Stand By Your Man

Chapter Five

heard Harmonica Jack before I saw him. Jack lives in a converted warehouse on the edge of Greensboro's business district, teetering on the line that divides the gleaming, multistoried office buildings and funky antique shops from the broken-paned abandoned shells of older, once useful warehouses.

I pulled off Elm Street, turned down the narrow alley to Jack's parking lot, and stopped in front of the loading dock Jack uses for a front door and living-room window. I cut the engine and heard the gentle lisp of his harmonica float out into the crisp fall evening. He was playing something slow and sweet and incredibly sad. For a moment I couldn't move, but he saw me, stopped playing, and began to walk toward the car.

His wiry, blond hair stood out in spikes from his head, as if taking off in different directions. He was wearing a faded green-plaid flannel shirt and jeans. Even fully clothed, Jack looked too thin. And he was barefooted. It's being barely sixty degrees, he was begging for a cold.

"Didn't your mama teach you no better?" I called out, pointing to his feet as he stepped closer to the car.

"My mama figured I'd get cold at some point and take care of myself," he said. He peered in the window at me, squinting in the glow of the streetlight that illuminated his tiny parking lot.

"What happened to you?" he asked. "Maggie, your nose is all puffy and it looks like your eyes are turning kind of black."

I tried it one more time. "I ran into a door at the police station," I said wearily.

Jack leaned back, cocked his head to one side, and sighed. "I knew you'd get up with him somehow. I just never figured him for the type to use violence."

I leaned my head against the steering wheel. "He didn't," I moaned.

Jack pulled open the car door and patted my shoulder. "Those doors can take their toll on you, can't they?" he said. "Yep. Gotta keep your eye on 'em. You never know when they'll take it into their heads to attack! Come on inside. I've got just the thing for a door whuppin'."

I didn't even bother to try and explain further. Sooner or later, Jack would pull the whole tale out of me. He always did, after a lengthy session of New Age breathing and transcendental meditation to realign my karma. Jack seems to think I'm uptight. On the other hand, I figure he's spent a little too much time smelling incense and assuming convoluted yoga positions. But he's trustworthy, and he's my friend. He's also a good seven years younger than me. I only mention that on account of sometimes he seems to get ideas, and I have to remind him that a relationship between the two of us would never work.

Jack pulled me up onto the loading dock and into his living room before hitting the door opener that brought the rusty metal bay door sliding down on its hinges. He wandered over to the counter in his tiny kitchen, pulled two wineglasses down from a rack, and grabbed a half-full bottle of red wine from a cupboard.

"There's more to this than meets the eyes," he said, chuckling to himself. "Come on over here."

We walked across the echoing loft, crossing the wooden floor to his living room area.

"Have a seat," he said, motioning to his battered old sofa. He put the wine and glasses down on the coffee table then walked over to the tiny potbellied stove that pumped out heat like a furnace. He fiddled with a knob on the front of the stove, then, when it satisfied him, moved back over to his place next to me on the couch.

"You're in trouble again, aren't you?" he asked. He reached past me for the wine and started to pour it into the glasses. He moved slowly, as if we were having a casual conversation, without a care in the world.

There's something about Jack. Something that makes me tell him the unvarnished truth, something warm that makes me want to curl up inside his confidence. And something else, I just can't quite put my finger on it. It's a feeling I get, every now and again, like there's something I'm missing about him. I don't know. I just know now isn't the time to go looking for trouble.

I looked at the ceiling, then reached for my wineglass. "Jack, I'm in a load of trouble, I think." I looked over at him. "I can't go home tonight, and maybe not for a while. Do you think I could… I mean, I don't mean, but what I need is…"

"Maggie," Jack said, "of course you're staying here. What about Sheila, she coming too?"

I guess sweetness turns me to mush. I spilled it all right then and there: how Vernell was missing; how Marshall did me, and finally, I told him about the Shadow.

"Something's bad wrong, Jack," I finished. "You believe me, don't you?"

