Stand By Your Man mr-2

by Nancy Bartholomew

  Not Vernell. Not that Vernell.

  I didn't say a word to Jack. I forgot about him. I couldn't hold more than Vernell in my head. I didn't realize he'd let go of my arm or that Marshall had taken it, until Marshall was helping me into his unmarked squad car. What I was aware of was the growing pain in my chest, the way my heart brimmed with a sadness so utterly deep that it filled my lungs and took my breath away. Vernell.

  Marshall stuck a blue light up on the roof and took off. It takes fifteen minutes to cross town and hit the airport. Marshall made it in less than ten. We didn't speak. I stared out the passenger-side window, wishing it would rain, and surprised that it didn't. Somehow rain would've been appropriate. Mama used to say rain was how God washed away his disappointment. I just knew it would take more than my tears to grieve for Vernell.

  We raced across lonely Bryan Boulevard, streaking from one streetlight to the next, passing through gray-white spots of light that became a strobe of pain-filled awareness.

  When we pulled up into the airport and took the turn to extended-stay parking, the dark night was suddenly filled with explosions of blue flashing lights. The entire deck was sealed off, with officers directing cars away and sealing off the crime scene area. My heart was beating in my throat and I was aware of not being able to catch my breath.

  Weathers paused briefly, rolled down his window, and spoke to the patrol officer. I didn't listen. I was staring straight ahead at Vernell's shiny white pickup. They had set giant lamps up beside the truck and several technicians seemed to be hovering, along with a blonde in a flappy black trenchcoat. She looked over at our car, pushed a frizzy lock of hair out of her eyes and motioned impatiently.

  Marshall Weathers slapped the car into drive and pulled neatly to the side, away from the crime scene tape, just on the shadowy edge of the parking deck.

  "Okay, Maggie," he said, his voice soft, "wait here. I want to check it out first. I'll come back and get you when we're ready."

  He pushed the door open and stepped out into the light. I sat there, numbly watching him take twenty steps before something in me churned and I was out of the car, following him. I had to know. I had to know now, when he knew, before another minute passed.

  Weathers had reached the blonde. Her dark eyes flashed from his face to mine, frowning as she clocked an intruder. She jerked her head in my direction. Weathers whipped around and started toward me.

  "Maggie, you need to wait."

  "No I don't."

  "Detective, who is this?" She was a tall, thickset woman who wore stockings and running shoes. I caught a glimpse of a paisley polyester shirt-dress peaking out from the all-business black trenchcoat. She'd missed a button at the collar, making her neckline look loose and rumpled. I figured she was that ambiguous age between forty-five and sixty. Her hands were big, clutching a metal clipboard.

  "I'm Maggie Reid," I said, sticking out my hand, forcing her to acknowledge me. "That's my ex-husband's truck you're examining."

  She took my hand and softened. I revised her age downward as I stepped close enough to realize she was tired, not old.

  "I'm Kay Edwards," she said, "medical examiner for Guilford County."

  "I want to see him," I said. I didn't feel anything but cold inside. My feelings had retreated to a box, contained for later.

  Kay Edwards looked past me to Marshall Weathers. He moved his head to the left, as if he were passing the decision on to her.

  "All right, Mrs. Reid," she said, and I didn't correct her. "If you can walk up to the truck without touching him or anything else, we'll go."

  Marshall stepped toward me, standing close, hovering. I held my head up, took a deep breath, and started toward the truck. If I prayed, it wasn't conscious. Instead, I probably did what I always do when I'm in a fix: summon Mama and her strength.

  The technicians backed away. Vernell's passenger-side door hung open, the seat pulled up and away to reveal a pair of legs, curled up and shoved down behind the seats in the tiny rear cab. Vernell's workboots, untied. Vernell's blue twill workpants, the ones he wore when he wanted to prove to his employees that he was still just good ol' Vernell.

  My body went still as the medical examiner led me closer, pulling a white sheet away from the upper half of the body.

  "Is this your husband, Mrs. Reid?" she asked.

