Nosmo King's family had put on one hell of a spread. Mama still wouldn't have given it her stamp of approval, though-too many happy faces, and music. At a true southern funeral gathering there would've been just as many people and just as much food, but the voices would be hushed and respectful. If we laughed, it was because of a funny story told about the deceased, not because we were really having a good time. But all around me, people were laughing, and worst of all, they were drinking.

I stood there with my plate, watching, half looking for a place to sit and half amazed that there was a keg of beer sitting right out at a funeral luncheon. I looked over at Bess and saw that her mother had joined her. The two of them seemed to be the only ones in the room not enjoying the party.

"Makes you wonder, don't it?" a soft voice whispered.

I turned. Behind me stood Vernell Spivey, dressed in a cheap gray suit and sporting an even cheaper gray beard and hairpiece.

"Vernell!" I was so relieved to see him that I almost overlooked the getup and forgot the reason for his disappearance.

"Hush!" he commanded. He looked furtively from side to side. "Step over here."

He walked quickly to a deserted spot along the wall, in the shadow of all the activity, and turned his back on the crowd of partyers.

"Vernell, where the hell have you been?" I reached out and touched him, as if maybe he were an apparition.

He took a swig of beer from his cup and squared his shoulders. "Well, if you were thinking I run off and left you hanging, you're wrong. I'm gonna handle this, it's just that-"

"Vernell, put that beer down and talk straight! Do you know how much trouble you're in?"

He stood like a lanky scarecrow in front of me, and he did what he always does when he's dead wrong, he hung his head and looked sheepish. He was a little boy in a bad Abe Lincoln costume. He made it awfully hard to ride herd on him when he seemed so vulnerable.

"Aw now, Maggie," he said, "it ain't as bad as all that."

I hardened my heart, looked right past him, back out at the crowd and over to the big barn door. "Isn't it?" I said. "Then tell me this: If I was to tell you that Detective Marshall Weathers of the Greensboro Police Department had just stepped through that door over yonder, would you stick around to talk to him?"

Vernell's thin, pressed rat face drained of all color and his eyes widened. "You're kidding me, right?"

I looked back at Marshall, standing like a Texas Ranger, dressed in his charcoal-gray suit, and shook my head.

"Nope, I don't kid, Vernell. And as soon as his eyes adjust to the light in here, he's gonna be on you like a fat man at a pigpickin'."

"Catch you later," Vernell said, and started walking toward a side door.

"Vernell," I said, "you wait one minute! We've gotta talk! You've got some explaining to do!"

Vernell looked back at me for one brief second, shoving his beer into my empty hand. "I'll find your car, and I'll wait for you there. Now, go get rid of him!"

Vernell was as scared as I've ever seen him, and for a man who spent most of his teenaged years tangling with the law, I was impressed. But then, Vernell knew Marshall Weathers, and he'd seen what he was capable of doing when he put his mind to it. We'd both seen that, and Vernell was divorced on account of it.

I gripped my plate in one hand and Vernell's beer in the other. The best thing I could do was find a spot at an empty table and try to blend in before Marshall saw me standing in the shadows looking guilty.

He was looking in Bess's direction when I sat down at the closest table. I didn't give so much as a second thought to my new tablemates, only noticing that they were two women about my age. I kept my head down and started in on the food.

My companions didn't seem to care that I'd joined them; in fact, they seemed oblivious. It didn't take long to follow that piece of information up with another one. The women across from me were knee-walking, about to be bowl-hugging drunk, and one was crying.

"I tole you thish was a bad idea," one girl said.

"I know, I know," the crier said, "but I just wanted to be near his spirit."

I looked up then. The crier was a large, dark-haired girl, her hair permed into long kinky curls that fell halfway down her back in a frizzy halo. She could've been anywhere between twenty-two and thirty, wearing fifty pounds of mascara that ran as she cried, leaving fat black trails down her cheeks.

Her companion was a frosted blonde, with the same frizzy hairstyle and thick pancake makeup that couldn't hide an accumulation of bad acne scars.

I put my head back down and concentrated on my plate. This was gonna be good.

"Oh, Nosmo," the black-haired girl said, the words coming out in a long moan of anguish.

"Shush up!" her friend said. "People will know."

"Who cares now? He's dead," she wailed, "and it's all her fault! She killed him! He would've left, he told me so, but she killed him!"

Her voice rose and her friend, drunk as she was, smelled trouble. "Shut up! We'll take care of this, but not now!"

There was a brief pause and I figured they'd noticed me and were nudging each other. Still I didn't move or look up.

"Will you look at that guy," the blonde said softly.

"What guy?"

I knew what guy. There was only one guy in the room that deserved that tone, in my opinion.

"Oh my God, he's gorgeous!"

"And he's coming right over here! Wipe your face!"

There was a mad scramble as the girls fumbled for lipstick and I tried to sink lower into my chair. I turned my head to the side and stared at the door that Vernell had gone through, wishing I could be anywhere else. Still, when he put his hand on my shoulder, a thrill went coursing through my stomach, and I couldn't quite work up the cold indifference I'd sworn to show him.

"Well," he said, "fancy this."

I looked up and tried to smile. He stared down at me, his eyes like lie detectors, looking right through me.

"This is right interesting," he said, pulling out a chair and sitting next to me. He looked across the table, saw the two women watching us, and smiled. "Ladies," he said.

They each raised a hand, wiggling their fingers and giggling. Weathers gave them the 200-watt treatment and turned back to me.

"This ain't like you, Maggie," he said, picking up Vernell's cup and staring into it.

"What? Drinking beer? I do it all the time."

Weathers smiled. "No you don't. And what are you doing here? I thought you didn't know Nosmo King?"

He spoke softly, so his words didn't carry across the table to his two admirers. I'm sure to them we seemed to be having an extremely intimate conversation.

I grabbed the half-full cup of beer, stared down into it. "Well, shucks," I said, "this beer's about gone. How's about filling it up when you get your plate?"

Weathers cocked an eyebrow. "Finish it," he said, "and I'll run right up there."

But he knew me. He knew I didn't drink beer. I hated it. In fact, I don't recall that Marshall Weathers had ever known me to drink anything. And other than a frozen strawberry margarita once or twice a year, I guess I didn't really drink. But this was a showdown. This was to protect Vernell's unworthy hide. So I picked up the cup, held my breath, and drank it down as quickly as I could.

"Go girl!" the drunken blonde said.

"Well," Marshall said, the smirk firmly in place. "Looks like you need another." And with that he got up and crossed the room to the keg.

In the minute he was gone, I tried to leave. But there's something about alcohol on an empty stomach that makes thinking and acting difficult to do at the same time. So, instead I wolfed down my brownie and wished I was walking out the back door.

"Here you go," he said, plopping the full cup down in front of me. "Enjoy!"