Shakespeare’s Landlord

Chapter Four

Wednesday mornings are flexible. It’s the time I set aside for emergencies (special cleanings for ladies who are going to host the bridge club or give a baby shower) or rare cleanings, like helping a woman turn out her attic. This Wednesday, I had long been scheduled to help Alvah York with her spring cleaning. Alvah observes this rite even though she and her husband, T. L., live in one of Pardon Albee’s apartments now that T. L. has retired from the post office.

Two years before, I’d helped Alvah spring-clean a three-bedroom house, and Alvah had started work before I arrived and kept on going at noon when I left. But Alvah has gone downhill sharply since the move, and she might actually need help for the two-bedroom apartment this year.

The Yorks’ apartment is on the ground floor of the Garden Apartments, next to Marie Hofstettler’s, and its front door is opposite the door of the apartment Pardon Albee kept for himself. I couldn’t help glancing at it as I knocked. There was crime-scene tape across the door. I’d never seen any in real life; it was exactly like it was on television. Who was supposed to want to get into Pardon’s apartment? Who would have had a key but Pardon? I supposed he had relatives in town that I didn’t know of; everyone in Shakespeare is related in some way to at least a handful of the other inhabitants, with very few exceptions.

For that matter, how had he died? There’d been blood on his head, but I hadn’t investigated further. The examination had been too disgusting and frightening alone in the park.

I glanced at my man-sized wristwatch. Eight on the dot; one of the primary virtues Alvah admires is punctuality.

Alvah looked dreadful when she answered the door.

“Are you all right?” I asked involuntarily.

Alvah’s gray hair was matted, obviously uncombed and uncurled, and her slacks and shirt were a haphazard match.

“Yes, I’m all right,” she said heavily. “Come on in. T. L. and I were just finishing breakfast.”

Normally, the Yorks are up at 5:30 and have finished breakfast, dressed, and are taking a walk by 8:30.

“When did you get home?” I asked. I wasn’t in the habit of asking question, but I wanted to get some response from Alvah. Usually, after one of their trips out of town, Alvah can’t wait to brag about her grandchildren and her daughter, and even from time to time that unimportant person, the father of those grandchildren and husband of that daughter, but today Alvah was just dragging into the living room ahead of me, in silence.

T. L., seated at their little dinette set, was more like his usual bluff self. T. L. is one of those people whose conversation is of 75 percent platitudes.

“Good morning, Lily! Pretty as ever, I see. It’s going to be a beautiful day today.”

But something was wrong with T. L., too. His usual patter was thudding, and there wasn’t any spring in his movement as he rose from the little table. He was using his cane this morning, the fancy silver-headed one his daughter had given him for Christmas, and he was really leaning on it.

“Just let me go shave, ladies,” he rumbled valiantly, “and then I’ll leave the field to you.”

Folding the paper beside his place at the table, he went down the hall. T. L. is a big, shrewd gray-haired man, running to fat now, but still strong from a lifetime of hard physical work. I watched T. L. duck into the bedroom doorway. Something else was different about him. After a moment, it came to me: This morning, he walked in silence. T. L. always whistles, usually country-and-western songs or hymns.

“Alvah, would you like me to come back some other time?”

Alvah seemed surprised I’d asked. “No, Lily, though it’s right sweet of you to be concerned. I may as well get on with spring cleaning.”

It looked to me as if it would be better for Alvah to go back to bed. But I began carrying the breakfast things into the kitchen, something I’d never had to do at the Yorks’ before. Alvah had always done things like that herself.

Alvah didn’t comment at all while I did the dishes, dried them, and put them away. She sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring into the dark fluid as if it would tell her the future. T. L. emerged from the bedroom, shaven and outwardly cheerful, but still not whistling. “I’m going to get a haircut, honey,” he told his wife. “You and Lily don’t work too hard.” He gave her a kiss and was out the door.

I was wrong again in thinking Alvah would be galvanized by her husband’s departure. All she did was drink the coffee. I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle with anxiety. I’d worked with Alvah side by side on many mornings, but the woman at the table seemed altogether different.

Alvah suffers from a pinched nerve in her back and is having increasing problems getting around, but she is normally a practical, good-natured woman with decided ideas about how she wants things done and a plain way of expressing them. She could offend by this straightforwardness, and I’ve seen it happen, but I’ve never minded her ways myself. There are few unexpressed thoughts hanging around in Alvah York’s head, and very little tact, but Alvah is a good person, honest and generous.

Then I saw the supplies I’d brought in for the Yorks on Monday afternoon were exactly where I’d left them. The butter was in the refrigerator in the same place I’d laid it down, and the lettuce beside it hadn’t been washed. At least the paper towels had been unwrapped, put on the dispenser, and used, and the bread had been put into the bread box.

I couldn’t say anything more than I’d already said. Alvah wouldn’t tell me what to do. So I mopped the kitchen.

Alvah has her own way of spring cleaning, and I thought I remembered she began by getting all the curtains down; in fact, the pair that hung in the living room on the window facing the street had already been removed, leaving the blinds looking curiously naked. So until very recently, Alvah had been operating normally. I cleaned the exposed blinds. They were dusty; Alvah had stopped just at that point, after she’d taken down the first pair of curtains.

“Is something wrong?” I asked reluctantly.

Alvah maintained her silence for so long that I began to hope she wouldn’t tell me whatever it was. But finally, she began speaking. “We didn’t tell anyone around here,” she said with a great weariness. “But that man over in Creek County-that Harley Don Murrell, the one who was sentenced for rape-well, that man… the girl he raped was our granddaughter Sarah.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face.

“What happened?” I sat across from Alvah.

