Shakespeare's Trollop (2 page)

“Stay here,” Marta Schuster told me brusquely. She pointed to the bumper of her official vehicle. She went to the trunk, unlocked it, and pulled out a pair of sneakers. She slipped off her pumps and put on the sneakers. She wasn't happy about being in a skirt, I could tell; she hadn't known when she got to work that morning that she'd be called on to tromp around in the woods. The sheriff got a few more items out of her car and went to the edge of the trees. Marta Schuster was visibly bracing herself to remember every lesson she'd ever learned about homicide investigation.

I looked at my watch and tried not to sigh. It seemed likely that I would be late for Camille Emerson's.

When she'd finished preparing herself mentally, Marta made a gesture like ones I'd seen on TV in old westerns, where the head of the cavalry troop is ready to move out. You know, he raises his gloved hand and motions forward, without looking back. That was exactly the gesture Marta used, and the deputy obeyed it silently. I expected her to toss him a Milk Bone.

I was grabbing at any mental straw to avoid thinking of the body in the car, but I knew that I'd have to face it sooner or later. No matter what Deedra's life had been, or how I'd felt about her choices in that life, I discovered I was genuinely sorry that she was dead. And her mother! I winced when I thought of Lacey Dean Knopp's reaction to her only child's death. Lacey had always seemed oblivious of her daughter's activities, and I'd never known if that was self-protective or Deedra-protective. Either way, I kind of admired it.

My calm time ended when a third vehicle pulled over to the shoulder, this one a battered Subaru. A young man, blond and blocky, leapt from the driver's seat and looked around wildly. His eyes passed over me as if I were one of the trees. When the young man spotted the opening into the woods, he threw himself along the narrow shoulder like a novice skier hurls himself down a slope, apparently intending to dash down the road to the scene of Deedra's demise.

He was in civilian clothes, and I didn't know him. I was betting he had no business at the crime scene. But I wasn't the law. I let him pass, though I'd stopped leaning against the sheriff's car and uncrossed my arms.

At that moment Marta Schuster came back into sight and yelled, “No, Marlon!” The big deputy dogging her stepped around her neatly, grabbed the smaller man's shoulders, and held him fast. I'd seen the smaller man around the apartments, I recalled, and I realized for the first time that this boy was Marlon Schuster, Marta's brother. My stomach clenched at this bombshell of a complication.

“Marlon,” the sheriff said in a harsh voice. It would've stopped me. “Marlon, get ahold of yourself.”

“Is it true? Is it her?”

From only five feet away, I could hardly avoid hearing this conversation.

Marta took a deep breath. “Yes, it's Deedra,” she said, quite gently, and motioned to the deputy, who let go of the boy's arm.

To my amazement, the young man drew back that arm to swing at his sister. The deputy had turned to walk to his car, and Marta Schuster seemed too astounded to defend herself, so I covered the ground and seized his cocked right arm. The ungrateful fool swung around and went for me with his left. Well, I too had a free hand, and I struck him
—seiken
, a thrust—right in the solar plexus.

He made a sound like “oof” as the air left him, and then went down on his knees. I released him and stepped away. He wouldn't be bothering anyone for a few minutes.

“Idiot,” the sheriff said, crouching down by him. The deputy was right by me, suddenly, his hand playing nervously around his gun. I wondered which of us he'd draw on. After a second his hand relaxed, and I did too.

“Where'd you learn that?” asked the deputy. I looked up at him. He had bitter-chocolate brown eyes.

“Karate class,” I said, throwing it away, not wanting to talk about it. Marshall Sedaka, my
sensei
, would be pleased.

“You're that woman,” the deputy said.

All of a sudden, I felt real tired. “I'm Lily Bard,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “And if you all are through with me, I need to be getting to my next job.”

“Just tell me again how you happened to find her,” Marta Schuster said, leaving her brother to fend for himself. She looked sideways at her deputy. He nodded. They seemed to be good at nonverbal communication. She addressed me again. “Then you can go, long as we know where to reach you.”

