Your Cheatin Heart

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was long past midnight.

Plastic cups littered the table between us. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke, burned coffee, and Marshall Weathers's cologne. I'd had about all I could take of repeating the details of how I came to discover Jerry Lee Sizemore's body. I wanted out.

"I've told you everything I can remember," I said finally. It was not the first time I had made that statement, but I had hopes it would be the last.

Marshall Weathers was just as tired. His eyes were bloodshot. He stared into the bottom of his coffee cup, as if hoping it would offer him more than bitter dregs and caffeine.

"You're right." He sighed and pushed the coffee cup away. "Let's call it a night."

He pushed back against his chair, brought his arms up, and laced his fingers behind his neck. For a moment he closed his eyes and I watched him. His face was pale beneath his tanned skin. The lines around his eyes had deepened.

"All right," he said, bringing the chair legs down on the ground and startling me. "I'll take you home, or wherever it is you're staying." The little sarcastic tone was back in his voice. It bothered him that I stayed with Jack. He probably figured we were having a torrid affair. The idea tickled me and I tried not to smile, but couldn't help it. He really didn't like that.

"What about my car?" I asked.

"Give me your keys. I'll see that it gets delivered."

"All right. Let's go." I stood up and grabbed my purse. He moved slower than I did, with more deliberation. He moved, I thought, like a panther, always looking for his next opportunity, always thinking three steps ahead.

Neither of us spoke again until we were seated in his car with the engine running.

"Where to?" he asked. "The warehouse district?" He put the car into reverse and started to leave the garage, assuming.

I let him assume. He pulled out onto Washington Street, heading for Jack's on Elm, and I let him drive almost to Elm before I spoke.

"My place."

"How's that?" Weathers reached over and cut the radio down, as if he hadn't heard me.

"I'm back at my place," I said.

"Huh." A little sound that spoke volumes. About time, it said. "Well good… shouldn't have been with that hippie harmonica player in the first place," it said.

He made a left on Elm and cut over to Friendly, clearly pleased to be heading away from Jack's.

He waited until we were rolling up in my backyard to speak again. "I don't want you to be paranoid," he said, "but you need to be cautious until we catch this guy."

It was the first true indication I had that he believed I wasn't a killer.

"Whoever killed your brother-in-law, and now your accountant, doesn't know that you're in the dark. He could be thinking that Sizemore got to you with his information."

I hadn't put all of that together yet, at least not consciously. But I was scared to death suddenly, so I knew in my heart he was right.

"All I'm saying is, don't take any unnecessary risks. Don't go out alone at night. Have someone walk you to your car after work. Don't go down to the mobile home lot anymore. The usual precautions." He threw that last one in almost as an afterthought, but I knew it was his main point. He'd said the words more slowly: "Don't go down to the mobile home lot."

"You take care of yourself and let me go to work on this."

I was about to say something sarcastic, but found I couldn't say anything. I was too scared to say a word. I looked up at my back deck, the light shining over my back door, every light in the house on, and realized I was terrified to go inside. What had seemed like such a perfect idea earlier in the evening now seemed foolhardy.

Weathers read me and cut the car's engine. "How about I come in and check around with you? Just put your mind at ease before I go?"

I didn't have to answer. He was out of the car, his hand reaching around to his side and unbuttoning his holster. By the time I reached him, he was standing on the deck, his gun drawn and waiting for me to unlock the door.

I must've stared at the gun, because he smiled slightly. "Don't worry," he said, "if someone's in there, I'll just shoot'em."

I tried to smile back, but the sight of that big black gun rattled me. "You do that," I answered, but I heard the tiny quaver in my voice.

He went in first. He was a large presence in my little bungalow. His footsteps echoed as he moved across the hardwood floors. I closed the door behind us and followed him from room to room. He made a big show of looking in the closets, moving the clothes aside and peering behind everything. He looked under my bed. He looked behind the shower curtain. Nothing.

"Well, you're clear," he said, putting the gun away and moving toward the back door.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked. This time the squeaky tension in my voice was evident to both of us. I tried to laugh it off, but that only made me sound hysterical.

"I'm kinda coffee'd out," he said. "You'll be fine, Maggie. You got my card and my pager number. If anything happens, if you get worried, you call nine-one-one. If you need me, they'll reach me at home. But you call them first so they can get a car out here."

"Oh, I'll be fine," I said.

"Did you fix that lock on the front door?" he asked, his face suddenly concerned.

"Not exactly, but I have a chain latch I use when I'm here, so I'd know if someone was trying to break in."

He didn't look so certain now, and I was feeling even more anxious. He walked back into the living room, over to the door, where he lifted the chain and held it in his hand.

"Why don't you see to getting the lock switched out and repaired tomorrow morning?"