“Thank God they don’t publish the victim’s name in the paper or put it on the news,” Alvah said. “She’s not in the hospital anymore, but T. L. thinks maybe she should be-the mental hospital. She’s just seventeen. And her husband ain’t no help-he just acts mad that this happened to her. Said if she hadn’t been wearing that leotard and tights, that man would have left her alone.”

Alvah heaved a sigh, staring down at her coffee cup. She would have seen a different woman if she’d looked up, but I was hoping she wouldn’t look up. I was keeping my eyes open very wide so they wouldn’t overflow.

“But he wouldn’t have,” I said. “Left her alone.”

Wrapped in her own misery, Alvah replied, “I know that, her mother knows that, and you know that. But men always wonder, and some women, too. You should have seen that woman Murrell’s married to, her sitting up there in court when she should have been at home hiding her head in shame, acting like she didn’t have any idea in the world what her husband was up to, telling the newspaper people that Sarah was… a bad girl, that everyone in Creek County knew it, that Sarah must have led him on…”

Then Alvah cried.

“But he got convicted,” I said.

“Yes,” Alvah said. “He cried and screamed and said he’d got the Lord. It didn’t do him a bit of good; he got convicted. But he’ll get out, less someone kills him in prison, which is what I pray for, though the Lord may damn me for it. They say that other prisoners don’t like rapists or child molesters. Maybe someone will kill him some night.”

I recognized the tone, the words. I had to fight panic hard for a second. I was grateful for Alvah’s absorption in her own troubles. My hand went up to my chest, touched the light yellow of my T-shirt, felt the ridges of the scars underneath it.

“Alvah, all I can do is clean,” I said.

“Well, let’s do that,” Alvah said shakily. “We might as well.”

For three hours, we worked in the small apartment, cleaning things that had never been dirty and straightening things that had never been messy. Alvah likes her life streamlined-she would live well on a boat, I’ve always thought. Everything superfluous was thrown away ruthlessly; everything else was arranged logically and compactly. I admire this, having tendencies that way myself, though I’m not as extreme as Alvah. For one thing, I reflected as I wiped the cabinets in the bathroom, Alvah has such limited interests that cleaning is one of her few outlets for self-expression. Alvah does a little embroidery of an uninspired kind, but she doesn’t read or sew and is not particularly interested in cooking or television. So she cleans.

Alvah is a warning to me.

“What about the camper?” I asked when I thought we were almost through with the apartment.

“What?” Alvah said.

“We usually do the camper, too,” I reminded her. The Yorks have a camper they pull behind their pickup truck, and when they visit their daughter, they park in her driveway and live in the camper. They can make their own coffee in the morning, go to bed when they feel like it, they’ve often told me. I’d been remembering while I worked how may times the Yorks had mentioned their granddaughter Sarah; youngest of their daughter’s children, Sarah had been spoiled and had just last year made a bad marriage to a boy as young as she. But the Yorks have always doted on Sarah.

“You remember all the arguments Pardon gave us about that camper?” Alvah asked unexpectedly.

I did indeed. At each end of the residents’ parking garage is a space about car width between the wall of the garage and the surrounding fence. The Yorks had asked permission to park their camper in the north space, and initially Pardon had agreed. But later, he’d reneged, insisting it stuck out and inconvenienced the other residents.

It had never been my business, so I’d paid little attention to the whole brouhaha. But I’d heard the Yorks carry on about it, and I’d seen Pardon standing out in the parking area, shaking his head at the camper as if it were a difficult child, puttering around it with a yardstick. Pardon Albee had been a fusser, a man apparently unable to let anything be.

He would never let a sleeping dog lie.

Now Alvah was weeping again. “You’d better go, Lily,” she said. “This whole thing has just got me where I don’t know if I’m going or coming. These past few days, when we were there for the trial, they have just been like hell. I’ll do better next week.”

“Sure, Alvah,” I said. “Call me when you want to get your curtains back up, or if you want to clean the camper.”

“I’ll call you,” Alvah promised. I didn’t remind her that I hadn’t been paid; that was an indicator, too, since Alvah is always scrupulous about paying me on the dot.

I can always drop back by tomorrow, I thought. By then, perhaps some of the shock of Murrell’s trial would have worn off.

Of course, Sarah’s suffering would continue, for weeks and months and years…

I realized it for sure wasn’t my day as I was leaving the building. Deedra Dean came in the front door before I could get out of it.

I can’t stand Deedra, especially since our conversation last week. We’d been standing right inside Deedra’s upstairs apartment door. Deedra had come home for lunch and was ready to return to Shakespeare City Hall, where she almost earns a living as an office clerk.

“Hi, housekeeper!” Deedra had said chirpily. “Listen, I been meaning to tell you… last week I think you forgot to lock the door behind you when you left.”

“No,” I had said very firmly. Reliability is very important in my work, maybe even more important than doing an impeccable cleaning job. “I never forget. Maybe you did, but I didn’t.”

“But last Friday, when I came home, my door was unlocked,” Deedra had insisted.

“I locked it as I left,” I’d insisted right back. “Though,” I’d added, struck by a sudden recollection, “Pardon was on his way up the stairs as I was coming down, and of course he has a master key.”

“Why would he go into my apartment?” Deedra had asked, but not as if the idea was so ridiculous. As it sunk in even further, Deedra’d looked… well, a strange combination of angry and uneasy. I’d been intrigued by the sight of thought processes echoing through Deedra’s empty head.

Deedra Dean, Deedra of the shiny blond hair, voluptuous figure, and a face completely undermined by its lack of chin. Deedra is always brightly made up and maniacally animated to distract the eye from that damning absence. Deedra moved into the apartment building three years ago and had screwed every male who had ever lived in the building except (maybe) Pardon Albee and (almost certainly) T. L. York. Deedra’s fond mother, a sweet, well-to-do widow who recently remarried, subsidizes Deedra heavily. Lacey Dean Knopp is apparently under the impression that Deedra is dating around until she finds Mr. Right. To Deedra, every man is apparently Mr. Right, for a night or two, anyway.

