Your Cheatin Heart

Chapter Fifteen

Jack let me stay inside myself. We rode all the way home in silence. The police had come and taken their report They weren't the same officers that I'd come to expect. They were young, and if they knew anything about me and Jimmy, they didn't say. They didn't seem surprised that someone had shot at me. In this part of town, on High Point Road, gunfire on a Saturday night was nothing new.

Cletus had escorted us to my car and made a big show of checking it out before I could drive off.

"We'll take good care of you, Maggie," he said, resting a big, beefy hand on my shoulder. "Probably somebody got liquored up and didn't watch where they were shooting." I nodded, but I didn't believe that for a second.

"Did the police find anything when they looked around?" I stared across the lot, suddenly seeing bad guys behind every car and shadow.

Cletus shook his head. "No, only thing they found was a couple of thirty-eight casings. That's all."

Jack stayed silent, lost in his thoughts. That was just how I wanted it. He seemed to sense this and left me alone, even after we got back to his place. He wandered over to the woodstove and busied himself stoking it, then adjusting the vents. I walked around the open space, unable to relax. Those shots fired in the parking lot had something to do with Jimmy. I could feel it.

I heard the sound of a wine cork softly popping, then the sound of liquid hitting the back of a glass. I stood in front of the CD player, staring blankly at the equipment.

"Here," he said, appearing by my side with a glass of red wine.

"Thanks, but I don't drink red wine," I said. Red wine didn't do much for me. Too dry.

"Try it," he said.

I took the glass, like a good guest, and brought it to my lips. It wasn't bad. I liked the way it slid down my throat without burning. It reminded me of the berries on my grandma's place, just before we picked them for jam-making.

Jack punched a button on the CD player. Jesse Winchester began singing "Yankee Lady."

"You like this, don't you?" he asked. "I saw it was on here, so I figured you were listening."

I nodded and took another sip of wine. My stomach felt warm when the wine hit. My shoul

ders were beginning to loosen up. I went and stood by the tall window that went from the loft upstairs all the way to the floor downstairs. Outside the moon glowed, almost full. Jesse Winchester sang about leaving Vermont.

Why couldn't I find a man like Jesse Winchester, I wondered. A strong rich voice, singing about loving women. I bet he didn't take potshots at women. I took another couple of sips of wine and let my body sway softly. I bet Jesse wouldn't spend all his time drunk, forgetting he had a family waiting at home for him.

Jack's red wine was probably one of the most delicious liquids ever invented, I thought, finding myself near the bottom of the glass. My face felt flushed, and I realized that I felt a little floaty. Shouldn't be drinking wine on an empty stomach, I thought, but that didn't stop me from holding out my glass when Jack came around with the bottle.

"It's good," I said.

"I like it right much," he said. I was humming along with Jesse. Jack put the bottle down on top of the CD player and turned to face me. Then he reached out for my wine glass, taking it from my hand and setting it down next to the wine bottle.

"Come here," he said softly. "Let's dance."

I didn't move.

"Come on, Maggie. It's the Tennessee waltz."

I stared at him. "I can't," I said finally.

"Sure you can." He laughed. "It's just a dance."

"No," I said, suddenly feeling like a panicked, tearful child. "I can't, Jack."

Jack dropped his arms to his side. "Why not?"

I took a deep breath and let the words fly out in a rush of air. "Because I can't dance."

There, I'd said it. I hated being asked to dance. It was worse than anyone knew, because with all my heart, I wanted to dance, but couldn't. A memory jumped back into my head, the same one that always came. Me and Darlene in dance class, dressed in pink leotards and tutus. Darlene gliding effortlessly across the floor, and me frozen, unable to tell right from left, the last to cross the floor, the baby elephant.

I wasn't going to cry. I bit the inside of my lip and started to reach for my wineglass. Jack grabbed my hand.

"Come here," he said again. This time he moved into me, sliding his arm around my waist. "You can do this."

He didn't know me. He didn't know how I felt.

"Maggie, relax. Close your eyes and breathe. Just let me hold you."

I hesitated, staring at him, trying to figure out what he really wanted. But he looked so genuine, I started to feel foolish for not humoring him. I did it. I let Jack play his New Age games. I'm sure he knew I didn't like it, but he didn't give up.

"Okay, let your head rest on my shoulder." He was swaying softly, taking me with him. Jesse sang softly about Bowling Green. The wine was a tranquilizer, moving me with him. Jack smelled like exotic spices and I inhaled deeply.

