Рон Гуларт: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

“I’ll handle this,” Baldy said. “Er, miss, is this your child?” He pointed to the baby Brody was holding carefully away from him.

The woman, half inside the backseat, came out slowly, straightened up, and without even looking Brody’s way, said, “I told that man earlier I’d never seen that child before. I don’t know why he keeps pestering me.”

Baldy now looked from the woman to Brody, questioningly. But Brody spotted what she had been putting in the backseat. It looked to him suspiciously like a box of those disposable diapers, something he needed right now for the wet kid. “Where’s the baby that goes with those things?” He pointed.

“I’m... I’m going to visit my sister who has a baby and I’m taking them to her.”

Huh, Brody thought, I already used the one about my sister’s kid. She oughta come up with something better.

Suddenly, the kid, who obviously wanted to be back on Brody’s shoulders, held up his arms and yelled, “Wah! Wah!”

Now the cop’s attention was on the baby. “Didn’t he just say Ma-Ma and hold out his arms to you?”

“He sure did!” Brody was quick to agree. “He wants his mama.”

“What’s your name?” Baldy asked the woman.

Another hesitation, then, “Eliza Marvin.”

“Well, just hold everything, Eliza Marvin. We’ll see about that.” He went back to the cop car, picked up the radio, and said something into it.

Uh-huh, Brody thought, he’s telling the other cop to run the name through that machine, but it’s probably not her real name anyhow. Boy howdy! Suppose he’d run my fake name through!

Baldy stuck his head out the window. “You from Beckley, West Virginia?”

There was an almost imperceptible nod from the woman.

Baldy said a few more words in the car, then got out. “Eliza Marvin, you are under arrest for kidnapping.”

Jeez! The woman didn’t even have sense enough to give a fake name. Dumb broad!

“No, no! I was babysitting.” Even under her sunburn, she looked pale. “The McClendons asked me to keep their kid while they were in Europe for a month.”

“They’ve been back from Europe a week and found you and their baby gone. They’ve been trying to hunt you down. The message went across the country on Amber Alert. Now you come with me. And how come you said that wasn’t your child?”

“He isn’t my child.”

“She told me she’d never seen him before.” Brody put in his two cents’ worth.

She started blubbering. “I had to take him. The man I planned to marry wanted children and I can’t have any. I thought if I told him I already had a child by a former marriage... Anyway, he said he didn’t want somebody else’s kid.”

“So why didn’t you leave him with his folks?” Brody couldn’t resist asking.

“They’d already reported him missing. I’d have been arrested.”

“Which you are,” Baldy said, opening the back door of the cop car. “Get in. We’ll hold you until they come from West Virginia to get you.” He looked at Brody. “I don’t want to put you back there and it’s against rules for you to ride beside me.”

“I don’t mind walking in the least,” Brody assured him. “Nosiree, nothing I like better than a walk down the beach. But hooweee! Can you imagine taking somebody else’s kid? Worst thing I ever heard of.” He handed the kid to the cop. “Maybe you better get that box she put in the backseat of her car. You’re gonna need it.”

It was late afternoon when he got back to the city. He had slipped out of Miz Dudley’s without her seeing him, forfeiting the rest of the week’s rent but happy in the thought that she hadn’t got the extra five reduction she’d given him when she thought he would stay a month.

He also left the beach without making a nickel, spending his last few dollars on gas to get away.

He found Nathan in the kitchen at the Church of the Divine Word.

“Well,” Nathan said. “I thought you’d stay longer.”

“Ran out of money. You think I could stay here in the basement where you put up the homeless for a day or two until I can get my hands on a few bucks?”

“I’ll even help you find a job.”

“That ain’t necessary. I’ll find one myself. I’m good at that sort of thing.”

Nathan shook his head, a sad expression on his face. “Brody, Brody, what am I going to do with you? What am I going to do about you?”

“Just let me be,” Brody said. “Don’t preach me no sermon. I’ll be okay.” His mind was already busy with plots, schemes, and ripoffs. “You know, Nathan, I learned one thing while I was at the beach.”

Nathan looked hopeful. “What was that?”

“A day at the beach ain’t always a day at the beach.”

Copyright © 2006 Helen Tucker