(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord

by Charlaine Harris

  But I wasn’t so sure he believed that down to his bones. Hadn’t there been a moment, a flicker, of something else—of relief—when I challenged him?

  I sank down in the armchair and looked at him intently. “I don’t know if I’m at fault, if I’m being overly prickly, or if Thea has undermined your confidence in your own judgment so much that you can’t trust your own instincts.”

  Marshall was not quick to respond, and I was glad. I wanted him to think about this.

  “Maybe both,” he said finally. “Come on, it’s almost time to work out.”

  As I pulled on my ancient gray sweatpants and a dark blue T-shirt, I pondered the fact that he was quite willing to have sex with me even though he hadn’t exactly given me a rousing vote of confidence. Did that mean he was so delighted with his returned virility that he just didn’t care whether I was tormenting his wife?

  Dealings between men and women are all too often like picking through a minefield, I thought with some disgust. Marshall was out in the living room waiting for me. He’d walked over in workout clothes, blue sweatpants and a maroon Body Time T-shirt.

  It was strange that I could stand in the hall and watch Marshall stretch that wonderful body and feel a wave of lust, that I could love the way he didn’t flinch at the horrible story I’d told him. But still, I drew back from him from time to time.

  This was one of the times.

  We didn’t talk much on the way to Body Time in my car, but the prospect of doing something I enjoyed with Marshall, who also enjoyed it, made me feel more relaxed.

  Janet Shook was on the treadmill when we entered. Her eyes widened. She clearly was adding two and two in her head. I waved casually. Marshall exchanged a few words with Derrick, who’d opened for him, and then we mapped out our workout. It was legs days—not my favorite—but doing legs was not so bad with company.

  It was very convenient and pleasant having Marshall there to take the weights on and off and spot for me; it was equally pleasant being able to return the favor.

  People who before had only nodded to me came up to speak, since I was with Marshall. Of course, everyone knew him. And I found that they knew who I was, too: They all called me Lily. Though my scratched face got some sideways glances, no one mentioned Norvel Whitbread.

  This, too, was pleasant, but I found that after greetings had been exchanged, I had nothing to say. I just listened as they chatted with Marshall. Marshall is a kind of community clearinghouse. Everyone who approached him had some piece of gossip or news to relate and seemed to feel free to speak in front of me. I wondered why.

  I found, as the second gossiper in a row referred to it, that I had a reputation for being closemouthed. It surprised me to think that people thought of me at all, but I should have remembered: In small towns, there is no such thing as an invisible life.

  Despite twinges in my side, I had finished leg-pressing three hundred pounds when Brian Gruber, an executive at the mattress-manufacturing plant that was one of Shakespeare’s larger employers, drifted by in the course of his workout to murmur quietly in Marshall’s ear. Marshall listened grimly, doing a lot of curt nodding. This was so definitely a man-to-man talk that I did an extra set so they could finish. After all, Marshall had said my quads needed work.

  When I was through, I just lay there and panted. Brian wandered away to do bicep curls while Marshall added a twenty-five to each side of the leg press for his set, looking thoughtful and grim. He didn’t meet my eyes as I made way for him. I reached for my sweat towel and began dabbing at my forehead.

  Damned if I was going to ask.

  Marshall slid into position. He put his feet up on the push board, aligned them carefully. He pushed a little, taking the pressure off the relief bars, which he flipped to the side simultaneously. Then he bared his teeth in a snarl of effort and began his set. Maybe he was trying to make me feel equal; three hundred was my top weight, and I knew Marshall could do double that. I waited stonily till his set was over and he’d flipped the bars back into place. He beckoned to me to crouch down where he lay.

  So, here came the bad news.

  “Brian just heard that Thea’s been telling everyone at her church that she’s going to put me through the wringer as far as property goes. But he also told me the same thing you did—that she’d been having overnight company, which’ll count against her in court.”

  “You’ve been having company, too.” I watched his face go blank.

