s an overstatement. I don’t see what Nancy Fisher’s drowning has to do with him.”

“I saved him from her nephew.”

“Elbert Robins wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Now I was sorry he’d taken a plea deal. If there’d been a trial, I could have dragged Nana Cole there every day and plunked her in the front row. Let her pishposh that.

“He killed Dr. Blinski. He admitted it.”

“Well, no one’s perfect.”

I’d had about enough of that. I wasn’t sure how serious Nana Cole was anyway. Sometimes she said things because she’d like them to be true, no matter how obvious it was that they weren’t. And sometimes she said things just to annoy me. Seriously, she needed to get out more.

“I have to work tomorrow afternoon,” I said, walking over to the chart hanging on the wall next to. “Do you think Jan might stay an extra hour or two?”

“I’ll call her,” Bev said.

“And if she won’t do it, we will,” Barbara said. And then she began to make goo-goo-ga-ga noises at the baby. I know that’s supposed to help babies pick up language, but seriously, it makes adults look like idiots.

“Okay, well, thanks.”

A few minutes later Bev and Barbara left, and it was time for Emerald’s bath. I held onto her while the pink plastic tub filled up with warm water. She was a big baby. Over ten pounds when she was born and now nearly twenty. Heavier than a bowling ball. Which amused me: my sister, the bowling ball.

Nana Cole brought me a towel and the bar of Ivory soap she insisted we use. I had to do the shopping, of course, so I’d gone ahead and bought some baby-specific soap, organic even, but she’d thrown it away and I had to use what she’d used on me and my mother.

“Do you want to go to a meeting later?” she asked. “The baby can watch TV with me. We’ll be fine.”

I wanted to slap her, but I couldn’t put Emerald down just then. She was wiggling too much, and saying na, na, na. I could tell she was on her way to the word ‘no’. She didn’t want to get in the bath. She never wanted to get into the bath even though she liked it once she was in.

“I’m fine.”

There is no planet on which I would admit to my Nana Cole that I’d ever gone to a meeting.

Despite the fact that NA was supposed to be anonymous—I mean it’s in the name for god’s sake—someone had gossiped about the few times I’d gone, and it had gotten back to my grandmother. Now she was always asking me about it.

She spread the towel out on the counter, and I laid Emerald down so I could undress her.

My grandmother waddled off to get a clean onesie.

Emerald’s room was upstairs; or at least her crib was.

She slept in the second bedroom I’d used when my mother was here.

I’d flipped the bed up against the wall, and put in the crib and a table with things she might need at night.

Other than that, most of her things were downstairs.

Basically, the entire house had been turned into a nursery.

Once Emerald was naked, I dipped her into the three inches of warm water. She giggled as her butt touched it—see, she did like a bath.

I said, “Uh-huh, you likey washy, washy, baby-waby.”

And then I heard myself and thought, Oh crap.