I’ve told myself often that it isn’t any of my business, and I’ve wondered why Deedra’s habits infuriate me. Gradually, I’ve come to the conclusion that Deedra’s total lack of self-respect dismays me, Deedra’s risk taking frightens me, and the ease with which Deedra has sex makes me envious.

But as long as I get paid on time by Deedra’s mama, I keep reminding myself every ten minutes that Deedra is an adult, nominally at least, who can arrange her life as she chooses.

“Well, just don’t let it happen again,” Deedra had lectured me last week, with a lame attempt at sternness, after she’d accused me of leaving the door unlocked. Even Deedra’s feeble brain had finally registered my anger. “Oh, gotta run! I had to come back to get my insurance card. I’ve got to get my car inspected on my lunch hour and get that tag renewal notice in the mail.”

I’d wanted to say something to Deedra about her lifestyle, something that would make a difference, but I knew nothing I could say would make an impression. And it was truly none of my business; Deedra was supposed to be grown up. I’d watched out the window as Deedra hurried from the front door to her red sports car, left idling at the curb. Deedra’s mother had made the down payment on that unreliable but flashy car; Deedra’d told me that quite casually.

“Did you ever find out if Pardon had been in your apartment?” I asked today. There was no one else in the ground-floor hall, and I kept my voice low. I had been following my own train of thought so intently, I’d forgotten that Deedra might be thinking of something quite different, and she looked at me now as if I was a very peculiar person.

“No,” she said fiercely. I raised my eyebrows and waited. “And you better not tell the police you talked to me about that, either!”

“Oh?”

“You won’t get any work in Shakespeare ever again,” Deedra threatened. “I don’t want to be involved in that old bastard getting killed.”

“Do you seriously think,” I said, one side of my mouth curling up in a very dry smile, “that anyone in this town would give up an excellent and reliable maid like me to protect your hide?”

Deedra’s blue eyes widened in shock. A door opened on the second floor, and down the stairs came the Garden Apartments’ only black tenant, Marcus Jefferson. Marcus, a handsome man in his late twenties, gave us a startled look, muttered a greeting, and pushed past us to the front door, which gave its heavy groan as it inched shut behind him.

This building was full of people behaving peculiarly today. When I looked back at Deedra, her face was brick red and she was watching the front door close on Marcus Jefferson.

Uh-oh. I had a flash of what might have finally prodded Pardon Albee into “doing something” about Deedra.

“Did you want me to come back on my regular day?” I asked. Perhaps Deedra didn’t want my services anymore. I clean Deedra’s apartment on Friday mornings. That is prime time, since everyone wants a house clean for the weekend, and I half-hoped Deedra would fire me.

“Oh… oh, yes. Listen, really, let’s just forget all about that conversation we had last week, about the door. I left it unlocked, okay? I just remembered it later. I’m sorry I even thought you might have done it. You’re just the most reliable…” Deedra’s voice trailed off, a phony smile pasted to her face, where it looked quite at home.

As I walked down the sidewalk to my own house, I wondered if Pardon had indeed been in Deedra’s apartment the week before. What would he go in there for? What would he have found if he did? If he was looking for trash on how Deedra lived her private life, he’d have found plenty. In her top dresser drawer, Deedra keeps some pornographic pictures some lover had taken of her in exotic lingerie and some of her naked. I certainly hadn’t wanted to know this little fact, but Deedra expects me to do her wash and put it away during the afternoon I spend cleaning the apartment, and that drawer is her lingerie drawer. Deedra also keeps some erotica and some ghastly magazines actually stuck under the bed (where I am obliged to vacuum), and of course the sheets are always a mess. There are probably other “incriminating” things there, too, things Deedra’s mother might be interested to know about.

Would Pardon Albee actually have dared to call Deedra’s mother, the very proper Lacey Dean Knopp?

By God, that would be just like him.

Five minutes after I had entered my own house, the doorbell rang. I checked my peephole and opened the door.

My visitor was surprising but nonthreatening-my seldom-seen neighbor, Carlton Cockroft. I’ve spoken to Carlton only three or four times a year since I bought the house.

There is something very “edible” about Carlton. He always reminds me of hot chocolate and caramels in the winter, or the coconut smell of tanning lotion and the tang of barbecue in the summer. Carlton is in his early thirties, like me. He has black hair and dark brown eyes, a cleft chin, and thick arched brows. He smells good. He is maybe four inches taller than I am, about five ten. My neighbor is polite, busy, and heterosexual-and that is the sum total of my knowledge.

“Hello, Lily,” he said, his voice pleasant but not cheerful.

“Carlton.” I nodded in greeting, then opened my door so he could step inside.

He looked very surprised, and I realized I’d never asked him in before. He looked at the room very quickly and didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, quite unlike my assured visitor of the day before.

“Have a seat,” I said, taking the wing chair.

“Lily, I’ll come straight to the point,” Carlton began after he’d settled himself on the love seat. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. He was wearing an unremarkable plaid shirt in navy blue and white, pleated blue jeans, and Reeboks; he looked informally prosperous and comfortable.

I waited for him to come straight to the point. Most people seem to think you should respond when they tell you they’re about to do something, but I’ve always thought it more interesting to wait and see if they actually do it.

He kept his eyes on me for a moment, as if expecting something from me, sure enough.

I made an open-hands gesture-okay, the point?

