"Why didn't you call the police?" I asked.
Sheila gave me a look. "Mama! The cops would've thought one of us did it!" Sheila looked back at her hands, holding them out a little ways from her lap and staring at them. "I touched him, Mama. I had to make sure he was dead, even though Keith told me he was. I had blood on my hands, and some got on my jeans."
I reached over and took her hands in mine. They were freezing. "It's all right now, honey. Just keep telling me what happened."
"Keith told me to go on home. He said we should both get out and not tell anybody anything." Tears were dripping down off the end of Sheila's chin. "So, I did. It was dark, and I was so paranoid, I thought everyone was after me, that everybody knew what was going on. I kept ducking behind trees and stuff on my way to my car, because I thought every car that passed me was the cops, or you or Daddy or Jolene."
"Oh, honey, you must've been terrified!" My almost seventeen-year-old daughter, struggling with her uncle's murder, all alone.
"I got home and, for once, no one was there. I got to my room and got cleaned up before I heard Daddy pull in. He was drinking and looking for Jolene to fix him dinner. He didn't even notice anything was wrong." Just like the Vernell of late, oblivious to everything, even his own daughter. "Jolene came in an hour later, so loaded down with shopping bags she couldn't walk. She and Daddy got into it over her not having dinner on the table and it being almost eight-thirty." Sheila was clearly reliving that night, her face wrinkled with disgust. "She called him a drunk and he called her a slut. I just left. They never even knew I'd been in the room."
"Sheila," I said, "listen to me. I don't know who Jimmy was talking to, but it wasn't me. I didn't shoot your uncle. Now, we're going to have to do the right thing, and clean up this mess."
Sheila looked up at me, her eyes dark with suspicion. "What?" she asked.
"I want you to tell the police everything you just told me. They need to know."
"But Mama!" she wailed. "I can't! They won't believe us!"
"Sheila, it's going to look worse if they find out some other way, and believe me, eventually the police find out everything." I thought back to the look on Marshall Weathers's face last night as he held my gun up, waiting for me to come up with an explanation. He'd find this out, too. We'd have to tell him.
I looked at my watch. In two hours, he'd be at my front door, wanting to talk, wanting answers. My head was demanding my attention, pounding and throbbing. I looked over at Sheila and saw she didn't look much better. We had to pull it together before Marshall Weathers arrived.
"Sweetie," I said, "my head's killing me and you don't look so hot yourself. Why don't you go into your room and try and rest for a little while. I'm going to take something for my headache before Detective Weathers gets here. There's no sense in us calling him about this right now. It can wait a couple of hours."
To my surprise, she didn't fight me. She walked to her room like a zombie and lay across her old bed sideways. When I looked in ten minutes later, she was sleeping. I stumbled back to my room and fell across my bed; My head was banging against my skull, but that didn't stop me from closing my eyes. It had all been too much, and within moments I felt myself drifting off. It was a relief not to be conscious, not to think or remember.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Even in my sleep there was no escaping the long arm of the law. I dreamed that Sheila and I were running through a maze of fire-orange azaleas, with Marshall Weathers right behind us. Every now and then he'd yell out, "Wake up and smell the coffee, Maggie! Wake up before it's too late!"
"Go away!" I cried. "Leave me alone!" But he just kept on coming, closer and closer. I could smell him. I could hear his breath, panting behind me. Finally, I could feel him, shaking me and calling my name.
"Maggie! Maggie! Wake up!"
I opened my eyes. The lights in the house were all on, and Marshall Weathers was sitting by my side, shaking my shoulder and calling my name. I smelled coffee and realized this was not a nightmare, it was my worst possible reality.
"What are you doing here?" I sat up too quickly and my brain slammed against my skull. "Ouch!" I grabbed my head and rocked slowly forward. I felt sick.
"Maggie, what is wrong with you? I knocked on the doors, both of them, for five minutes at least. Then, when I saw your car, I knew you had to be here. Maggie, you didn't even have the chain on the front door. I just popped the door and walked right in."
Marshall Weathers looked concerned. He was frowning and looking at me like I was a strange form of lab specimen.
"Maggie, I couldn't wake you up. Did you take something?"
So now he thought I was a drug addict. How much lower was I going to go in his opinion?
"No, unless you count aspirin," I said. "I forgot. I went out to the Mobile Home Kingdom around lunchtime and-"
He didn't let me finish. "Didn't I tell you not to go there?" he fumed.
I just stared at him. "You want me to tell you, or do you want to lecture me?"
He just shrugged. "I made some coffee. I didn't know what was wrong with you. I thought maybe you'd overdosed or something. You kept moaning and telling me to go away. I figured coffee might be better than calling nine-one-one."
"Coffee beats nine-one-one any day of the week." I looked past him, trying to see out into the hallway. "Why didn't Sheila let you in?"
"Sheila's not here, Maggie. There's no one here but you and me."
"Oh, God!" I jumped up and ran past him. Sheila's room was empty. She was gone.
He stood right behind me, his hand on my shoulder. "So, you want to let me know what's going on?" he asked.
Well, did I? Did I want him scrambling all over Greensboro, looking for my daughter? And what if he found her and I wasn't there? Gould Sheila tell him the truth without making herself look like a teenage serial killer? Somehow, given Sheila's tendency to play the drama queen, I doubted it.
"Nothing's going on," I said. "I lay down to take a nap and thought Sheila was going to wake me up in time to get ready for work before you got here, that's all." I led him back into the kitchen, looked at the clock on top of the stove and caught my breath. If I didn't leave within fifteen minutes, I'd be late and Sparks would fire me.
"You're not going to like this," I said, setting my coffee mug down carefully on the counter, "but I'm fixing to be late for work. I know I said I'd talk to you but-" He cut me off. "Oh, you're gonna talk to me, all right. You're gonna start talking now and finish when I say we're through."
I tried to stare him down, but my heart wasn't in it. I was late for a job I loved too much to lose and worried sick about my baby. Weathers was the low man on my totem pole tonight.
"All right." I sighed. "Here's the deal. Let me get changed and I'll talk to you until I have to walk out the door."
"No, this here's the deal," he said. "You change. I'll drive you to work, and if you've answered all my questions, I'll let you go inside. If not, I'll just head the car on downtown and take you along with me."
"Then how'll I get home?" I said.
"You've got friends." The sarcastic glint was back in his eye. "And if you don't, then I reckon I'll just have to swing back by and get you."
That was just what he wanted. He wanted me in a little cage where he controlled my movements and saw everything I did. He didn't trust me, which was fine, because I didn't trust him either.
"All right. I guess we'll play it your way." I brushed past him and headed for the walk-in closet. Fine. Let him have his way about the small stuff. It didn't matter. What mattered was keeping him away from Sheila until I'd had time to find her, civilize her, and drag her sorry tail down to the police station. I could handle Weathers. Sheila wouldn't last two minutes with his rapid-fire questioning. Heaven knew what she'd end up telling the man, and heaven only knew what he'd end up making her believe.