Shakespeare’s Champion

Chapter Four

I woke up and looked out at sheets of rain, a chilly autumnal gray rain. I’d slept a little late since I’d had such a hard time getting to bed the night before. I’d have to hurry to make it to Body Time. Before I dressed, I poured myself a cup of coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, the morning paper unopened beside me. I had a lot to think about.

I worked out without talking to anyone. I drove home feeling a lot better.

I showered, dressed, put on my makeup, and fluffed my hair.

I wondered if the black-haired man had been out walking in the night, too.

As my car lurched slowly along the driveway that led to the back of the small Shakespeare Clinic, an uninspiring yellow brick office structure dating from the early sixties, I was betting that Carrie Thrush would be working today.

Sure enough, Carrie’s aging white Subaru was in its usual place behind the building. I used my key and called “Hi!” down the hall. Carrie’s clinic was depressing. The walls were painted an uninspiring tan and the floors were covered with a pitted brown linoleum. There wasn’t enough money yet for renovation. The doctor had massive debts to pay off.

Carrie’s answer came floating back, and I stepped into the doorway of her office. The best thing you could say about Carrie’s office was that it was large enough. She did a lot of scut work herself, to save money to pay back the loans that had gotten her through med school. The doctor was in black denims and a rust-red sweater. Carrie is short, rounded, pale, and serious, and she hasn’t had a date in the two years since she’s come to Shakespeare.

For one thing, she’s all too likely to be interrupted in any free time she might manage. Then, too, men are intimidated by Carrie’s calm intelligence and competence. At least that was what I figured.

“Anything interesting happen this week?” she asked, as if she wanted to take her mind off the heap of paper. She shoved her brown chin-length hair behind her ears, resettled her glasses on her snub nose. Her beautiful brown eyes were magnified many times by the lenses.

“Becca Whitley, the niece, is living in Pardon’s apartment,” I said, after some thought. “The man who’s taken Del Packard’s place at Winthrop Sporting is living in Norvel Whitbread’s old apartment. And Marcus Jefferson moved out in a hurry after the Deedra Dean car-painting incident.” I’d seen the U-Haul trailer attached to Marcus’s car the morning before.

“That was probably a good move,” Carrie said. “Sad though that state of affairs is.”

I tried to think of other items of interest. “I ate out in Montrose with the chief of police,” I told her. Carrie hungered for something frivolous after being a sober, God-like decision-maker all week.

“Is that the niece everyone was talking about, the one he left everything to?” Carrie had fastened on the first item. But she would get around to all of them.

I nodded.

“What’s she like?”

“She’s got long blond hair, she wears heavy makeup, she works out and takes karate, and she probably features in the wet dreams of half the guys she meets.”

“Smart?”

“Don’t know.”

“Has she rented out Marcus’s apartment yet? A lab tech at the hospital is looking for a place to live.” Shakespeare had a tiny hospital, perpetually in danger of being closed.

“I don’t think the dust has had time to settle on the windowsill yet. Tell the lab tech to get on down there and knock on the apartment to the rear right.”

“So what’s with the chief? He show you his nightstick?”

I smiled. Carrie had a ribald sense of humor. “He wants to, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“He’s been hanging around you for months like a faithful hound, Lily. Cut him loose or give in.”

I was reminded yet again of how much people in a small town knew about you even when you tried to keep your life private.

“He’s cut loose as of last night,” I said. “I just enjoy his company. He knows that.”

“Do you think you can be comfortable with him now?”

I thought of a quick answer and a longer truer one. I sat down in one of the two patient chairs and said, “It was possible until Claude started talking about the Darnell Glass lawsuit.”

“Yeah, I hear Mrs. Glass is talking to a lawyer from Little Rock about bringing a suit. You’d be a witness, huh?”

“I reckon.”

“Tom David Meicklejohn is such a jerk.”

“But he’s Claude’s jerk. She’d be suing the Shakespeare Police Department, not just Tom David or Todd.”

Carrie shook her head. “Rough waters ahead. Think you and Claude can weather it as friends?”

I shrugged.

Carrie’s smile was wry. “It’s uphill work being your confidant, Bard.”

I sat silent for a minute. “I expect that’s from being Victim of the Year after I got raped. Too many people I talked to, people I’d known all my life, turned around and told everything I said to the press.”

Carrie looked at me, her mouth slightly open in surprise. “Gosh,” she said finally.

“Got to work.” I got up and pulled on my yellow rubber gloves, prepared to tackle the patients’ bathroom first, since it was always the nastiest.

When I left the room, Carrie was bending over her paperwork with a little smile on her lips.