I gave her the Joe-Friday facts: Mrs. Rossiter's phone number, my cell phone number, my home phone number, and where I'd be working this afternoon if I ever got to leave this stretch of road.

“And you knew the deceased how?” she asked again, as if that was a point she hadn't quite gotten straight in her head.

“I cleaned her place. I live next to her apartment building,” I said.

“How long had you worked for Deedra?”

The tall deputy had gone down the path with a camera after making sure that Marlon was off his tear. The sheriff's brother had recovered enough to haul himself up to the hood of his Subaru. He was sprawled over it, weeping, his head buried in his hands. His sister completely ignored him, though he was making a considerable amount of noise.

Two more deputies arrived in another squad car and emerged with rolls of crime-scene tape, and Marta Schuster interrupted me to give them directions.

“I worked for Deedra—though I'm sure her mother subsidized her—for over three years,” I said, when the sheriff turned her attention back to me. “I cleaned Deedra's apartment once a week.”

“So, you were friendly with her?”

“No.” That didn't require any thought.

“Yet you knew her for more than three years,” Marta Schuster observed, pretending to be surprised.

I shrugged. “She was most often gone to work while I was at her place.” Though sometimes she was still there; and sometimes the men would still be there, but the sheriff hadn't asked me about the men. She would, though.

While the sheriff gave more directions to her deputies, I had a little time to think. The pictures! I closed my eyes to contain my dismay.

One of the least explicable things about Deedra was her fondness for nude pictures of herself. She'd kept a little pile of them in her lingerie drawer for years. Every time I'd put her clean clothes away, I'd felt an uncomfortable stab of disapproval. Of all the things Deedra did to parade her vulnerability, this was the thing I found most distasteful.

I thought of those pictures lying out on a desk in the sheriff's office, being viewed by all and sundry. I felt a wave of regret, an almost overwhelming impulse to rush to Deedra's apartment ahead of the law, remove the pictures, and burn them.

Marlon Schuster slammed his hand against the hood of his car, and his sister, who was watching my face rather than his, jumped. I carefully avoided her eyes. Marlon needed to take his display of grief to another, more discreet, location.

“So, you have a key to the apartment?” Marty Schuster asked.

“I do,” I said promptly. “And I'm going to give it to you now.” I abandoned any quixotic notion of shielding Deedra's true nature from the men and women examining her death. I was sure almost everyone in town had heard that Deedra was free with herself. But would they look for her killer as hard, once they'd seen those pictures? Would they keep their mouths shut, so rumors didn't reach Deedra's mother?

I pressed my lips together firmly. There was nothing I could do, I told myself sternly. Deedra was on her own. I'd set the investigation of her death in motion, but beyond that, I couldn't help her. The cost to myself would be too high.

So thinking, I worked her key off the ring and dropped it in the open palm of Sheriff Marta Schuster. A vague memory stirred, and I wondered if I knew of another key. Yes, I recalled, Deedra kept an emergency key in her stall in the apartment carport. As I opened my mouth to tell the sheriff about this key, she made a chopping gesture to cut off my comment. I shrugged. But I told myself that this was truly my only key, and that because I'd turned over this key, Deedra Dean was out of my life.

“I'll need a list of the people you've seen there,” Sheriff Schuster said sharply. She was aching to return to the crime scene, her face turning often to the woods.

I'd already begun to go back to my car. I didn't like being hushed with that chopping hand, it wasn't like I chattered. And I didn't like being ordered.

“I never saw anyone there,” I said, my back to the sheriff.

“You…in the years you cleaned her apartment, you never saw anyone else there?” Marta Schuster's tone let me know she was well aware of Deedra's reputation.

“Her stepfather was there one morning when Deedra was having car trouble.”

“And that's all?” Marta Schuster asked, openly disbelieving.

“That's all.” Marlon, of course, had been creeping out of there three or four days ago, but she knew about him already and it didn't seem the time to bring that up again.

“That's a little surprising.”

I half-turned, shrugging. “You through with me?”