"I'll get on it," I said. I was seriously doubting my decision to leave Jack's and return home. But I had to do it sometime and if someone wanted to get to me, Jack's was just as easily broken into as my house.

"Go on home now," I said. "I'm fine. Really."

"I know you are," he said. "Just take normal precautions." The closer he moved to my back door, the slower he seemed to walk.

"Thanks for checking around for me," I said. "Go home and get some rest." I yawned loudly and stretched. "That's what I'll be doing," I lied. "I'll be getting a good night's rest."

We were inches apart at my back door. Mama used to say it was a sure thing that if you were feeling a certain way about a person, then they were probably feeling that same way toward you. Well, I knew how I felt. I felt like kissing Marshall Weathers again.

I looked up at him and saw him watching me.

Mama was right, all right. But he didn't do it. Instead he reached out and touched my arm. My heart started pounding and my mouth went dry.

"Enjoy church, did you?" he asked. I could feel my face turning scarlet. "Mama always likes to welcome a new face. She was right taken with you." I was speechless. "Of course, visitors don't usually leave by the bathroom window. That's a first for us."

"I was just…"

He let me hang there for a second, enjoying my discomfort. "Wondering?" he said finally;

"No, taking care of myself. If my life is on the line, then I want to know everything I can about the people around me. You're supposed to be in charge of clearing Jimmy's murder. How do I know I can trust you?"

The muscle in his jaw twitched, but he forced a smile. He wasn't liking this one little bit. "Well, I hope Mama was helpful."

"I didn't know you were divorced," I lied. No sense in beating around the bush. "Like me."

"Not exactly," he said.

"Not exactly like you or not exactly divorced?"

Weathers leaned against the back door and looked at me. "Both, I guess. Won't be final until she signs the papers."

"When Vernell left me for the damn Dish Girl, I nearly lost my mind. I went to bed for days and ate myself silly. But I had to go on. Guess that's why I'm singing now."

"You think?" he asked.

"Yeah. I mean, I guess it turned out to be for the best, although it stung at the time. Isn't that how you felt?"

I knew better. I believed his mom and her friends, and the pain that briefly crossed his face confirmed it. He hadn't quite figured out how to wrap his mind around the fact that his best friend and his wife had both betrayed him.

"Yeah, I guess." He sighed. "You go on. She's happy and I'm glad for it." He was a bad liar.

"Makes it hard to trust someone ever again, doesn't it?" I said softly.

He looked at me for a long moment, looked right through my heart and into my soul, and then found he could do it no longer. "Aw, I guess looking back I could have seen it coming. I was working long hours. She needed more than I could give. I learned from it."

He looked down at me again, but not into my eyes. Instead he seemed to search my entire face, as if wanting to say something, but holding back, not willing to trust himself or me.

I took one tiny step closer, still waiting for him to meet my eyes. When he did, finally, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. We stayed like that, in each other's arms, for only a few minutes, and then he pulled back.

"I need to go," he said, and in a brief instant was gone.

I closed the back door, turned the dead bolt, and leaned against it. Then, when I thought he wouldn't see, I peeked through the little cut-out windowpane at the top of the door. He was sitting in his car, staring up at the house.

"All right," I said, turning away from the door. "Let's show him we're serious. We can take care of ourselves." My voice echoed through the empty house.

I forced myself to march back into the living room. An antique sideboard sat against one wall. If I pushed it in front of the door and loaded it with books, no one could come through the front door. I grabbed at it and tried to pull, but it wouldn't budge. I pushed and it moved slowly, its heavy wooden legs groaning and leaving deep gouges in the floor. I didn't care. I pushed as hard as I could until at last it rested across the front door.

I rewarded myself by walking through the house to the back and peeping out my back window. He was gone.

"I'm fine," I said loudly. That's when I began hearing things.

At first it was a thud on my front porch. Then something hit the side of the house. I froze, listening. I hit the light switch by the back door and plunged the bedroom into total darkness. I didn't want anyone to see me moving around, a silhouette against the shades, a moving target. My skin was crawling. Someone was out there. I knew someone was out there, watching, waiting.

I moved across the room and picked up the cordless phone on my bedstand. I clicked it on and listened to the reassuring dial tone. I peeked through the curtains. Still nothing. It was all my imagination.

"You're being ridiculous," I said. "You need sleep." I fumbled through my dresser drawers, hunting for the blue-and-white-striped flannel pajamas that I'd inherited from my brother Larry one Christmas. Every year Mama gave him new pajamas and every year he tossed them to me when she wasn't looking. Larry was too manly to wear pajamas.

I started to undress, but stopped, listening, my heart pounding in my throat. The bedroom was too exposed, too open to prying eyes peering in through little chinks in the curtains. I went into the bathroom, but left the door open, just in case. I took the phone with me, too. As quickly as I could, I undressed and put on the pajamas, carefully rolling up the too-long sleeves and leg cuffs.

