Stand By Your Man

Chapter Two

I grabbed my nose, the world went starry and black, and I was propelled backward into the desk.

A voice said, "Oh, man!"

Marshall Weathers was suddenly right there, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me right back into the chair I'd just come from.

"She's bleeding," the door pusher said. "I'll get some paper towels and ice. Oh, man! I'm sorry." My attacker was a female, a sumo wrestler, if the strength of her pushing was any indication.

My hands were covering my face. I could feel blood seeping through my fingers as my nose started to swell. Great. This was all I needed.

"Maggie," Weathers said, "just lean back." His hands tenderly brushed my curls out away from my face. "Do you think it's broken?"

"It can't be," I wailed. "I've gotta sing for a living!"

Marshall slipped his arm around my shoulders and pulled my head to his chest.

"Shhh," he said softly, "it'll be all right."

I wanted to cry, partly because I hurt so bad and partly because it took a broken nose for him to take me in his arms again, but I was cried out. Telling Marshall about Vernell and hearing the reality of the situation had drained me.

The door swung open, cautiously this time, and the pusher stepped back into the room. I looked up and took in the fresh-scrubbed, young, blonde officer, carrying a roll of paper towels and a bucket of ice.

"I'm so sorry," she said again.

"Me, too," I said, before I could remember my manners. "But I'll be fine."

She was staring at Marshall Weathers the same way I had when I first met him. I could tell right then and there that she was smitten. Marshall smiled up at her, took the towels and ice from her hands, then said, "Thanks, Trace."

She blushed. "I was just coming to see if we're still on for tonight," she said softly.

Weathers looked at me, then back at her. "Um, yeah, sure."

"Five thirty okay?" she asked.

He nodded and I jumped up out of my seat, a paper towel jammed against my nose.

"I'm fine," I muttered through the thick cloth. "And I have to go. Right now. I'm late."

"Maggie, wait," Marshall said.

I favored him with my nicest glance, considering that all he could see was eyes and a blob of white towel. I wasn't Einstein, but I wasn't stupid, either. "Let me know as soon as you find out about Vernell," I said. "Be sweet."

"Be sweet." That's southern for "curl up and die, you idiot!" A true southern woman never betrays her temper. Instead, she kills you with kindness. She lowers her voice almost to a whisper, looks you straight in the eye, and wishes you to stay as sweet as you are. It's her eyes that tell you the true story. Marshall Weathers was a Southerner. He knew exactly what I was saying.

I walked off through the Homicide Unit, weaving through the gray partition walls, heading for the lobby and the outside exit. People glanced up, then just as quickly looked away. I was guessing they didn't want to think too hard about what had happened to the Reba McEntire look-alike who had only minutes before strolled past with Marshall Weathers.

I wasted no time walking to my aging white VW Beetle and taking off. I drove through Greensboro's rush-hour traffic, heading for College Hills and my tiny Victorian bungalow. I hardly noticed the five-minute trip home or the beautiful fall colors that accented the tree-lined streets; I was too busy thinking. Besides, my nose ached and I just knew I was going to have two black eyes.

What was I going to tell Sheila? She was probably home, waiting for me. I hadn't let her in on how worried I was about her daddy, but now I was going to have to tell her.

When Vernell left us two years ago for Jolene, the Dish Girl in his satellite dish commercials, Sheila was just turning fifteen. I was a beautician and co-owned the Curly-Que Beauty Salon, and while it wasn't enough to keep us in luxury, it did afford me the little cottage off Mendenhall Street. Sheila hated the house, said it was a dump, but I loved it. It was full of character. It was just like me, waiting to be rediscovered and loved.

Sheila couldn't see that. No, she took up with a dope dealer down the street and eventually ran off to live in her father's pressed-cement, nouveau riche mansion in snobby New Irving Park. Time won out, though. Money can't buy a mother's love, especially when your stepmother is a greedy schemer bent on separating you from your father and his money. Poor Sheila.

I thought about Vernell for a minute. After his brother died, Vernell had started back drinking the hard stuff on a daily basis. I remembered sitting on a sidewalk curb one night, Vernell sick and crying beside me, and realizing that for all his restless meandering, Vernell truly loved me. He just couldn't live up to it. And try as I might, I couldn't hate him for that. Vernell was a just a junkyard dog trying to live indoors.