Jack set his wineglass down on the coffee table and reached over to take my hand.

"Of course I do, Maggie. Why wouldn't I?"

I sighed and curled my fingers around his. His hand was warm and dry, his grip gentle, yet strong. He believed me, I knew that much.

"We need a plan, huh?" he said.

I nodded and reached for my wineglass, staring out the windows that flanked Jack's stove. Something had moved in the parking lot. I stared harder, trying to isolate the area where I'd seen movement, then shook myself. Maybe it was only a dog, looking for food in the trash can.

"So?" Jack said.

"So… what?"

"Don't we need a plan? Don't we need to start talking to people Vernell knows, see if we can find out what's up?" Jack was twirling his wineglass slowly between his fingers.

I saw a flash of dark out of the corner of my eye again. "There's something out there," I said. "Look!"

Jack turned and peered through the window. The parking lot was empty. The streetlight cast a perfect moon of yellow light onto my Beetle. Nothing moved. He stood and walked over to the window, staring hard into the night, then glancing back at me.

"Maybe it was the wind," he said softly.

The "wind" chose that moment to begin banging on Jack's loading-dock door.

"Maggie," Detective Marshall J. Weathers said, "I know you're in there. Please open the door."

Jack sighed and shook his head, then looked at me. "Well?"

I stood up and nodded, facing the huge cargo-bay door. Jack punched the garage-door remote and the heavy metal began to rumble.

The fact that Marshall Weathers had tracked me down to Jack's house was not at all unusual. At one time he had made it his business to know the ins and outs of my life. He knew I'd come to Jack. So that part didn't bother me. What bothered me was that he'd said "Please open the door." Please. That sent a little tingle of alarm moving through my body. Marshall Weathers knew something and it wasn't good. Why else would he be so nice? Nice wasn't usually his style.

The door rose with creaking uncertainty, catching on the cogs and hesitating as it shook its way open. Marshall stood there, still wearing his suit, frowning.

He ignored Jack and stepped onto the ancient wood floor of the warehouse. He looked instead at me, his frown softening.

"Maggie, I'm afraid I have some bad news." My stomach flipped over and a cry tightened my throat. "They've just found Vernell's truck out at the airport. Honey, I'm sorry, but there's a body inside and the description fits Vernell. I'm on my way out now."

I stood there in stunned silence, tears welling up in my eyes and spilling over. Jack stepped up to my side and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"You want me to come look, don't you?" I asked. My voice wouldn't raise any louder than a whisper.

Marshall nodded. "If you think you could."

I stepped toward him, unaware of how I moved because it all seemed like someone else's bad dream. Vernell was dead?

My mind flashed on Vernell holding Sheila and dancing around the delivery room in the seconds after she was born, smiling, tears rolling down his thin cheeks. Then I saw him out in the backyard at our first house, holding a green garden hose up in the air, his thumb over the nozzle. The water shot up, arcing and falling down around him and three-year-old Sheila, and they laughed and laughed as the sun hit the water and created a rainbow.

Not Vernell. Not that Vernell.

I didn't say a word to Jack. I forgot about him. I couldn't hold more than Vernell in my head. I didn't realize he'd let go of my arm or that Marshall had taken it, until Marshall was helping me into his unmarked squad car. What I was aware of was the growing pain in my chest, the way my heart brimmed with a sadness so utterly deep that it filled my lungs and took my breath away. Vernell.

Marshall stuck a blue light up on the roof and took off. It takes fifteen minutes to cross town and hit the airport. Marshall made it in less than ten. We didn't speak. I stared out the passenger-side window, wishing it would rain, and surprised that it didn't. Somehow rain would've been appropriate. Mama used to say rain was how God washed away his disappointment. I just knew it would take more than my tears to grieve for Vernell.

We raced across lonely Bryan Boulevard, streaking from one streetlight to the next, passing through gray-white spots of light that became a strobe of pain-filled awareness.

