Nancy Bartholomew - Your Cheatin Heart

I stepped up between the two men. "I'm really tired, Detective," I said, "perhaps it could wait."

Weathers's eyes glistened. He loved this.

"Well, this is kind of time-sensitive," he said. "I find it best to move on these things while they're fresh in folks' minds." He took a step back, looking toward his car. "Do you need a coat or anything? It's kind of cold out there."

"No, I don't need a coat," I fumed, And you'd be the last one to know if I did , I thought. "Let's get this over with."

I walked past the two men, toward Weathers's car.

"Maggie," Jack called. I turned around. "Here," he said, tossing me the remote door opener.

It was his way of letting me know he'd be there, waiting.

Weathers was already cranking the engine when I reached the car. He didn't look at me, just put the car into reverse and backed out of his parking space.

"So, is this the big downtown talk?" I asked. We were headed straight toward the police station and I knew what that meant. Weathers was fixing to spend hours asking me questions. But instead of turning onto Eugene, he drove straight past, heading away from the municipal plaza.

"So where are we going?"

"I just thought we'd ride a little bit," he said, but I could tell he had a destination in mind.

It was an early fall morning in Greensboro; ordinarily I might've enjoyed it, but when Weathers turned onto Mendenhall, I knew where we were going. Weathers was taking me to my house. For a moment, I didn't know what to say. If I told him I didn't want to go to my place, then he'd be all the more determined. I was sure of one thing, Weathers wanted me to be uncomfortable. It just seemed to be his main goal in life.

I could tell he was waiting for my reaction. I could feel him watching me from the corner of his eye, so I settled back and tried to pretend I was enjoying the ride.

"What a pretty morning," I said. "Leaves are just starting to turn."

He grinned a little to himself. "Uh-huh."

He turned down the little back alley that ran behind my bungalow, made a sharp right, and pulled up into the tiny backyard, just like I always did. He cut the engine and turned to face me for the first time.

"Wanna go inside?" he asked.

"Aw, I'm sorry," I said. "If I'd known you wanted to come here, I'd have brought my keys." I shrugged my shoulders. "But I don't have them with me!"

Weathers pulled his keys out of the ignition and smiled. "That's all right," he said, "I've got a spare."

"A spare? How'd you get a key to my house?"

He pulled the door handle and started to leave, the keys jingling in his hand.

"Wait!" I said, but he didn't. He was out of the car, heading up my back steps before I could get out of the car and go after him.

"Detective, stop!"

He turned around and looked at me, his eyebrow raised in a question mark, his head slightly cocked.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't want to go in there!"

He turned away from the back door and the smug, cocky look was gone. He walked to the edge of the top step and sat down, patting a place next to him. I stayed where I was, at the foot of the steps, watching him the way you might eye a wild dog.

"Why don't you want to go in there, Maggie?" he asked.

"I don't know," I lied. A swirl of emotion surged up, encompassing me. It wasn't my home anymore. I knew that now. It wasn't safe. Jimmy's blood stained my grandmother's rug. How could I ever go back there?

"I just want to go back to Jack's and get some sleep. I've been up all night." The wine was wearing off, leaving me in a fog.

"Didn't look to me like you were thinking about sleeping a little while ago."

"Well, that'd be none of your business, now would it?" I snapped.

He shrugged and smiled slowly. I found myself staring into his blue eyes a little too long, long enough for him to notice.

"I'm just thinking you could do better," he said. He leaned back against the step, his elbows resting on the deck behind him.

"Oh, right," I snapped, "like you, I suppose?" I don't know how the words flew out of my mouth. I could feel my cheeks heating up, and I looked away.

Weathers grinned and raised his eyebrow again. He had me. He reached slowly into his shirt pocket, carefully pulling out what looked like a picture.

"I bet you could even do better than this," he said, handing the photo to me.

"Oh my God," I said, sinking down onto the steps, the picture clutched in my hand. How was it my life kept chasing me like a bad dream?

There I was, in my black bikini, six years ago, out on Holden Beach. Jimmy had his arms wrapped around me from behind, a mischievous grin on his face. We might've been any couple, anywhere. Only trouble was, we were just clowning around.

"Where'd you get this?" I asked, already knowing the answer. I kept it in the back of my underwear drawer, a reminder to me that there had been a time when I looked good in a bikini. It was my motivation to remember my diet. Now it looked like just another link between me and my murdered brother-in-law.

"You guys searched my underwear drawer?" I asked. "And now you walk around with the key to my house on your key ring?" I couldn't believe it. If it wasn't bad enough that someone had come into my house and killed Jimmy, now the cops could root through my underwear any time they liked.

"Well," he said slowly, "not exactly."

"Not exactly? What does that mean, not exactly?" I jumped up off the step and whirled around to face him. With him sitting on the top step, and me standing just in front of him on the ground, we were eye-to-eye.

"We searched everywhere on the initial search warrant, Maggie. That's our job. But we can't just come and go into your house without cause."

"Then why do you have a key to my house?"

"I don't."

"You don't?"

Weathers shrugged his shoulders. "Nope."

"So, you were lying. Why?"

"To see what you'd do," he said.

I looked down at my boots. They were the sharpest-toed boots I owned and at that particular moment, all I could envision was kicking Weathers right in his shiny white teeth.

"I know you're mad," he said. "Hell, I'd be mad, too."

I looked up at him and he knew I didn't believe a word he said. "You know," I said, scuffing the ground with the toe of my boot, "the funny thing is, I'm more disappointed than mad." His eyebrow was up again. He hadn't expected this. "You see," I said, "I thought you were different. Vernell, Jimmy, hell, even Harmonica Jack, they've all got an agenda. I expect them to lie to me. But I thought you were a cut above. When I looked out onto the dance floor that first time I saw you, I thought to myself, Now there's a man you can trust. You can look right into those blue eyes and see he don't lie."

I coughed out a short, sarcastic laugh and stared at him like he was maybe a bad accident.

"Just goes to show you," I said, "what bad picker genes'll do." I drew myself up as tall as I could, straightened my shoulders, and looked him right in the eyes.

He stared right back, and where any other man might've started in with a host of sorry one-liners, he said nothing. I spun around and headed for the car. I didn't look back, didn't try to guess if he was following me. I just opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat, staring out the side window.

He stayed where he was for a moment, then slowly unfolded his long lanky body and walked toward the car. He sat in his seat for a moment, before reaching up to put the keys in the ignition and start the engine. Then he turned to face me.

"You know, Maggie, in this business people lie to me all day long. You come to expect it. Killers don't play fair, so you've gotta do whatever it takes to get to the truth. That's what I do, Maggie. I've been doing it so long, I don't even think about it. I just put in what's needed for a given situation. This ain't about genetics, Maggie, it's about a man's life wasted. So yeah, I set you up. But I do it just as much in hopes that you're innocent as I do in case you're not." His eyes were searing into mine, the little muscle in his jaw twitching. "And do I think you can do better than that?" he said, gesturing to the picture I'd thrown down on the seat beside me. "I know you can."