"What about my car?" I asked.
"Give me your keys. I'll see that it gets delivered."
"All right. Let's go." I stood up and grabbed my purse. He moved slower than I did, with more deliberation. He moved, I thought, like a panther, always looking for his next opportunity, always thinking three steps ahead.
Neither of us spoke again until we were seated in his car with the engine running.
"Where to?" he asked. "The warehouse district?" He put the car into reverse and started to leave the garage, assuming.
I let him assume. He pulled out onto Washington Street, heading for Jack's on Elm, and I let him drive almost to Elm before I spoke.
"My place."
"How's that?" Weathers reached over and cut the radio down, as if he hadn't heard me.
"I'm back at my place," I said.
"Huh." A little sound that spoke volumes. About time, it said. "Well good… shouldn't have been with that hippie harmonica player in the first place," it said.
He made a left on Elm and cut over to Friendly, clearly pleased to be heading away from Jack's.
He waited until we were rolling up in my backyard to speak again. "I don't want you to be paranoid," he said, "but you need to be cautious until we catch this guy."
It was the first true indication I had that he believed I wasn't a killer.
"Whoever killed your brother-in-law, and now your accountant, doesn't know that you're in the dark. He could be thinking that Sizemore got to you with his information."
I hadn't put all of that together yet, at least not consciously. But I was scared to death suddenly, so I knew in my heart he was right.
"All I'm saying is, don't take any unnecessary risks. Don't go out alone at night. Have someone walk you to your car after work. Don't go down to the mobile home lot anymore. The usual precautions." He threw that last one in almost as an afterthought, but I knew it was his main point. He'd said the words more slowly: "Don't go down to the mobile home lot."
"You take care of yourself and let me go to work on this."
I was about to say something sarcastic, but found I couldn't say anything. I was too scared to say a word. I looked up at my back deck, the light shining over my back door, every light in the house on, and realized I was terrified to go inside. What had seemed like such a perfect idea earlier in the evening now seemed foolhardy.
Weathers read me and cut the car's engine. "How about I come in and check around with you? Just put your mind at ease before I go?"
I didn't have to answer. He was out of the car, his hand reaching around to his side and unbuttoning his holster. By the time I reached him, he was standing on the deck, his gun drawn and waiting for me to unlock the door.
I must've stared at the gun, because he smiled slightly. "Don't worry," he said, "if someone's in there, I'll just shoot'em."
I tried to smile back, but the sight of that big black gun rattled me. "You do that," I answered, but I heard the tiny quaver in my voice.
He went in first. He was a large presence in my little bungalow. His footsteps echoed as he moved across the hardwood floors. I closed the door behind us and followed him from room to room. He made a big show of looking in the closets, moving the clothes aside and peering behind everything. He looked under my bed. He looked behind the shower curtain. Nothing.
"Well, you're clear," he said, putting the gun away and moving toward the back door.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked. This time the squeaky tension in my voice was evident to both of us. I tried to laugh it off, but that only made me sound hysterical.
"I'm kinda coffee'd out," he said. "You'll be fine, Maggie. You got my card and my pager number. If anything happens, if you get worried, you call nine-one-one. If you need me, they'll reach me at home. But you call them first so they can get a car out here."
"Oh, I'll be fine," I said.
"Did you fix that lock on the front door?" he asked, his face suddenly concerned.
"Not exactly, but I have a chain latch I use when I'm here, so I'd know if someone was trying to break in."
He didn't look so certain now, and I was feeling even more anxious. He walked back into the living room, over to the door, where he lifted the chain and held it in his hand.
"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."