And the story ends just about how you’d think it would:

The mother of a 3-year-old girl was charged Tuesday after police said the toddler was found wandering around a Caseyville motel in a T-shirt and underwear while the woman was at work in a strip club.

Police were searching Tuesday night for the woman, identified as Patrice A. Johnson, 28.

Johnson’s last known address is unclear, but police said she stays in metro-east motels when she works at the Soft Touch club in Washington Park.

Johnson was charged Tuesday with felony unlawful possession of a controlled substance and endangering the life or health of a child. Bond was set at $25,000.

Employees at a Days Inn, 8950 Tucker Drive in Caseyville, called police about 5:40 a.m. Feb. 20 to report that a young child was seen wandering around the motel hallways in just a T-shirt and panties for about 45 minutes. Motel staff were unable to contact guests in the child’s room, which was registered to Johnson.

Officers responded, and one of them stayed with the child while the others went to the room. Police reported that the child seemed unusually hyperactive.

The officers heard noise coming from the room, but no one answered. When motel workers opened the room, police did not find anyone inside but saw what looked like cocaine, prescription drugs and other drug paraphernalia in the room.

“We don’t have anything to confirm that the child got into the drugs other than possibly suspecting that because of the child’s behavior,” Caseyville Police Chief J.D. Roth said. “Maybe it was anxiety or shock because the child was left alone.

Don’t worry they finally picked her up. What was she doing while police were building a case against her for possibly allowing her toddler to get high on coke? Planning a threesome with her gun toting, heroin addict baby-daddy of course. The third person was someone she identified to police as the child’s aunt, otherwise known as her sister or the sister of the father:

About an hour after police arrived, two women walked into the motel lobby and identified themselves as the child’s mother and aunt.

Johnson, the mother, told police that she and the other woman just left work at Soft Touch. She said the child was supposed to be in the care of the father while the women were at work, but she didn’t know where the father was.

Officers then went with the women and child to their motel room to get clothes for the child. Police saw the mother take more than $2,000 in cash from a metal box from under a nightstand and put the money in her coat pocket.

Police took the women in for questioning and notified the Department of Children and Family Services of the incident. Johnson and the other woman told police they planned to have sex with the child’s father in another, separate room they rented at the motel. The women said the child’s father is a heroin addict, and has kept a gun in the room.

Police were attempting Wednesday to locate the father for questioning.

“We’d like to talk to him to get his side of the story,” Roth said.

His side of the story being that he gets high and bangs two strippers at a time, one of whom is either his old lady’s sister or his sister. I guess the whole “aunt” thing could be metaphorical, as in she’s so close to this other stripper they consider themselves family which still makes the threesome creepy, just not nauseating.

But hey, they’re only hurting themselves, right Libertarians? I mean if you ignore the toddler being left in the care of an armed heroin addict who abandons her in a room full of drugs.