Nancy Bartholomew - Stand By Your Man

"I'm leaving," I said. "I'll be back in time to finish the last set."

Sparks pushed his ten-gallon hat back on his head and favored me with a malevolent glare. "You can't do that," he said.

But I wasn't listening. I was walking away.

I don't think anyone expected me to take a powder. Sparks didn't yell out after me. The boys in the band didn't say a word as I walked away, assuming that I was going to get a drink or stop by the ladies' room. When I stepped outside the front door and stood with my back against the wall, it was just like any one of a dozen or so nights that I'd come outside for a breath of fresh air and a glimpse at the traffic that raced up and down High Point Road.

"Ain't too busy tonight," the doorman drawled.

"Nope," I answered.

"You guys on break already?" He laughed. "Wish my job were as easy as yours!" He turned to make change for a trio of women and when he did, I spotted a regular customer making his way across the parking lot.

"Billy," I called, "will you do me a favor?"

Billy, a young farm boy in his early twenties, was only too happy to give me a ride downtown to my car. He laughed and flirted and never once asked why I needed a ride. When he dropped me off beside the BB amp;T Bank parking lot, I pecked him on the cheek and ran into the deck, my keys in hand.

I started up and drove out of the parking lot, onto the almost empty downtown streets. I circled around, past the police station and back out Elm Street, heading away from the business section and crossing over into the wealthy residential area of older Greensboro.

I was trying to piece everything together in my mind. Nosmo King was dead. Three million dollars was missing. Nosmo was shot with Vernell's gun, in Vernell's truck, and Vernell himself admitted he had no alibi, and all the motive in the world. In fact, the only reason for not believing Vernell had killed Nosmo was my own stubborn belief that he wouldn't do something like that.

But things kept circling around to Vernell. Everything pointed to Vernell and I had to wonder why. Why shoot Nosmo King with Vernell's gun? Wouldn't it be easier to use another gun, a gun not attached to Vernell's body? Why go to all the trouble to make it look like Vernell was the killer? Who would want Vernell and Nosmo out of the way?

I pondered on that one as I found myself winding around through Old Irving Park, approaching Vernell's concrete palace from the less obvious back entrance to New Irving Park.

Nosmo's girlfriend had motive and means and quite probably opportunity. She was next on my list, but first I wanted to look through Vernell's house one more time, without interruption. I glanced at my watch. It was ten thirty. I could do this and see Pauline before closing time. I could be back at the club before Tony and Marshall returned for me, and if my luck were running right, I'd figure some way out to deal with the two of them and avoid any painful consequences.

But who was I fooling? Three men would be waiting for me when I returned, and not one of them would be easy to handle.

I pulled up in Vernell's driveway, cut the lights, and slipped around to the side entrance. When I came within five feet of the door, the security lights flicked on and a strange robotic voice barked "Key in your security code or ring the doorbell." I punched in Sheila's birth date and waited.

"Accepted," the robot said.

I stepped through the door, closing it firmly behind me and locking it. This time there would be no slip-ups, no unwanted intruders like Tony Carlucci.

I stood in the mud room, just off of the garage, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light that shone in from the kitchen.

"If I were Vernell Spivey, and I was trying to hide something like my important papers or money, where would I put it?" There just had to be some way to figure out what the connection was between Nosmo and Vernell.

The stove in Vernell's kitchen glowed with the light from the hood overhead. I walked in and stood by the huge pine table, looking around at the excess Vernell had poured into his new home.

The range was a Viking, but Vernell couldn't cook. The refrigerator was a subzero, but when I opened it, all I found was beer and a shriveled lemon. The tiles on the backsplash were hand-painted. The window treatments were custom-made, something Vernell and I could never afford in all of our married life.

I looked around and realized that Vernell's palace was an interior designer's dream, and that there was not one personal item or picture from his life present in any of the rooms downstairs. Vernell and his second wife, the lovely nymphet, Jolene the Dish Girl, had bought and paid for their lives together, without so much as one idea of what true life really meant. I shook my head. Where had all of Vernell's money gone? Had he ever really had any money?

I looked across the hallway, into Vernell's darkened study. I remembered the stacks and stacks of bills that Vernell had left unpaid on his desk. At the time I'd assumed he was merely irresponsible, not unable to pay them.

I walked out into the huge marble foyer and began climbing the steps to the second floor of Vernell's home.

Vernell and I had started out poor, so poor we lived in a repossessed trailer that had been gutted by its former owners. Somehow, I remembered those days fondly. We were still in love then, puppy love, the kind where you can't see obstacles, only possibilities.

I was pregnant with Sheila, sick as a dog, and still I couldn't help but feather our nest. Vernell would drag in used bits of wood and Formica, rebuilding me a kitchen, hand-laying the tiles to form the floor. He worked for a mobile home lot as a repo man. The pay was terrible and the hours were long, but the promotions came quick. Before we knew it, Vernell was a salesman and the little bit of money he brought home bought the crib and curtains for Sheila's room.

I looked around Vernell's stone palace and shuddered. It was cold and loveless. The trailer in southeast Greensboro had been dog-ugly but filled to the brim with love. But that didn't last.

"I don't know what it's all about anyway," I muttered. I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked both ways up and down the hall. Vernell's master suite lay off to the right, the only room in the house that I'd never seen. Sheila's room and the guest rooms lay to the left.

When Sheila had lived with Vernell, he and Jolene had tried to give her all the love money could buy, and for a while it had worked, and I'd lost her. But those things have a way of showing themselves to be just what they are, and Sheila came back to me. Poor Vernell couldn't understand why she left, but then, he hadn't understood Jolene either.

I shook myself and turned to the right. Might as well step into the lion's den. It couldn't hurt me now anyway. But I was wrong. My feet sank into the thick white carpeting as I walked into his room. But when I crossed over the threshold, I stepped onto a hard wood floor. The room was dark. Dark hulks of furniture stood out, casting dark shadows in the reflection of the streetlight outside.

I reached for the light switch, deciding to take the risk. I had to be able to search his room. What I saw took my breath away. Vernell's room was a huge expanse that took up the entire end of the house, but that wasn't what stopped me.

Vernell had pulled up the carpeting that covered the rest of the upstairs and laid hardwood floors. The carpet was shoved into one of the two walk-in closets, the closet with all of Jolene's clothing. Along with the carpeting, Vernell had torn the curtains from the windows and torn the bedding from the king-sized bed, throwing it all in on top of the carpet. What he had done next broke my heart.

The yellow wedding ring quilt Mama had made as a gift for us on our wedding day covered the bed. Vernell had pulled out all of the pictures he had of Sheila, from infancy until last year, slipped them into plain wooden frames, and hung or placed them with care around the room. Against the far wall he had hung a picture from our first home, a cheap watercolor print of a forest scene. His mother's green velvet rocker stood against the window, with an ancient floor lamp beside it, and on the floor lay a bible and an empty Jack Daniel's bottle.