“I saw you out walking the night of the murder.” He waited for me to shriek in alarm. “I got up to get a sinus pill.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“Lily, that puts you in a bad position. I didn’t tell Friedrich, but he asked me an awful lot of questions about you. If anyone else saw you, I’m afraid he may even suspect you of having something to do with Pardon’s death.”

I thought for a moment, my hands folded on my lap.

“So, why are you here?” I asked.

“I just wanted to warn you,” Carlton said, straightening from his intent-but-relaxed pose. “I’ve always worried about you some.”

My eyebrows flew up.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said with a little smile. “None of my business. But you’re a woman alone, a pretty woman, and since I live next to you I feel a little responsible… I sure don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

I felt a terrible impulse to pull up my shirt and let him have a good look. The bad thing, the worst thing, had already happened to me. But I knew he was trying to shelter me, shield me from harm. I knew that Carlton perceived that as the right stance for a man to take. And I thought, as I so often do when dealing with them, that men are frequently more trouble than they’re worth.

“Carlton, I live next to you, and since you’re a good-looking guy living alone, I feel responsible for you,” I said.

Carlton turned red. He started to get up, restrained himself. “I guess I deserved that. I should have turned it around in my own head to hear how it sounded, before it came out. But damnit, Lily, I’m trying to be your friend.”

“I see that, Carlton, but why do you feel responsible for my possible trouble with the police? How do you know I’m not guilty of killing Pardon?”

My handsome neighbor looked at me as if I’d grown a snake’s head and hissed. He was hurt, his gallant impulse rebuffed.

“Well…” he began stiffly, “well… I’ve just wasted my time. And yours.”

I looked down at my right hand; my ring-finger nail had an aggravating notch in it. I’d have to get out my emery board before it got worse.

He said unbelievingly, “I’m trying to be nice to you.”

I looked up at him steadily, debated whether or not to speak. “Carlton, you’ve dated too many women who thought you were just what they were looking for,” I said.

I had observed the parade to and from his little house for four years. A good-looking guy with no visible vices and a steady income in a town this size? USDA prime.

“But thanks for not telling the police you saw me. As it happens, I don’t know who killed Pardon, and I’d rather not spend a lot of time convincing the police of that.”

I thought I’d been fairly agreeable. But Carlton said, “Goodbye, Lily,” and stalked out in a huffy way. He remembered just in time not to slam the door behind him.

As I went to get my emery board, I shook my head. There was a good guy in there somewhere under a few layers of crusted manure. I wondered how Carlton had imagined his visit would go.

“Lily, I’m the handsome male next to you and I’m showing you by my silence that I’m gallant and dependable. You should develop a crush on me.”

“Thank you, hunk who has never noticed me before. I was out late at night on a mysterious but innocent errand. I am truly not the peculiar person I sometimes seem, and I am so grateful you have shielded me from interrogation by the rough police. I am absolutely innocent of everything but a strong urge to go to bed with you and/or hire you to prepare my next tax statement.”

I had a little laugh to myself, which was something I needed before I went to my next job.

The Shakespeare Combined Church secretary had called a few days before to ask me to serve and clean up after a board meeting for the SCC preschool, so I left home on foot at 4:55. After passing the apartment building, I began walking by the large parking lot, which is at the end of Track Street. The preschool building, which on Sundays houses the Sunday school, is set at the back of the parking lot and is one long two-story wing. An L-shaped covered walkway runs across the front of the preschool and up the side of the church proper, which faces Jamaica Street. The white-spired church is traditional red brick, but I know little about that part of the establishment. The offices of the minister and his secretary are on the second floor of the Sunday school wing.

If I ever resume going to church, my choice won’t be Shakespeare Combined, or SCC, as the locals invariably call it. SCC was formed when lots of conservative splinter groups amazingly coalesced to combine incomes and hire a minister and build a facility that would serve them all.

They’d found the Reverend Joel McCorkindale and they’d fund-raised and collected until they’d had enough to build the church, then the Sunday school building. The Reverend McCorkindale is a super fund-raiser. I’ve seen him in action. He remembers everyone’s name. He knows everyone’s family connections, asks after ailments, condoles about losses, congratulates on successes. If he is ever at a loss, he humbly confesses it. He has a spanking-clean wife and two toothy, clean boys, and though I believe Joel McCorkindale truly loves his work, he makes the skin on my neck crawl.

I’ve learned not to ignore the skin on my neck.

As far as I know, Joel McCorkindale has never broken the law. Probably he never would. But I feel his potential to do something truly dreadful simmering right beneath the surface. I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.

So far, that strange streak has only shown itself in his hiring of the church janitor. Norvel Whitbread had shown up on the church doorstep one morning drunk as a skunk. Joel McCorkindale had taken Norvel in, given him a good dose of the Spirit (rather than spirits), and taken him on as church maintenance man. Like his boss, Norvel looks good on the outside; he is supposedly now sober, he has a genuine knack for fixing things, and he keeps a smile on his face for church members. He is voluble in his gratitude to the minister and the congregation, which makes everyone feel good.

Though Joel McCorkindale may have a dark monster inside, it may never surface; he’s done a great job so far, keeping it contained and submerged. Norvel, however, is simply rotten inside, through and through. All his cheer is a sham, and I am sure his sobriety is, too. He is the most touched-up of whited sepulchres.

SCC pays Norvel’s rent at the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, and a salary besides, and members of the church are always inviting him home to meals. In return, Norvel keeps the church bathrooms and the church floors clean, washes the windows twice a year, empties the garbage cans daily, picks up trash in the parking lot, and attempts minor repairs. He also does a little work for Pardon Albee at the apartments. But he won’t do anything remotely domestic, like loading the huge church dishwasher or making and serving coffee. So I get the overrun of church duties, if none of the sisters of the church are available to serve for free.

