Shakespeare's Trollop (9 page)

My living room isn't large and there isn't much floor space. I was sitting right next to the sprawled-out young man, and my blood was still humming through my veins.

But after only a few seconds, I was overwhelmed with the wrongness and stupidity of what I'd just done. And with someone I thought of as a friend. The day before Jack was returning.

All these years of trying so hard not to make a mistake had just gone down the drain.

“Lily,” said a voice gently. Bobo was propped up on his elbow next to me. His flushed face had returned to its normal coloring, his breathing was even. His big hand traveled an infinite distance to hold mine. “Lily, don't feel sad.”

I was unable to speak. I wondered if Bobo was twenty-one yet. I told myself in the nastiest terms what a depraved moron I had been. I wanted to literally beat my head against the wall.

“It was the moment,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I answered.

“Don't be so upset,” he repeated. “I don't wanna be crude, Lily, but it was just a dry hump.”

I'd never heard the phrase before.

“You almost smiled, I saw your mouth twitch,” he told me, pleased.

I brushed his hair back from his forehead.

“Can we pretend it never happened?” My voice wasn't as shaky as I'd feared it would be.

“No, I don't think so. What it was, was fantastic. I've always had a thing about you.” He drew my hand to him, kissed it. “But I never saw this coming. It was just funeral fever. You know—she's dead, but we're alive. Sex is a great way to prove to yourself you're alive.”

“You're being wise.”

“It's about time you got a break, let someone else do the wise thing.”

“I do plenty of things that aren't so smart,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.

“Lily, this won't happen again, not ever. You're not gonna let it. So let's be real honest with each other.”

I wasn't sure what that would entail. I waited for him to go on.

“There's no telling how many fantasies I've had about you since you worked for my mother. When you know some beautiful, mysterious woman is cleaning your room, it's just a sure thing you're going to imagine…what if? My favorite one—”

“Please, no,” I said.

“Oh, all right.” He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “But the point of this is I
know…
I know it was just a fantasy, that you're real, that we're not gonna have a relationship. I know that you just like me as a…buddy.”

A little more than that, I thought ruefully. But I knew better than to say it out loud. “You don't really know me,” I said, as gently as I was able.

“There's a lot I know about you that you won't admit about yourself,” he retorted.

I didn't understand.

“You pull old men out of burning buildings. You saved Jack Leeds' life and almost died in the act. You're willing, and brave enough, to risk your life to save others.”

What a misconception! “No, no, no,” I protested angrily. He made a kind of dampening gesture, patting down the air with his free hand. I sat up and reached over to the pile of folded laundry on the chair, laundry I hadn't had a chance to put away today. I passed him a hand towel, and he began dabbing at the front of his pants, trying hard not to be embarrassed.

“You did those things. You are brave.” He sounded flat, and final.

I didn't want to hear a booster speech from Bobo Winthrop. I was going to feel bad about what had just happened for a long, long time.

“And you're smart, and hard working, and really, really, pretty.”

All of a sudden, tears stung the back of my eyelids. The final humiliation, I thought.

“You have to leave,” I said abruptly. I leaned over to kiss Bobo on his cheek. For the last—and only—time, I pulled him close and hugged him after we stood up.

“Now, you go, and we'll be okay in a week or two,” I told him, hoping that I was telling him the truth. He looked down at me very seriously, his handsome face so solemn I could scarcely bear it.

“I have to tell you something else,” Bobo insisted. “Listen to me, Lily. I'm switching subjects here.”

I nodded, reluctantly, to show him I was waiting.

“That fire was set. The fire marshal came and told Calla this morning, and she called all of us in the family. Not Lacey, naturally, but all the others. Someone tried to kill Joe C, but you stopped them.”

I didn't listen to the renewed pat-on-the-back part of Bobo's speech. I was thinking about his opening sentence. I wasn't surprised by the news. In fact, I'd been taking it for granted that the person I'd seen in the yard of Joe C's house had actually started the fire. Trespasser + sudden fire = arson.

“How was it set?”

