Stand By Your Man mr-2

by Nancy Bartholomew

  Vernell looked pitiful.

  "Did you tell Detective Weathers?"

  Vernell snorted. "Yeah, and what did that get me? Murder One, Maggie." He leaned in closer, raised his hand to touch the glass and stared straight at me. "I didn't kill him, Maggie. I went to see him to square a few things."

  I could see Marshall standing out in the hall, entertaining the jailer.

  "What were you trying to square, Vernell?"

  Vernell looked down at his lap, then back at me. "I wanted to ask him to let go of Bess."

  Oh great, give Vernell yet another motive to murder Nosmo King.

  I shook my head and buried my face in my hands. The doorknob twisted and Marshall Weathers was back in the room with me.

  "I'm sorry, Maggie," Vernell said. "I didn't mean for it to come out like this."

  The door opened and the jailer appeared behind Vernell, motioning for him to come. I stared at Vernell, watching the way his jumpsuit hung on his bony frame, memorizing the way his eyes sought out mine, begging me to understand him.

  "Baby, get me the best lawyer they got. I didn't do it."

  Marshall Weathers waited until Vernell left the room before he spoke.

  "See what I mean?" he said softly. "I didn't have another choice."

  I stood up, squared my shoulders, and stared right into his eyes. What else was there left to say?

  "Thank you for your time," I said. "I appreciate you getting me in to see him like this."

  The jailer returned for us, opened the door, and led us back through the system of doors to the front of the building.

  I stepped ahead of Weathers, who stopped when another deputy called his name, walked out the front door and down the ramp to the sidewalk. I didn't hear the motorcycle coming. Didn't track that Carlucci was there until he pulled right in front of me.

  "Here," he called, handing me my helmet. "Let's go."

  He didn't have to ask how it went. It was written all over my face.

  As he pulled away from the curb and into traffic, I saw Marshall Weathers step out of the jail and walk toward the sidewalk. I looked in Carlucci's side-view mirror and watched him stand there and watch as we rode off. Then I closed my eyes and tried not to think of him at all.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Dumping Carlucci wasn't easy. He took me to the side street where I'd hidden my car, took elaborate care to check it for bombs and whatever else he thought might be attached to it, and with great reluctance agreed that I could drive it. I wasn't in much of a mood for arguing or fussing over what my next move was going to be. Instead, I let him tell me what the plan was.

  "Let's take your car back to my house," he said. "No one'll try and bother us in the daytime. It's too busy, what with the concrete trucks coming and going. We can eat a late breakfast and go from there."

  I nodded and he took pity on me.

  "It's gonna work out all right, Maggie," he said. "Weathers is all wrong."

  I couldn't bring myself to talk much. I sighed, took the keys from his outstretched palm, and opened the driver's-side door. Let him think I was a half-zombie, completely devastated by what I'd learned about my ex-husband, and at the hands of my ex-boyfriend who'd never really been my boyfriend anyway. Let him think I was an overwhelmed female. That suited me just fine.

  I slid behind the driver's seat and cranked the engine. Inside a little kick of adrenaline flared up and I could feel the surface of my skin prickle.

  "I'll follow you," I said, my voice a tired, hopeless monotone.

  "Okay. I'll drive slow so I don't lose you."

  I nodded and waited for him to put his helmet on and start off down the street. I waved one hand out the window and started off after him, content to let him wind me through the older neighborhood of homes, around the back of Greensboro College, and into downtown Greensboro.

  I stayed right up behind him, until I knew for certain he was confident that I'd follow him all the way to Pleasant Garden. Then, as we drove down Eugene Street, moving away from the police station in a lazy zigzag, I cut off, did a U-turn across Battleground, and disappeared up Greene Street.

  I knew I had mere seconds to escape, but I had one advantage my northern friend didn't-I knew Greensboro. I knew every little alley and more than that, I had a parking card to the BB amp;T bank building employee parking lot, courtesy of my lease with them for the Curly-Que Salon. While Tony would have to park, dismount, and begin his search, I could evaporate.

  I slammed the VW into a basement-level parking slot, ran for the stairs and raced up two flights of steps to the Greene Street exit. I stood just inside the door, peering out for any evidence of Carlucci, and when I was sure he was still circling the garage, I lit out around the corner, past the Carolina Theater, and around the corner to the Curly-Que.

