Stand By Your Man

Chapter Seventeen

I cried the entire way back to my house. Kept on crying as I parked the car and walked up the back steps. I opened the back door into my bedroom and fell across my bed, still sobbing and still miserable. I lay there in the early evening darkness, my head in my pillow, crying for everything that now wasn't ever going to be.

"Does this mean you don't want dinner before you go to work? Because I was working on a pasta here that would knock your socks off."

I jerked upright. "What are you doing in my house again?"

"You know, Sparks called your machine, which I did not answer, and said he wants you at the Stallion early."

I rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands and stared harder. Tony Carlucci was leaning against the doorway to my bedroom, a big hulk of biker boots and black denim.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" I said. "Why are you following me around and making my life a living hell?"

"Well, the way I see it, you was crying when you got here, so I don't take credit for your atmospheric environmental mood swings. And as for a living hell, well, if I hadn't come over when I did yesterday, you'd be dead, and where you spend your eternal rest would not be up to me. So living hell I figure is better than your alternative dead hell."

I just looked at him. He was such a Yankee.

"Now," he said, "it's five fifteen. Sparks wants you at the club by seven forty-five. I don't know about you, but I couldn't jump around and sing on a full stomach, so let's eat around six." Carlucci stared at me, his eyes doing a slow, thorough appraisal. "You know. I'm thinking you might want to take a shower or something. You've got leaves in your hair and you look a real mess. Them black eyes is fading, but now you made 'em all puffy."

He didn't ask why I was crying. Instead, he ignored the fact totally, even when I hiccuped.

"Did I have any other messages?" I asked.

Tony shrugged. "I try to keep up," he said, and pulled a small square of paper from his back pocket. "Archer VanScoy from VanScoy Mobile Homes called. Sounds like a serious sleaze to me. Your sister, Darlene. She said don't worry, Sheila's fine, but she's thinking of coming in town tomorrow night. And Jack from the band called, wants to know if you're sleeping at his place tonight." Carlucci peered at me over the top of the paper. "You get around, don't you?"

"It's not like that!" I said.

"Hey," he said, holding up one hand, "it ain't none of my personal concern who you sleep with. I'm just saying, be aware. In this day and age…"

"Shut up, Carlucci. For as much as you profess to know about my life, you really don't know anything at all."

Carlucci stared at me again, his eyes dark. "Maybe you'll have to educate me, Maggie." Then he shifted up off of the doorjamb. "But not until you sort out your love life. I don't do complicated."

With that, he turned around and stepped back into the kitchen. The man had some nerve. I jumped up off the bed, grabbed my thick white terrycloth bathrobe from its hook on the wall, and stomped past him into the bathroom. He chuckled to himself as I went past.

I stood in the shower until the water started to run cool. By the time I emerged from the bathroom, I felt more like myself and less like a tearful, dependent female. Like Mama always said, "Ain't nothing like a shower to wash away self-pity."

Carlucci had his back to me as I passed him. The aroma of chicken and lemon filled my tiny kitchen, and I was suddenly hungry.

"Five minutes until it's on the table," he said.

I reached into the closet and pulled out a sapphire-blue dress. It shimmered in the light of the closet and for an instant I was right back where I'd been before, the image of the dead intruder suddenly fresh in my mind.

"Who cleaned up?" I asked, whipping around and walking back out into the kitchen.

Carlucci kept his back to me. "I did. I didn't want you coming back and finding that."

I stood there, holding the dress up to my chest, staring at the spot on the floor where the body had been. I'd been so caught up in Vernell and Marshall that I hadn't even given it any thought until now. Two men had died in my home now: Vernell's brother, Jimmy, and an intruder who'd meant to scar me for life.

After Jimmy died, I came to feel as if his spirit still lingered around. It wasn't a sad or scary thing, it was oddly comforting, as if he still wandered through my life, keeping in touch. But this other person, this intruder, that was different and frightening. I stared at the floor and saw no trace of blood.