When we pulled up into the airport and took the turn to extended-stay parking, the dark night was suddenly filled with explosions of blue flashing lights. The entire deck was sealed off, with officers directing cars away and sealing off the crime scene area. My heart was beating in my throat and I was aware of not being able to catch my breath.

Weathers paused briefly, rolled down his window, and spoke to the patrol officer. I didn't listen. I was staring straight ahead at Vernell's shiny white pickup. They had set giant lamps up beside the truck and several technicians seemed to be hovering, along with a blonde in a flappy black trenchcoat. She looked over at our car, pushed a frizzy lock of hair out of her eyes and motioned impatiently.

Marshall Weathers slapped the car into drive and pulled neatly to the side, away from the crime scene tape, just on the shadowy edge of the parking deck.

"Okay, Maggie," he said, his voice soft, "wait here. I want to check it out first. I'll come back and get you when we're ready."

He pushed the door open and stepped out into the light. I sat there, numbly watching him take twenty steps before something in me churned and I was out of the car, following him. I had to know. I had to know now, when he knew, before another minute passed.

Weathers had reached the blonde. Her dark eyes flashed from his face to mine, frowning as she clocked an intruder. She jerked her head in my direction. Weathers whipped around and started toward me.

"Maggie, you need to wait."

"No I don't."

"Detective, who is this?" She was a tall, thickset woman who wore stockings and running shoes. I caught a glimpse of a paisley polyester shirt-dress peaking out from the all-business black trenchcoat. She'd missed a button at the collar, making her neckline look loose and rumpled. I figured she was that ambiguous age between forty-five and sixty. Her hands were big, clutching a metal clipboard.

"I'm Maggie Reid," I said, sticking out my hand, forcing her to acknowledge me. "That's my ex-husband's truck you're examining."

She took my hand and softened. I revised her age downward as I stepped close enough to realize she was tired, not old.

"I'm Kay Edwards," she said, "medical examiner for Guilford County."

"I want to see him," I said. I didn't feel anything but cold inside. My feelings had retreated to a box, contained for later.

Kay Edwards looked past me to Marshall Weathers. He moved his head to the left, as if he were passing the decision on to her.

"All right, Mrs. Reid," she said, and I didn't correct her. "If you can walk up to the truck without touching him or anything else, we'll go."

Marshall stepped toward me, standing close, hovering. I held my head up, took a deep breath, and started toward the truck. If I prayed, it wasn't conscious. Instead, I probably did what I always do when I'm in a fix: summon Mama and her strength.

The technicians backed away. Vernell's passenger-side door hung open, the seat pulled up and away to reveal a pair of legs, curled up and shoved down behind the seats in the tiny rear cab. Vernell's workboots, untied. Vernell's blue twill workpants, the ones he wore when he wanted to prove to his employees that he was still just good ol' Vernell.

My body went still as the medical examiner led me closer, pulling a white sheet away from the upper half of the body.

"Is this your husband, Mrs. Reid?" she asked.

"Yes," I whispered, a sob catching in my throat. There was blood everywhere. Blood and stuff I don't want to mention. Someone had shot Vernell at point-blank range, must have, the back half of his head was missing and his face was almost unrecognizable. His skin was a waxy yellow and he looked dirty. I forced myself to examine him. I was making him dead in my mind, making myself accept the reality by studying him dead. Then I saw it.

"Maybe it is," I said, my voice rasping out like a stranger's. "Except, Vernell has a mustache and it's missing."

Of course, my brain was telling me that mustaches don't disappear, but I couldn't quite put it together that a body in Vernell's clothing, minus a mustache, could possibly not be Vernell.

"Does your husband have any identifying marks on his body?" Dr. Edwards asked.

"Just the eagle tattoo on his chest," I said.

Edwards leaned into the backseat of the cab and gently unbuttoned the man's shirt. She motioned me closer. I stepped in and peered over her shoulder. I sighed, turned, and threw up, right there on the concrete.