  The bell tinkled as I ran inside and Bonnie looked up from her chair by the counter. Velmina was back at the shampoo station, carefully working on a little old lady. Rozetta, the receptionist, was making change for Bonnie's departing customer, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.

  "Bonnie," I said, dashing over to her. "Help me quick!"

  Bonnie's eyes widened. "Maggie, what's wrong?"

  Unfortunately, everyone in the salon, with the exception of Velmina's customer, heard me. I had their complete and undivided attention.

  "Hide me! A big guy, dressed in black, will probably come busting through that door in two minutes and he can't find me!"

  Bonnie's customer turned around. She was a tall, slim woman with blunt-cut, strawberry-blond hair and freckles. When she moved I saw the gun clipped to her belt and the quick way her eyes moved to the door and back to me.

  "I'm an intensive parole officer," she said. "You need help?"

  Bonnie grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the shampoo station.

  "Nah," she said, her voice like tumbling gravel, "this kinda crap goes on all the time. You might oughta hang around, though, just in case it gets interesting. Besides, he might be single." She laughed, choking it off into a smoker's cough.

  "Sit down," she said, and threw a huge black cape over my body as she pushed my head back into the bowl of the sink.

  "Hey," Velmina said, "he's gonna see her legs and know." Velmina sat her customer up, wrapped her head in towels, and walked over to my chair. "Here, do this." She knelt in front of me, pulled off my shoes and rolled the legs of my jeans up until they were tucked underneath the black vinyl cape. She grabbed a pedicure pan and quickly stuck my feet in the cold water.

  "Oh God!" I shrieked. "It's freezing!"

  "Can't help that now," Velmina said calmly. "It's all right, dear," she murmured to her now-anxious customer. "Foot problems. Had 'em all her life."

  Bonnie dunked me under the warm water and began pouring shampoo onto my head.

  Rozetta, not one to be left out, got up and grabbed a tube off the makeup counter.

  "He'll see her face! Honestly!" She clacked up beside me in her four-inch stiletto heels and began slathering a thick cream on my face.

  Bonnie cackled. "Oh, that's good," she said. "Green goop. Now she looks like a Martian!"

  "Great!" I sighed.

  "I think it's high time someone changed your look anyway," Bonnie said.

  "Why don't we color her hair?" Velmina asked.

  The parole officer was watching the door. "Big, black hair, black motorcycle jacket?" she yelled over the din in the salon.

  "That's him!"

  My heart began to dance up into my throat and my chest tightened. The bell tinkled, the door flew back against the wall, and everyone but Bonnie and Velmina's little old lady jumped.

  "Well, son," Bonnie said slowly, "we can all tell you need a haircut, but don't bust the place down trying to get it!"

  Rozetta slowly exhaled, placed the last dollop of goo on my face, and turned away. I kept my eyes tightly shut, afraid like the Indian legend that my soul might escape from my body if I inadvertently looked into his eyes.

  "Do you have a
n appointment, baby?" she purred.

  "No," Carlucci said, his voice as angry-sounding as I imagined he was. "I'm looking for Maggie Reid."

  I heard him walking toward us, pacing and examining.

  "You must not know, sugar," Bonnie said. "She don't work here on a day to day basis no more."

  His steps drew closer, stopping a few feet away from the shampoo station. "Where is she?" he asked, but it wasn't really a question. It was a command. Produce her. Now.

  "Now, honey, I know you were probably attached to her way of doing you, but really, put yourself in our hands, and you'll look every bit as good."

  He moved a few steps, pulling open the door to the closet.

  "Hey," Bonnie said, "what are you doing?"

  His footsteps moved across the floor and I heard the bathroom door open. At the same time I heard the parole officer cross the floor, her flats making an authoritative slap as she walked up behind Carlucci.

  "Excuse me, sir," she said.

  I don't know because I couldn't see what she did, but I could only assume that she let him see her gun and her badge.

  "If you're not here to get your hair cut, and if you don't have an appointment, well then I suggest you-"

  "I was just leaving," Carlucci muttered. He crossed the floor, through the waiting area and over to the door. The women beside me held their breath, no one moving, except for Velmina's customer. Velmina's little old lady seemed to wake up out of her shampoo-induced stupor.

