Mean Woman Blues

her.
    Abasolo loped up. “Turner’s waiting. He’s getting too old for this shit. And by the way, what shit would that be?”
    Skip’s breath was ragged. “Cuff her, would you? I can’t move.”
    The girl came to life. “You can’t arrest me. I ain’ done nothin’.”
    “Oh, yeah? Then why’d you run?” Abasolo didn’t even know why Skip had run, but he was right there, bless his heart.
    “Meet Mary Jones,” Skip finally managed to gasp.
    “Ah. As in, ‘Mary had a little statue.’ Well, that just do explain things.”
    “That ain’ my name,” the girl said.
    Abasolo cuffed her while Skip dusted herself off. “Now, Mary…”
    “I said that ain’ my name.”
    “All right, what is your name?”
    “Trenice.”
    “Okay, Trenice, what were you doing at the Starnes apartment this morning?”
    “I take care of Jacob.”
    “You’re the babysitter?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Nobody answer this mornin’, though. I don’t know why. Bettina ain’ call me or nothin’; car’s there and everything. And I know I heard Jacob cryin’.”
    Skip and Abasolo let their eyes meet. He said, “You and Shellmire go. I’ll take care of her.”
    Once again, Skip broke into a dead run; realizing how far she had to go, though, she slowed to a jog, and it irritated her, watching Shellmire watch her toil. He hadn’t put his jacket back on.
Maybe getting older isn’t so bad
, she thought.
    “That was the babysitter. Says she got no answer, but she heard the baby crying and the car’s still there.”
    “You beat that out of her or what?”
    “I’ll explain later. You do the honors.” Her speech was ragged; she was still out of breath and sweating heavily. Shellmire banged loudly, and they waited. And in the silence, a loud wail came back at them, obviously a baby’s cry.
    “Jacob?” Skip yelled. “Jacob, it’s okay.” Her dream of termites came back to her, the termites that in her mind, meant Jacomine; meant disaster.
    “Do you smell something?” Shellmire asked.
    She sniffed the hot air. “Very faintly. I’ve got a bad feeling, Turner.”
    On impulse she tried the door; to her amazement it opened.
    The smell was stronger, not overpowering, but unmistakable. Something was dead in there. Except for the baby’s cries, all was quiet.
    “Bettina? Jacob?”
    They split up, guns drawn, Skip down the hall to the bedrooms, Shellmire to the living room and kitchen.
    She found the baby first standing up in his crib, now evidently so frightened— or fascinated— he’d stopped crying.
    “Hi, Jacob,” she whispered. “You okay, Buddy? Hang tight one more minute, okay?”
    Bettina was in the next room, very obviously dead in her bed, an empty medicine vial and a Jim Beam bottle on the table beside her. The room was hot; green flies were already crawling on her. “Turner! In here!”
    About that time, the baby started howling again. Shellmire stopped on his way to pick Jacob up. Skip met him in the hall and took the kid. “She’s dead; go look. I don’t want the baby in there.”
    She took Jacob into the living room, where she rocked and petted him, not even stopping to open windows. Shellmire came back in, glancing nervously at Jacob. He said, “Ambulance and child protection guys on the way.” He pressed his lips together a moment. “Skip, there’s a note. It’s just lying on the bureau— no envelope, nothing.”
    “Take the baby, would you?” Jacob howled anew when she left.
    “Without Him, I am nothing,” the note said. And then, without further ado, it got down to business: “I do hereby bequeathe my only son, Jacob Starnes, to the custidy of my sister, Rose Maintree. All my worldly goods I leave to my sister Rose. I am sorry to leave this way.”
    It was signed “Bettina Starnes.”
    So probably, despite the speed of decomposition, she’d killed herself only the night before. The late spring heat was merciless.
    In the past, Skip might have suspected that somehow this had been engineered by Jacomine himself.
    Maybe, in a way, it had. Maybe he’d told Bettina to kill herself if he died. Or maybe it was her own idea. If you believed what she wrote, it amounted to the same thing. She must have left the door unlocked, figuring the babysitter would try the door when she got no answer.
    It was another hour before the baby had been called for, the body removed, and the crime lab satisfied. In the course of it, Mary Jones had been sent back to the Third in a district car, to await