Stand By Your Man

Chapter Nine

Marshall Weathers was in a foul mood and maybe that's why I didn't tell him anything. Maybe if he'd made it easy, I would've told him about Carlucci, but as it was, I didn't get a chance. At least, that's how I chose to see it.

"I thought you might be here," he said. "I need your signature on a search warrant so we can go through the books and other stuff in Vernell's offices." He was whipping out the papers as he spoke.

"Come inside," I said. The curtains fluttered across the street and I knew the unmarked patrol car, with its antennae and state plates, was drawing the attention of my neighbors. It wasn't the first time they'd seen police cars in front of the house, but I didn't want them to start speculating on my lifestyle.

Weathers stepped into the living room and sniffed. He smelled breakfast. He looked past me at the dining-room table and I saw his eyebrow twitch. The radar was on. Two coffee mugs sat out on the table. Two crumpled napkins.

"Company?" he asked.

There was something in the tone of his voice, a hint of sarcasm or suspicion that I didn't like one little bit.

"Sheila. I always make her breakfast," I lied. I don't know why I did it, except I didn't like the insinuation.

"I thought you said she stayed at her friend's house and was going to school from there." He had me and we both knew it, but I couldn't bring myself to admit it.

"She forgot her science book." My neck was starting to flush red, spreading across my chest, burning its way up to my ears. I never was a good liar, but pride made me continue to try. "You know young'uns," I said, "always hungry."

He looked at me, his eyes zeroing in on my neck. He took his time folding up the search warrant and pushing it slowly into his jacket pocket.

"Yep," he said at last, "I know young'uns, and I know Sheila. She just don't strike me as the breakfast type." Before I could argue, he turned away. "Guess you learn stuff about folks every day. Next time I see you, maybe you'll catch me up on why Sheila drinks black coffee instead of juice. And how come she's started carrying pieces of motorcycle chain around with her."

I looked back at the table and saw Carlucci's mug. It was half full. My mug was easy to tell. It had a lipstick-stained rim. A few pieces of metal lay next to Carlucci's mug. I hadn't noticed them. Weathers was out the door and down the sidewalk without a backward glance.

"Damn," I said, "damn, damn, damn!" I'd lied to Weathers for no other reason than stubborn pride and he'd caught me. "Okay," I said out loud, "it's time to make a move. Forget those stupid men!" I grabbed the cordless phone from its stand by the front door and punched in the number I knew by heart. It was time to call in backup. It was time for brains over brawn. In short, it was time to do the job myself, without relying on a Prince Charming.

"Curly-Que Salon and House of Beauty," a familiar voice rasped.

"Bonnie," I said, "what are you doing?"

There was a snort, and then the sound of a long exhale as Bonnie blew out a stream of cigarette smoke.

"Honey, what the hell do you think I'm doing? I'm doing hair, that's what. I know you've been gone from here a while, but I didn't figure singing would make you forget about the business totally. What am I doing!" She laughed again, her deep voice rumbling through the phone. "You must be having one hell of a time if you can't remember your partner's occupation!"

"Bonnie," I said, breaking in before she took off again, "I need you."

That was all it took. "All right, sugar, what you got going on? I reckon Velmina can take over my customers for a while. You need me now?"

Bonnie never asks why. When Vernell walked out and left us, Bonnie never asked the obvious questions, the ones everyone else asked over and over. She's raising six young'uns on her own, she doesn't have to ask why. Why doesn't matter when you've got to go on. When I told her I wanted to take a leave of absence from our shop and go be a country singer, Bonnie smiled and said, "Go for it, girl!"

"I'm coming to get you," I said. "Vernell's gone, his money's gone, and I've gotta find him."

Bonnie started to say something and stifled herself. I figured it ran along the lines of "don't look for something what needs to stay lost."

"Come on then, honey. I'm just puttin' the blue rinse on Neva Jean. Chances are the old bat won't know whether it's me or Velmina what does her comb-out. I'm good to go."

Fifteen minutes later, I rounded the corner onto Exchange Place, drove slowly down the short side street, and found a parking place in between the bail bondsman's office and the karate studio, directly across from the intensive parole offices and down from the IRS building. The way Bonnie and I figured it, we were in a prime location.

The Curly-Que was humming with the midmorning blue-hairs, all in for their rinse and sets. Bonnie met me at the door, spun me around, and shoved me away from the front desk.

"Get out! Neva Jean sees you and that'll be the end of it! You know how she is! She only wants you to do her. I've finally got her to where she'll let me do it. Don't spoil things."

"But I thought Velmina was doing her comb-out. How'd that happen?"