"Mag, you're doing it. That's it." I swayed against him. He slowly whirled me around, gently teaching my feet to move. Then the song ended and the next one was faster. I moved to push out of his arms.

"Maggie, stay. You can do this."

"No, I can't."

He handed me my wine glass. "Take another sip," he instructed. I took more than one.

"Hey, girl," he sang along with Jesse, and whisked my glass away. He was moving, his arms holding mine, forcing my body to move along with his. My feet were actually going! I laughed, delighted.

"That's it! See!"

Jesse was singing about letting go and I did. I was someone else. I was a dancer. Jack was humming, smiling, his eyes closed, totally involved in the music. We danced. I don't know for how long, maybe an hour, maybe more. Suddenly I became aware that the music had stopped and we were still moving, slowly.

Jack opened his eyes and smiled. "See? You're a dancer. I knew you were a dancer." He brought his hand up and softly pushed my hair away from my face. His face was inches from mine. My heart started to race and I realized that Harmonica Jack was about to kiss me, and that furthermore, I was going to let him!

His eyes softened and he smiled at me, his face coming closer to mine. I closed my eyes, still not believing that this was really happening. Jack's fingers cupped my chin. Just as I felt the whisper of his lips upon mine, someone beat on the loading bay door, making us both jump.

"What in the hell?" Jack jerked back, alarm replacing tenderness.

"What time is it?" I asked, looking at the clock in the kitchen. It was just after six A.M.

Jack had moved to the door, grabbing a wooden bat that stood beside the refrigerator.

"Do you think we should open it?" I asked, but I meant, Are you nuts? Don't open that door!

The banging started again and Jack hit the garage door button. The door hadn't moved six inches when I called out to Jack.

"Put the bat down. It's the law."

Weathers was wearing black snakeskin boots this time, with silver tips on the toes. Damn his hide!

He was smiling, dressed in black pants and a crisp white cotton shirt.

"Good morning, folks," he said, smiling like this was a social call. "Saw your lights on as I was on my way to work." His eyes glided past Jack, over to the window. The sonofabitch had been watching us!

"Detective Weathers," he said, extending his hand to Jack. "How're you doing?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I need to borrow Ms. Reid for a little while, if I may?"

I stepped up between the two men. "I'm really tired, Detective," I said, "perhaps it could wait."

Weathers's eyes glistened. He loved this.

"Well, this is kind of time-sensitive," he said. "I find it best to move on these things while they're fresh in folks' minds." He took a step back, looking toward his car. "Do you need a coat or anything? It's kind of cold out there."

"No, I don't need a coat," I fumed, And you'd be the last one to know if I did, I thought. "Let's get this over with."

I walked past the two men, toward Weathers's car.

"Maggie," Jack called. I turned around. "Here," he said, tossing me the remote door opener.

It was his way of letting me know he'd be there, waiting.

Weathers was already cranking the engine when I reached the car. He didn't look at me, just put the car into reverse and backed out of his parking space.

"So, is this the big downtown talk?" I asked. We were headed straight toward the police station and I knew what that meant. Weathers was fixing to spend hours asking me questions. But instead of turning onto Eugene, he drove straight past, heading away from the municipal plaza.

"So where are we going?"

"I just thought we'd ride a little bit," he said, but I could tell he had a destination in mind.

It was an early fall morning in Greensboro; ordinarily I might've enjoyed it, but when Weathers turned onto Mendenhall, I knew where we were going. Weathers was taking me to my house. For a moment, I didn't know what to say. If I told him I didn't want to go to my place, then he'd be all the more determined. I was sure of one thing, Weathers wanted me to be uncomfortable. It just seemed to be his main goal in life.

I could tell he was waiting for my reaction. I could feel him watching me from the corner of his eye, so I settled back and tried to pretend I was enjoying the ride.

"What a pretty morning," I said. "Leaves are just starting to turn."

He grinned a little to himself. "Uh-huh."

He turned down the little back alley that ran behind my bungalow, made a sharp right, and pulled up into the tiny backyard, just like I always did. He cut the engine and turned to face me for the first time.

"Wanna go inside?" he asked.

"Aw, I'm sorry," I said. "If I'd known you wanted to come here, I'd have brought my keys." I shrugged my shoulders. "But I don't have them with me!"

Weathers pulled his keys out of the ignition and smiled. "That's all right," he said, "I've got a spare."

"A spare? How'd you get a key to my house?"