  "Yes," I whispered, a sob catching in my throat. There was blood everywhere. Blood and stuff I don't want to mention. Someone had shot Vernell at point-blank range, must have, the back half of his head was missing and his face was almost unrecognizable. His skin was a waxy yellow and he looked dirty. I forced myself to examine him. I was making him dead in my mind, making myself accept the reality by studying him dead. Then I saw it.

  "Maybe it is," I said, my voice rasping out like a stranger's. "Except, Vernell has a mustache and it's missing."

  Of course, my brain was telling me that mustaches don't disappear, but I couldn't quite put it together that a body in Vernell's clothing, minus a mustache, could possibly not be Vernell.

  "Does your husband have any identifying marks on his body?" Dr. Edwards asked.

  "Just the eagle tattoo on his chest," I said.

  Edwards leaned into the backseat of the cab and gently unbuttoned the man's shirt. She motioned me closer. I stepped in and peered over her shoulder. I sighed, turned, and threw up, right there on the concrete.

  Chapter Six

  Cops have a way of taking care of you and backing off, all at the same time. When I threw up, Marshall Weathers whipped a square of white handkerchief from his pocket, handed it to me, and went right into his interrogation.

  "You have no idea who that is?" he asked. "You've never seen him before? Think. Never?"

  Cameras were flashing again, zooming in on the victim's naked chest. He didn't so much as have one curly hair on it, and there was definitely no tattoo. I was awash with relief and horror. Who was this man and where was Vernell? Furthermore, why was he wearing Vernell's clothes? Was Vernell wearing his?

  Dr. Edwards pulled Marshall aside, talking in a low, urgent undertone that I couldn't quite catch. They seemed to have forgotten me, so I sidled closer.

  "That would put the time of death somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours ago," I heard her say. Weathers muttered something to which Dr. Edwards replied, "Maybe a thirty-eight. I don't know yet."

  If another officer hadn't walked up, I might've gone home with more information, but as soon as the officer arrived, they noticed me.

  "Maggie, I'm sorry," Weathers said. "I'll have someone take you back. I'll catch up with you later." I was in the way. "Will Sheila be home when you get in?" His way of seeing where I'd be and when.

  "No, she's staying with a friend for the night. She won't be home until after school tomorrow."

  "Well," he said slowly, "I'll catch up with you if I need to. I've got to get back to this here." He nodded toward the truck. Sixteen minutes later I was standing on Jack's loading dock, dumped without a backward glance by a tall, bald-headed cop who seemed to spend more time on his cell phone talking to his girlfriend than he did listening to his radio calls.

  I raised my hand to bang on the metal door but it began to groan open. Jack had been waiting. His eyes were soft with concern and he reached out to pull me inside before I could move to walk.

  "Maggie, I'm so sorry," he whispered, pulling me into his arms and hugging me. He stroked my hair and held me so tight, I almost hated to tell him.

  "It wasn't him," I said. "It was his truck, but it wasn't him."

  Jack pushed back and looked at me. "Well, who was it?" He hit the switch to close the garage door and walked me over to the sofa. The cool October night had chilled the warehouse, and the only warm spot seemed to be the area in front of the wood stove.

  "I have no idea who it was. He looked a lot like Vernell, what was left of him." The images of the bloody body came flooding back, and along with it a wave of nausea. I sank onto the sofa and gripped my head with bot
h hands, as if that would do any good.

  "Jack, it was so horrible."

  He poured a glass of wine and handed it to me. "I know, honey. Just lean back and breathe, let the feelings evaporate."

  I sighed. Here we went with Jack's New Age breathing techniques. Next thing I knew he'd be handing me a fistful of herbal tablets and telling me to imagine world peace. Sad thing was, most of Jack's ideas actually worked.

  So I leaned back against the sofa, closed my eyes, and envisioned a better world. The breathing helped, but I had to open my eyes. All I could see when I closed them was the body in the backseat of Vernell's pickup.

  "Vernell's gonna be mad as hell when he sees his truck," I said. I sat back up and took a swig of wine, a big swig. "I figure that's a hell of a way to go joyriding!"

  Jack just stared at me, his brown eyes unchanging. Then he shook his head. "You think someone stole Vernell's truck and left a body in it?"

