"Maggie, he left you and the whole town knew about it. He married someone else while you were off buying a wedding gown. Why weren't you mad?" Tears flooded my eyes and I couldn't see. "Come on," he said, standing up. "Let's go outside and sit in my car."
Why had I ever agreed to eat lunch with this man? Why did I agree to answer his questions? Maybe because I was still chasing the cowboy who'd come and smiled encouragement as I did my audition. Marshall Weathers was not that man. Oh, he lived in the same body, but he was not the same man.
I climbed into the front seat and tried to pull myself together. Digger was years ago. It just hurt me to know that Weathers had been nosing around in my hometown and had managed to find out the one thing I'd hoped everyone would've forgotten by now. Someone, probably more than one someone, remembered me for being left behind.
"I figure Digger was a real creep," Weathers said. "If I'd been your big brother, I'd have set him straight on a couple of counts'"
I ignored him. I didn't want to talk about Digger anymore, even if Weathers was on my side.
"Why are you following me?" I asked, wiping at my eyes and blowing my nose.
"Because it's my job."
There was no smile to accompany that answer. He was stating a fact. He had a job to do and that's all he could see, his job. I was a case number, a suspect.
"Why don't you look for the real killer? Why do you keep hounding me?"
Weathers turned in his seat and looked at me. "Maggie, I haven't accused you of anything."
"Oh, come on, you might as well have!" How could the man stay so calm? And why did I keep staring into his eyes?
"You're all I've got to go on right now, Maggie. I haven't accused you of anything. I haven't called you a suspect, have I? I'm just covering all my bases."
"Then why aren't you haunting Jimmy's widow? And why haven't you checked up on anyone else the way you've done me?"
"What makes you think I haven't?" he asked.
I didn't have a thing to add to that. We just sat there for a few minutes, watching people come in and out of Yum-Yums. Eventually, he leaned forward and started the car. The interview was almost at an end. I could make it back to Jack's place without anymore forays into my past.
We drove in relative silence and I relaxed a little. When we pulled into Jack's parking lot, I had my hand on the door handle and was almost out the door before he could roll to a stop.
"Thanks for lunch, I guess," I said, jumping out of the car and leaning down to look in on him. I was pushing the door closed when I heard him, and by then it was too late to stop the door from flying out of my fingers and slamming on his last words.
"Maybe we'll talk about Union Grove sometime," he said. The car began to roll and I was left standing in the broken gravel parking lot, staring after him. Now how in the hell had he found out about Union Grove?
Chapter Eleven
Don't fish with a skunk, Mama used to say, it'll only raise a stink and you'll come home empty-handed. Mama was right. There I stood, empty-handed and staring after a Grade A skunk. Union Grove! "Ask me what you really want to ask me, Maggie." The words kept circling around in my head like buzzards. If Weathers had his way, I was done for. I just knew it But then, Marshall Weathers didn't know what I was capable of doing. And if I had my way, he wouldn't find out until I was ready.
Know where your enemy keeps his dirty underwear and you'll have won the war, Mama said. It was time to follow the smell. I ran inside Jack's place and called Bonnie down at the Curley-Que.
"Maggie?" she said, all breathless and worried. "Are you all right?"
"No, Bonnie, I'm not," I said, "but I'm sure gonna be! Listen, didn't you go to Smith High School?"
"What?" Bonnie hadn't expected this.
"Smith. Did you go to Smith?"
I was pacing around Jack's living room, staring out the window, unable to sit still.
"Yes, I went to Smith. Graduated in '80. Why?"
"Good," I said, "then you're just the help I need."
"Maggie, I don't see what this has to do with…"
"Did you know a Marshall Weathers?" I demanded.
Bonnie sighed. "Know him? Know him! Just about every girl in the school knew him! Driving a sixty-eight Mustang convertible, football, track, softball, and women! That boy was a hundred miles of fast, bad road. Liked to kill his poor ole mama with worry! You know she goes to my church, don't you?"
I leaned back against the wall facing the window and stared out at the parking lot, a smile edging its way across my face.
"He's come a long way, that ole boy has," Bonnie sighed, "He's a big detective now, down at the… Hey, he isn't the…? Aw, Maggie…"
I could hear the beauty parlor sounds in the background, the whoosh of blow dryers, the chatter of the customers, but above it all I heard a tiny little giggle.
"Maggie, you watch out now, girl! He ain't like Vernell, not at all!"
"Bonnie," I said, "how's about me and you going to church Sunday?"
Bonnie sucked in her breath. "You are a wicked woman!" she said. "I'll meet you there about quarter to eleven."
"Thanks, Bon, I owe you. Big time!"
I hung up the phone and started humming a little. Okay, so he knew more about me than almost anyone, but the tables were turning. Soon I was gonna be sitting in the catbird seat. Union Grove! How in the hell had he found out about that?
It was years ago. We'd sworn ourselves to secrecy. Which one of them had talked? Well, they were weak. A bunch of girls, women now, mothers, bored, with too much time on their hands and too little attention. I could easily see them giving in the face of Weathers's thousand-watt charm. Hell, if I stayed around him too long, I'd give, too. But that was never going to be an option. I'd see to that. I hoped.
Women, girls really, Boone's Farm apple wine, and the feel of a spring night our senior year of high school. That's what was really responsible for Union Grove. We were just young girls, with the sense of power that comes from blossoming bodies and not enough freedom to know a risky situation. And it was all my fault, as usual.
It was before the Digger Bailey fiasco, before I knew how badly the world could wound you. I wasn't scared of nothing, not my alcoholic father, not his wild-assed family, not my teachers, and certainly not boys. That's how come when we heard the senior boys had rolled toilet paper around the statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in front of our high school, we knew we had to show them the proper way to pull a senior prank. I was the organizer.
"That was a pitiful display," I said to my girlfriends the next day. "How juvenile. How immature!" The others were nodding right along. We were all piled up in my VW, down at the end of Shannon Abie's driveway, smoking cigarettes and drinking Boone's Farm apple wine. "They're just little boys. We're women!"
"Yeah," they chorused. "Women!" Evella Lynn threw back her head and uttered a long rebel yell, and the rest of us whooped and tossed our cigarettes out the open windows.
"Let's do something really, really bad. Something that'll let them boys know that we're women!"
Well, the more we drank, the more the idea of besting the boys appealed to us. No idea was too outrageous for us! Finally a plan gelled. We would leave our mark on Union Grove High School, all right!
The next night, Friday, actually early Saturday morning, the six of us met at Evella Lynn's place.
"Evella, you got the paint?"
"Yes, ma'am!" she cried, brandishing a bucket of bright blue latex.
"Darnelle, you got gloves?"
"Check!"
We went through the list, swigging our Boone's Farm at record speed, then heading out in Evella Lynn's brother's pickup, bound for the school. Lacy was the only one who had doubts. She always was the sissy, and as I thought on it now, would be the most likely to have ratted us all out to Weathers. She was just sure we'd be caught.