Another favorite woman of mine was Marie Hofstettler, and I was sorry to see today was not one of her “limber” days. When I used my key to enter her ground-floor apartment, I could see at a glance that she wasn’t in her usual chair. Marie had been living in the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, next door to me, for years. Her son, Chuck, who lives in Memphis, pays me to clean once a week and take Mrs. Hofstettler wherever she wants to go on Saturdays.

“Mrs. Hofstettler,” I called. I didn’t want to scare her. Lately, she’d been forgetting when I was due to come.

“Lily.” Her voice was very faint.

I hurried back to her bedroom. Marie Hofstettler was propped up, her long silky white hair in an untidy braid trailing over one shoulder. Somehow she seemed smaller to me, and her myriad wrinkles looked deeper, chiseled into her fine skin. Her color was bad, both pale and gray-tinged.

She looked like she was dying. The effort of calling out to me had clearly exhausted her. She gasped for breath. I picked up the phone on the bedside table, jammed between a framed picture of her great-grandchild and a box of Kleenex.

“Don’t call,” Marie managed to say.

“You have to go to the hospital,” I said.

“Want to stay here,” she whispered.

“I know, and I’m sorry. But I can’t…” My voice trailed off as I realized I’d been about to say “be responsible for your death.” I cleared my throat. I thought about her courage in the face of the pain she’d endured for years, from arthritis and a bad heart.

“Don’t,” she said, and she was begging.

As I knelt by the bed and held Mrs. Hofstettler’s hand, I thought of all the people in this apartment building I’d seen come and go from its eight units. Pardon Albee had died, the O’Hagens had moved, the Yorks were gone, and Norvel Whitbread was in jail for forging a check: this, out of the tenants that had been in the Garden Apartments this time last year. And now Marie Hofstettler.

She was gone in an hour.

When I judged the end was near, and I knew she no longer heard me, I called Carrie.

“I’m at Marie Hofstettler’s,” I said. I heard paper shuffling around on Carrie’s desk.

“What’s up?” Carrie knew something was wrong by my voice.

“She’s leaving us,” I said very quietly.

“I’m on my way.”

“She wants you to drive slow.”

A silence. “I hear you,” Carrie said. “But you have to call nine-one-one to cover your ass.”

I put down the phone with the one hand I had free. I’d been holding Marie’s thin bony fingers with the other. When I focused on Marie’s face, she sighed, and then her soul left her body. I gave a sigh of my own.

I punched in 911. “I’ve been here cleaning Marie Hofstettler’s apartment,” I said. “I left the room for a while to clean the bathroom and when I checked back on her, she was… I think she’s dead.”

Then I had to move quickly. I grabbed some glass cleaner to give the bathroom a very quick once-over. I left the spray bottle and some paper towels by the sink and I stuck the bowl brush in the toilet, hastily pouring some blue cleanser in the water.

Carrie Thrush knocked on the door, and she was barely bending over Marie when the EMTs got there.

As I let them in, the door across the hall and to the back opened, and Becca Whitley looked out. She was dressed to kill, in tailored red slacks and a black sweater.

“The old lady?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“She having a crisis?”

“She died.”

“Should I call someone?”

“Yes. Her son, Chuck. The phone number is right here.” While Carrie and the EMTs consulted over Mrs. Hofstettler and then loaded her onto a gurney, I fetched the pad of telephone numbers the old lady had kept by the living room phone, and handed it to Becca Whitley.

I was relieved beyond words to be spared calling Chuck, not only because I didn’t like him but because I was feeling guilt. As Marie was wheeled out to the ambulance, I thought of the things I should have done; I should have called Carrie, or 911, immediately, called Marie’s best friend-the older Mrs. Winthrop, Arnita-and then talked Marie into wanting to go on. But Marie had been in more and more pain, more and more dependent, the past few months. There’d been many days I’d had to dress her, and times I wasn’t scheduled to come and found later she’d stayed in bed all day because she couldn’t do otherwise. She’d refused her son’s proposal to move her to a nursing home, she’d refused to have a nurse in the apartment, and she’d made up her own mind when to let go.

Suddenly I realized how much I would miss Mrs. Hofstettler, and the impact of witnessing her death hit me broadside. I sat down on the stairs up to the second floor’s four apartments, sat down and felt the wetness on my cheeks.

“I got Chuck’s wife,” Becca said. She was in her stocking feet, I noticed, trying to figure out how she’d crept up on me. “She didn’t exactly sound torn up.”

I didn’t look up at her.

“They wrote her off a few years ago,” I said flatly.

“You’re not in her will, are you?” Becca asked me, her voice calm.