  "Hey," she sang out, "was you looking for a little redheaded girl?"

  Bonnie groaned under her breath.

  Carlucci was sugar and spice. "Why, I sure was," he said. "Have you seen her?"

  I held my breath, my toes curling in the frigid water.

  "No," she said. "I just wondered. I used to have me a little redheaded girl what cut my hair, but she ran off with the circus. Ain't that some shit?"

  Velmina laughed, a high-pitched, hysterical shriek of laughter. "No, Mrs. Watkiss, Maggie didn't join the circus. She's a singer."

  Mrs. Watkiss belched. "I didn't mean her. I meant this girl I used to know, another redheaded girl. Why, I saw Maggie just-"

  "Just last month," Bonnie interrupted. "She did your hair for Brian's wedding."

  "That was it," Velmina cooed. "Now here, let me dry you off."

  Whatever Mrs. Watkiss would've said was muffled by the thick white towel Velmina used to dry her hair, and Carlucci, sensing defeat, opened the door and stomped out.

  For an entire thirty seconds, no one made a sound, until the parole officer called out "All clear!" As soon as she said that, we all screamed, jumping up to high-five each other and dance around the shampoo stand.

  Only Bonnie seemed restrained. When I noticed this, I stopped and looked at her, our eyes locking. "Okay," she said, "what's all this about?"

  The others stopped too, but Bonnie was having none of it. "Me and Maggie are going to have a little powwow," she said. "Velmina, you go on with your customer. And Charlene, I'll call you. Thanks for sticking around. The next cut's on me." Then she turned to Rozetta. "Good thinking with that face cream, but did you really have to crack open the hundred-dollar jar of Egyptian mud?"

  Rozetta batted her long, fake lashes. "A crisis is a crisis. Besides, we get it wholesale for twenty bucks. Don't worry, I won't let it go to waste!"

  Bonnie sighed as Rozetta walked away. "I got dogs smarter than that young'un," she said. "If she wasn't Mark's girlfriend, she'd be out of here."

  "Now, Bon, you gotta admit that the cream idea was pretty darn slick." I pulled a tissue from its box and began wiping the gunk off of my face.

  Bonnie sighed. "You know why I hired her?" Our eyes met in the mirror. Bonnie dropped her tone down to a whisper. "On account of Mark works nights. I figure with Rozetta here, she won't be over at my house sleeping with my eighteen-year-old son!"

  Bonnie fumbled in her smock for a pack of cigarettes and motioned to me to follow her out the back door and onto the little covered stoop that overlooked the bail bond office.

  We stepped outside and Bonnie lit up without hesitation.

  "It's gonna kill you," I said, waving the smoke away.

  "Yeah, maybe one day, but that fella that was just here looks like he'll be the death of you a lot sooner." Bonnie took a drag on her cigarette and squinted through the smoke. "So what's up? And why is Vernell in jail, really, because as much as I hate him for what he's done to you, he ain't no cold-blooded killer."

  I leaned back against the hard, red brick wall and shut my eyes for a second. Then I told her everything.

  "So, I don't know what Vernell's done with the money. If Vernell didn't kill Nosmo, then I've got to figure out who did."

  Bonnie was listening, smoking her second cigarette. "Who's on the short list?"

  I thought for a moment. "In no particular order, Nosmo's girlfriend was drinking with Vernell and Nosmo before Vernell passed out. Maybe she shot him and took the money."

  "Huh," Bonnie said. "A woman killin' for greed. Now who'da thunk that?" Then she laughed. "Who else?"

  "Maybe one of Nosmo's rivals. Maybe it was all a big setup. If Nosmo was in the Redneck Mafia, maybe one of them took him out. It happens all the time in the real Mafia."

  Bonnie stubbed her cigarette out against a brick and tossed the butt into a far corner of the little courtyard.

  "Listen," she said, "you know anything about the Redneck Mafia?" I shook my head. "Well I do," she said. "They're a loose-knit bunch of men who pull construction scams. If Nosmo was laundering money, or lending it, there'd be plenty of folks ready to rip him off or take over. Maybe that fits, what with Vernell set up to look like the shooter. Had to be someone who don't know Vernell well enough to know he's a big 'fraidy cat."