Bonnie sighed, closed the door to the salon and squinted into the bright sunlight. "Neva dozes off in the chair. What she don't know won't hurt her. Besides, Velmina's almost a spitting double for me."

I looked at Bonnie. She was fifty, had brassy blond hair cut short, and never wore makeup. Velmina was twenty-three, made up like a Barbie doll, and a good six sizes smaller than Bonnie. Denial is a wonderful thing.

As we made our way through the downtown traffic, I caught Bonnie up on the details of Vernell's disappearance, the death of Nosmo King, and the arrival of Tony Carlucci.

When I'd finished, Bonnie leaned back in her seat, and looked over at me with a big smile on her face.

"Man," she said, "some people just have all the luck. Look at you. Your husband leaves you, you become a country and western singer, meet a hunk of a detective, and get stalked by another hunk, all courtesy of your low-life, scuzzball husband!" She shook her head. "Honey, I just don't know how you do it. Rodney walked out on me and all I got were the kids and a pile of bills."

It was edging up on eleven a.m. I was flying up Battleground Avenue heading for the older strip of businesses that housed the Twilight Motel and the Your House Diner.

"You know why he wants you to look in the parking lot, don't you?"

Bonnie was staring at me with this curious half-smile that she seems to wear most of the time. To some folks, it might seem she was being smug. To me, it merely meant she was about to say something I wouldn't want to hear, and was trying to cushion bad news with a smile.

"No, why?"

"Baby, the Twilight Motel is centrally located to Irving Park. Them tennis ladies drop their kids at the preschool and then they're right over here taking lessons from the pro, or whoever else is the flavor of the month. Sugar, they rent these rooms by the half-day or the hour. See what I'm saying?"

I did. And so help me, I thought of Vernell in the same breath. This would've been where Vernell took his skunk of a girlfriend back when we were still married. Centrally located, all right. The Twilight Motel was also less than a mile away from the Satellite Kingdom, Vernell's newest endeavor.

I pulled into the parking lot and followed the narrow driveway around to the back. Carlucci was right. Three Volvo station wagons sat in front of motel room doors. The rest of the lot was taken up with pickup trucks and assorted other cars, but it was the upscale models that stood out.

"All right," I said, swinging back around to the front, "here's where we get creative."

I pulled right up to the motel office and stopped the car under a portico. The way I saw it, there was nothing to do but hit the situation head on. I got out of the car, with Bonnie right behind me, and walked into the fifties-time-warp of an office. A pimple-faced young man, somewhere in his early twenties, was behind the counter, his black hair slicked to the side of his head. His lips were too thick for his face, making him look somewhat like a fish.

He slid a pad across the desk to me and smirked. "You want it by the hour or the day, ladies?"

I reached into my purse, pulled out my wallet, and stuck my fingers down into a side slot. Vernell's picture, the worse for wear, and about ten years old, came sliding out.

"Do you know this man?" I asked. I stared hard at the kid, trying to look important or official, but he snickered.

"Yeah, right," he said. "Lady, we work the same as the government here: Don't ask, don't tell. Just like I'd do for you two."

He leered at Bonnie and that was all it took. She reached across the counter, snatched the boy up by his shirt collar, and yanked him halfway across the registration desk. She had a cigarette leaning out of the left side of her mouth, and for a moment, I thought the guy was in danger of being branded.

"Listen here, you little punk," she rasped, smoke billowing out into the boy's face. "This ain't the movies and we ain't playing. I've got young'uns at home older than you and I can whip their asses with one hand tied behind my back." The guy wanted to struggle, but Bonnie uses her hands and arms all day long. There was no prying loose from her grip.

I reached back into my wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. I stepped behind Bonnie and waved it where the kid could see me. He coughed, eyed the money, and looked back at Bonnie.

"All right, all right," he whined, "turn loose of me!"

"Do you know that man?" Bonnie asked, drawing out each word so that it seemed to slap Junior right between the eyes.

I pulled out another bill and added it to the twenty.

"Yes, I do," he said. Bonnie released him with a shove and he fell back, grabbing at his collar.

"Start talking," Bonnie said.

"Mr. Smith's been coming in here semi-regular for the past few months. He used to come in all the time, a couple of years ago, with this knockout, but now he's got him a new one."

I slid a twenty across the counter and it was gone instantly. "Keep talking," I said.

"What do you want to know?"

"When was the last time he was in, and who was he with?"

Bonnie blew smoke across the counter and glared at the boy.

"He was here, um"-the kid looked at the ceiling, thinking-"Friday." The day Vernell vanished.

"You're sure?" I said, my heart beating hard against my chest.

