Despite her shock, she managed to catch the projectile. “Why’d you call me that?” She was blinking fast, trying to put the pieces together.
“Because it’s your pole name.”
“Yeah, but how’d you know?”
“You said you’d never been to Pole Kisses,” I said. “Why lie about taking a pole dancing class?” Without asking, I used her tea towel to catch blood dripping from Little Sister’s ear.
She made a face as she set the bag of frozen peas on her swelling ankle. “Because pole is kind of low rent, right? Like for strippers.”
“Then why go at all?” I pressed.
“When I started taking classes, I really liked it. But my mom went ballistic when I told her. Said she didn’t raise me to be a stripper-whore. So I quit going.”
Miranda was clearly rattled enough by Ralphie and Errol to tell me anything, if I was smart about it. There was a chance she’d seen me kill Connor. She might’ve stopped by my house the other day to confront me, then chickened out. But whatever happened, I needed to know.
Being a mom had taught me sometimes the best way to get information out of a reluctant witness is to feign omniscience. So I bluffed. “Miranda, I know what happened in the alley behind Huckleberry’s the other night.”
All color seeped from her face. “Tilly, I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was your car.”
Relief flooded every cell in my body. Followed by rage. How dare this woman frame meagainfor crimes she committed. First she hid her empty vodka bottle in my duffel bag. Now she’d stuffed a dead body in my trunk! I couldn’t wait to tell the police what she’d done.
But that’s when the thing happened that ruined my tidy plan to turn in Miranda.
A familiar sound came from a monitor tucked behind an end-table lamp.
A baby’s wailing.
Thirty-Four
It’s common knowledge nothing brings a sense of calm like the smell of an infant. So when I found the perfect, black-haired little girl with a strawberry birthmark on her neck lying in a white crib in the office down the hall, I scooped her up and started sniffing the top of her head like a wayward teen huffing gas.
Once I’d returned to the living room and handed the precious cargo to Miranda, she snuggled the babe to her chest and sighed. I recognized it. The relief and wonder at finally having a baby (or in my case, babies, plural) after knowing for so long it might never happen. The infant made a happy gurgling noise. Glancing around the room, I spotted a baby swing tucked alongside the couch. I hadn’t noticed it in the scuffle. I was starting to feel whiplashed.
“Miranda,” I said, “whose baby is this?”
As I went to work stanching the fresh bleeding from Little Sister’s ear, a story of longing I knew too well flooded out of Miranda. After what she’d done to me, I didn’t want to listen or sympathize. But I was curious about where this baby had come from. And I needed a minute to think, to figure out my next steps, so I listened. More than anything in this world, Miranda said, she’d wanted to be a mother. I remembered that yearning, the soul ache for a child. Even had I truly known how much cleaning up of vomit and poo, maternal anxiety, financial insecurity, and eventual twin bickering motherhood would entail, I still would’ve wanted it.
But like me, Miranda had fertility issues. Round after round of heartbreaking, expensive IVF treatments, complete with hormone injectionsthat would’ve turned even a young Emma Watson into an unhinged weeping crazy lady, had walloped Miranda’s body, spirit, and bank account. For once in her life, her mother had actually been supportive, saying the right things, being there for her. “I literally couldn’t have done it without her!” Miranda said. Belinda Carson was unwavering in her support, an actual dream mother, right up until Miranda and her husband decided to adopt, at which point Miranda’s mother turned mean again, ranting about the insanity of raising a child from an unknown bloodline. Miranda had soldiered on, wading through mountains of red tape and expenses. Then, ten days ago, a beautiful baby girl was discovered on the doorstep of an Airbnb shaped like an oversized potato off Highway 84. The twenty-eight-foot fake spud had had a first life as a promotional tool for the Idaho Potato Commission. The origins of the three-day-old baby—whom CPS workers had nicknamed Tater Tot—were more mysterious.
The infant was placed into emergency foster care, but Miranda had immediately petitioned to foster and adopt the baby.
“Did you ever read that Shel Silverstein book about the circle that was missing a piece and went around looking for it?” Miranda said. “As soon as I held Tater Tot, I knew I’d found my missing piece, that we were meant to be together. I felt like I was born to take care of her.”
“You don’t have to get all trad wife about it,” I said. But my volcanic anger had started to cool. The appearance of Tater Tot had turned my rage into something more complicated. “So tell me why you murdered that creep and tried to pin it on me.”
I thought she might backpedal, but new motherhood had clearly left her raw as a skinless, boneless chicken thigh. Her face crumpled and she told me everything. On that notorious Sunday, she’d gotten the call that she could pick Tater Tot up in a few days. She spent the evening hunched over her laptop at Caffeina, furiously trying to get ahead on her casework.
“I’d parked behind Huckleberry’s because Caffeina’s lot was full.When I headed back to my car, I saw this guy,” Miranda said. “He was—well, he had his pants down a little and his butt backed up to the open trunk of a blue muscle car.” She paused and looked sick. “Your muscle car. But I didn’t know that then.”
“Ah-ha!” I said. “So he did steal my keys!” I paused. “But what do you mean he had his butt backed up to my car?”
“I think,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I think maybe he was trying to take a dump in the trunk?”
“Ugh!” I cried. But it made sense. I explained Connor had probably spiked my drink with Ambien and nabbed my keys. When his plan to lure me out of the club failed, he must’ve decided to take a revenge dookie in my trunk instead.
“As soon as I walked under a motion light, we recognized each other,” Miranda said. “From this CPS case I investigated a few months ago.”
“Wait! You’d already met Connor? And this dog?” I hadn’t believed Alice when she said Miranda and Little Sister were previously acquainted. But maybe she’d been right.