  I stood up and covered my face with the towel as though I was bathed in sweat, when in fact I’d cooled down. I had to get my indifferent face back on. I felt a strong inclination to pick up my workout bag and leave without a word, but that would be cowardly.

  I shifted so my back was to the leg press, and I stared at a pretty teenager who was having the time of her life showing Bobo Winthrop how hard it was for her to bench-press two ten-pound dumbbells. Bobo looked over at me, his eyes widening as he took in my marred face. His mouth formed the words You okay? I nodded. Then the girl on the bench said something to claim his attention. I looked in another direction so Bobo wouldn’t meet my eyes again and feel obliged to come over to talk to me.

  I felt hands on my shoulders, and I twitched like a horse trying to dislodge a fly.

  “So, I’ll just have to find some other toehold,” Marshall said calmly. He began to take off the twenty-fives he’d added.

  “Leave them on,” I said. I slid into position, braced my feet, flipped the braces to the side, and began to push.

  I managed five reps before I could tell that serious pain was just around the corner.

  To finish up, we did three sets, thirty each, of lunges and leg lifts in the aerobics room. When we sat up after a short rest, I said what I thought he was waiting for me to say. “I don’t think we should see each other until you’re really divorced. Thea is unstable; she’s in trouble at work and at home. There’s no point making things worse for her, which will only make it worse for you in the long run—your property settlement and all.”

  “I don’t want a sick woman like that dictating what my life will be like,” Marshall said. He meant it, but he was also relieved. I could hardly blame him; I’d worked hard for what I had, too.

  “Then there’s the trick-playing thing,” I went on after a calculated pause. “I can’t go on being scared every time I step out of my house that someone’s going to put something on my doorstep or leave something on my car. Maybe if we don’t see each other for a while, that’ll let up. If it’s the same person who’s playing tricks on Thea, it’s someone who has serious feelings about you; maybe he, or she, will let you know about those feelings if I’m not around. You can deal with it, and I’ll be clear of it.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Lily,” Marshall said. “I don’t want to lose you now that we finally…”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and got to my feet, ignoring the reawakened pain in my side. “We’ll see each other in karate class, and here sometimes.” I left before Marshall had to think of something else to say.

  As I drove home, I became aware that I was feeling something I hadn’t felt in years: disappointment.

  No sooner had I turned the corner to Track Street than I saw the police car at the curb outside my house. Leaning against it was Claude Friedrich, as solid and immovable as if he had all the time in the world.

  I made a sudden decision to go grocery shopping, and after checking the traffic behind me, I backed up before Friedrich could see me and reversed my direction in a convenient driveway. I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, least of all the all-too-perceptive Friedrich.

  I hadn’t been to the store without a list in years. Sunday is the day I usually cook ahead, and my little freezer was almost empty.

  The last time I’d been in Kroger’s, I’d been shopping for myself and for the return of the Yorks…. Hey, they’d never reimbursed me for the groceries, or for the work I’d done last Wednesday. I hated the thought of bothering them, knowing how dev
astated they were by the trial of their granddaughter’s assailant, but if they felt better to the extent of being able to take a walk, they could pay me.

  I was trying to remember all the ingredients of my favorite tortilla casserole when a cart slammed into mine. I looked up sharply and realized the anger rolling around inside me had found an excellent focus, here to my left, wearing a modest shirtwaist dress and loafers.

  The woman pushing the other cart was Thea Sedaka. Thea had bumped my cart on purpose; the stare she fixed on me aimed at contrite but never made it past loathing.

  It had been a long time since I’d seen Thea this close. She was as pretty as ever. Tiny and small-boned, the future ex-Mrs. Sedaka has a sweet oval face outlined with shoulder-length dark hair cut to frame it perfectly. Thea had always made me feel like a hulking milkmaid to her dainty princess. I’d never known if the effect was intentional or a result of my own touchiness.

  Now that I had the inside scoop on Thea’s character, I could see how she achieved my displacement. She looked up, far more than she actually needed to, to make me feel even taller, and she pushed her cart with a little frown, as if it was almost too heavy to manage.