This quarterly board meeting, comprising those elected to sit for staggered terms on the preschool governing board, is always a lively event, and I’m almost always hired to set up the coffee and cookie trays, because any sisters of the church overhearing this group would be liable to (depending on their individual temperaments) die laughing, or stomp out in exasperation.

Norvel Whitbread was lounging in the church kitchen, which is at the end of the preschool building farthest from the church, when I came in. A large broom and dustpan were leaning against the counter, establishing his bona fides.

“How’re you [har yew] today, Sister Lily?” he drawled, sipping from a soft-drink can.

“I’m not your fucking sister, Norvel.”

“You want this job, you better watch your mouth, woman.”

“You want this job, you better stop spiking your Cokes.” I could smell the bourbon from four feet away. Norvel’s thin, nose-dominated, undernourished face showed plain shock. I could tell it had been a while since someone had spoken to the church’s pet convert in plain terms. Norvel was dressed in clothes passed on by a member of the congregation: the baggy brown pants and loose striped shirt had never been Norvel’s choices.

While I got out the twenty-cup coffeepot, Norvel rallied.

“I’m a member of this church, and you ain’t,” he said, his voice low and mean. “They’ll take my word.”

“I’ll tell you what, Norvel. You go on and tell them what you like. Either they’ll believe you and fire me-in which case, the next woman they hire will be more than glad to tell them about your drinking habits-or they’ll fire you, at the very least keep a closer eye on you. As I see it, Norvel, either way, you lose.” My policy has always been to avoid or ignore Norvel, but today I was set on confronting him. Maybe my restraint with Carlton had worn out my quota of “nice” for the day; maybe this was just one face-to-face encounter too many. I often go for a week without talking to as many people as I’d talked to today.

Norvel struggled with his thought processes while I got the coffee apparatus assembled and perking and found a tray for the white-boxed assortment of bakery cookies that had been left on the counter.

“I’ll get even with you for this, bitch,” Norvel said, his sunken cheeks looking even more concave under the merciless fluorescent lighting.

“No, you won’t,” I said with absolute certainty.

Inspired by the liquor or the devil or both, Norvel made his move. He grabbed his broom with both hands and tried to jab me with it. I grabbed the stretch of handle between his hands, ducked under his arm, twisted the broom, and bent. Norvel’s arm was strained over the handle. It was excruciatingly painful, as I’d learned when Marshall taught me this particular maneuver, and Norvel made a high squeak like a bat’s.

Of course, the Reverend Joel McCorkindale came in the kitchen right then. Before I saw him, I could tell who it was by the scent of his aftershave, for he was fond of smelling sweet. I slid my right foot behind Norvel’s leg, raised it slightly, and kicked him in the back of the knee. He folded into a gasping mess on the clean kitchen floor.

I folded my arms across my chest and turned to face the minister.

Joel McCorkindale never looks like himself on the rare occasions when I see him with his mouth shut. Now his lips were compressed with distaste as he looked down at Norvel and back up at me. I figured that when he was an adolescent, McCorkingdale had looked in the mirror and seen a totally forgettable male and then had vowed to become expert in using strength of personality and a remarkable voice to overcome his lack of physical distinction. He is of average height, weight, and unremarkable coloring. His build is average, neither very muscular nor very flabby. But he is an overwhelming man, able to fill a room with his pleasure, or calm, or conviction.

Now he filled it with irritation.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, in the same marvelous voice God could have used from the burning bush-though I hoped God was above sounding peevish.

Norvel whimpered and clutched his arm. I knew he wouldn’t try anything on me with his meal ticket standing there. I turned to the sink to wash my hands so I could return to arranging the cookies.

“Miss Bard!” boomed the voice.

I sighed and turned. Always, always, there was a payback time after I enjoyed myself.

People said so much they didn’t need to say.

“What has happened here?” the Reverend McCorkindale asked sternly.

“Norvel got red-blooded, so I cooled him down.”

This would require the least explanation, I figured.

And the minister instantly believed me, which I had figured, too. I’d seen him give me a thorough look once or twice. I’d had a strong hint he wouldn’t find a man making a pass at me unbelievable.

“Norvel, is this true?”

Norvel saw the writing on the wall (so to speak) and nodded. I’d wondered if his shrewdness would overcome his anger.

“Brother Norvel, we’ll have a talk later in my study, after the meeting.”

Again, Norvel nodded.

“Now, let me help you up and out of here so Sister Lily can complete her work,” said McCorkindale in that rich voice with its hypnotic cadence.

In a minute, I had the large kitchen to myself.

As I searched for napkins, I decided that Norvel’s drinking couldn’t have escaped the overly observant Pardon Albee, since he saw Norvel at the apartments, too, as well as at church here. I wondered if Pardon had threatened Norvel with exposure, as I had done. Norvel would be a natural as Pardon’s murderer. As a janitor, he might even be more likely to notice my cart as it sat by the curb on Tuesdays, and thus more likely to remember it when he needed to transport something bulky.

I grew fonder and fonder of that idea, without really believing it. Norvel is disgusting, and it would please me if he was gone from the apartments next door to my house. But I didn’t really think Norvel had the planning ability to dispose of Pardon’s body the way it had been done. Maybe desperation had sharpened his wits.

I put a bowl of artificial sweetener and a bowl of real sugar on the coffee tray. I got out two thermal coffee carafes and poured the perked coffee into them. By the time the board members had all assembled in the small meeting room right next to the fellowship hall, the cups, saucers, small plates, napkins, coffee carafes, and cookie trays had all been arranged on the serving table in the boardroom. I had only to wait until the meeting was over, usually in an hour and a half, to clean up the food things. Then I could go to my martial arts class.

