Your Cheatin Heart

Chapter Twenty-Five

I twisted the dead-bolt handle and jerked the door open. Weathers was still glaring, his eyes bloodshot and his face grim.

"What in the hell are you doing, trying to break into my house?" I demanded.

"Breaking into your house? I'm not breaking into your house! What are you doing slamming lamps around and making all kinds of noise at four o'clock in the morning?"

We stood there, staring each other down, neither one of us budging. Then slowly he began to smile.

"What the hell are you smiling at?" I said. "I asked you a serious question."

He laughed. "You always sleep in them oversized britches?" he asked.

I looked down. In my rush to get to the phone, my pajama cuffs had come undone and my sleeves were now hanging six inches below my fingertips. I must've Looked ridiculous.

I pulled myself up as tall as I could and tried to look dignified. "Well, what are you doing, lurking around my house?" I asked.

"I couldn't sleep. I got to thinking about you in here, with nothing but a chain on your door, and I felt like I might as well drive over and check you out."

"So what were you doing picking my lock?"

He gave me a disgusted look, a this-ain't-TV look. "I was checking your door when I heard all hell breaking loose in here. You're lucky I didn't shoot the lock off!"

I looked down then, and saw the gun in his hand.

"God! Put that thing away! You could've shot me!" I couldn't stop staring at the huge gun.

"Maggie, I am a professional. I wouldn't have shot you!"

It was cold outside, even for a late September dawn and the air smelled of rain. I started to shiver, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the breeze that had started to blow, bringing with it the first raindrops.

"Well, this is ridiculous," I said. "At least come inside." I turned around, without waiting to see if he followed, and immediately tripped over a knife.

"Ow, damn!" I swore.

Weathers reached over and flicked on the light switch by the door.

"You always keep your knives in the bedroom?" he asked, studying the disarray before him.

"No," I muttered, bending down to study my big toe. "I do not. Now look what you did," I said. "My toe's bleeding."

"What I did?"

"Well, if you hadn't decided to slink around my bedroom, I would never have tripped over the bedside table. And if I had never tripped over the table, then the knife holder wouldn't have fallen, now would it?" I stood upright and scowled at him.

"You are nuts," he said. "And you'd better go get a Band-Aid for that toe before you stain the floor."

He didn't look at me. Instead he bent down and started picking up the knives that were scattered everywhere. I thought I saw his shoulders shaking and that made me even more irritated. He was laughing at me.

"Fine, then. Maybe you can find the phone while you're at it," I said, and stalked off to the bathroom.

My toe was starting to throb, and it took almost five minutes to find gauze and tape and stop the bleeding. Outside the tiny bathroom, I could hear Weathers moving around, pushing furniture back and forth and attempting to put my room back together. As I finished playing doctor with my toe, I became aware that there was no longer any sound at all coming from my room.

"You about done?" he called.

"Yeah," I answered, putting the bandages back up on the medicine cabinet shelf.

"Come here a sec."

I walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, a huge lumpy bandage swaddling my big toe.

"Well, it's the best I could do," I said, walking into my room.

Weathers was sitting on the edge of the bed, a white handkerchief in his lap. When I wandered up to him, he carefully folded back the edges of the square of cloth.

"This yours?" he asked.

My.38-caliber Beretta lay cradled in his lap.

"Where did you get that?" I breathed.

He was watching me closely, gauging my reaction. "It was under a bag, underneath your bed." He was waiting for me to answer him.

"Well, I didn't put it there!"

"Maggie, I got probable cause right now, right here in my lap. Do you realize what that means?" He didn't wait for my answer. "It means, by all rights, I could arrest you right now and book you for murder."

If he was waiting for a confession, it wasn't coming. I stared right back into his eyes, my face a stony mask of anger and confusion.

"The only reason we're not heading back downtown is that I can't prove, at this particular moment, that the two murder victims were shot with this thirty-eight-caliber pistol. But you know what?" His face was suffused with anger. "It won't take me long to find out. I'm gonna take this gun back to the office and send it to the crime lab, with a request to do a rush job on it, because there are two murder victims and the count is probably gonna climb!"

"You can't think that I put that there!" I said. "I wouldn't hide a murder weapon under my own bed!"

"Maggie, you were here most of the late afternoon and evening. You were only gone from your house for about five hours. There's no sign of forced entry." His voice trailed off as he left me to make the conclusion.

"Get out of my house," I said. I kept my voice low and even, but there was no mistaking how angry I was. "I thought I could trust you. I even went so far as to believe that you were on my side, but that was all an act, wasn't it? You come in here, go through my things, and all the time I'm thinking you're here to help me. I don't know how that thing came to be in my house. Your people tore this place apart after Jimmy died. They know it wasn't here. And now, suddenly, it's here." I stared at him coldly. "How do I know you didn't plant that?"

He stood up slowly, the twitching muscle in his jaw the only indication that he was angry "I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that," he said softly.

I walked over to the back door, flung it open, and looked back at him. "And I'm gonna pretend I don't know you," I said.

He walked past me, out into the cold, rainy dawn, my pistol carefully wrapped in his handkerchief. I slammed the door behind him and shot the bolt home. I didn't need him. I didn't need anybody. I was going to find Jimmy's and Jerry's killer all by myself and Weathers would be plenty sorry when I did.