I drove down the alleyway and up into my small stamp of a backyard, trudged up the steps, and unlocked the door that opened into my bedroom, a converted sleeping porch. Sheila was lying across the bed, her head on her arms, wailing. From the sound of it, she'd turned up the volume as she heard my key fit into the lock.

She raised up slowly onto her elbows, her stick-straight red hair spilling around her freckled, tear-swollen face. She was a mess, but she stopped in midcry when she saw my face.

"It's not nearly as bad as it looks," I said.

"Oh my God! Who did that to you?" She drew her lanky frame up into a lotus position in the middle of Mama's yellow wedding-ring quilt. She was using her affected New York accent.

"Pride," I said, knowing she wouldn't let it go at that.

"Pride? You know somebody named Pride?"

I slung my purse down onto the dresser and looked into the mirror. My nose stood out between my green eyes like a Mercedes on a sucker lot. The skin around my eyes was puffy and starting to glow red and a bit purple. I touched it gently and winced. It hurt, but it wasn't broken.

"It was an accident. I ran into a door at the police department."

Sheila started to smile. "I knew you'd go see him," she said. "And after you gave me that big lecture on waiting for the boy to call you!"

That was when I knew for certain my concern for Vernell hadn't spilled over onto Sheila.

"You didn't go to school today, did you?" I asked, not quite ready to broach the Vernell subject.

Sheila's eyes narrowed and her face flushed the telltale way it does when she's done wrong.

"Did the headmaster call you?"

Sheila attends the Irving Park Country Day School because her father insists. He sees it as yet another way of clawing up into Greensboro society. I try to tell him that money can't buy breeding, but he wants his picture sprawled across the newspaper's society page, hobnobbing with the la-de-dahs at the Heart Ball.

"I had cramps," she said, sliding back down onto the bed. "I just couldn't make myself go."

Self-discipline was another one of Sheila's "opportunities for growth." She'd learned about this in her psychology class and now every time I tried to call her onto the carpet for slacking off, she'd call it a "growth opportunity" and say she was "working on it." I'd about had it with Sheila's personal growth.

"Well," I said, "it's probably for the best anyhow. We've got a problem. Your daddy's missing along with almost all of his money. I'm going to need your help."

The pretense fell away from Sheila. She sat up, started at me for a minute, and then decided I was serious.

"What happened? Where is he? Is he all right?"

I went over to her, sat down and looked straight into her eyes. "Sheila, we don't know. No one knows, but everyone's looking for him."

Sheila's face went still and pale. I could see her working to control her emotions, and it wasn't going well. She bit her bottom lip, but her chin quivered.

"Did someone hurt him?"

I reached out a hand and stroked her arm. "I don't know, honey. I'm going to find out."

"Do you think he left?"

I wasn't going to lie or sugarcoat the truth. "Some folks think so. I don't. Your dad's got his shortcomings, but he wouldn't leave you."

Sheila folded up like a hinged chair, drawing her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and laying her head on top of her knees. Her hair spilled around her like a sheet of silky satin. She sighed, her thin shoulders moving with each breath. I stretched out my hand and touched her, letting my fingers rest gently on her arm, a reminder that I was still there with her. After a minute she raised her head and it was my Sheila, back again, strong and tough.

"Okay," she said, her voice clear. "Let's go get Daddy!"

I smiled at her. "I think we should start with his castle."

"Oh, most definitely," she said. "Daddy's house is a mess. I'm sure we'll find tons of sh… um, clues, there."

She was up and moving, grabbing her small leather backpack purse and looking back at me with her usual air of impatience.

"So, like, are you coming or what?"

Mama said once, "You can't skin a rattlesnake with a toothbrush." She was cautioning me about not studying for a test in high school, but it clearly applied here. Sheila was loaded for bear, all right, and ready to go find her daddy, but what did we know about tracking down a missing person?

I thought about Detective Marshall J. Weathers and had a pang of regret. I needed his help and expertise. It would've been nice to know I could count on him, or to feel we were working together to find Vernell, but this was the same man who'd promised to call and vanished. Now he'd said he'd help me, but what kind of guarantee was that? Maybe it meant he'd file a report and forget about it. Maybe it meant less than that. Maybe it was all talk. No, Sheila and I were on our own, tracking down a man who'd cheated on me, left me, and still, in his heart of hearts, loved me.