“A package of cigarettes. Not just one cigarette was lit, but a whole pack. They were left on the couch to smolder. But the flames ran away from the couch, didn't consume it, and the traces were still there.”

“How is Joe C?” I asked.

He looked surprised for a minute, as though he'd been expecting me to exclaim and ask a different question.

“Nothing can kill Joe C,” Bobo said, almost regretfully, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “He's like a human cockroach. Hey, I saw that twitch again!”

I looked away.

“Lily, this isn't the end of the world.”

I saw I was hurting him, and I didn't want to. I didn't want to have done
any
of the things I'd done today.

And I was determined to stick to an impersonal topic.

“If Joe C had died, who would have inherited?” I asked.

Bobo turned red. “I'm not supposed to know the answer to that, but I do,” he confessed. “'Cause I saw a copy of the will at Joe C's house. He had it stuck in the old rolltop desk. I've always loved that desk. Gee, I guess it's all burned up now. But I played with it since I was a little boy, you know, looking in the secret compartment that he'd shown me.”

“The will was there?” I prodded when memories seemed to wrap him up.

“Yes. The last time I went to see Joe C…last week, I guess it was…I was sitting with Toni in the living room while Aunt Calla was helping Joe C get his shoes on after his nap. He'd asked all of the greats to come over—grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Deedra, me, Amber and Howell Three, Becca. The other three live in North Carolina…. So, I was showing Toni the little place you push to open the compartment. And there it was. I didn't mean anything by reading it, I promise.”

After a brief period of being his sex bunny, I was now back to being Bobo's wise woman who had to approve of his actions. I sighed.

“What did it say?”

“There was lots of lawyer language.” Bobo shrugged. “But what I could tell, I guess, is that Great Uncle Joe C left one thing, one furniture item, to each of us Winthrop kids. So Amber and Howell Three and I could each pick something. I was hoping I'd get the desk. I was thinking I'd try to pick first. Now everything's burned or water damaged, I guess.” Bobo smiled his beautiful smile, amused at the confounding of his greed. “Of course the main thing is the house. Joe C left proceeds from the sale of the house to his great-grandchildren. Walker's three kids, and Alice Whitley's two, and Lacey's…oh, but…” His voice trailed away. “But Deedra's dead,” Bobo resumed slowly.

I digested this slowly. I thought that whom Joe C'd included was just as interesting as who he'd left out. “Nothing for Calla,” I pointed out. “She's a granddaughter.”

Bobo actually looked horrified. “But she's taken care of him all these years,” he said.

I remembered Bobo's grandfather. He'd only been a brother-in-law to Joe C, but they were from the same mold. I wondered what Shakespearean mothers had fed men-children in those days to make them so mean.

“Did anyone know this besides you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Well, I guess I don't know,” he muttered. He still seemed stunned at his great-uncle's mean-spiritedness. His thoughts must have followed the same trail mine had, because suddenly he said, “What kind of people do I
come
from?”

“You come from your parents, and they're both nice people.” I had reservations about his mother, but this was no time to think about that. “Your father is a nice man,” I said, and meant it. “Your grandmother is a true lady.” That encompassed some less-than-desirable attributes as well as some great ones, but there again, I was always more clever at not saying things than saying them. Sometimes that was the better characteristic.

Bobo was looking a little less miserable.

“You're a good man.”

“You mean that?”

“You know I do.”

“That's the best thing you could've said to me.” He looked down at me soberly for a long minute before his smile cracked through the serious facade. “Other than calling me your incredible stud and permanent sex slave.”

All of a sudden, I felt better. I could see that the brief sexual connection we'd had had faded out of existence and that our old friendship might replace it; that we might actually forget this past twenty minutes, or at least make a good enough pretense of it.

But Jack was still coming the next day, and any reprieve from self-loathing I'd felt was washed away in the flood of anguish the idea of seeing him caused me.

Bobo raised a hand to touch my hair, or caress my neck, but something in my face stopped him.

“Good-bye, Lily.”

“Good-bye,” I said steadily.

He opened the front door and buttoned his suit coat to cover, at least partially, the stain on the front of his pants. He half-turned when he was almost over the threshold.

