Your Cheatin Heart

Chapter Nineteen

I awakened alone and with a plan. Jack was gone and the carafe of coffee was waiting for me on the kitchen counter. I sat on the sofa, drinking and rooting through my purse and wallet. I had been surprised to see Marshall Weathers's card floating around in my bag a few days ago. I hadn't remembered him giving it to me, but now when I needed it, it was nowhere to be found.

"Come on, Weathers, I know you're in here," I muttered. I pulled out my wallet and started taking every picture, credit card, and paper out of the worn leather slots. It had to be there somewhere. Only after I emptied every last item out of my purse did I find the beige business card, wedged under a piece of leather at the bottom.

I sat for a few moments, studying the card and debating: Call or don't call? "Just don't think about it," I whispered to myself. "Just pick up the phone and do it." My fingers were cold and I realized that I was shaking on the inside. "What are you afraid of? He'll listen to you. He'll take you seriously." But maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd blow me off like he had when someone shot at me. Maybe he'd think I was making it all up to throw the suspicion off of myself.

I jumped up off the sofa and ran across the room to the phone, picked it up, and dialed before I could stop myself. He answered on the first ring.

"Marshall Weathers," he said, his voice deep and businesslike.

I hung up.

A few moments later the phone rang, echoing through the cavernous room. I jumped and stared at it. I started to reach for it, and changed my mind. I couldn't do it. What if it was him? "You're being ridiculous," I said aloud. The phone continued to ring but I walked away. Calling Weathers was a bad idea.

"I'm making a big deal out of nothing, probably," I said to the empty room. "I'll get my locks fixed. I'll just go over and pick Sheila up after school. Between me and Vernell, we can watch her. If somebody lays a hand on my baby, me and Vernell'll kill him."

That was the right decision. If I left it up to the police, they might not watch her like I could. They might figure I wasn't telling them the truth, and my little girl would be caught in the middle. That is, if Sheila were even in danger. Chances were, it was just a Nosy Parker with too much time on his hands, looking to scare someone.

I ran upstairs, took a quick shower, and threw on a pair of jeans and a purple sweatshirt. Eventually, despite what I'd told Weathers, I was going to have to go back into my house, even if it was only to pick up more of my belongings. I wedged on a pair of tan suede, low-top cowgirl boots and ran down the stairs. Weathers was leaning against my car when I stepped out into the bright fall afternoon.

"Ever hear tell of Caller ID?" he said.

"So, when I hung up you got my number?"

"It ain't rocket science," he said.

I jammed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans and stood on the dock staring at him. It was just as well that we were both wearing sunglasses. I couldn't see those powerful blue eyes and he couldn't look through mine and see what I was feeling. He stood there, his arms folded, smiling. I figured he was feeling right proud of himself.

"So, what'd you want to talk to me about?" he asked.

"It wasn't anything much," I said. I took my time walking down the steps and over toward him. "If it'd been worth bothering you about, I'd have stayed on the line. As it was, I simply changed my mind. So you ran over here for nothing, and I hate it for you."

The smile never left his face but that little muscle began to jump in his jaw. He looked at his watch, then back at me.

"It's past lunchtime," he said. "You eat yet?"

My stomach growled. "No." I was close enough to touch him if I'd wanted to. For an instant the idea crossed my mind. What would it be like to touch him? He stood there, still smiling, waiting and not saying a word. It was up to me, somehow I just knew it.

"You want to go grab a bite?" I said. I didn't look at him when I spoke. It wasn't that obvious; I let my eyes wander to a spot just below his collarbone. The man made me nervous, or else I'd had too much coffee.

"Sure," he said, like a teacher who's been waiting on a student to come up with an obvious answer. "That'd be fine. Where you got in mind?"

Weathers was never going to be a man to use two words when one would do. I tried to think of where to go, and could only remember the last place we'd been, the only place we'd ever been together. "Yum-Yums'll do, I reckon."

He nodded, the decision made. He didn't even ask if I wanted to drive. He simply headed for his car, unlocked the door, and waited.

"I don't feel like driving anyway," I muttered to myself. "Use his gas."

He was talking on his cell phone as we drove off, a series of grunts and "uh-huhs" that gave me almost no indication of whether the call was business or personal. He cut across town, heading for lunch, his driving as clean and spare as his conversation. I was a shameless eavesdropper. I stared out the window, tried to act disinterested, and listened as hard as I could.

"Yeah, uh-huh, well, I know that." He leaned his head to the left, balancing the cell phone while he turned down the radio. "I know that, too," he said, but this time he seemed a little impatient "Here's what you do," he said. "You tell her I said no. She'll understand that." He listened for a moment, grunted something I couldn't make out, and hung up.

For a moment he seemed to have forgotten that I was even in the ear. He had pulled into Yum-Yums, and now sat with the ear in park, his arms folded across the steering wheel, staring at the brick wall in front of him.