“No. I want you to meet me at the apartment in about two hours. Since you're familiar with Deedra's belongings, you can tell us if anything's missing or not. It would be better if Mrs. Knopp didn't have to do it, I'm sure you agree.”

I felt trapped. There was nothing I could say besides, “I'll be there.”

My involvement in the troubled life of Deedra Dean was not yet over.

Camille Emerson would hate me later for not telling her my little news item, but I just didn't want to talk about Deedra's death. Camille was on her way out, anyway, a list clutched in her plump hand.

“I remembered to put the clean sheets out this time,” she said with a touch of pride. I nodded, not willing to give a grown woman a pat on the back for doing a simple thing like putting out clean sheets for me to change. Camille Emerson was cheerful and untidy. Though I didn't dislike her—in fact, I felt glad to work for her—Camille was trying to warm up our relationship into some kind of facsimile of friendship, and I found that as irritating as the employers who treated me like a slave.

“See you later!” Camille said finally, giving up on a response. After a second I said, “Good-bye.” It was lucky I was in a mood to work hard, since the Emersons had made more than their usual mess since my last visit. There were only four of them (Camille, her husband, Cooper, their two boys) but each Emerson was determined to live in the center of chaos. After spending fifteen minutes one day trying to sort out the different sizes of sheets I needed, I'd suggested to Camille that she leave the clean sheets on each bed, ready for me to change. That was much better than extending my time there, since Mondays were always busy for me, and Camille had blanched at the thought of paying me more. We were both happy with the result; that is, when Camille remembered her part.

My cell phone rang while I was drying the newly scrubbed sink in the hall bathroom.

“Yes?” I said cautiously. I still wasn't used to carrying this phone.

“Hi.”

“Jack.” I could feel myself smiling. I grabbed my mop and cleaning materials in their caddy, awkwardly because of the telephone, and moved down the hall to the kitchen.

“Where are you?”

“Camille Emerson's.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I've got news.” Jack sounded half excited, half uneasy.

“What?”

“I'm catching a plane in an hour.”

“For?” He was supposed to be coming to stay with me tonight.

“I'm working on a fraud case. The main suspect left last night for Sacramento.”

I was even more miserable than I'd been after finding Deedra's body. I'd looked forward to Jack's visit so much. I'd even changed my sheets and come home from the gym early this morning to make sure my own little house was spanking clean. The disappointment bit into me.

“Lily?”

“I'm here.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You have to work,” I said, my voice flat and even. “I'm just…” Angry, unhappy, empty; all of the above.

“I'm going to miss you, too.”

“Will you?” I asked, my voice as low as if there were someone there to hear me. “Will you think of me when you're alone in your hotel room?”

He allowed as how he would.

We talked a little longer. Though I got satisfaction out of realizing that Jack really would regret he wasn't with me, the end result was the same; I wouldn't see him for a week, at the very least, and two weeks was more realistic.

After we hung up I realized I hadn't told him about finding Deedra dead. I wasn't going to phone him back. Our good-byes had been said. He'd met Deedra, but that was about the extent of his knowledge of her…as far as I knew. He'd lived across the hall from her before I'd met him, I recalled with a surge of uneasiness. But I channeled it aside, unwilling to worry about a faint possibility that Jack had enjoyed Deedra's offerings before he'd met me. I shrugged. I'd tell him about her death the next time we talked.

I tugged the crammed garbage bag out of the can, yanked the ties together in a knot, and braced myself as Camille Emerson staggered through the kitchen door, laden with grocery bags and good will.

 

I was late for my appointment with Marta Schuster, but I didn't care. I'd parked my car in my own carport before striding next door to the eight-unit apartment building, noticing as I threw open the big front door that there were two sheriff's department vehicles parked at the curb. I was in a bad mood, a truculent mood—not the frame of mind best for dealing with law-enforcement officials.

“Take a breath,” advised a cool, familiar, voice.

It was good advice, and I stopped to take it.

“Marta Schuster and her storm trooper are up there,” Becca Whitley went on, stepping from her apartment doorway at the back of the hall to stand by the foot of the stairs.