  Thea’s dark green dress was covered with teeny-weeny flowers in a sweet pink; nothing splashy or florid for Thea. She curled her lip at my workout clothes.

  She guided her cart until she was at my side, right in the middle of the canned vegetables. I watched her lips curve in a venomous grin, and I knew she was about to say something she hoped would be painful.

  So I beat her to the punch.

  I leaned down to Thea and said with the widest smile I could stretch my lips into, “Drive past my house one more time and I’ll have Claude Friedrich arrest you.”

  Thea’s expression was priceless. But she snapped back together quickly.

  “Marshall is mine,” she hissed, reminding me vividly of my seventh-grade school play. “You’re trying to break up a happy marriage, you home-wrecker.”

  “Not good enough,” I said. “You’d better warn Tom David to find another parking place.”

  Once again, Thea was disconcerted. But being Thea, belle of Shakespeare, she rallied.

  “If you’re the one leaving those awful things at my house”—and here she actually managed tiny tears—“please stop.” She said this just loudly enough for an older lady who was comparing soup cans to absorb her meaning and then eye me in horror.

  “What things?” I asked blankly. “You poor little gal, has someone been leaving things on your doorstep? What did the police say?”

  Thea turned red. Of course she hadn’t called the police; the police, in the person of Tom David Meiklejohn, had already been on hand.

  “You know,” I said, with as much concern as I could muster, “I’m sure Claude would station someone outside your house all night if you think there’s a prowler.” The older woman gave me an approving nod and ventured down the aisle to compare the prices of tomato sauce.

  I hadn’t said anything insincere in so long that it actually felt refreshing and creative.

  Thea had to content herself with a low-voiced “I’ll get you” and a flounce as she laboriously pushed her cart toward the meat counter. A very weak finale.

  I left the grocery store with several bags, and I managed to feel almost like myself when I got home.

  Damned if the chief of police wasn’t still there. He’d just moved his car, probably to its parking space behind the apartments, but he’d returned his body to my carport. I pulled into my driveway and unlocked my trunk. I would not be kept out of my own home. Friedrich uncrossed his arms and sauntered over.

  “What is it with you?” I asked. “Why do you keep turning up here? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I might think I wasn’t welcome if I didn’t know better,” Friedrich rumbled. “Your face is looking a lot better. How’s the side?”

  I unlocked my kitchen door and pitched in my purse and workout bag. I went back to the car for the first two bags of groceries. Friedrich wordlessly gathered the next two and followed me into the kitchen.

  In silence, I put the cans away in the pantry, stowed the meat in the refrigerator, and slid the juice containers into the freezer of my side-by-side. When all that was done, when the bags were folded and put under the sink in their designated place, I sat down at my plain wooden table opposite Friedrich, who’d seated himself, and said, “What?”

  “Tell me what you saw the night Pardon was killed.”

  I looked down at my hands. I thought it over carefully. My goal in keeping quiet had been to keep the police from asking questions about my past. Well, Friedrich had done that anyway, and been too trusting of his subordinates; my past was out, and the results hadn’t been as dreadful as I’d always thought they would be. Or maybe I had changed.

  If only Claude Friedrich was here to listen to me tell it, and I didn’t have to go down to the police station again, why not tell him the little I knew?

  And maybe Marshall had spooked me a little, with his “woman who knows too much” scenario.

  Friedrich was waiting patiently. I would feel much more comfortable in this big man’s presence if I had nothing to conceal; he would then drench me with his warm approval. My mouth went up at one corner in a sardonic grin. This ambience was undoubtedly what made Claude Friedrich such a good policeman.

  “I’ll tell you what I saw, but it won’t make any difference,” I told him, making my decision abruptly. I looked him in the eyes and spread my hands flat on the table. “That’s why I didn’t see the need to tell you before.”

  “It was you that called me that night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. It was me. Partly because I didn’t want him to lie out there all night, but mostly because I was scared some kids might find him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this to begin with?”