“I hope not.” And then I did look up at her, and she stared back at me with her contact-blue eyes, and after a minute she nodded and went back into her place.

I was scared to finish my work in Mrs. Hofstettler’s apartment without permission. If anyone came asking me questions about her death, I didn’t want my staying to clean afterward to look suspicious, as though I was clearing away evidence or stealing valuables. So I locked the door behind me, and turned my key over to Becca, who took it without comment.

As her own door closed behind me, I heard another one above me slam shut. I looked up the stairs. Down came the man who’d rented Norvel Whitbread’s apartment, the man who’d come into the Winthrops’ with Howell the day before. He was maybe my age, I now conjectured, about five foot ten, with a prominent straight nose, straight black brows over those hazel eyes. Again, his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He had narrow, finely chiseled lips and a strong chin. There was a thin scar, slightly puckered, running from the hairline by his right eye down to his jaw. He was wearing an ancient leather jacket, dark green flannel shirt, and jeans.

I was able to take all this in so minutely because he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at me for a long moment.

“You’ve been crying,” he said finally. “You all right?”

“I don’t cry,” I said furiously and absurdly. I met his eyes. It seemed to me I was full of fear; it seemed to me I could feel something inside me cracking.

He raised his straight brows, stared for an instant longer, and then went past me, out the back door to the tenants’ parking area. The door didn’t sigh shut for a long moment. I could see that he sat in his car for a beat or two before he pulled out of his space and drove away.

Mrs. Hofstettler’s funeral was Monday, quick work even for Shakespeare. She’d planned the service two years before; I remembered the Episcopal priest, a tiny man almost as old as Marie, coming by to talk to her about it.

I hadn’t entered a church in years, so I had a long struggle with myself. I’d already said good-bye to Marie, but it came to me very strongly that she would have wanted me to be at the funeral.

Stiffly, reluctantly, I called two of my Monday afternoon regulars to reschedule. I brushed and pressed my long-stored expensive black suit (which I’d retained from my former life as being all-purpose). I’d bought a pair of pantyhose, and now I wriggled into the nasty things. Grimacing with distaste, I slid my feet into high-heeled black pumps. Two of my scars were visible, thin and white, because of the square neckline of the suit. I was so pale that the scars weren’t conspicuous, I decided; anyway, there was nothing to be done about it. I wasn’t about to buy another dress. This one still fit, but not exactly the way it used to. Working out so consistently had resculpted my body.

The black suit seemed dreary unadorned, so I put my grandmother’s diamond earrings in my ears, and added her diamond bar pin to the ensemble. I still had a good black purse; like the suit, it was a relic of my former life.

Shakespeare police always escort local funerals, and one of the cars is always stationed at the church. I hadn’t anticipated this, especially that the police car attending to the church traffic would be manned by Claude. He watched me get out of my Skylark, and stood drop-jawed as I came down the sidewalk to enter the church.

“Lily, you look beautiful,” he said, unflatteringly amazed. “I’ve never seen you dressed up before.”

I shot him a glance and passed in to the warm dimness of tiny Saint Stephen’s. The dark old Episcopal church was absolutely jam-packed with friends and connections from Marie Hofstettler’s long life: her contemporaries, their children, other members of the church, volunteers from her favorite charity. Only two pews had been marked off at the front for the family. Chuck, now in his late fifties, was Mrs. Hofstettler’s only living child.

It was obvious what sitting room there was left should be saved for the older people who formed the majority of the mourners. I stood at the back, bowing my head as the coffin was brought in draped with the heavy church pall, staring at the sparse hair on the back of Chuck Hofstettler’s head as he followed behind the coffin. He was looking at the embroidered pall with a kind of grieved fascination. To me, the container and its contents were uninteresting. The essential Marie was elsewhere. The casket was only there to provide a focus for grief and meditation, the way a flag provided a focus for patriotic upswelling.

Marie’s best friend, Arnita Winthrop, was seated near the front of the church with her husband, Howell Sr., her son, and his wife. Old Mr. Winthrop was holding his wife’s hand. Somehow I found that touching. Beanie, chic as always, had lightened her hair a couple of shades, I noticed. Beanie and Howell Jr. were not holding hands.

The unfamiliar service progressed slowly. Without a prayer book, I was at a loss. There were quite a few of us standing, and more people crowded in even after the service began. It took at least five minutes for me to realize who was a little behind me. As if some inner radar had blipped, I turned my head slightly to see the man who’d come down the apartment building stairs the day Marie died, Howell’s mysterious friend.

He was as duded up as I was. He was wearing a suit with a vest, a navy-blue pinstripe. Instead of Nikes, he was shod in gleaming wing tips. His shirt was white and his tie was a conservative navy, green, and gold stripe. The black ponytail and the puckered scar contrasted oddly with the banker’s costume.