Becca Whitley was a wet dream about three years past its prime. She had very long blond hair, very bright blue eyes, strong (if miniature) features, and cone-shaped breasts thrusting out from an athletic body. Becca, who'd lived in Shakespeare for about five months, had inherited the apartment building from her uncle, Pardon Albee, and she lived in his old apartment.

I'd never thought Becca would last even this long in little Shakespeare; she'd told me she'd moved here from Dallas, and she seemed like a city kind of woman. I'd been sure she'd put the building up for sale and take off for some urban center. She'd surprised me by staying.

And she'd taken my place as the highest-ranking student in Marshall's class.

But there were moments I felt a connection to Becca, and this was one of them. We'd begun a tentative sort of friendship.

“How long have they been up there?” I asked.

“Hours.” Becca looked up the stairs as if, through the floors and doors, she could watch what the sheriff was so busy doing. “Did they tell you to come?”

“Yes.”

“What about Marlon?”

“He was at the crime scene bawling his eyes out.”

“Ew.” Becca scrunched her nose in distaste. “He's the one been seeing her so hot and heavy.”

I nodded. I wondered how well the sheriff would investigate her own brother.

“Do you have your key?” Becca asked.

“I gave it to them.”

“Good move,” she said. “They got my copy of her key, too.”

I shifted from foot to foot. “I better go up. I'm supposed to tell them if anything's missing.”

“See you tonight,” she called after me, and I lifted my hand in acknowledgment.

Deedra's apartment was the right rear, just above Becca's. It overlooked the paved rear parking lot, not an inspiring view. It held a carport divided into eight stalls, a Dumpster, and not much else. I wasn't sure who, besides Deedra, lived on the second floor now, but I'd known many of the people who'd passed through. Claude Friedrich, the chief of police and a friend of mine, had moved from the second floor to the first after a leg injury. I figured he and Deedra had been the in the building the longest. Generally, the eight units of the so-called Shakespeare Garden Apartments stayed full because the units were a nice size and fairly reasonable. I was pretty sure Becca had gone up on the rent as the leases ran out, because I had a faint memory of Deedra complaining, but it hadn't been an outrageous increase.

I knocked on Deedra's door. The same tall officer answered, the guy who'd been at the crime scene. He filled up the doorway; after a long second, he stepped aside so I could enter. He was lucky looking at me was a free activity, or he would be broke by now.

“Sheriff's in there,” he said, pointing toward Deedra's bedroom. But instead of following his hint, I stood in the center of the living room and looked around. I'd been in to clean the past Friday, and today was Monday, so the place still looked good; Deedra was careless with herself, but she had always been fairly tidy with everything else.

The furniture seemed to be in the same spots, and all the cushions were straight. Her television and VCR were untouched; rows of videotapes sat neat and square on their little bookcase by the television. The brand-new CD player was on the stand by the television. All Deedra's magazines were in the neat stack I'd arranged a few days before, except for a new issue left open on the coffee table in front of the couch, where Deedra usually sat when she watched television. Her bills were piled in the shallow basket where she'd tossed them.

“Notice anything different?” The tall deputy was standing by the door and keeping quiet, a point in his favor.

I shook my head and resumed my examination.

“Emanuel,” he said suddenly.

Was this some kind of religious statement? My eyebrows drew in and I regarded him with some doubt.

“Clifton Emanuel.”

After a distinct pause, I understood. “You're Clifton Emanuel,” I said tentatively. He nodded.

I didn't need to know his name, but he wanted me to know it. Maybe he was a celebrity freak, True Crime Division, Famous Victims Subsection. Like Sharon Tate, but alive.

Maybe he was just being polite.

I was relieved when the sheriff stuck her head out of Deedra's bedroom and jerked it back in a motion that told me I'd better join her.

“Everything in the living room okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What about this room?”

