Chapter 21
Paulette
Paulette gazed listlessly at the stacks of lettuce, kale, cucumbers, carrots, and leeks as she pushed her cart down the produce aisle. She paused on the glistening linoleum, closed her eyes, and rubbed her belly, wincing at the spasms of pain that wrapped their way from her spine to her navel in undulating lightning bolts. She breathed deeply in and out, her brown nostrils flaring as she waited for the pain to subside.
“Damn you, Braxton Hicks,” Paulette muttered as she opened her eyes thirty seconds later and started to push the cart again, heading toward a mini-pyramid of navel oranges.
“Braxton Hicks,” as in Braxton Hicks contractions, according to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the book she kept hidden in one of her bathroom drawers. It wasn’t quite like contractions, the book said. Those would come closer to her delivery date. These were her uterus’s way of prepping for delivery. Her body was practicing for its grand performance: ushering a baby into the world. Unfortunately, that “practicing” was starting to feel alarmingly real, from the pain that had plagued her since she had stood in the shower that morning, pressing her forehead against the tile as the lightning bolts struck. It had dragged on for a good three hours, coming at varying intervals. As soon as she would regain her breath and start going about her business, it would come in again like a tidal wave.
“Drink more water to make the pain go away,” the book had advised. She had already downed four bottles today.
“Make sure you empty your bladder,” she read next. Well, Paulette had that part covered. She peed all the time these days, thanks to her son using her bladder as his personal futon.
But the pain still hadn’t gone away. To distract herself, she had driven to the grocery store to pick up magnesium supplements (another helpful suggestion for preventing Braxton Hicks contractions) and some badly needed food, since their fridge was getting alarmingly empty at home again.
Paulette now reached for a plastic bag on a dispenser hanging from a metal bar. She pulled the bag open with the tips of her fingernails. She then picked up an orange, examining it for dents. She dropped it into the bag and reached for another one.
“Mrs. Williams,” someone said over her shoulder.
Paulette turned to find a man standing behind her, next to a stack of Gala apples. He was wearing a polo shirt and baggy khaki shorts. A Nationals baseball cap covered his bald head. He was even wearing leather sandals, though he had paired them with black dress socks for some reason. When she realized it was Detective Nola, her breath hitched in her throat. Her eyes widened.
“D-detective Nola, what . . . what are you doing here?”
He raised a bushy eyebrow and then the green plastic basket in his hand that was filled with bread, a six-pack of Budweiser, a box of Saltines, and Cheese Whiz. “Just doing a bit of shopping, like yourself.”
Paulette laughed nervously. “Uh, y-yes. I can see that. I’m just surprised to find you here in . . . in this grocery store, in particular. I-I didn’t know you lived in Chesterton.”
He nodded. “My place is only a half mile from here. I walk here all the time to pick up things I need around the house.”
She continued to smile dumbly in response, squeezing the orange so hard in her hand that orange juice might begin to ooze between her fingers. She dropped the battered orange back on the stack.
“How are you doing, Mrs. Williams?”
“Oh, fine. Fine!” she cried, placing the bag filled with a solitary orange into her grocery cart, wondering how she could politely walk away from the detective without seeming like she was fleeing. She knew now that Antonio hadn’t murdered Marques, but there was still something about the detective that made her uncomfortable. His discerning gaze, maybe? He stared at her like he could smell the guilt on her from a mile away, like he knew things that he shouldn’t know.
The detective inclined his head. “And how is Mr. Williams?”
“He’s also good. Thanks . . . thanks for asking.”
“I appreciate you and your husband talking to me.”
“Oh, it was no problem.” Her eyes wandered to the end of the aisle. “Well, it was nice seeing you again, but I really should be going, D—”
“You know, we still haven’t made much progress in the investigation into Mr. Whitney’s murder.”
She cleared her throat. Her smile teetered a little as tendrils of pain erupted again in her lower back. Not now, she thought, feeling another Braxton Hicks contraction coming on. “I’m sorry to hear that, Detective.”
“It’s quite all right. We’re not taking it personally. It’s often the case with a guy like Whitney who had lots of enemies, lots of people with the motivation to do him harm or get rid of him . . . however justified . . . You have so many suspects that you don’t know which direction to look first.” He raised his brows again. “In fact, I understand from one of Mr. Whitney’s friends that in addition to making his money off of the selling of steroids and other drugs, Whitney wasn’t above engaging in a little bit of blackmail to make some extra cash.”
Paulette fought back a wince. It felt like a metal belt was being wrapped around her waist and someone was pulling it tighter and tighter. “Is that so?” she said through clenched teeth.
The detective nodded. “His friend told me that before Whitney died, he boasted about how he was making quite a lot of money off of one of his ex-girlfriends. He was blackmailing her. My understanding is that he managed to get more than two hundred thousand dollars out of her before all was said and done. He bought a new tricked-out car and everything.”
“O-oh, r-really?”
She reached out and gripped the handrail of her cart, her fingers wrenching the smooth plastic so hard that she might rip it clear off its metal brackets.
The detective squinted his pale blue eyes at her. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this ex-girlfriend, would you, Mrs. Williams?”
Breathe, girl, she told herself. Breathe!
But Paulette could feel her throat tightening despite her best efforts. The pain. It had turned from just a feeling into a living, malevolent being with claws that were dragging up and down her back and along her torso. She wanted to swat it away, to tell it and Detective Nola to leave her the hell alone, but she couldn’t.
“N-no, I’m sorry,” she managed to say between huffs. “I don’t . . . I don’t know, Detective.”
He took a step toward her and she instinctively took a step back, bumping into the stack of oranges and sending one tumbling to the tile floor and bouncing beneath a table where bananas and plantains were arranged in a spiral under a grinning Chiquita banana placard.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Williams?” the detective asked.
Paulette quickly nodded. “Y-yes, I’m . . . I’m fine. I . . .”
She didn’t finish. She dropped to her knees, doubled over with pain, and the detective rushed toward her.
“Mrs. Williams!” he shouted before dropping to one knee at her side. “Are you okay?”
She suddenly felt a clammy wetness between her thighs. She dazedly looked down and saw that she was kneeling in a murky puddle. Where had all the liquid come from?
Oh God, she thought, shaking with panic.
Her water broke. It had broken right here in the grocery store. That wasn’t Braxton Hicks contractions she had been feeling all morning; it was the real thing. But it was too early. . . way too early! Her son wasn’t due for another month and a half. But her body didn’t seem to agree. Paulette fell to all fours as the pain doubled, tripled. Tears sprang to her eyes. She groaned in agony. She had never felt pain like this before.
“Mrs. Williams, tell me what’s wrong!”
“I’m . . . I’m having my baby,” she managed to whisper to the detective.
He blinked in surprise. “A baby? You mean you’re . . . you’re pregnant?”
She nodded before pressing her head down to the wet floor.
He turned and frantically waved down a produce boy who was pushing a cart of strawberries. “Call an ambulance! Call a goddamn ambulance! This woman needs help. She’s about to deliver a baby!”
After that, the world around her seemed to lose all color and sound.