I darted from the bathroom, through the brightly lit kitchen and back into my darkened bedroom. I couldn't make myself turn out the lights in the rest of the house. They could stay on all night. I listened, my ears straining to catch every sound. A car door swung shut outside and I jumped. Was it next door? Down the street?

I grabbed the remote and switched on country music videos. Clint Black wandered across the screen, staring at me with his soulful black eyes, crooning his heart out. I fixed on him for all of two seconds and then had to hit the MUTE button. What if someone was outside and I couldn't hear them coming? I checked the phone again. I jumped out of bed and peered through the back door window. The yard glowed in the fight from the back door.

The phone rang. I jerked it from its stand.

"Hello?"

Nothing, then a click.

The hairs stood up on my arms and the fingers that still clutched the phone began to tingle and sweat. "It was a wrong number," I muttered dully. The phone rang again and without thinking, I answered.

"Hello?"

"What are you doing there?" Jack demanded.

"Did you just call me?"

"No, and don't dodge the question. Why are you there?" I sank down on the edge of my bed, my knees too weak to hold me.

"Jack, it was time. I couldn't keep staying with you. Sooner or later, I had to come home. I'm fine." As I talked, I wandered out into the kitchen and grabbed the knife holder that sat out on the counter, clutching it with one arm and walking back into the bedroom. It looked good on my bedside table.

"I don't like you being there by yourself," he said.

"Hey, I don't particularly love it either, but like I said, it's home and I needed to come back. Besides," I said, working to keep the panic out of my voice, "think of Evelyn. It couldn't look good for you to have another woman staying at your place."

"What makes you think I told her?" he said, laughing.

"Well, I guess in your shoes, I would figure the less said the better. But see, Jack, that's what I mean." I looked at the bedside clock. It was almost four in the morning. "Jack, what are you doing calling me at this hour anyway?"

"I just got in," he said. "I was worried." There was a slight pause. "Hey, you don't sound too sleepy. I mean, it doesn't sound like I woke you up."

"Guess that's why we're night owls," I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move outside.

"Yeah, hard to go to bed early on your night off. It'd only screw up the schedule." I was wandering over to the window and lifting a slat in the blinds while he talked. The backyard seemed empty, but who knew?

"Well, if you're sure this is what you want, I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing." Jack sounded a little lonely. "I'm gonna miss having you around. Kinda got used to another body in the bed."

"Thanks, Jack. I really appreciate all you did."

"You got a place in my bed anytime." He laughed. "Take it easy."

I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the dead phone, listening to the dial tone humming out into the still room.

"It's four in the morning," I said aloud. "People don't break into houses at four in the morning. Too close to dawn." I stretched and stood. Might as well turn out some of the lights. I walked back through the house one more time, turning out all but one light in each room. In the living room, I hit the overhead light, forgetting I'd unplugged the lamp when I moved the table against the door. The room was completely dark.

Outside a streetlight glittered off the parked cars, and I stared through the front window curtains. The street looked deserted. No cars moved. My college student neighbors had finally called it a night. In another hour or two, it would begin all over again. People would walk out of their houses and start off for work or class, and no one would think twice about the night behind them.

I started to drop the curtain and stopped. Someone was outside. A shadow had passed around the side of the house. I was certain this time. I dropped the curtain and listened in the darkness. Something banged up against the trash cans I kept in the narrow pathway between my house and my neighbor's. A dog started to bark, and then another, until there was a chorus of howls and bays. The neighborhood alarm system had gone off.

I jumped off the couch and ran back for the bedroom. The phone. I had to get to the phone and call 911 before he got inside or cut the wires. I tripped coming into the bedroom, hitting the leg of my bedside table. As I reached to steady myself, the tiny table toppled, sending the lamp, the phone, and the knife holder crashing to the floor.

The lamp crashed and broke. The phone skidded across the floor, into a dark corner, and the knives flipped out of their holder, dropping in all directions.

"Damn it!" I said, trying to find the phone and coming up empty-handed.

My fingers closed on the heavy butcher knife just as a shadow crossed the back deck. He was out there, moving toward the back door.

I jumped up, the butcher knife clutched in my hand, and began to walk softly toward the door.

The door handle started to move, ever so slightly, just as I reached it. I made myself stand just to the side of the door. I could flip the light switch and find the phone, but if I did, wouldn't I be an easier target?

I stretched up on my tiptoes and leaned quickly toward the window at the top of the door. Maybe it was a dog, or my imagination. But it wasn't. A man was bending over my outside doorknob. As I peered down at him, he suddenly jerked uptight and I screamed.

Marshall Weathers stood eye to eye with me, glaring in through the back window.