As I located him, he turned his head to look at me. Our eyes met. I looked forward again. What was he doing here? Was he some long-lost army buddy of Howell’s? Was he Howell’s bodyguard? Why would Howell Winthrop need a bodyguard?

When the interminable service was over, I left the church as quickly as I could. I refused to look around me. I climbed back into my car and went home to change and go to work. Even for Marie, I wasn’t going out to the cemetery.

When I went in to Body Time the next morning, Darcy Orchard greeted me with, “Is is true you’re working for a nigger?”

“What?” I realized I hadn’t heard that word in years. I hadn’t missed it.

“You working for that gal rented the house on Sycamore?”

“Yes.”

“She’s gotta be half black, Lily.”

“OK.”

“What’s she doing here in Shakespeare, she told you?”

“No.”

“Lily, it’s not my business, but it don’t look right, a white woman cleaning for a black.”

“You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

“I’ll say this for you, Lily,” Darcy said slowly. “You know how to keep your mouth shut.”

I turned to stare at Darcy. I’d been doing lat pull-downs, and I didn’t rise, just swiveled on the narrow seat. I looked at him thoroughly, from magnificent physique to acne-marked cheeks, and I looked beyond him at his shadow, Jim Box, a darker, leaner version of Darcy.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I do.”

I wondered what Darcy’s reaction would be if I told him that the last time I’d cleaned at Mookie Preston’s house, I’d found a rifle under her bed, along with a bundle of targets. Nearly every target was neatly drilled through the middle.

The next day I stayed at Body Time longer than I usually do. I keep Wednesday mornings open for cleaning emergencies, and the only thing I had scheduled was my semiannual turnout of Beanie Winthrop’s walk-in closet.

Bobo was working that morning, and once again he seemed depressed. Jim and Darcy were attacking triceps work with determination. They both gave me curt hellos before diving back into their schedule. I nodded back as I stretched.

Jerri Sizemore fluttered her fingers at me. I decided it must be the effect of my new outfit. I’d unbent enough to buy a pair of calf-length blue spandex workout pants and matching sports bra, but I’d mitigated the bare effect by pulling on an old cutoff T-shirt.

I finished my regular routine and decided to try some chin-ups, just to see if I could. I’d turned to face the wall instead of the room, because the T-shirt came up when I raised my arms, exposing a stretch of scarred ribs. I’d pulled over a stool to help me grip the high bar initially, but after that I’d shoved it away with a dangling foot so I wouldn’t be tempted to cheat.

The first chin-up went fairly well, and the second and third. I watched myself in the mirror on the wall, noticing with irritation that the T-shirt certainly did expose a lot of skin. I should never have listened to Bobo’s flattery.

By the fourth rep, I wouldn’t have cared if the shirt fell off, I was in so much pain. But I’d promised myself I’d do at least seven. I shut my eyes to concentrate. I whined out loud when I’d achieved the fifth, and dangled from the bar, despairing of finishing my set. I was taken by surprise when big hands gripped me at the hipbones and pushed up, providing just enough boost to enable me to finish the sixth chin-up. I lowered myself, growled, “One more,” and began to pull up again. The hands gave a trifle more boost, enabling me to accomplish the seventh.

“Done,” I said wearily. “Thanks, Bobo.” The big hands began lowering me to the stool he’d shoved back into position.

“You’re welcome,” said a voice that wasn’t Bobo’s. After a moment, his hands fell away, leaving an impression of heat on my stomach and hips.

I pivoted on the stool. My spotter had been the black-haired man. He was wearing a chopped-off gray sweatshirt and red sweatpants. He hadn’t shaved that morning.

He walked away, and began doing lunges on the other side of the room. Picking an exercise almost at random, I hooked my feet under the bar on the lat pull-down machine and did stomach crunches, my arms crossed over my chest. I kept an eye on the stranger as he did leg presses. After he’d warmed up, he pulled off his sweatshirt to reveal a red tank top and a lot of shoulder. I turned my back.

As I was leaving, I almost asked Bobo if he knew the man’s name. Then I thought, I’ll be damned if I ask anybody anything, least of all Bobo. I gathered my gym bag and my jacket and started to the door.

Marshall entered as I was reached it. He threw his arm around my shoulders. I leaned away from him, startled, but he pulled me close and hugged me.

“Sorry about Marie Hofstettler,” Marshall said gently. “I know you cared about her.”