He pulled the door handle and started to leave, the keys jingling in his hand.

"Wait!" I said, but he didn't. He was out of the car, heading up my back steps before I could get out of the car and go after him.

"Detective, stop!"

He turned around and looked at me, his eyebrow raised in a question mark, his head slightly cocked.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't want to go in there!"

He turned away from the back door and the smug, cocky look was gone. He walked to the edge of the top step and sat down, patting a place next to him. I stayed where I was, at the foot of the steps, watching him the way you might eye a wild dog.

"Why don't you want to go in there, Maggie?" he asked.

"I don't know," I lied. A swirl of emotion surged up, encompassing me. It wasn't my home anymore. I knew that now. It wasn't safe. Jimmy's blood stained my grandmother's rug. How could I ever go back there?

"I just want to go back to Jack's and get some sleep. I've been up all night." The wine was wearing off, leaving me in a fog.

"Didn't look to me like you were thinking about sleeping a little while ago."

"Well, that'd be none of your business, now would it?" I snapped.

He shrugged and smiled slowly. I found myself staring into his blue eyes a little too long, long enough for him to notice.

"I'm just thinking you could do better," he said. He leaned back against the step, his elbows resting on the deck behind him.

"Oh, right," I snapped, "like you, I suppose?" I don't know how the words flew out of my mouth. I could feel my cheeks heating up, and I looked away.

Weathers grinned and raised his eyebrow again. He had me. He reached slowly into his shirt pocket, carefully pulling out what looked like a picture.

"I bet you could even do better than this," he said, handing the photo to me.

"Oh my God," I said, sinking down onto the steps, the picture clutched in my hand. How was it my life kept chasing me like a bad dream?

There I was, in my black bikini, six years ago, out on Holden Beach. Jimmy had his arms wrapped around me from behind, a mischievous grin on his face. We might've been any couple, anywhere. Only trouble was, we were just clowning around.

"Where'd you get this?" I asked, already knowing the answer. I kept it in the back of my underwear drawer, a reminder to me that there had been a time when I looked good in a bikini. It was my motivation to remember my diet. Now it looked like just another link between me and my murdered brother-in-law.

"You guys searched my underwear drawer?" I asked. "And now you walk around with the key to my house on your key ring?" I couldn't believe it. If it wasn't bad enough that someone had come into my house and killed Jimmy, now the cops could root through my underwear any time they liked.

"Well," he said slowly, "not exactly."

"Not exactly? What does that mean, not exactly?" I jumped up off the step and whirled around to face him. With him sitting on the top step, and me standing just in front of him on the ground, we were eye-to-eye.

"We searched everywhere on the initial search warrant, Maggie. That's our job. But we can't just come and go into your house without cause."

"Then why do you have a key to my house?"

"I don't."

"You don't?"

Weathers shrugged his shoulders. "Nope."

"So, you were lying. Why?"

"To see what you'd do," he said.

I looked down at my boots. They were the sharpest-toed boots I owned and at that particular moment, all I could envision was kicking Weathers right in his shiny white teeth.

"I know you're mad," he said. "Hell, I'd be mad, too."

I looked up at him and he knew I didn't believe a word he said. "You know," I said, scuffing the ground with the toe of my boot, "the funny thing is, I'm more disappointed than mad." His eyebrow was up again. He hadn't expected this. "You see," I said, "I thought you were different. Vernell, Jimmy, hell, even Harmonica Jack, they've all got an agenda. I expect them to lie to me. But I thought you were a cut above. When I looked out onto the dance floor that first time I saw you, I thought to myself, Now there's a man you can trust. You can look right into those blue eyes and see he don't lie."

I coughed out a short, sarcastic laugh and stared at him like he was maybe a bad accident.

"Just goes to show you," I said, "what bad picker genes'll do." I drew myself up as tall as I could, straightened my shoulders, and looked him right in the eyes.

He stared right back, and where any other man might've started in with a host of sorry one-liners, he said nothing. I spun around and headed for the car. I didn't look back, didn't try to guess if he was following me. I just opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat, staring out the side window.

He stayed where he was for a moment, then slowly unfolded his long lanky body and walked toward the car. He sat in his seat for a moment, before reaching up to put the keys in the ignition and start the engine. Then he turned to face me.