  “Because I didn’t want to come to your attention. What I saw wasn’t important enough for me to risk you calling Memphis, getting the story about what happened to me. I didn’t want people here to know. And yet it’s happened, anyway.” And I looked him directly in his eyes.

  “That’s a mistake I can’t make up to you,” he said. “I regret letting that report sit around on my desk, more than I can tell you. I’m taking steps to minimize the damage.”

  That was as much apology as I’d ever receive; and really, what more could he say?

  I shrugged. My anger against him deflated gently. I had known all along that someday it was inevitable that my past would block my path again.

  “What I saw was someone wearing a raincoat with a hood, wheeling Pardon over to the arboretum,” I said flatly. “I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure it was someone from the apartments. I figured you already knew that, since Pardon’s body appeared and disappeared so many times. Gone when Tom O’Hagen paid his rent, back when Deedra paid hers. It had to have been hidden in a different apartment, though I can’t imagine why anyone would move Pardon’s corpse around.”

  “How was the body moved over to the arboretum?”

  “It was in some garbage bags, one pulled on from the feet and another pulled on from the head. Then it was loaded in my garbage-can cart and rolled over there.” I felt mad all over again when I thought of the use of my cart.

  “Where are the garbage bags?”

  “Gone to the incinerator.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “My fingerprints were on them. I checked to see if Pardon was dead.”

  Friedrich gave me the strangest look.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Start at the beginning,” he rumbled.

  I began with my walk. Friedrich’s eyebrows went up when he realized I walked by myself in the dead of night quite frequently, but he said nothing until I had given him the whole account.

  “Do me a favor, Lily,” he said finally.

  I raised my eyebrows and waited.

  “Next time, just call me to start with.”

&n
bsp; It took me a moment to realize he was joking. I smiled. He smiled back, no great big grin, but companionable. He was letting that warmth wash over me, and I was enjoying it just as much as any other suspect who’d just come clean. Why not? I thought, forgoing scolding myself for being a chump. I was prepared for Friedrich to take his leave, but there he stayed, seemingly content at my clean, bare kitchen table.

  “So,” the policeman said. “Happening in the same time frame, we have the murder of Pardon Albee and the strange persecution of Lily Bard and Thea Sedaka. Thea never called us in, officially. But Tom David said a few things to Dolph, who figured he better tell me. I like to know what’s going on in my town. Don’t you think it’s strange, Lily, that so many unusual things are happening at the same time in Shakespeare?”

  I nodded, though I had my own ideas about the “strange persecution.” Moving quietly, I gathered my cutting board, a knife, and a package of chicken breasts. I began to skin and debone the chicken.

  “The Yorks were gone on Monday. They returned that night late,” Claude said. I worked and listened. “Mrs. Hofstettler was there all the time, but she’s partially deaf and sometimes almost immobile. Jenny O’Hagen was at work, and Tom O’Hagen was sleeping. When he got up, he played a round of golf at the country club. He came home and went upstairs to pay blackmail to Norvel Whitbread, who was home from work ‘sick.’ Then Tom went down to pay his rent. You were unlocking the Yorks’ apartment. When Tom found Pardon’s door open, the body wasn’t there, but the furniture was not in its usual order. An hour and a half later, Deedra came home from work, went upstairs to get her mother’s check, then went down to pay the rent. And Pardon’s traveling body was back on the couch, but arranged naturally enough that Deedra thought he was asleep.”

  “When did all the others pay their rent?” I asked over my shoulder as I scrubbed my hands at the sink. I thought this show-and-tell time was very strange, but I was enjoying it.

  “I’d slipped my check under his door on my way to the station that morning,” Friedrich said. “Norvel’s rent was paid by the church. The secretary mailed Pardon a check, the Reverend McCorkindale told me. Marcus Jefferson says he’d also slid his rent check under Pardon’s door on his way out to work that morning, and Pardon must already have made a trip to the bank right when it opened, because Marcus’s check, mine, and Mrs. Hofstettler’s were credited to Pardon’s account when I called the bank.”