  I shrugged. "Could be Bess King."

  Bonnie's eyebrow shot up. "The dear widow?"

  "Yeah, think of it. She loses an abusive husband, she gains three million dollars, plus Nosmo's insurance money, and if Vernell's been ripped off, she could've taken his money, too."

  Bonnie shook her head. "You know," she said, "Vernell's got a brain the size of two BBs rattling around loose in a freight car. When it comes to women, Vernell lets the little head do the thinking, and look where it's got him." She stopped herself, looked over at me, and shrugged. "You were his only exception. And what did he do? Run away from his one shot at normalcy. I'll just never understand that. Rodney was the same exact way…"

  And she was off. Bonnie'd be talking about Rodney for the next half hour, and given the least encouragement by her next customer, she'd talk about him for the next hour. Some things just die hard, I reckon, and the marriage of Bonnie and Rodney Miller was certainly a weed that wouldn't die easy in Bonnie's memory.

  As for my situation, I had a murder to investigate, without the help of two particularly irritating men. That would take some doing. I just needed an afternoon alone to work. Surely I could escape the watchful eye of Tony Carlucci for that long.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Bonnie's car was an aging Toyota van that had seen better days a few years before she bought it. It was reliable and unobtrusive. In short, it was the perfect vehicle for an afternoon spent snooping.

  I ducked out the back door of the salon, high-tailed it the few feet to the driver's-side door, and was freedom bound within seconds, turning off the tiny street where the Curly-Que sat and out onto Greene Street. The radio was blaring Reba's latest, and I was humming along, too busy concentrating on my next step to sing the harmony.

  Nosmo King's girlfriend might hold the piece I needed to clear Vernell, but if she did then it probably meant she'd killed her beloved, or at least helped to plan it. I thought back to her behavior at the funeral reception and couldn't quite picture the sobbing, black-haired Pauline as a killer. And then I thought of her friend, the bleached-blond Christine. Now there was a cold-blooded vixen. Maybe the two of them together could've killed Nosmo King, but Pauline wasn't sharp enough or hard enough to d
o the job alone.

  "You are just the last of the naive innocents, Maggie Reid," I said aloud. "Do you really think that all murderers have to look like the posters on the post office walls? Pauline could've pulled that trigger for two million dollars and been acting the grief-stricken girlfriend three days later if it meant saving herself."

  But she'd seemed so certain that Bess King had killed Nosmo. Either way, Bess King was my starting point. If she'd hired Tony, maybe she knew about Nosmo's girlfriend. I turned the van toward the northeast and began the drive out toward Brown Summit. I looked into the rearview mirror, saw no one I recognized, and drove on, satisfied that Tony Carlucci was sitting on the hood of my car, fuming.

  Just as quickly, I flashed to my last image of Marshall Weathers, standing outside the jail, watching me ride off with Carlucci. In that brief second, the pain overwhelmed me, taking my breath away.

  "You weak-willed woman," I said. "What is wrong with you? You let a man see you naked for the first time in God knows how long, and the next thing you know, you think you're in love." I turned onto Route 29 and headed north. "Desperate and dependent, that's what you are." I merged into the early afternoon traffic. "You weren't this way last week. What's wrong with you, getting all upset over another stupid man? He told you he wasn't looking for a relationship." But that was it. He wasn't looking to get hooked up and here I was seeing that as a challenge.

  It was the raw hurt in his eyes. It was the way he smiled when he took me into his arms, the way he held me as I fell asleep. It was all too much. I hadn't ever felt like that. It only made sense I magnified it into meaning more to him than it really did.

  "Can't make a souffle' out of turnips and hog jowls," I said, quoting Mama. The car chirped in agreement, and then chirped again.

  I looked at the console. What was that noise? It was insistenfand regular, and quite loud. I listened and heard it again, coming from Bonnie's tape holder. Bonnie, ever technologically aware, had a cell phone, the better to keep tabs on her six kids and the errant, estranged Rodney.

  I picked it up out of a tape slot and opened the receiver. "Hello?" I said cautiously.