"You know, Maggie, in this business people lie to me all day long. You come to expect it. Killers don't play fair, so you've gotta do whatever it takes to get to the truth. That's what I do, Maggie. I've been doing it so long, I don't even think about it. I just put in what's needed for a given situation. This ain't about genetics, Maggie, it's about a man's life wasted. So yeah, I set you up. But I do it just as much in hopes that you're innocent as I do in case you're not." His eyes were searing into mine, the little muscle in his jaw twitching. "And do I think you can do better than that?" he said, gesturing to the picture I'd thrown down on the seat beside me. "I know you can."

He looked away then, throwing the Taurus into reverse and backing out into my alley. He picked up the microphone that lay between us and barked into it. Weathers was back on the job, and for some inexplicable reason, I felt as if I'd missed something important.

Weathers pulled the Taurus right up in front of Jack's loading dock, put it in park, and sat waiting for me to leave. Funny thing was, now I didn't want to go. I felt like I wanted him to understand something about me, but I just couldn't lay my hand on what it was.

"That picture," I said, my thoughts trailing to a stop.

"Yeah?" His hand rested on the wheel, but he was watching me.

"That was six years ago. We were just clowning around at the beach." Weathers didn't say a word. He waited. "The Spiveys rent this big house at Holden Beach every year. It was kinda fun, you know?"

He nodded ever so slightly.

"I didn't come from a family that did stuff like that. It was one of the things I liked best about the Spiveys." I was taking up air space and saying nothing. But it was almost as if I had to keep moving my mouth to get around to what I was thinking.

"Jimmy was a sweet boy, Detective. He meant well, but he couldn't help himself. He just lacked ambition. I don't know what he would've done with the love of a good woman, but Roxanne wasn't the one. I tried to be like a big sister to him. I guess he took it wrong. But you should know this: I never did anything to make Jimmy think I loved him. I never violated my vows to Vernell. Not with anyone. Not ever."

Weathers had turned a little in his seat and was giving me his full attention.

"And I was plenty lonely, Detective. So you go on and check me out. You root through my underwear drawer and dig up my past. You take it to mean whatever you want, but you won't find a murderer. I'm guilty of a lot of things. I've been foolish in love, and probably gullible in situations you'd see coming a mile off. But I don't intentionally set out to hurt people, Detective, even when they've hurt me."

I reached down and picked up the photo of me and Jimmy. He looked so young and happy. Who in the world had killed him? He'd loved me, in his own lost-boy way, and somehow, I'd let him down. Not just by not loving him the way he wanted me to love him, but by not listening, not hearing something that might've saved his life. And now maybe I was the only one with sense enough to find his murderer. Maybe I was the only one who really cared. Vernell was stuck inside a bottle and Roxanne only wanted Jimmy's money. I looked at the picture again for a moment, remembering the crash of the ocean behind us, and the smell of the salty air that hot August day. Then I stretched out my hand and offered the picture to Weathers.

"You keep this," I said. "I don't need it anymore."

Weathers reached out and took the picture, and his fingers brushed mine. Our eyes met and held, the shock of skin on skin dancing up my arm, flipping my stomach over like the drop of a roller-coaster. He leaned across the seat and cupped my chin with his fingers. Ever so slowly and gently, Marshall Weathers kissed me. I melted into him, feeling myself sinking deeper and deeper.

He pushed back, his face inches from mine, looking deep into my eyes.

"Like I said, Maggie, you can do better."

I pulled away and turned to fumble with the door handle. I had to get out of the car because I'd suddenly had a memory that Weathers couldn't know about and I couldn't explain.

"How will I know, Mama?" I'd asked one summer day out on the porch, the two of us swinging on the wooden porch swing.

"Honey," she'd answered, "when the right man comes along, you'll know."

Suddenly the air inside the car was too close, and my head was spinning. I was too tired. My mind was playing tricks on me, and I was too tired.

"Good-bye, Detective," I said, my voice coming out in a husky whisper.

"I'll be in touch," he said.

I couldn't look at him. Suddenly, I was eleven, sitting on the porch swing with Mama, while part of me, the adult Maggie, was running just as fast as she could.

I ran up the steps to the loading dock and hit the remote button. Behind me, I heard the crunch of Weathers's tires pulling away and I sighed with relief. The garage door moved too slowly, and all I could think about was getting inside. I half expected to see Jack, but the downstairs was empty, another relief. I didn't need to deal with any more men at this particular moment.

I wandered over to the couch and sat down, pulling off my boots and searching for a quilt all in the same move. I wasn't going upstairs. I was going to pull myself into a little ball, right there on the sofa, and sleep and sleep and sleep, until all my crazy thoughts went away.