"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.
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 suffuse
d 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.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As the sky began to brighten slightly, I fell asleep. But not before I'd lain awake cursing Marshall Weathers and wondering who in the world would want to frame me for two murders. I awoke at ten in the morning, with only four hours of sleep, because an alarm was ringing in my head. I swatted at the clock before realizing that it was the phone. I lay there, waiting for the answering machine to get it, but it had been disconnected in last night's frenzy.
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