"Yep," he said slowly. "It was payday. And it must've been his too, on account of he tipped me fifty bucks." The kid eyed me like maybe I was going to cough up a fifty.

"Who was the woman?" I asked.

"I don't know," the kid said, shaking his head impatiently. "They don't introduce them to me, they just rent the rooms. Ain't you never done it before? The man gets the room while the woman waits in the car."

"Don't get smart, boy," Bonnie said, stepping a little closer to the counter.

"All's I could tell was, she didn't look like the one he used to bring. This one was closer to Mr. Smith's age." I thought about Jolene the Dish Girl, twenty-four, bleached white-blond, and stacked.

"What color hair? What did she look like?"

The clerk thought a moment. "Um, brown hair, you know, dark hair. Kinda cut short, maybe curly. Had a pretty smile. That's all I could tell."

A Mercedes pulled up behind my VW under the portico. An older businessman stepped out of the driver's side door and started toward us.

"Are you done?" the clerk said.

"You ever seen that woman come in here with another guy?" Bonnie asked.

"Nah," the kid answered. "And she wasn't pro material, either."

Bonnie nodded, satisfied. "Just wondering," she muttered to me. "I just can't figure how Vernell keeps coming up with pretty women, as dog-butt ugly as he is!"

We reached the door at the same moment the businessman did. He held the door and I walked out, but Bonnie stopped, looking from him to the young woman waiting in his car.

"Go on back to work, you old fool," she said. "You got a wife and young'uns, don't you?"

The man's face reddened and he walked right on past her, into the office. Bonnie stepped out into the driveway and glared at the blonde in the Mercedes.

"Hussy," she said. "Rodney would've loved this place. Would've saved him taking his pickup out to High Rock Lake and fooling around in the broad daylight!"

I wasn't listening. I was thinking. Vernell had been coming to the Twilight Motel for the past few months with a woman. Vernell, single again, had no need of a motel. He had a mansion. For some reason, this woman wouldn't come to Vernell's stone palace. Why?

I slid into the car and cranked the engine. Bonnie was still going on about Rodney leaving her and his history of seducing women. Rodney, never too proud to show his ass when he was drinking, apparently showed it off regularly to the bass fishermen of High Rock Lake. The idea of getting sweaty on the underside of Rodney while lying on the bed-liner of a pickup truck did nothing for me, but Bonnie seemed to think Rodney never lacked for partners.

"Bonnie," I said, "Vernell's new honey must be married to someone he knows or someone who lives in the neighborhood. Why else would she come here every Friday?"

Bonnie, in the middle of her monologue about Rodney, stopped talking and stared at me.

"Guess that's why they pay you the big bucks," she said. "Of course." Bonnie looked out the window as I pulled out into traffic. "Guess we're going to the Satellite Kingdom, huh?" she said.

"Why?"

Bonnie snorted. "On account of that's where he met up with his last honey," she said. "Men ain't free thinkers, you know. They're creatures of habit. Betcha five dollars she's the new receptionist. That's how Rodney got his out at the dealership. Just you wait and see."

We headed north on Battleground, homing in on the Satellite Kingdom. Bonnie was humming to herself now, something that sounded like "Faded Love."

"Bonnie," I said, not looking over at her. "What do you think it means when a man tells you he doesn't want to get involved and then kisses you?"

Bonnie snorted. "Baby, just let me tell you one damn thing: Men are like fish. You can't just plop your line in the water and think they're gonna see it for what it is and run with it."

She was looking at me now, I could feel it. I focused on the traffic, which in a town where everyone feels entitled to having it their way, is a good idea. Vernell's kingdom was straight ahead, just outside of the main business drag, across from Wal-Mart and next to a lot where a guy sat in a truck and sold rocks to wealthy gardeners.

"Naw, a man's gotta mouth the bait a little," she said. "I take it we're discussing your detective fella." I nodded ever so slightly. "Honey, he's a big 'un. Them kind slip up, try and take the bait off your hook, then run if you ain't watchin'. You gotta wait 'em out. Don't go yanking on the line and trying to reel him in. He's got a lot of fight in him. You can tell that, just by the way he walks."

I couldn't let that one go. "How can you tell what a man's gonna do by the way he walks?"

"Your boy walks slow like he's prowling," she said. "Remember, I've met him. He came into the shop when Jimmy got hisself murdered. Thought he could get to you by going through me. Huh!" she snorted. "Yeah, right, like I'd talk about you to the police." Bonnie reached in her purse for a cigarette, remembered I didn't like smoking in the car, and dropped the pack back into the leather pouch. "That detective can't keep his eyes off of you, that's another sign. You got him, but you gotta give him room to run."

