Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle - Hardcover

Deloach, Nora

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553107038 ISBN 13: 9780553107036

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

Mama's back on the case, sniffing out dark, tragic secrets...and a killer.

Not much happens in Otis, South Carolina (pop. 5,000) that Mama, a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, doesn't know about.  Mama's given name is Grace Covington, but everyone calls her Candi--for the honeyed color of her complexion, not her cooking (which is second to none from Otis all the way to Atlanta, where I work as a paralegal).  I usually go home when I need some truly soul-satisfying eating.  But this time I was heading back to Otis to help Mama after her bunion operation.  I had no idea we'd end up knee-deep in somebody else's trouble....

It all seemed to start when Mama and I were shopping for groceries and crazy old Miss Birdie stole Cricket Childs' tiny baby, causing a scene between the two women everyone in town heard about.  It wasn't twenty-four hours later that Cricket, known as a lady who liked wild times and wilder men, turned up murdered in a fellow's bed.  Even worse, Cricket's baby had vanished.

To add to the chilling events, my Daddy's wandering dog Midnight dug up something shocking: an infant's skull.  And not long after Mama rushed it over to Sheriff Abe's office, Midnight brought home another.  Naturally, he couldn't tell us where he got them...and the mystery deepened.

So no way Mama wasn't going to start snooping.  And with the doctor ordering her off her feet, I ended up doing some legwork.  But it's a good thing I still had two good feet, because before long, I was running for my life...as babies' cries and women's tears  mingled in a crime fueled by motives as ancient as human memory--greed, jealousy, and old-fashioned revenge.

In Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle, Nora DeLoach captures the warmth of family life in the deep South...and the icy tingling of superb suspense.  And in Mama she has created a woman sleuth as filled with compassion as courage, wise in the ways of the human heart--and the criminal mind.

About this title

About the Author

Nora DeLoach is an Orlando, Florida, native presently living in Decatur, Georgia.  She is married and the mother of three.  Her novels include three previous Mama mysteries.  She is at work on her fifth.

From the Inside Flap

on the case, sniffing out dark, tragic secrets...and a killer.<br><br>Not much happens in Otis, South Carolina (pop. 5,000) that Mama, a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, doesn't know about. Mama's given name is Grace Covington, but everyone calls her Candi--for the honeyed color of her complexion, not her cooking (which is second to none from Otis all the way to Atlanta, where I work as a paralegal). I usually go home when I need some truly soul-satisfying eating. But this time I was heading back to Otis to help Mama after her bunion operation. I had no idea we'd end up knee-deep in somebody else's trouble....<br><br>It all seemed to start when Mama and I were shopping for groceries and crazy old Miss Birdie stole Cricket Childs' tiny baby, causing a scene between the two women everyone in town heard about. It wasn't twenty-four hours later that Cricket, known as a lady who liked wild times and wilder men, turned up mu

Reviews

Atlanta paralegal Simone Covington returns home to Otis, S.C., to aid her worldly-wise mother, a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, after a bunion operation. As in earlier books in the series (Mama Stalks the Past, 1997, etc.), Simone ends up helping her Mama solve a murder. Daughter and mother are puzzled when an addle-brained woman turns up in a grocery store with another woman's baby. But isn't the mother, Cricket, a bit harsh when she threatens to kill Birdie if the woman touches her child again? Although Simone remembers Cricket as a foul-mouthed, party-loving person, Mama contends that she is suitably maternal. When Cricket is killed and baby Morgan goes missing, the town gossips come out in force. As they've done since Simone's childhood, Mama and daughter set out to find the culprit, collecting and dissecting hearsay and innuendo. Meanwhile, Simone's father's dog begins presenting him with infants' skulls. Alarmed at what might be in store for Morgan, the two women must tangle with a malevolent mysogynist, climb Birdie's family tree and finally wade through the secrets of an old cemetery before they can find the killer and retrieve the infant. DeLoach continues to show considerable strength in her warm characterization of Mama and her clan. She is less adept at managing her convoluted plot, though she deserves considerable credit for again demonstrating that the conventions of the English cozy can be transplanted successfully to the African American South.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