I stood at the foot of Deedra's bed and turned around slowly. Deedra had loved jewelry, and it was everywhere; necklaces, earrings, bracelets, an anklet or two. The impression was that the jewelry was strewn around, but if you looked closer, you would notice that the backs were on the earrings and the earrings were in pairs. The necklaces were lain straight and fastened so they wouldn't tangle. That was normal. Some of the drawers were not completely shut—there again, that was typical Deedra. The bed was made quite tidily; it was queen-size, with a high, carved headboard that dominated the room. I lifted the corner of the flowered bedspread and peered beneath it.

“Different sheets than I put on last Friday,” I said.

“Does that mean something?”

“Means someone slept in it with her since then.”

“Did she ever wash the sheets and put them right back on the bed?”

“She never washed anything, especially sheets. She had seven sets. I did her laundry.”

Marta Schuster looked startled. Then she looked disgusted. “So if I count the sheet sets in the laundry hamper, I'll come up with the number of times she entertained since last Friday morning?”

I sighed, hating knowing these things about someone else, much less revealing them. But it was the nature of my job. “Yes,” I said wearily.

“Did she have a video camera? I noticed all the tapes out there.”

“Yes, she did. She kept it up there, on the closet shelf.” I pointed, and Marta fetched. She opened the soft black case, removed the camera, turned it on, and opened the tape bay. Empty.

“Who paid you to clean this place?” she asked out of the blue.

“I thought we'd covered that. Her mother, Lacey, gave Deedra the money so she could afford me.”

“Deedra get along with her mother?”

“Yes.”

“What about her stepfather?”

I considered my answer. I'd heard a fight between the two so intense I'd considered intervening, maybe three or four months ago. I didn't like Jerrell Knopp. But it was one thing not to like him, another thing to tell the sheriff words he'd spoken in anger.

“They weren't close,” I said cautiously.

“Ever see them fight?”

I turned away, began putting Deedra's earrings into her special compartmented box.

“Stop,” the sheriff said sharply.

I dropped the pair I was holding as if they'd burst into flames. “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head at my own error. “It was automatic.” I hoped Marta Schuster stayed diverted.

“She always have this much jewelry lying around?”

“Yes.” I was relieved she'd asked a question so easily answered. I couldn't stop myself from glancing over at Deedra's chest of drawers, wondering if Marta Schuster had already found the pictures. I wondered whether mentioning them would help in some way.

“They're in my pocket,” she said quietly.

My eyes met hers. “Good.”

“What do you know about her sex life?”

I could see that this was supposed to signal a tradeoff. My mouth twisted in distaste. “Your brother was mighty interested in Deedra, from what I could see. Ask him.”

Marta Schuster's hard, square hand shot out and gripped my wrist. “He's just the latest in her long string,” she said, her jaw as rigid as the grip of her hand. “He's so new to her that he's dumb enough to be sorry she's dead.”

I looked down at her fingers and took slow breaths. I met her eyes again. “Let go of me,” I told her in a very careful voice.

Keeping her eyes on my face, she did. Then she took a step away. But she said, “I'm waiting.”

“You already know that Deedra was promiscuous. If a man was willing, she was, with very few exceptions.”

“Name some names.”

“No. It would take too long. Besides, they were almost always gone when I got here.” That was my first lie.

“What about the exceptions? She turn anyone down?”

I thought that over. “That kid who worked at the loading dock over at Winthrop Lumber and Supply,” I said reluctantly.

“Danny Boyce? Yeah, he's out on parole now. Who else?”

“Dedford Jinks.”

“With the city police?” she asked, incredulity written all over her face. “He must be in his fifties.”

“So he doesn't want sex?” What universe did Marta Schuster inhabit?

“He's married,” Marta protested. Then she flushed red. “Forget I said that.”

I shrugged, tired of being in this room with this woman. “He was separated from his wife. But Deedra didn't go with married men.”

The sheriff looked openly skeptical. “Anyone else?”

I actually had a helpful memory. “She'd had trouble with someone calling her.” Deedra had mentioned that to me the last time I'd cleaned the apartment, just this past Friday. She'd been running late for work, as she all too often did. “Last Friday, she told me that she was getting calls at two or three in the morning. Really nasty calls from a guy…somehow disguising his voice, talking about sexual torture.”