“Do you think Calla could do that?” he asked, as though he were asking a student of the dark parts of the heart. “You think she could do that to Joe C? Set the fire? The door was unlocked. She has keys.”

“I think she could want him to die if she knew about the will,” I told him honestly.

He was startled, but he took my word for it.

Shaking his head, he headed off down the street to find his Jeep and go home to his girlfriend and parents.

Then I was left alone with my own damn conscience.

I'd just put away my groceries when I heard a quiet knock on my front door.

Becca Whitley was there, still in brilliant makeup, though she'd changed into jeans and a T-shirt.

“You busy?” she asked.

“Come in,” I said, actually relieved to have someone else break into my thoughts.

Becca had been in my house only once before, so she didn't exactly relax once she was inside. “Your boyfriend here this weekend?” she asked, standing in the middle of my tiny living room.

“Not until tomorrow. Would you like a drink?”

“Fruit juice or water,” she said. “Whatever.”

I poured her a glass of pink grapefruit juice, and we sat in the living room.

“Have the police been by again?” I asked, since I couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Not for a couple of days. They ask you for a list of men she'd had up there?”

“Yes.”

“What'd you tell them?”

“That the men were gone before I got there in the morning.”

“Naughty, naughty.”

“What'd you tell them?”

“I gave them a list.”

I shrugged. I didn't expect everyone to do what I did.

“I hear that the sheriff's department has an automatic door that zips open and closed all day, so much traffic is going in and out.”

“You hear?” Someone's lips were awfully loose.

“Anna-Lise Puck.”

Anna-Lise was Becca's workout partner. She was also a civilian employee of the sheriff's department.

“Should she be talking about that?”

“No,” Becca said. “But she enjoys being in the know so much that she just can't resist.”

I shook my head. Anna-Lise would find herself unemployed pretty soon. “She better watch out,” I told Becca.

“She thinks she has job security.”

“Why?”

“Well, she was tight with the first Sheriff Schuster.” Becca shrugged. “She figures the second Sheriff Schuster won't fire her because of that.”

We exchanged glances, and Becca grinned at me. Right.

“When I went to pick her up for lunch yesterday,” Becca told me, “guess who I saw coming out of the door?”

I looked a question.

“Jerrell Knopp,” she said significantly. “The stepfather himself.”

Poor Lacey. I wondered if she knew.

“And,” Becca continued, stepping on the word heavily, “our esteemed neighbor Carlton.”

I was shocked. I had always figured Carlton as too fastidious for Deedra. I could feel my lips tighten in a small sneer. It just went to show.

“In fact,” Becca said, “all the guys in our karate class have been in, including our esteemed
sensei
.”

“Raphael? Bobo?” Raphael was the most married man I'd ever met, and Bobo was Deedra's cousin.

“Yep, and the new guys. Plus a few men that haven't been to class in a long time.”

“But why?” Even Deedra couldn't have arranged a rendezvous with every single karate student.

Becca shrugged. “I have no idea.”

Obviously, there was some reason, something that had been discovered during the investigation that had led to this. “Are they bringing in the tae kwon do people?” I asked.

Becca looked pleased with me. “Exactly what I asked Anna-Lise,” she told me. “Yes, all the martial arts guys in Shakespeare are visiting with the sheriff. Whether or not they are really known to have known our late neighbor.”

“That's quite a few men.” I hesitated, then went on. “I just wonder if they'll ever find out who did kill her.”

“Lily, I want the police to solve this. You know one of the men she slept with did this to her.”

“Maybe.”

“They hauled out lots of sheets.”

“She had a drawerful of condoms.” Of course, I couldn't be sure she'd used them, but I thought fear of pregnancy would have prompted caution, if fear of disease didn't.

Becca stared at me, her eyes like bright blue marbles, while she thought that through. “So, most likely there won't be semen stains on the sheets. So, no DNA to test and compare.” She'd crossed her legs, and her foot began to swing. “There may not be DNA inside her, anyway. Hey, she ever go with women?”