I was embarrassed at mistaking his intention, and his concern and tenderness reminded me of the reasons I’d hooked up with him initially. But I wanted him to let go. “Thanks,” I said stiffly. The black-haired man was looking at us, as he stood with Jim and Darcy, who were chattering away. It seemed to me now that something about him was familiar, an echo of long ago, from the darkest time in my life. I couldn’t quite track the trace of the memory back to its origins.

“How’s your hip been?” Marshall asked professionally.

“A little stiff,” I confessed. The kick that I’d taken in The Fight had proved to be a more troublesome injury than I’d guessed at the time. Standing on my left foot, I swung my right leg back and forth to show Marshall my range of motion. He crouched before me, watching my leg move. He told me to raise my leg sideways, like a male dog about to pee, the position the karate class assumed for side kicks. It was very uncomfortable. Marshall talked about my hip for maybe five more minutes, with other people contributing opinions and remedies like I’d asked for them.

None from the black-haired man, though he drew close to listen to the discussion, which ranged from my hip to The Fight to Lanette Glass’s civil suit to stop the upcoming meeting at one of the black churches.

While I showered and dressed, I thought how strange it was that this black-haired man was cropping up everywhere.

It could be a coincidence. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. He could have his eye on someone else other than me; maybe Becca Whitley? Or maybe (I brightened) the finances of the Shakespeare Combined Church had attracted the interest of some government agency? The church pastor, Brother Joel McCorkindale, had always alerted that sense in me that detected craziness, twistedness, in other people. Maybe Mr. Black Ponytail was after the good brother.

Then why the secret tryst with Howell? The black bags? I hadn’t opened the window seat when I’d been cleaning the day before, because I hadn’t any business in Howell’s study.

Of course, I could be attributing all sorts of things to a regular working guy, who also liked to keep fit, and go to funerals of old women he didn’t know, and have secret meetings with his employer.

What with Mookie Preston, Becca Whitley, and this scarred man with his long black hair, in no time at all I was going to lose my standing as the most exotic imported resident of Shakespeare.

It was a chilly day, almost visible-breath temperature. Though I don’t like to work in long sleeves, I pulled on an old turtleneck I wore when it was too cold to do without. I’d bought it before I started muscle-building, and it was tight in the neck, the shoulders, the chest, the upper arms… I shook my head at my reflection in the mirror. I looked as obvious as Becca Whitley. I’d throw it out after I wore it today, but it certainly would do to clean Beanie’s closet. I pulled on my baggy jeans and some old Converse high-tops, and after checking my mirror one more time to verify that my hair was curling and fluffy and my makeup was smooth and unobtrusive- evaluating Becca’s cosmetics had made me more aware of the dangers of overdoing it-I went out to my car.

It wouldn’t start.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, and a few more things. I raised the hood. One of the legacies of my gentle upbringing is that I don’t know shit about cars. And since I became ungentle, I have been too busy making a living to learn. I stalked back into my house and called the only mechanic I trusted in Shakespeare.

The phone was picked up to a mind-numbing blast of rap music.

“Cedric?”

“Who you want?”

“Cedric?”

“I’ll get him.”

“Hello? Who wants Big Cedric?”

“Cedric, this is Lily Bard.”

“Lily, what can I do for you this fine cold day?”

“You can come find out what’s wrong with my car. It was running smooth this morning. Now it won’t start.”

“I won’t insult you by asking if you got gas in it.”

“I’m glad you’re not going to insult me.”

“Okay, I tell you what. I got this car up on the rack I got to finish with, then I come by. You gonna be there?”

“No, I got a job. I can walk to it. I’ll leave the keys in the car.”

“Okay, we’ll get this problem taken care of.”

“Thank you, Cedric.”

The phone went down without further ado. I sighed at the thought of the expense of fixing the car-again-on a tight budget like mine, detached the car keys from my ring and put them in the ignition, and started walking to the Winthrops‘.

Nothing in Shakespeare is really far away from anything else. But it was a considerable hike to the Winthrops’ neighborhood in the northern part of town, especially in the cold.

At least it wasn’t raining.

I reminded myself of that frequently. I promised myself something extra good for lunch, maybe a whole peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with my homemade soup. I deserved another treat, too. Maybe a new pair of boots? Nope, couldn’t do that if I had to pay for the car repairs…

Finally, about nine-thirty, I got to the Winthrops‘, the jewel of the most opulent new neighborhood in Shakespeare. This neighborhood, not coincidentally, was farthest away from the southwestern black area and my own slightly-less-southern patch to the east.