James Covington's Labrador retriever, Midnight, likes to wander. Lately he's been wandering away from that part of Otis, South Carolina, where the Covingtons and their friends own substantial landholdings, drink Heineken, and express shock and outrage over the prospect of abortion as a way of ending an unwelcome pregnancy. Where the dogs been going is over to the other side of town, where the skulls of long-dead infants are buried in shallow graves, just waiting for Midnight to dig them up. Atlanta paralegal Simone Covington, called to her parents' home to care for her Mama while Candi Covington is recuperating from surgery to remove her bunions, would find Midnight's discoveries merely disquieting if the violence against babies didn't have a much more threatening echo in the present. The day after Birdie Smiley walks into the Winn-Dixie toting Cricket Childs's newborn daughter Morgan, somebody kills Cricketpresumably the same somebody who's been sending her notes denouncing her as an unfit mother and claiming that ``Morgan suppose [sic] to be mine''and runs off with Morgan, leaving behind a roomful of blood and the rumor that Cricket was blackmailing upright citizens of Otis about their dirty linen. Though she's supposed to stay off her feet, Mama manages to uncover all the long-buried scandals readers of her hardcover debut (Mama Stalks the Past, 1997) will have come to expect. Apart from ancient family secrets and low-octane detection, fans will be treated to a third constant: mouthwatering soul food on both sides of the tracks. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Although the opening scene finds Simone Covington's Dad's dog Midnight digging up an infant skull, murder and lowlifes only hover around the edges of this southern cozy. The real story is the twentysomething Simone's periodic escapes from her life as a paralegal in Atlanta to go home to Otis, South Carolina, where her fiftysomething Mama cooks up great meals and gets to the bottom of things. Mama needs Simone after a bunion operation, and when Simone arrives in Otis, she finds Cricket Childs accusing an unstable neighbor, Birdie, of kidnapping her baby. Cricket ends up dead shortly afterward, and her baby is missing. So, under Mama's direction, Simone handles the sleuthing, discovering a fair number of skeletons in Birdie's and the Childs' closets. A set piece has three of the local women, Sarah, Annie Mae, and Carrie, striding about collecting gossip and information like a down-home version of the Fates (or the Furies). The touch is light, the food is rich, and the African American cast is recognizable. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My mama's name is Grace, but she's called Candi because of her candied sweet potato complexion.

My parents are originally from Otis, South Carolina.  They got married right out of high school and my father joined the Air Force.  After a career of thirty years and the birth of my two brothers (Rodney and Will) and me, Captain James Covington retired and he and Mama moved back home to Otis, a town of five thousand people.

* * *

"Okay," I told Mama, "but I want you to cook roast pork, fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, string beans and new potatoes, rice and okra.  And, for dessert, I want carrot cake and sweet potato pie."

* * *

On Saturday morning, we were in Winn Dixie shopping for groceries when the baby's wail rang through the aisles.  It sounded like somebody had stuck a hand down the infant's throat and squeezed its intestines.

I flinched.  Mama held her shopping list in one hand, a can of mushroom soup in the other.  She was saying something about sodium when the child's second scream broke her concentration.  She glanced in the direction of the cry.  "Something is wrong with that child!" she said softly, putting the can of soup back on the shelf.

A voice over the loudspeaker suggested that shoppers visit the produce section. . . watermelon, grapes, and peaches were on sale.  Then one of my favorite songs by the Manhattans began to be piped through the store.

Mama eased her shopping cart toward the juices; I hummed along with the music.

The baby screamed again, the sound as sharp as a police siren.  Mama looked at me; I threw her a look of reluctance, but it didn't do any good.  She was going to see what the matter was with that child and that was all there was to it.  I shrugged, then followed her toward the noise.

On the next aisle, near the canned vegetables, we spotted a woman who looked all of thirty-five years old, who smelled powerfully like the camphor used for canker sores.  She was holding a baby and shaking it.  The woman's skin was dark.  She had small eyes, and a very large nose.  As we walked toward her, she looked scared, almost terrified.

I glanced at the baby . . . it was beautiful, although its tiny face was as red as the labels on the cans of tomatoes that were on the shelf.  It wailed again.

"Birdie Smiley, what's wrong with that baby?" Mama demanded.

Birdie stammered but she didn't stop shaking the baby in her arms.  "I-I had no business--"

Mama interrupted impatiently, "That's Cricket's baby, Morgan.  What have you done to that child?"

Birdie didn't look up.  Instead, she began shaking the baby harder.  The baby screamed.

"Stop that!" Mama shouted, then she snatched the crying baby from Birdie's arms.  "If you keep that up you'll knock the wind out of her--she'll stop breathing!"

Birdie's body was trembling.  Beads of sweat were on her forehead.  "I-I ain't got no business keeping her . . . ain't got no business letting her come with me . . . I just remembered, I ain't got no business keeping nobody's baby!" The words poured from her mouth like a hot flood.

Mama was cradling the sobbing baby in her arms, looking down into its wide-open eyes.  "Now, Morgan," she whispered.  "Everything is going to be all right!"

"I ain't got no business keeping a baby," Birdie stammered.  "Doctor told me I ain't got the nerves for it . . . ain't got no business . . . can't take care of no baby . . . won't do it again!"

The baby hiccuped and stopped crying.  "I was at the hospital the day this baby was born," Mama said, as if talking to herself.  "She had the brightest eyes, and when you talked to her, she paid attention like she understood exactly what you were saying."