"Trouble at work?" I asked after a minute, in which we sat stone silent in his car.

He didn't jump perceptibly, but he came back from wherever he'd been and looked across at me.

"Come on, let's get us a hot dog," he said. He didn't answer the question.

"Must've been personal," I murmured to myself, not that there was any logic involved in that deduction. Just call it woman's intuition. I wondered who the "she" was that he'd said would understand "no."

I wondered about it the whole way up to the counter. I placed my order, almost without having to think, and went back to speculating about Weathers. I knew what I was doing. I was putting off the inevitable. I was going to have to talk about Sheila. I could feel it building up in me like a storm. My mother's intuition told me that the voice on the other end of the phone had meant to scare me, and also to threaten my daughter.

If Weathers knew what I was doing, he didn't comment. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. We took our hot dogs and walked to a booth across the room, under a chart showing a World War II aircraft carrier. He carefully unwrapped his hot dog, grabbed a couple of napkins out of the dispenser and handed me one. Then he focused on eating.

We sat for a couple of minutes in complete silence, until I couldn't stand it any longer. There was no one in the booths nearby, no other conversation to listen in on, and no distractions to keep me from talking.

"So, how'd you come to be at the Golden Stallion the night I auditioned?" I asked. A harmless question.

"Is that what you called me to ask?" He quit eating and sat perfectly still, waiting.

I felt myself turn red. "No, I'm just making polite conversation, that's all." He still didn't say anything. "I mean, you haven't been in since that night, that I'm aware of. I just wondered."

"Keep careful track of the Golden Stallion patrons, do you?"

I gave up. Shook my head in disgust and took a sip of my soda, only to have it misfire and go up my nose. I choked and coughed, my eyes watering with the effort to regain control of my windpipe. He laughed. Laughed so hard, I finally had to join in, and we laughed until I realized I was losing control and on the verge of tears.

"Okay," he said, suddenly reaching across the table, his fingers stretching to cover mine, "why did you call?"

"Someone threatened my daughter. I know you may not believe that, that's why I hung up. I just didn't know who else to call and I had to talk to someone."

He straightened up, his fingers edging back into his lap. It was business now;

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I looked back at him, right into his eyes. He was really listening, and so I told him about the phone call. My voice shook, my hands trembled, and I felt cold, even though the steam from hundreds of hot dogs filled the tiny restaurant. I was so afraid.

He leaned back against the booth, his head cocked slightly to the left, listening as I went through the details of the phone call. He didn't laugh at me or make light of the threat. He just nodded, as if he was all too familiar with threatening phone calls.

"So, do you think this is something I should take seriously, or was it a crank call?"

"I don't know," he said. "Could be either. I don't think you oughta go getting totally paranoid, but I don't think you can just dismiss it, either." He smiled slightly. "You tick anybody off lately?"

I almost came up off of my seat. "Of course I ticked someone off, Weathers," I said. "Someone's so ticked at me that they're trying to make me out to be a murderer! And if that fails, they're gonna flat out kill me! I know that's not exactly what you want to hear, but it's God's honest truth." I didn't give him the opportunity to deny it.

"The whole Spivey clan must be angry with me. The grieving widow is especially angry, on account of Jimmy left his share of the business to me. Vernell can't be too pleased, although he sure is putting on a good show of it. He thought he was rid of me. Now I'm his business partner and maybe, he thinks, his brother's killer. So, I'd say, in answer to your question, yeah, I got a whole slew of people ticked off at me." I leaned back against the booth, breathless.

"All right," he said. "Let's set the record straight, again. I am only interested in finding out who killed Jimmy Spivey. I have no personal vendetta against you. I am working just as hard to find the innocent parties in this investigation as I am to find the guilty ones. You need to quit looking at me as if I'm your enemy, Maggie. We'll get a lot further if you start trusting me."

I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to trust this man. "Well, it just seems as if I'm the only person you're investigating."

"We've covered that, Maggie. I'm not 'investigating' you. I'm asking questions."

A crowd of teenagers came through the door, out of school and hungry, laughing and talking as if they hadn't a care in the world. For a moment, Weathers allowed himself to be distracted, but then he was right back at it.

"How's Vernell get along with Sheila?" he asked.

"Fine. Why?"

"Well, you said the voice on the phone was male. You mentioned Vernell was probably plenty angry at you. I'm just asking questions, Maggie."

"Oh, Vernell's harmless," I said. "He wasn't a nice husband. He treated me like a dog, but he's a good daddy. He wouldn't harm a hair on Sheila's head."

"Maybe not, but you're the one brought his name up."

So I had, but I was only trying to make a point. Vernell wouldn't harm a fly, would he?

"Have you talked to Vernell?" I asked.

"Sure." Nothing more. The professional mask was back in place.