The Winthrop lot was a corner lot. Today I used the kitchen door at the back of the garage, which was a wing on the side of the house opening onto Blanche Street, since I didn’t have my oil-spotting car. The front door of the house faced Amanda Street. To compensate for the small trees in front (this was a new subdivision) the landscaper had made the backyard a veritable jungle enclosed by a wooden privacy fence. There were several gates in the privacy fence, always kept carefully locked by the Winthrops so neighborhood children wouldn’t trespass for a dip in the pool or a game of hide-and-seek. The Winthrop house backed up to an equally large home that had employed the same landscape planner, so in the greener seasons their block resembled the tropical bird enclosure at a good zoo. There was a narrow alley in between the back gates of the two houses. It ran the length of the block and allowed passage for the Shakespeare garbage trucks and the lawn service that maintained almost every lawn in the neighborhood.

I stepped into the Winthrop kitchen, for once feeling positively happy to be there. The kitchen was dim and warm, wonderfully warm. For a couple of minutes I stood under a vent, enjoying the rush of heated air, restoring my circulation. I pulled off my old red Lands End squall jacket and hung it on one of the chairs at the round table where the family ate most of their meals. I strolled out of the kitchen, still rubbing my hands together, to the huge family room, stylishly carpeted in hunter green and decorated in taupe, burgundy, and gold. I picked up a couch pillow and fluffed it, replacing it automatically in the correct corner of the couch, which could easily seat four.

Still trying to reach a normal temperature, I stood staring out the sliding glass doors. The backyard looked melancholy in the late autumn, the foliage thinned out and the high fence depressingly obvious. The gray pool cover was spotted with puddles of rainwater. The warm colors of the big room were more pleasant, and I roamed around it picking up odds and ends as I stretched chilled muscles.

The pleasure of being warm made me feel like singing. I’d only rediscovered my voice recently; it was as though for years I’d forgotten I had the ability. At first the memories had wrenched at me-I remembering singing at weddings as a teenager, remembered church solos… remembered what my life once was. But I’d gotten past that. I began humming.

Though it wasn’t my regular cleaning day, from habit I walked through the whole house, as I always did when I came in. Upstairs, Bobo’s room was picked up and the bedspread was actually pulled straight. No such epiphany had inspired Amber Jean and Howell Three, but then they’d never been as sloppy as Bobo. The two upstairs bathrooms were more or less straight. Downstairs, Beanie always made the king-size bed in the huge master bedroom, and she was meticulous about hanging up her clothes because she had paid a lot for them. Beanie’s family had a great regard for money.

I began singing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” as I went to the “cleaning stuff” closet in the kitchen to select what I’d need: dust cloths, the vacuum cleaner, glass cleaner and rags, shoe polish.

Twice a year, for extra pay of course, I performed this odd little service for Beanie. I took everything out of her huge walk-in closet, every single thing. Then I cleaned the closet, reorganized her clothes, and checked to make sure all her shoes were polished and ready to wear. Any clothes that needed mending or were missing buttons I put to one side for Beanie’s attention, or rather her seamstress’s.

I had sung my way to the end of the ballad when I took all my cleaning paraphernalia into the big dark bedroom- Beanie kept the drapes drawn-and dumped it on the floor to one side of Beanie’s closet. I opened the mirrored door and reached inside to switch on the light.

Someone grabbed my wrist and yanked me in.

I fought immediately, because Marshall had taught me not to hesitate; if you hesitate, if you falter, you’ve already lost psychological ground. In fact, I almost went crazy and lost all my training, but hung on by a little rag of intelligence. I formed a good fist and hit with my free left hand, striking for anything I could hit. I couldn’t place my assailant exactly, had no idea who had grabbed me.

My blows made contact with flesh, I thought a cheek. He grunted but didn’t lessen his formidable grip on my right wrist, and it was only with an effort that I kept the left hand free. I knew it was a man from the sound of the grunt, so I went for his balls, but he twisted to one side and evaded my fingers. He’d been wanting to catch that free hand, and this he finally did; bad news for me. I tried breaking loose by stepping into him and bringing my hands, palms up, against his thumbs, the same move that had worked against Bobo; once I was free, I would slap him over the ears or gouge his eyes, I wasn’t particular, I would kill him or hurt him however I could.

The move didn’t work because he’d been expecting it. His hands slid down from my wrists to hold me right below the elbows. I slammed my head forward to break his nose but got his chest instead. As I threw my head back up I heard his teeth click together, so I’d clipped his chin, but that wasn’t enough to effect any major damage. I tried for the groin again with my knee and this time managed to make some contact because I got the grunt again. Elated, I tried to bring him down by hooking my leg between his legs and kicking the back of his knee. This was incredibly stupid on my part, because I succeeded. I brought him down right on top of me.