  I didn't need Jack to say another word, because the next dreadful thought crowded in on top of it. "What if they killed Vernell?" I whispered. Whoever had been in the truck with the dead man had certainly killed him. What if he'd killed Vernell too?

  Jack just shook his head again. "There's another possibility, Maggie," he said slowly. "And I don't think it's one you'll want to hear." I gulped down another hefty portion of wine and looked at him.

  "What if Vernell killed that man?"

  The possibility lay between us like a heavy stone. I wanted to be angry with him, but I just couldn't do it. He was right. I could hear it, coming from him, my friend. I just didn't know what I was going to do if the police started talking that way. It was a possibility, but I knew Vernell. I didn't think him capable of making that large a commitment. After all, dead is dead, and Vernell Spivey likes his options open. No, Vernell Spivey couldn't knowingly kill anybody. Impossible.

  I closed my eyes again and leaned back against the sofa. I wasn't exactly envisioning world peace, I was just too tired to do anything else. A sudden wave of fatigue had settled in my bones and it made all thought and memory disappear.

  Jack let me stay that way for a few minutes. I heard him get up and throw another log into the wood stove, then twist some knobs to adjust it. The longer I sat, the heavier I felt.

  "Come on, Maggie," Jack whispered. The now empty wineglass was tugged from my hand. He reached for me, pulling me up and out of my stupor. "Let's go to bed," he said. "You can think on this in the morning."

  I wanted to fight it. I muttered, "Let me sleep here." But he didn't listen.

  "Come on."

  He led me up the twisting, wrought-iron steps to his bedroom. We stepped out into a room filled with a huge waterbed and a thousand candles. A giant window took up the far end of the room, with a tiny balcony off of it. The lights of downtown Greensboro twinkled in the near distance, cut by the leaves of an aging oak tree.

  "Okay," he said, pulling out a drawer and rummaging through it, "you can have the 'I Love Rodeo' T-shirt or, lemme see, there's a 'Take This Job and Shove It' tee that's broke in right nice. Which do you fancy?"

  I stood there, numbly staring at the two T-shirts, unable to make even that small decision.

  "You look like a rodeo," he said, shoving the shirt in my direction. "I get first call on the bathroom. You go on and get changed." He entered the bathroom and closed the door.

  I stared after him as I fumbled with the buttons on my shirt. That was Jack for you. Mama would've called him a gentleman. He was, the gentlest man I knew. This wasn't the first time I'd stayed with Jack. I'd done it before, when the chips were down and I couldn't stay in my own home. He'd taken me in, slept with me in his bed, and never laid a hand on me. With another man I might've worried, but Jack wasn't like most men. He'd walked out of the Golden Stallion on many a night with one cutie or another. It wasn't that Jack didn't like women, quite the contrary. Jack loved women. He just didn't take advantage of them.

  I pulled the T-shirt over my head and dropped my jeans to the floor. I was stepping out of them as he emerged from the bathroom. His shirt was off and his hair looked a little wilder for it.

  I passed him, slipping into the tiny bathroom, where I found my guest toothbrush in its holder, just as it had been the last time I'd come to stay three months ago. I could hear him bustling around the room and knew what he was doing. By the time I stepped out into the darkened room, he had lit some of the candles and was already lying in bed. Naked. Jack always slept naked, said it made his dreams more vivid because he wasn't confined by clothing.

  I took a deep breath and gently rolled into the waterbed, pulling the pile of quilts on top of me and trying to use them as a buffer between us. Just because Jack was a gentleman didn't mean he wasn't prey to temptation.

  Jack rolled to face me, watching.

  "Still uptight, huh, Maggie?"

  I wedged the covers a little tighter. "Jack, just because sleeping with a naked man makes me uncomfortable, it doesn't mean I'm uptight. Besides, I'm too old for you."

  He half-propped himself up on his elbow and grinned. Then he reached out his finger and twirled it around a strand of my hair.

  "You're a pretty woman, Maggie. Don't underestimate yourself. I kinda like my women a little older, gives 'em an edge on the competition, to my way of thinking."

  Suddenly the room seemed much warmer and I felt my face flush. Jack was enjoying my discomfort.