I looked closer at Morgan.  She was indeed enchanting.  For a moment, I felt a strange inkling, like the prickle of an unfamiliar emotion.  Morgan's eyes charmed me, too.

"Is Birdie some kin to Morgan?" I asked, thinking that such a nervous woman had no business taking care of this delightful baby.

"I don't think she is," Mama answered.  "Cricket Childs, Morgan's mother, is one of my clients." Mama works for the Social Services Department.

"Then this beautiful child is the other side of the coin of a single-parent home," I said.

"I suppose," Mama replied, in a tone that told me that she didn't think my statement relevant.

As long as Morgan held on to my eyes, I had to agree with Mama.  This captivating baby girl looked almost a year old.  She had thick black hair and a flawless milk-chocolate complexion.  Her eyes were dark and bright, her mouth small and round.  She smelled of Johnson's baby powder.  But cuteness wasn't all there was to this little girl.  There was something bewitching about that child's gaze.

Mama smiled down at Morgan, clearly having fallen in love.  This baby's bright beckoning eyes had that kind of power.  "I can't imagine Cricket leaving you, sweet child," Mama whispered.

Birdie Smiley stood anxiously rubbing her arm and staring at Mama and little Morgan when Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls eased up quietly beside Mama.  In Otis, these three women are jokingly called the "town historians" because they go out of their way to know everything about everybody in Otis.  Mama actually finds them helpful.  She calls them her "source."

I was surprised to see the ladies, but Mama glanced at them as if she'd known all along that they were in the store.  "Ladies," she said, without taking her attention from the smiling baby, "it's good to see you."

"I told you," Sarah Jenkins said, her voice strong despite her pasty complexion and constant preoccupation with her health, "that was Cricket's baby hollering."

Annie Mae Gregory is an obese woman, whose body is the shape of a perfect oval and who has dark circles around her stonelike eyes; Annie Mae always reminds me of a big fat raccoon.  When she looks at you a certain way, she appears cross-eyed.  She asked Mama, her jaws shaking like Jell-O, "Candi, what are you doing with Cricket Childs's baby?"

"I ain't got no business--" Birdie Smiley muttered, as if talking to herself again.

Mama glanced up.  "Now, Birdie, Morgan is just fine now."

Carrie Smalls is a tall woman with a small mouth and a sharp nose.  She holds her body straight, like she's practiced so that her shoulders wouldn't slump--I've told Mama more than once that it's Carrie Smalls who gives strength to the three women's presence, who gives a measure of credibility to what these three say.  Carrie Smalls looks the youngest; she dyes her hair jet black and lets it hang to her shoulders.  Now she looked down into Mama's arms at the baby girl.  "Where's Cricket?" she asked, in an authoritarian tone.

Just about that time, Koot Rawlins, a large woman known for being full of gas, swung into the aisle and belched.  Koot's shopping cart was full of lima beans, rice, fatback bacon, and Pepsi.  She nodded a greeting but kept walking.

I went back to staring down into little Morgan's face.  "My friend Yasmine, the beautician, she had a party a few weeks ago--a young woman named Cricket was there who told me she lived in Otis.  Could she be this baby's mother?" I asked.

Mama's attention shifted back between me and the baby as if she was surprised.  "There's only one Cricket Childs that lives in this town, and she's Morgan's mother, yes."

Annie Mae Gregory shook her head impatiently.  "Where in the world is Cricket now?" she snapped.

Sarah Jenkins looked around.  "I declare, Cricket's got her share of faults--"

"Whatever Cricket's faults," Mama interrupted, "she's a good mother.  I can personally vouch for her devotion to this child."

Carrie Smalls shrugged.  "I reckon you think 'cause your job throw you to be with her that you know her better than anybody else.  My question now is where is Cricket, and why is she letting her baby cause so much confusion in this grocery store?"

"Cricket isn't far," Mama said, convincingly.  "She must have left Morgan with Birdie for just a few minutes."

Carrie Smalls motioned to her two companions that it was time for them to leave.  "You work for the welfare, Candi," she told my mother.  "You know better than anybody else that if Cricket doesn't take better care of her child, it'll be your place to take her away from Cricket and put her in a home where she'd be properly taken care of.  A grocery store ain't no place to drop off a child--"

"I don't think it's fair to say that Cricket dropped Morgan off in the store," Mama pointed out.  "Birdie is taking care of the baby."

Carrie Smalls responded sharply, "There are times when Birdie can't take care of her own self, much less take care of a hollering baby!"

I watched the three women shuffle down the aisle toward the fruit and vegetables.  But Mama ignored them.  She was still staring...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553107038
• ISBN 13: 9780553107036
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208