Caution! Cute Baby Alert! novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Cufflink

Nathaniel called Dee from the car, and Dee said she was already in the driveway.

She was in a bakery apron and slippers, with a rolling pin.

"Go," she said. "I've got the kid. If anyone comes through the door, they get dough."

I had never loved her more.

We drove to Parma in ten minutes.

Nathaniel ran two red lights and did not apologize for either.

The plastic deer was knocked over in the flower bed.

The front door hung from one hinge.

Inside, a lamp lay broken on the floor, and the kitchen drawers had been emptied onto the table.

Two men in dark jackets stood in the middle of the mess with flashlights.

One of them held a fistful of paper.

The other turned, and light hit his chest.

He wore a navy jacket with a small white ship's wheel stitched over the heart.

Nathaniel saw it before I did.

"That's my company's crest," he said.

The man with the paper froze.

"Mr. Pendelton."

"You've worked for me for nine years," said Nathaniel, flatly.

"Sir, we were told to retrieve a stolen record. We have an order from your mother's office."

"Where is the nurse?"

"Sir, I don't know."

"Where is she?"

I was already moving.

I went past them, down the narrow hall to a door under the stairs, and knocked.

"It's Della," I said. "From the lawn."

A bolt slid.

The door opened a crack.

The nurse peered out of the basement stairwell with a baseball bat in her hands and her white hair in a net.

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