For maybe a quarter of an hour, I straightened the kitchen. It was a good advertisement to do a little extra work and it kept me from being bored. Then I went out into the fellowship hall. The fellowship hall is about forty by twenty, and has tables set up all the way around the sides, with folding chairs pushed under them. The preschool uses the tables all week, and they get dirty, the chairs not evenly aligned, though the teachers carefully train the children to pick up after themselves. I neatened things to my satisfaction, and if I ended up close to the door where the meeting was taking place, well, I was bored. I told myself that like the things I happen to see in people’s homes when I clean, the things I might happen to hear would never be told to another person.

The door to the meeting room had been left ajar to help the air circulation. This time of year, in a windowless room, the air tends to be close. Since I hadn’t brought a book, this would help to amuse me till it was time to clean up.

One of the preschool teachers had mentioned evolution in her class during the course of Dinosaur Week, I gathered after a moment. I tried hard to imagine that as being important, but I just couldn’t. However, the members of the board certainly thought it was just dreadful. I began wondering what enterprising child had turned in the teacher, what message it would send that child if the adult was fired. Brother McCorkindale, as they all addressed him, was for having the teacher in for a dialogue (his term) and proceeding from there; he felt strongly that the woman, whom he described as “God-fearing and dedicated to the children,” should be given a chance to explain and repent.

Board member Lacey Dean Knopp, Deedra Dean’s widowed and remarried mother, felt likewise, though she said sadly that just mentioning evolution had been a bad mistake on the teacher’s part. The six other board members present were all for firing the woman summarily.

“If this is typical of the people we’re hiring, we need to screen our employees more carefully,” said a nasal female voice.

I recognized that voice: It belonged to Jenny O’Hagen, half of a husband-and-wife Yuppie team who managed the local outlet of a nationally franchised restaurant called Bippy’s. Jenny and Tom O’Hagen manage to pack their lives so full of work, appointments, church functions, and phone calling connected to the various civic organizations they join (and they join any that will have them) that they’ve found a perfect way to avoid free time and conversation with each other.

Jenny and Tom live in the ground-floor front apartment at the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, the one right by Pardon Albee’s. Naturally, they don’t have a minute to clean their own apartment, so they are clients of mine. I’m always glad when neither one is home when I’m working. But most often, whichever one has been on the night shift is just getting up when I arrive.

I hadn’t known the O’Hagens belonged to SCC, much less held a position the board, but I might have figured. It was typical of the O’Hagen philosophy that childless Jenny had managed to finagle her way onto the preschool board, since the preschool is the most important one in Shakespeare and the waiting list for it is long. Jenny had probably made an appointment with Tom to conceive a child on October fifteenth, and was putting in her time on the board to ensure that infant a place in the preschool.

Since my clients were involved, I began listening with heightened attention to the heated words flying around the boardroom. Everyone got so excited, I wondered if I should have made decaf instead of regular coffee.

Finally, the board agreed to censure, not fire, the hapless young woman. I lost interest as the agenda moved to more mundane things like the church school’s budget, the medical forms the children had to fill out… yawn. But then I was glad I hadn’t drifted away to clean some more, because another name came up that I knew.

“Now I have to bring up an equally serious matter. And I want to preface it by asking you tonight, in your prayers, to remember our sister Thea Sedaka, who’s under a lot of strain at home right now.”

There was dead silence in the boardroom as the members (and I) waited in breathless anticipation to find out what was happening in the Sedaka household. I felt a curious pang that something important had happened to Marshall and I was having to find out this way.

Brother McCorkindale certainly knew how to use his pauses to good effect. “Thea’s husband is no longer-they have separated. Now, I’m telling you this very personal thing because I want you to take it into account when I tell you that Thea was accused by one of the mothers of one of the little girls in the preschool of slapping that child.”

I sorted through the sentence to arrive at its gist. My eyebrows arched. Slapping children was a great taboo at this preschool-at any preschool, I hoped.

There was a communal gasp of dismay that I could hear clearly.

“That’s much, much worse than mentioning evolution,” Lacey Deene Knopp said sadly. “We just can’t let that go, Joel.”

“Of course not. The welfare of the children in our care has to be our prime concern,” the Reverend McCorkindale said. Though he spoke as though he’d memorized a passage from the school manual, I thought he meant it. “But I have to tell you, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, that Thea is deeply repentant of having even given the child cause to think she was slapping her.”

“She denies it?” Jenny O’Hagen had thought that through before anyone else.

“What Thea says is that the child spoke back to her, not for the first time, but for the seventh or eighth time in one morning. Now, Thea knows part of her job is to endure and correct behavior like that, but since she is under such a particular strain, she lost some of her self-control and tapped the child on the cheek to get her to pay attention. Like this, is how she showed me.”

Of course, I couldn’t see or hear the Reverend McCorkindale’s demonstration.

“Were there any witnesses?” Jenny asked.

I decided Jenny had potential as an interrogator.

“No, unfortunately, Jenny. Thea and the child were alone in the room at the time. Thea had kept the child in from recess to discuss improving her behavior.”

There was a silence while presumably the board members mulled this over.

“I think we have to call her on the carpet, Joel,” rumbled the voice of one of the older men on the board. “Corporal punishment is a choice for the parents, not for the teachers at this school.”

I nodded.

“So you want her to keep her job?” Joel McCorkindale inquired pointedly. “We have to reach a decision; she’s waiting to hear. I must remind you that Thea is a steady church-goer and she is in a very stressful situation. The parents of the little girl have said they would abide by our decision.”

They practically begged McCorkindale to drive directly over to Thea’s house and tell her all was forgiven-provided she didn’t repeat the offense.