I returned her stare with interest, trying not to look shocked. I was learning a lot about myself today. “If she did, I never knew about it.”

“Now, don't get all tight-ass, Lily,” Becca said, seeing I wasn't happy with the conversation. “You know, lots of women who went through what you did would be inclined that way afterwards. Maybe Deedra had run the gamut of men, wanted something different.”

“And that would be equally no one else's business,” I said pointedly.

“Oh, you're no fun!” Becca recrossed her legs, picked up the morning newspaper, and tossed it down. “Well, how's old Joe C?”

“I haven't called the hospital yet, but I hear he's still alive.”

“He's lucky you came along.” Her narrow face was utterly sober.

“Eventually someone would have called the fire department, and the firefighters would have gotten him out.”

“Well, I'm going to say thank you anyway, since Joe C is my great-grandfather.”

“Did you visit him often?”

“I hadn't been to Shakespeare since I was a little kid. But since Uncle Pardon died and I moved here, I've been by to see him maybe once every two weeks, something like that. That old rascal still likes short skirts and high heels, you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Kind of pathetic. But he's a peppy old bastard; I'll give him that. Still capable of launching into you in the wink of an eye, you give him cause. Rip you another asshole.”

“You specifically?”

“No, no. I was speaking in general. Not me.”

Was I supposed to ask who? I decided not to, out of sheer perversity. “I understand you inherit, with the other great-grandchildren,” I said instead, not knowing why I was commenting on what Bobo had told me.

“Yep, that's the way I hear it.” Becca was smiling broadly. “But the old so-and-so isn't dead yet!” She seemed pleased to be related to such a tough bird. But then her face grew serious. “What I really came here to tell you, Lily, is that you may be getting another visit from that woman sheriff.”

“Why?”

“Anna-Lise says all the karate women will come next. Because of the way Deedra died.”

“How did she die?”

“She was—.”

A heavy knock on the door interrupted this interesting bit of dialogue. “Too late,” Becca said, almost blithely.

Before I could say anything, Becca just got up and went out my back door. I was left to answer the front with an increasingly bad feeling.

“Sheriff Schuster,” I said, and it was impossible for me to sound anything but grudging. This day had been too much for me already.

“Miss Bard,” she said crisply.

Marta stepped in with Deputy Emanuel on her heels.

“Please have a seat,” I said, my voice cool and insincere.

Of course, they did.

“The results of Deedra Dean's autopsy,” Marta Schuster said, “were very interesting.”

I raised my hand, palm up. What?

“Though various things were done to her after death”—I couldn't help remembering the glint of glass between Deedra's thighs—“she died of a single hard punch to the solar plexus.” The sheriff tapped her own solar plexus by way of visual aid.

I probably looked as stumped as I felt. I finally could think of nothing to say but, “So…?”

“It was a massive blow, and it stopped her heart. She didn't die from a fall or strangulation.”

I shook my head. I was still clueless. Whatever reaction Marta Schuster was expecting from me, she wasn't getting it, and it was making her angry.

“Of course, it might have been an accident,” Clifton Emanuel said suddenly, so we both looked at him. “It might not have been intended to kill her. Someone might have just punched her, not knowing how hard they hit.”

Still I stared like a fool. I tried to understand the significance of his statement, which he had definitely delivered as though he was giving me the Big Clue.

“A hard punch,” I said blankly.

They waited, with twin expressions of expectancy, almost of gloating.

And the shoe dropped.

“Like a
karate
strike,” I said. “So…you think…what do you think?”

“The pathologist said a person would have to be strong and probably trained in order to deliver such a blow.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. There was no defense against suspicion. There was no way to deny what they were simply thinking. I thought so many things at once that I had trouble sorting the ideas out. I recalled the people in my karate class, and scanned the faces in the line. Every one of the students who'd been in for more than a few months (as you can imagine, the class has a high attrition rate) had known Deedra. Raphael Roundtree had taught the math class Deedra took in high school, Carlton Cockroft had done her taxes, Bobo was her cousin, Marshall had seen Deedra trot in and out of Body Time's aerobics sessions. Though I could hardly believe it, each one could've slept with her, too.

