"Sure," I said, "I've got a place." But I wasn't stupid or foolish enough to tell him about it. Sure, he seemed like he only had our interests at heart, but I'd seen his eyes. And Tony was getting paid by someone to find Vernell. Until I knew more about that, I wouldn't trust Tony Carlucci with any information.
"I'm not going anywhere," Sheila said suddenly. "I'm gonna stay here and look for my dad."
"Sheila, there's nothing you can do. It's too dangerous." I'd figure out what to tell her about why I was coming back later. For now, I only needed to get her away from here.
"Sheila," Tony said, "I need you to help me by staying away." He was looking into her eyes, his hand resting on her shoulder. "If I'm not worried about you, I can work faster to find your dad. Besides," he added, "the quicker I find your dad, the quicker you and I can go back out cruising on my bike."
Sheila smiled.
"What? You took her on your motorcycle?"
Sheila and Carlucci both smiled at me indulgently. "Like, of course, Mama," Sheila said. "How else would I have gotten home? I mean, you did send him to get me, right?"
Behind her Tony smiled and shrugged his shoulders, as if saying "What else could I tell her?"
I sighed. They had me. "Well, that was just this once," I said. "I don't think you'll be riding on that thing anymore."
"Right," Sheila said, like she totally intended to follow my directions.
"Pack," I said. "You'll have to do it without turning on any lights. So do it fast and don't bring the entire universe with you."
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Sheila, what does it matter? You'll be missing school and on vacation. I'll tell you all about it later."
Tony Carlucci wasn't fooled. He waited until she stalked off to her room before he started up again.
"You're staying there with her," he said.
"No I'm not." I tried to brush past him, but he grabbed my shoulders and spun me around, forcing me back against the wall.
"Let go of me," I said.
"Not until you listen," he said, his voice barely audible above the sound of Sheila's CD player. "You are worthless in this situation. This is what I do for a living. I find people. Just stay out of everybody's hair and let me do my job."
His fingers bit into my flesh, and when I glared back at him I was frightened by the intensity of the anger I saw there.
"All right, fine," I said. Let him think whatever he wanted. I just wanted to get away from him. Anybody can charm a schoolgirl, I thought, but it takes more than a cheap smile to put one over on Maggie Reid. I was coming back to town just as soon as I dropped Sheila off with her Aunt Darlene and Uncle Earl.
Carlucci could look for people all day long, but he didn't know Vernell like I did. I'd see the signs or read the clues far better than he or Weathers could do, and I cared far more about my ex-husband than outsiders ever could. I was coming back, all right, and Carlucci could just deal with it. That is, if he saw me before I saw him.
Chapter Thirteen
Sheila made the trip to Danville a living hell. She didn't want to ride in my car. She didn't want to leave without her CD player. She didn't think the towels I piled on the seats would keep her designer jeans dry. She complained about the smell, the drive, not having a cell phone like all her friends had, and not even owning a pager.
"Mama," she said, "if only I had a phone or a pager, then Daddy could've called me and told me where he was going."
So that was what was at the bottom of all this. "If onlys" were attacking Sheila. If only she'd been available; if only she'd stayed closer to home; if only she'd been the perfect child, her daddy wouldn't have left. I shook my head. I'd seen this same behavior when Vernell had left us for Jolene, the lovely Dish Girl.
"Baby," I said, reaching over to turn down the screaming radio, "if your daddy could've called you, he would've. If he's in trouble it's on account of not seeing what was coming, being blindsided." I patted her knee. "Sweetie, Daddy's a survivor. He'll be all right."
"Mama, my psychology teacher says what you're doing is called denial."
"And what your psychology teacher knows about the real world could be…" I bit my tongue. This would get us nowhere.
Sheila humphed and looked away. I tried again. "Baby, I know you're worried sick about him, but he'll turn up."
Sheila whipped back around. "Yeah," she said, "but will he be dead or alive?"
I was saved from answering her by our arrival at Darlene's trailer. We turned off the two-lane into a narrow dirt drive that was rutted with potholes. Darlene's husband, Earl, says he doesn't level it out more often on account of how it keeps trespassers away. What Earl isn't taking into account is the way it tears up a welcome visitor's car and shortens the life of Earl's own vehicles.
We bounced down the little lane, huge trees on either side reaching down with heavy limbs to almost touch the roof of my car. Sheila was gripping the door handle with feverish intensity and moaning about the water that ran from side to side on the floorboards. I was just trying to keep the car headed in the general direction of the bright yellow light that shone down on Darlene's doublewide.
By the time we stopped, Earl's vicious-looking yard dogs had run around to snarl at the intruders and Earl was standing on the back stoop with his shotgun in hand and Darlene right behind him.
"Mama," Sheila said, "you can't really be thinking we're going to stay here."
"Who's 'we,' kemosabe?" I said, under my breath.
When she recognized the car, Darlene whacked Earl's arm. "Fool, I told you that was them!"
Earl, a tall skinny man in a white undershirt and blue jeans, slowly lowered the gun and started to grin. He was a right handsome, dark-haired man, who'd been totally devoted to Darlene since high school, when he was a football player and she was a tiny cheerleader.
"I know it's them," he said. "But I didn't know until she drove up. According to her, we can't be too cautious."
Darlene stepped out from behind the shelter of Earl. "Baby!" she cried, running down the steps for Sheila.
Sheila dwarfed Darlene by a good six inches. Darlene could be five foot two on a good day, and couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds. She's two years older than me, two sizes smaller than me, and still looks like a freshman cheerleader. When we were born, I got the voice, but she got all the coordination.
Earl had passed us, walking over to my car to pull out Sheila's suitcase and CD player.
"What choo do?" he grunted, "bring all of Greensboro up with you? Thought Sheila was the only one staying?"
"What?" Sheila's voice squeaked out into the darkness. She broke away from Darlene, walked over to the trunk and looked inside.
"Mama, where's your stuff?"
I ran my hand through my hair and prepared for the holy war. "I'm not staying, baby."
"Mama!" Sheila's tone said it all, and Earl and Darlene missed none of it.
"Sheila," Earl said, "come on out to the barn with me. I gotta show you someone."
Sheila didn't want to go-that much was obvious in the way her shoulders stiffened and the slow way she turned to face him. But I did not raise a disrespectful daughter. She followed him slowly, looking back over her shoulder at me, her expression saying that she wasn't through with the discussion.