"Thank you for doing that," I said.

"It's all right," he muttered. As I watched, he lifted my big stockpot and poured the contents into a colander in the sink.

"Do you know who he was?" I asked. "Did they tell you?"

"I knew who it was." He still didn't look at me. "His name was Sammy Newton, but everybody called him Mouse." I waited, because I knew there was more. "He's Redneck Mafia, Maggie. I figure you know that."

I supposed I had, but I'd blocked it out, not wanted to think about it or face it. When Tony turned around, he was holding a steaming platter of pasta.

"Go put that down and come eat. Let's don't talk about trash right now." His face was a tight-set mask of control. Even looking into his eyes didn't tell me what emotion lived there, or how he felt about killing a man and then cleaning up the gory aftermath. It was a closed subject.

I turned away from him, laid the dress out across my bed and walked back through the kitchen and into my dining room. Carlucci was lighting candles, throwing the room into a milky yellow glaze of soft lighting and good smells. It was like entering another dimension, where violence had no place and death was kept at bay, held off by the sounds and smells of living.

Tony Carlucci's black hair gleamed in the candlelight. His strong shoulders rippled as he moved a heavy white bowl to the center of the table. His hands were a roughened contrast to the smooth white surface of the dish he held. I wondered about him for a moment. Who was he underneath that tough exterior? Where had he lived before he'd arrived in Greensboro? Who had he left behind? Did she miss him?

He looked up when I entered, then back down at the table.

"This is a recipe handed down from my great-grandmother, on to my grandma, to my mother, and now to me. Don't even try asking for the ingredients or anything else, because if I told you, I would be forced…"

He broke off, not wanting to finish the phrase, to kill you. I looked at my plate and back at him.

"Well, whatever you did, it smells wonderful. I'm starving." I smiled and made a big show of digging in, but all I could do was think. The events of the past few days ran through my head like a slide show. Vernell turning back up should've been the release I needed, but it only made matters worse, because as sure as I sat there eating lemon-cream pasta, I knew he'd be charged with murder by daybreak. That's just the way Vernell lives. If a storm is gonna come up, Vernell's gonna be stuck smack in the eye of the hurricane.

I looked back at Carlucci and found him watching me, his smoky eyes dark and impossible to read. When he reached for the pepper I found myself watching the muscles in his arms. I wondered what it would feel like to have them wrapped around me. Just as quickly, I shook the image off and swallowed. What in the world was I doing thinking like that?

As if he read my mind, Carlucci smiled.

"You should wear that robe to dinner more often," he said. "And let your hair go like that, so it just goes all curly. You ever think about not fixing it up, just leaving it be?"

"You know," I said, laying my fork down on my plate, "you and my ex-husband would get along."

"And how's that?" he asked.

I stared right back at him. "Whenever Vernell doesn't want to deal with something, he starts complimenting me. Here you are, in my house again, without my permission, making yourself at home, and I'm supposed to just take it and go on."

Carlucci licked his lips. "Exactly."

"Why?"

"Because you'll get yourself killed if I don't stick around. Besides," he added, "I think we've got some unfinished business."

I could feel my face flame up under his gaze, the heat spreading down my neck and into my chest. What did he mean, unfinished business? Who was I kidding? I knew exactly what unfinished business he meant.

I tossed my hair back over my shoulders and looked at him. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Carlucci laughed. "You most certainly do. I can see it in the way you squirm when I look at you."

I jumped up, pushing my chair back behind me. I didn't want him to see it in my face, to read what we both knew I felt. I didn't want to deal with him. I couldn't face what I felt. Not now, maybe not even later. "I'm late. I've got to get ready."

Carlucci just stared at me, his eyes roving down the V of my robe, taking his time. "You do that, Maggie Reid, you get ready."

I turned away from him and stalked off to my room, closing the door and locking it behind me. Who did he think he was?