The minister didn’t have any more bombshells to drop, and the meeting was clearly winding down. I took care to be out of sight in the kitchen when the board members emerged. It crossed my mind that Joel McCorkindale would come in the kitchen to ask more about my confrontation with Norvel, but after the board members had gone, I heard his steps ascend to his office on the second floor.

As I washed the dishes and sealed the plastic bags containing the leftover cookies, I found myself wishing that I’d stayed in the kitchen during the whole meeting. I would see Marshall Sedaka in minutes, and knowing something about his private life that he himself had not chosen to tell me made me uncomfortable. I glanced down at my big waterproof watch, then hurriedly wrung out the washcloth and folded it neatly over the sink divider. It was already 6:40.

Since I had only minutes to change into my gi, I was less than pleased to see Claude Friedrich leaning against his official car, apparently waiting for me. He’d pulled the car right up to the curb in front of my house. Was that supposed to fluster me?

“Hello, Miss Bard,” he rumbled. His arms were crossed over his chest in a relaxed way. He was out of uniform, dressed casually in a green-and-brown-striped shirt and khakis.

“I’m in a real hurry now,” I said, trying not to sound snappy, since that would imply he had succeeded in upsetting me.

“Isn’t one of the advantages of a small town supposed to be the slower pace?” he asked lazily.

I stopped in my tracks. Something bad was coming.

“Shakespeare is quieter than, say, Memphis,” he said.

I felt a sharp pain in my head. Though I knew it was emotional, it hurt as much as a migraine. Then I felt a wave of rage so strong that it kept me up straight.

“Don’t you talk about that,” I said, meaning it so much, my voice sounded strange. “Don’t bring it up.”

I went into my house without looking at him again, and I thought if he knocked on the door, he would have to arrest me, since I would do my best to hurt him badly. I leaned against the door, my heart pounding in my chest. I heard his car pull away. My hands were sweating. I had to wash them over and over before I pulled off my cleaning clothes and put on my spotless white gi pants. The top and belt were already rolled up in a little bag; I would just wear a white sleeveless T-shirt to Body Time and then put on the rest of my gi. I put my hand in the bag and touched the belt, the green belt that meant more to me than anything. Then I looked at the clock and went out the kitchen door to the carport.

I pulled into the Body Time parking lot just at 7:30, the latest I’d ever been. I pushed through the glass doors and hurried through the main room, the weights room. At this hour of the evening, only a few diehards were still working with the free weights or machines. I knew them enough to nod to.

I went quickly through the door at the back of the weights room, passing through a corridor along which doors lead to the office, the bathrooms, the massage room, the tanning-bed room, and a storage closet. At the end of the corridor are closed double doors, and I felt a pang of dismay. If the doors were closed, class had begun.

I turned the knob carefully, trying to be quiet. On the threshold, I bowed, my bag tucked under my arm. When I straightened, I saw the class was already in shiko dachi-legs spraddled, faces calm, arms crossed over their chests. A few eyes rolled in my direction. I went to one of the chairs by the wall, pulled off my shoes and socks, and faced the wall to finish putting on my gi, as was proper. I wound the obi around my waist and managed the knot in record time, then ran silently to my place in line, second. Raphael Roundtree and Janet Shook had unobtrusively shifted sideways to make room when they saw me enter, and I was grateful.

I bowed briefly to Marshall without meeting his eyes, then sank into position. After a few seconds of regulating my breathing, I peeked up at Marshall. He raised his dark eyebrows slightly. Marshall always makes the most of his quarter-Oriental heritage by working hard on inscrutability; his triangular face, its complexion somewhere between the pink of Caucasian and the ivory of Asian, remained calm. But the bird-wing eyebrows said volumes-surprise, disappointment, disapproval.

Shiko dachi is a position very like sitting on air, and it is painful and demanding even after long practice. The best way to get through it is to concentrate on something else, at least for me. But I was too upset to go into meditation. Instead, I scanned the line of fellow sufferers reflected in the mirror lining the opposite wall.

Newcomers are always at the end of the line. The newest man’s head was bowed, his legs trembling-so probably the class had been in position for a minute and a half or two minutes. I hadn’t missed much.

After a few seconds, I began to relax. The pain required my attention and the anxiety of my encounter with the policeman began to fade. I started my meditation on the kata we would practice later. Ignoring the ache in my quadriceps, I visualized the various moves that made up geiki sei ni bon, I reminded myself of mistakes I habitually made, and I anticipated further refining the grace and power of the kata, a series of martial arts strikes, blocks, and kicks woven together in what becomes almost a dance.

“Three minutes,” said the first-in-line student, a huge black man named Raphael Roundtree. His watch was strapped to his obi.

“Another minute,” said Marshall, and I could feel the dismay, though no one made a sound. “Be sure your thighs are parallel with the floor.”

There was a general ripple of movement down the line as students corrected their stance. I stayed rock-still; my shiko dachi was as perfect as I could make it. My feet were the correct distance apart, pointing outward at the correct angle; my back was straight.

I emerged from my reverie for a moment to glance down the line in the mirror. The last-in-line man was in serious trouble. Though he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sweat was streaming down his face. His legs were trembling violently. With some amazement, I recognized my next-door neighbor, Carlton Cockroft, who had so generously let me know he’d seen me out walking in the night.

I shut my eyes and tried to refocus on the kata, but I was too full of surprise and conjecture.

When Raphael called, “Four minutes,” it was as much relief to me as it was to the rest of the class.

We all stood, shifting from leg to leg to shake off the pain.

“Lily! Stretches!” Marshall said, his gaze just grazing me as it swept down the line. He retreated to a corner, where he watched us all for the slightest sign of slacking.

I bowed and ran to face the rest of the class. There were only eight that night. Janet and I were the only women, and we were much of an age, though I thought Janet might be thirty to my thirty-one. The men ranged from twenty to perhaps fifty-five.