He pinned me to the floor with his body, his strong hands gripping my arms to my sides, his legs weighting mine. I lost my mind. I bit him on the ear.

“Goddamn! Stop it!” He never lessened his grip, which was what I was working for, but brought his forehead down on mine, using my own trick against me. He hadn’t used full force, not by a long shot, but I gasped with pain and felt tears form in my eyes.

He moved his head down to my ear, so his cheek was against mine, an oddly intimate contact. I heaved and bucked against him, but I could feel the weakness in my movements. “Listen,” he hissed. And then as I opened my mouth to scream, hoping to throw him off guard for a second, he said the one thing that could have achieved a truce.

“They’re breaking in,” he whispered. “For God’s sake, just shut up and be still. They’ll kill us both.”

I know how to shut up and I know how to be still, though

I couldn’t stop quivering. My eyes finally adjusted to the near-darkness of the closet, and by the faint light coming in through the partly open door, I saw that the man on top of me was Mr. Black Ponytail.

After a second, I wasn’t too surprised.

Those eyes were not focused on me, but staring out the closet door as the man listened to the faint sounds that were just now penetrating my tangled state of fear and rage.

He bent back so his mouth was by my ear, his newly shaven cheek again resting against mine. “It’s gonna take them a while. They don’t know shit about breaking and entering,” he said in a voice so low it seemed to come from somewhere inside my own head. “Now, who the fuck are you?”

Through clenched teeth I said, “I am the fucking maid.” Every muscle in my body was tensed, and the shivering would not stop no matter how I willed myself to be still. I began to make myself relax, knowing that if I didn’t, I would remain weak and disadvantaged.

“That’s better. We’re on the same side,” whispered the man as he felt my body soften and still beneath him.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

“I,” he told my ear, “am the fucking detective. ” He shifted on top of me. He wasn’t as calm or cool as he was trying to sound. His body was reacting to its proximity with mine, and he was getting uncomfortable. “If I let you go, are you gonna give me any trouble? They’re much more dangerous than I am.”

I thought about it. I had no idea if he really was a detective. And whose detective? FBI? Private? ATF? The Shakespeare police force? Winthrop County?

I heard glass shattering.

“They’re in,” he breathed into my ear. “Listen, the game plan has changed.”

“Huh,” I said contemptuously and almost inaudibly. I hated sports metaphors. I felt much better almost immediately. Angry is better than scared or confused.

“They’ll kill us if we’re caught,” he told me again. His lips, so close to my ear, suddenly made me want to shiver again in a completely different way. His body was talking to mine at great length, no matter what his mouth was saying.

“Now, what I want you to do, when they’re all in the house,” he whispered breathlessly, “is start screaming. I’m going out the front door, circling around to the alley to get their license plate number, identify the car, so I can try to find where they go after this.”

I wondered what his original plan had been. This one seemed awful haphazard. His hands, instead of gripping my arms, were rubbing them slowly.

“They’ll know it was me and come after me.”

“If you’re never in their sight, they won’t believe you saw them,” he breathed. “Give me three minutes, then scream.”

“No,” I said very softly. “I’ll turn on the vacuum cleaner.”

I sensed a certain amount of exasperation rolling off Mr. Ponytail. “OK,” he agreed. “Whatever.”

Then he slid off me, and rose to his feet. He held out his hand and I took it without thinking. He pulled me up as easily as he’d helped me do chin-ups that morning. He gave me a sharp nod to indicate the clock was running, and then he was gone, easing himself out of the closet, through Beanie’s bedroom, and presumably down the little hall that led to the foyer of the house. His exit was much more subtle than the burglars’ entrance.

I peered at my big-faced man’s watch, actually timing the self-proclaimed detective, trying not to wonder why I was doing what he said. At two and a half minutes, I risked stepping out of the closet. I could hear the intruders clearly now. Once they’d gotten into the house, they’d abandoned all attempts at silence.

After plugging in the vacuum cleaner, I suddenly began belting out “Whistle While You Work.” Without waiting to assess the reaction, I stepped on the “On” button and the vacuum cleaner roared to life. I was careful to keep my back to the bedroom door as I began industriously vacuuming, because I could see in Beanie’s dressing table mirror if I was being stalked. I caught a shadow swooping across the mirror, but its owner was in the act of departure. I’d spooked them.

When I felt sure they were gone, I turned off the vacuum cleaner. Watchfully, I once again toured the Winthrop house. One of the sliding glass doors leading to the pool area was broken. Looking across the covered pool, I saw one of the wooden gates standing ajar. The Winthrops needed a full-fledged security system, I thought severely. Then I realized I would have to clean up all the glass, and I found myself irrationally peeved.