I had no idea what Bonnie was going on about. The way I had it figured, it was hopeless. My head knew this, but my heart and a few other parts of my anatomy didn't want to throw in the towel quite yet.

I pulled into the gravel lot of the Satellite Kingdom and stopped in front of the doublewide Vernell used for a sales office.

"Now here's where the rubber meets the road," Bonnie said, and opened the car door. "Five dollars says it's the receptionist." And with that she marched up the stairs and into the building.

By the time I reached the door, Bonnie was stomping out. "Clever ruse, that Vernell has," was all she said as she walked past me and down the steps. She was fumbling with a cigarette and a lighter and apparently had no intentions of returning. "Just make it snappy. I need to get back to the shop as soon as possible. They can't keep the place going more than an hour without me there to watch 'em." She gave me a sharp glance and touched my arm. "I mean, unless you need me to whip that one inside into shape." She looked back toward the door and shook her head. "There's more to all this than meets the eye, honey."

I had no idea what she was talking about and Bonnie wasn't sticking around to explain. She walked off across the parking lot, headed for the car and her smoke break.

I pulled open the glass door and stepped inside. The receptionist looked up and smiled, her gray hair piled neatly on top of her head.

"Can I help you?"

"You're new," I said.

The woman adjusted her thin framed glasses, pushing them back up her nose and squinting through them to see me better. Her face was a maze of wrinkles and laugh lines. She was the double for Vernell's grandmother.

"Oh dear," she sighed, "now just tell me you're someone important and I'm supposed to know you." She shook her head. "I told Bess I didn't need a job, but she had to have it her way."

"Bess who?" I asked.

The woman stood up from behind the desk and walked around to stand in front of me.

"Bess King, my daughter. She's the one told me I needed something to do now that Guthrie's gone. She said Mr. Spivey needed help, and here I am." She smiled and I couldn't help smiling back, but inside my heart had skipped a beat. Bess King. Nosmo King.

"Don't mind me," she said, "I wander on." She stuck out her hand. "I'm Eugenia Price. Welcome to the Satellite Kingdom. I'd be glad to help you with all your satellite needs but as you can see, I don't know a thing about newfangled technology. Our salesmen are, um"-she looked around-"out in the field today."

Out in the field, indeed. With Vernell gone, and paychecks missing, it meant the sales team hadn't shown for work.

"How about Andy Little?" I asked. Eugenia Price looked puzzled. "The manager."

"Oh yeah, him." She shook her head. "I think he's in the field, too." Eugenia was looking around, her gaze flitting back and forth from one vacant office to another. "I just started Thursday. To tell you the truth, I'm just not the one to help."

"Don't worry about it, Mrs. Price. I reckon you don't know, but I'm Mr. Spivey's ex-wife and I'm worried about him." There was suspicion in Eugenia Price's eyes now. Concern and ex don't always run together.

"He's missing," I said. "He hasn't been seen since Friday. He and I are co-owners of his other business, the Mobile Home Kingdom. I'm just plain scared something's happened."

Eugenia's eyes widened. She folded her arms, her fingers running up and down the silky material of her sleeves, as if she were trying to warm up.

"Missing?" she repeated.

I nodded. "You know, if your daughter is a friend of Vernell's, she might know where he is."

Eugenia shook her head slightly. "Oh, I don't think so. Vernell Spivey is the last thing on her mind. Bess's husband died this week." Eugenia's face seemed to crumple a little as pain slowly filled her eyes. "I was only here this morning to tell the boss man I can't stay." She looked around the empty trailer. "I guess there's no point in waiting around anymore. I was supposed to start at twelve, but I can't stay. Bess has got so much on her."

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said automatically.

Eugenia Price's head went up. "Oh, sugar," she said, "that weren't no loss. Nosmo King was the meanest man alive. I've been after Bess for years to leave him. I'm only sorry he died and left things in such a mess. No will. No instructions. And her with them two kids and Nosmo's gas station to run."

I could see Bonnie outside leaning on the hood of my car, a cigarette in hand and a scowl on her face.

"That's terrible," I said.

Eugenia nodded. "Yeah, but at least she won't be hurting for money. That gas station is a gold mine. Sits right out at the corner of Summit Avenue and Wendover. I never knew there was so much money in gasoline!"

Eugenia shook herself and looked back at me. "I'm sorry, here you are worried about your husband, and I'm running on about my own worries."

I smiled again. "Vernell'll turn up," I said, "he always does. You know," I said, "I think I may've seen your Bess around here before. She have short brown hair, kinda curly, and a real pretty smile?"

Eugenia Price smiled. "That's her," she said. "Prettiest smile in Guilford County, I always say."