“Kiostke!” I said sharply to bring them to attention. “Rai,” I instructed, bowing to them. They bowed to me in return, Carlton only a beat behind. He was keeping a sharp eye on the man in line next to him, picking up on his cues. I wondered again why he was here. But the class was waiting for my directions, and I extended my right leg, balancing carefully on my left. “Big toe up… and down…” I said. A few minutes later, I was concluding with lunges to alternating sides, my hands extended to the front for balance.

I bowed to Marshall and ran back to my place.

“Teacher’s pet,” hissed Raphael out of the side of his mouth. “Late, too.” Raphael and I pretty much alternate leading the stretches. Raphael is a high school math teacher, so I figure karate gives him a chance to blow off steam.

“First time,” I whispered defensively, and saw his teeth flash in a grin.

Marshall told us to take a short break, and after a gulp of water from the fountain in the weights room, I strolled over to Carlton. He looked overdone, rather than edible. His face was red and his hair was wet with sweat. I’d never seen him approach tousled, much less disheveled.

Raphael drifted up behind me before I could say anything to my neighbor, and I introduced them. I consider Raphael a friend, although I never see him outside of class. Now I might get to know Carlton in the same way, after living next door to him for four years. He had apparently rethought something after our prickly conversation.

“So what made you decide to come to class, Carlton?” Raphael was asking with open curiosity. It was obvious Carlton was no workout buff.

“I keep Marshall’s books,” Carlton explained, which was news to me. “And I’ve seen Lily heading out for class for four years now, since I bought the house next door to her. She always looks like she is happy to be going. I called Marshall today and he said to give it a shot. What comes next? I barely survived that shigga-whatever.”

“Next,” said Raphael, with an openly sadistic grin, “comes calisthenics.”

“More?” Carlton was horrified.

I looked up at Raphael. We began laughing simultaneously.

I was still lacing up my shoes when the last class member left. I’d deliberately dawdled so I could talk to Marshall without asking him to preselect a time, which would have upset the balance of whatever relationship we have.

“Late tonight,” Marshall commented, folding his gi top carefully and putting it in his gym bag. In his white T-shirt, his arms bare, the warm ivory tinge to his skin was more apparent. Marshall’s grandmother had been Chinese and his grandfather American, he’d told Raphael in my hearing one night. Aside from his skin tone and his straight black hair and dark eyes, it would be hard to tell. He is a little older than I am-about thirty-five, I figure-and only three inches taller. But he is stronger and more dangerous than anyone I’ve met.

“Police,” I said, by way of explanation.

“What-about Pardon?” Marshall gave me his attention.

I shrugged.

“Something was bothering you tonight,” he said.

Marshall had never said anything more personal than “Good kick,” or “Keep your hand and wrist in line with your arm,” or “You’ve really worked on those biceps.” Because of our long camaraderie, I felt obliged to answer.

“A couple of things,” I said slowly. We were sitting on the floor about four feet apart. Marshall had one shoe on and was loosening the laces on the other, and he slipped it on and tied it while I was pulling on my second sock.

Marshall crossed his legs, wrapping them together in a yoga position, and pushed against the floor with his hands. He was suspended off the floor, his arms and hands taking all his weight. He “walked” over to me like that, and I tried to smile, but I was too uncomfortable with our new situation. We’d never had a personal conversation.

“So talk,” he said.

I took as long as I could lacing up my shoe, trying to decide what to say. I looked over at him while he was distracted by the faint sound of the telephone ringing in his office. It cut off after the second ring; one of the employees had answered it.

Marshall’s face is markedly triangular, with narrow lips and a nose that has been flattened a few times. He has a distinctly catlike look, but he doesn’t have a cat’s sleekness. He is built much more like a bulldog.

Well, I should either talk or tell him I’m not going to, I thought. He was waiting patiently, but he was waiting.

“Was Pardon Albee your partner?” I said finally.

“Yes.”

“So what happens now?”

“We had a contract. If one of us died, the other got the whole business. Pardon didn’t have anyone else to consider. I had Thea, but Pardon didn’t want to deal with her. So he carried a heavy insurance policy on me, and Thea would get that money if anything happened to me, instead of getting a share of the business.”

“So… you own Body Time now.”

He nodded. His eyes were fixed on me. I was used to being on the dispensing, rather than the receiving, end of fixed stares, and it was an effort not to fidget. Also, Marshall was a good bit closer to me than people were in the habit of getting.

“That’s good,” I said, with an effort.

He nodded again.

“Have the police talked to you yet about Pardon?” I asked him.

“I’m going to go talk to Dolph Stafford tomorrow at the police station. I didn’t want them to come here.”

“Sure.” I thought I could hardly bring up Thea; Thea’s slapping the little girl was something I wasn’t supposed to know, though if I knew the Shakespeare grapevine, everyone in town was hearing some version of the incident by now. And I couldn’t just blurt out a question as to why Marshall and Thea had separated.

The air was getting pretty thick with something, and I was feeling increasingly nervous.

“So… the other thing?” he asked quietly.

I glanced over at him quickly, then back down at my hands, fidgeting with the damn shoelaces. “Nothing else I can talk about,” I said dismissively.

“I’ve left Thea.”

“Oh.”

We stared at each other a little more, and I felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in my throat.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“What? Why what?” I knew I sounded stupid, but I just couldn’t seem to concentrate. It was taking an effort to keep still. A private conversation, physical closeness, personal talk-these are unnerving things.

Marshall shook his head. “Nothing, Lily. Can I ask you something in return?”

I nodded rather warily. I wondered if we looked like two of those wooden birds on the stand, bobbing at each other.

“Where’d you get the scars?” he asked gently.