  "Go to sleep, sweetheart," he said. "I'm not gonna bite you. Not yet, that is." He turned to blow out the candles, chuckling to himself. Then he gave the bed one good hard bounce that sent me rolling into him. I squeaked and pulled back, he laughed, and suddenly it all hit me funny too. We laughed and laughed, until I remembered Vernell and fell silent.

  "Come 'ere, Maggie," Jack said, pulling me into him. "Get comfortable and go to sleep. When you're feeling this bad, sometimes it's nice just to feel another human being up next to you. Kinda keeps the universe in perspective, so to speak."

  He was right. It did feel good to sleep with someone's arms around me, even if he wasn't Marshall Weathers. Lying there I remembered another night, three months ago, when I'd done the same for Jack. We had a strange relationship, unlike any I'd ever had before. The other men I knew couldn't sleep naked with a woman, not without getting ideas and feeling they had a point to prove.

  I nestled in closer, the quilt still wrapped around my body, feeling Jack's arm, skin-on-skin against mine. Vernell was missing. Marshall didn't love me. And a stranger on a motorcycle was stalking me. Somehow, with the moonlight streaming in through the window and Jack beside me, everything seemed temporarily smaller and I could drift off to sleep. It wasn't world peace, but it was a temporary truce in the chaos of my life.

  Chapter Seven

  I stirred at dawn, sensing movement in the room. Jack was standing by the window, fully dressed and staring out at Greensboro by first light. He wore faded boot-cut jeans and a dark navy blue shirt. In the half-light of morning I studied him. Jack's mother was dying and he wore the sadness of her leaving like a heavy cloak. His shoulders bowed under the weight of losing his confidante.

  "Are you going to see her?" I asked, my voice startling him.

  He turned back to me, shaking off the mantle of sorrow and trying to smile. "Mornings are tough on her," he said. "I like to help her get started."

  I thought of Evelyn, her short white hair framing her face like a wispy halo, so frail she could barely walk unassisted, yet hanging in, refusing to leave her son and the world she loved so much.

  "Want me to come with you?"

  He smiled. "Sleep, Maggie. I'll leave you some coffee."

  I snuggled down deeper under the thick quilts, my eyelids heavy with fatigue. I heard his footsteps dying away as he descended the winding iron stairs, then listened as he made coffee for the morning. I tried to sleep, but found myself following Jack's movements around the kitchen. The awareness of yesterday came rushing back in flashes, and as it did I realized there would be no more slee
p.

  I lay floating on the warm surface of the waterbed, chilled by the reality of my situation. Mama had a way of summing up life when it got to its roughest going. She'd say: "Sugar, life is like a winding mountain railroad. It's the quality of the track that determines the ride." Vernell's track never ran true, while mine seemed to hit the brick wall of unpleasant reality with increasing regularity.

  As I listened, the loading-bay door swung up and Jack left for his morning ritual with his mother. I stayed under the covers for all of another five minutes before I jumped out, ready to start my own day. Jack's shower was slow to warm up, but once it did, I stood under the spray and thought about my first move.

  By the time I'd finished dressing and coated my developing black eyes with makeup, I had a plan. It was still early. I could slip into my bungalow, take some clothes and supplies, then head out on my search for Vernell. If I got there early enough, the Shadow might miss me.

  When I stepped out onto the loading-bay platform, my hair was still wet, hanging around my shoulders in thick, spiral curls that matched the steam from my coffee cup. I had purpose and intent. Marshall Weathers apparently felt the same way. He was perched on the hood of my car, a thick Styrofoam coffee cup clutched in his left hand. My breath caught in my throat as he brought the cup to his lips, took a swallow and slowly brought his hand back down away from his mouth. The way that man moved sent a shiver up my spine. I just wanted to be his coffee cup.

  He watched me walk down the concrete steps and cross the parking lot to my car, all without speaking. I saw no sign of his unmarked sedan. His tan leather cowboy boots were spotted with the dew that clung to the grass that sprouted between the pieces of broken asphalt of the lot. The suit was gone, in its place a pair of faded blue jeans, another crisp white shirt, and a navy blue blazer.