And that was just the men. Janet had known Deedra for years, Becca was her landlady…and I worked for her.

I thought,
There goes my business
. I'd survived other scandals and upheavals in Shakespeare, and kept working, though not as busily as before. But if serious suspicion fell on me, I could kiss my livelihood good-bye. I would have to move. Again.

No one wants to be scared of her cleaning lady.

Schuster and Emanuel were still waiting for me to respond, and I couldn't summon a word to say. I stood. After a second of hesitation, they stood too. I walked to my door and opened it. I waited for them to leave.

They looked at each other questioningly, and then Schuster shrugged.

“We'll see you later,” she said coolly, and she preceded Emanuel down my two front steps.

“I don't think so,” I said, and closed the door behind them.

I sat with my hands on my knees and tried to think what to do. I could call a lawyer on Monday…who? Surely I knew a lawyer or two. Well, Carlton could recommend one. But I didn't want to do that, didn't want to spend the time and money to defend myself from a charge so unfounded. The sheriff's own brother was a more likely suspect than I. I figured that was why she was attaching more weight to the “karate strike” theory than it maybe deserved. How could you characterize a blow? It was what it was. If you could call a stopped heart the result of a “karate” blow, you might as well go on and say, “This strike was delivered by a right-handed student who's taken
goju-ryo
karate for approximately three years from an Asian-born
sensei
.”

If an autopsy could show Deedra had been punched while she was standing, that would surely be important. There probably weren't that many men, and even fewer women, in Shakespeare who could deliver such a blow, or who would even realize such a blow could be fatal. But if Deedra had been punched while sitting or lying down—in either case resting against a hard surface—well, that feat could be performed by a much larger pool of people.

Just at the moment I couldn't quite visualize how such a sequence of events could have occurred, but it was possible. Among the many things the sheriff had neglected to mention was Deedra's artificial violation. Was that postmortem or antemortem?

When I thought about it, a
lot
depended on the answer to that question.

And why had she been left out in the woods? It was really bad for the case for my innocence that the place she'd been dumped was off a road I frequented. There were other homes and businesses out on Farm Hill Road, sure. There was a car repair shop not a quarter of a mile beyond Mrs. Rossiter's house, and an antique/craft/flea market barn not a mile beyond that. That made me relax a little; the finger wasn't pointing so obviously at me.

Where had I been the night Deedra was killed? That would've been a Sunday. Last Sunday, though it seemed at least a month ago. Jack hadn't come that weekend; I'd done my usual chores on Saturday, the same list I was trying to complete this Saturday: two quick cleaning jobs, straightening my own house, shopping for groceries. I often followed that up by cooking for the coming week and freezing my meals. Yes, I recalled, I'd cooked Saturday night so I'd have a whole day on Sunday to do nothing much besides go work out, do some laundry, and finish a biography I'd checked out of the library.

And that had been exactly the program I'd followed on Sunday. No unexpected callers, no public appearances except the gym for an hour on Sunday afternoon. Janet and Becca had been there; I recalled speaking to both of them. I'd watched a rental movie on Sunday evening, and I'd finished the biography. No one had called. Typical Sunday evening for me.

What did all this boil down to?

I knew Deedra, and I took karate. I was somewhat familiar with the location where the body was found.

That was all.

And those same conditions applied to lots of other people.

No, I wouldn't let Sheriff Schuster get me panicked.

Not yet.

I'd automatically finished putting away my groceries, but I felt too unsettled to begin preparing my meals for the next week. It was almost suppertime, and the shadows of the tall trees in the arboretum across the street were making fringed patterns on the pavement. I tried to think of a reason to go out so I wouldn't be walking aimlessly. I decided to go see Joe C in the hospital. He didn't hear well over the telephone, anyway.

It was cool enough for a jacket. Track Street was quiet when I went out the front door. Carlton had mowed his grass for the first time, and the fresh smell released a puff of peace inside me—natural aromatherapy. That smell, when I was little, had meant home and Father and the proximity of summer. My troubles shifted, a bit; the burden was lighter.