"Where was he when Jimmy died? Could he have done it?"

Weathers studied me for a moment, making up his mind. "Vernell says he was on his way back into town from Stokesdale. We haven't been able to confirm or deny that yet."

Vernell didn't have an alibi. But that didn't mean a thing. I flashed on Vernell in the Golden Stallion, the night after Jimmy's death, drunk and decked out in his blue polyester leisure suit. Sure was a funny way to show grief for the loss of your only brother.

"But Vernell would never hurt Sheila," I said.

"Nobody's hurt Sheila," he answered.

"It's gotta be somebody else."

"Probably is," he said. His face was closed and I couldn't read him.

"Well, we've got to make sure she's safe," I said. "Shouldn't you have somebody watch her?"

Weathers shook his head. "That's TV, Maggie. We don't have enough manpower to put an officer on everybody who receives a threatening phone call. I don't know any police department that does. Unless someone actually tries to hurt Sheila, our hands are tied. But," he said, before I could start in, "that doesn't mean that I'm not taking this seriously."

"Then what are you going to do about it?"

"We, Maggie," he said. "What are we going to do about it. You've got to talk to Sheila, get her to be cautious. Then you've got to try and help me figure out who would want to scare you. Because that's what I think this is, an attempt to frighten you. We just need to know why."

There was something about Marshall Weathers that made me believe what he was saying. Not just believe him, but feel comforted and reassured by his words. He knew we could figure this all out. He seemed so sure of himself. He didn't seem upset or even very worried. It was as if he dealt with this kind of thing every day, and of course, he did. This wasn't the worst thing he'd ever heard of, but he wasn't dismissing it, either. He was making me feel like I had some control over what happened. The voice on the phone had been trying to scare me. In reality, no one had hurt Sheila, and I could help make sure that no one did.

"Okay," I said. "Fair enough. I'll talk to Sheila and I'll keep talking to you."

Weathers nodded, satisfied.

"I still don't think Vernell has anything to do with this," I said. "He's my ex, and by rights I could hate him, but he's harmless."

Weathers shrugged. "You may be right," he said, "but I don't take nothing for granted when it comes to ex-spouses. There's always an axe to grind somewhere, no matter how deep it's buried."

I looked over at Weathers, noting the tiny twitch back in his jaw. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that I had just gotten a glimpse of the man who lived behind the professional exterior.

I opened my mouth to ask the next question, to find out a little bit more about this man and his past, but he saw it coming.

"Gotta get back," he said, sliding out of the booth and heading for the trash can. "I got work to do, and you've got a daughter to look after."

I couldn't argue with that. I followed him out into the parking lot, the afternoon sun hitting me squarely in the eyes. He was on the cell phone once again when I climbed into the passenger seat. For a minute I wondered if he was really talking to anyone at all. Maybe hugging the phone was his way of avoiding questions from me. Still, I listened.

"Hey!" he said, his voice a bit rougher than it was when he spoke to me. "Listen, I been thinkin' and I got a different way to go on this here." He was watching the road, but for an instant he glanced over at me. "I want you to draw something up and get her to come in and sign it. I'm tired of fooling around."

He looked almost sad, his eyes dark blue wells. Couldn't be a professional call, I thought. There was nothing in his tone to give away sadness, but I had an urge to touch his knee, a sure sign that my womanly intuition was on alert and sending signals. Just like me to hone in on another wounded dog. Probably them bad picker genes leading me down one more dead-end road.

"Yeah, huh." He grunted. "I know it." He listened, making the turn onto Elm Street and preparing to pull back into Jack's parking lot. He sighed, a frown creasing his forehead.

"I ain't much for Monday morning quarter-backing," he said. "Let's just get on with it and see what you people can get accomplished." Then, an afterthought: "And keep it simple, y'hear? She started the whole mess, but that don't mean we gotta make it sting worse." He slammed the phone shut and threw it down on the seat between us.

"Lawyers," I sighed, shaking my head and taking a stab in the dark.

"Ain't that the truth," he said, before he could catch himself.

"Listen now," he said, turning to me, "you get up with Sheila, make sure she's all right. I'll be in touch."

I hopped out of the car and turned back to say good-bye. "Maybe you can tell me all about your divorce next time," I was going to say, leave him with the smart aleck comment this time. But he was already back on the phone, barking at someone. He lifted his hand up, a dismissive wave good-bye, and was gone.

I was left standing in the parking lot once again, my mouth hanging open and looking like a big dummy. Back when I was growing up, whenever Mama witnessed someone who had a particular talent for leaving others speechless and getting their own way, she'd stand back and admire the whole act for a few moments. Then she'd turn to us young'uns and say, "Now there goes a prize violin."

Weathers had played me like a fiddle all right, but the band was just tuning up and Maggie Reid was gonna have the last word.