Also, I had to call the police.

There was no way around it.

Should I tell them about Black Ponytail? If it weren’t for Claude, I’d lie in a jiffy. All my contacts with the police had been painful. But I trusted Claude. I should tell him the truth. But what could I tell him?

I was fairly sure Howell Jr. must have admitted Black Ponytail to the house or given him the keys. My doubts about their relationship recurred. But no matter what that relationship was, it seemed to me I’d be violating whatever loyalty I was supposed to have to the Winthrop family if I told the police Black Ponytail had been already concealed in the house, anticipating this very break-in.

This was knotty.

I called the police station and reported the break-in, and had a few moments to think hard.

The safest thing was a straight break-in. I don’t know nothin‘, boss.

It helped immensely that Claude didn’t come. Dedford Jinks, the detective who’d so frightened Bobo, and two patrolmen responded to my call. Claude was in a meeting with the county judge and the mayor and had not been told about the incident, I gathered from listening to the patrolmen.

Dedford was a good ole guy with a beer gut hanging over a worn belt buckle he’d won in his calf-roping days. He had thin graying hair, a thin compressed mouth, and a ruddy complexion. Dedford was nobody’s fool.

My story was this: I’d heard little noises, but thought that a member of the family had come in. From then on, I told the truth: I’d plugged in the vacuum and turned it on, I’d heard a big commotion, I hadn’t seen anyone.

After they’d checked out the backyard and found a gate unlocked, and many footprints in the flower beds, the police said I could go.

“I have to clean up,” I said, gesturing to the glass on the Winthrops’ thick hunter-green carpet. They’d gathered up the biggest pieces for fingerprint testing, but there were lots of fragments.

“Oh,” said one of the patrolmen, disconcerted. “Well, OK.”

Then Howell burst into the house, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move. His face was red.

“My God, Lily, are you all right?” He actually took one of my hands and held it. I reclaimed it. This was strange. I could feel the policemen looking at each other.

“Yes, Howell, I’m fine.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

I gestured wide with my hands to draw his notice to my uninjured body.

“But the bruise on your forehead?”

I touched my face carefully. Sure enough, my forehead was tender and puffy. Thanks, Mr. Ponytail. I hoped his ear hurt.

“I guess I ran into the doorframe,” I said. “I got pretty excited.”

“Well, sure. But one of the men didn’t…”

“No.”

“I had no idea you were going to be here today,” Howell said, taking his snowy white handkerchief out of his pocket and patting his face with it. “I am so glad you weren’t harmed.”

“I came to do your wife’s closet. It’s just a twice-a-year thing,” I explained. For me, I was talking too much. I hoped no one would notice. I was rattled. I knew now that Howell was directly involved in this day’s peculiar doings. At least it was Howell who had let Ponytail in, so he had been here legitimately. I guessed Howell was now wondering where the hell his man was and what part he’d played in this fiasco.

“I’ll just clean up this mess and go,” I suggested again.

“No, no, you need to go home after this,” Howell exclaimed, his handsome, fleshy face creased with anxiety. “I’ll be glad to clean it up.”

Definite glances between all police personnel within earshot. Shit.

“But I’d like to…” I let my sentence trail off as Dedford raised an eyebrow in my direction. If I insisted longer, so would Howell, drawing more attention to his unusual preoccupation with my condition. He was obviously guilt-stricken. If he kept this up, everyone present would figure something strange was going on, and they might think it was more than Howell having an affair with his maid, which was bad enough.

“Where’s your car?” Howell asked suddenly.

“It wouldn’t start this morning,” I said wearily, by now tired of explaining myself. “I walked.”

“Oh my God, all that way! I’m sure one of these boys will be glad to give you a ride home!”

One of the “boys,” the older paunchier one with a disbelieving mouth, said he sure would be glad to do that.

So I got delivered to my house in style. My car was still in my carport, but with a sheet of yellow legal paper stuck under the windshield. It read, “I fixed it. You owe me $68.23.” It was a lot more direct and honest than the blue sheets that were suddenly papering the town. I turned to the patrolman, who was waiting to see me enter my house safely. “Do you know anything about those flyers that are turning up under everyone’s windshield wipers?”

“I know they ain’t no ordinance against it,” he replied, and his face closed like a fist. “Likewise they ain’t no ordinance against the blacks meeting to talk about it, which they aim to do tonight.”

“Where?”

“The meeting? At the Golgotha A.M.E. Church on Castle Road. We got to maintain a presence, case there’s any trouble.”

“That’s good,” I said, and after thanking the man for giving me a ride home (and being willing to part with information without asking any questions) I sat in my recliner and thought.