Shakespeare’s Trollop

Chapter Nine

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

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

“You busy?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

“What’d you tell them?”

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

“Naughty, naughty.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I gave them a list.”

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

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

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

“Anna-Lise Puck.”

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

“Should she be talking about that?”

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

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

“She thinks she has job security.”

“Why?”

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

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

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

I looked a question.

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

Poor Lacey. I wondered if she knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Becca shrugged. “I have no idea.”

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

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

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

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

“Maybe.”

“They hauled out lots of sheets.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Did you visit him often?”

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

“Yes, I know.”

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

“You specifically?”

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

“How did she die?”

“She was-.”

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

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

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

“Miss Bard,” she said crisply.

Marta stepped in with Deputy Emanuel on her heels.

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

Of course, they did.

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

I raised my hand, palm up. What?

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A hard punch,” I said blankly.

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

And the shoe dropped.

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

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

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

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

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

No one wants to be scared of her cleaning lady.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did all this boil down to?

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

That was all.

And those same conditions applied to lots of other people.

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

Not yet.

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

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

A Bible verse flashed across my mind: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The Book of Matthew, seemed like. I thought about that as I strode past Shakespeare Combined Church. After I’d been raped and scarred so horribly on my abdomen and chest, while the resulting terrible infection laid waste to my reproductive organs, my parents’ minister had come to see me in the hospital. I’d sent him away. My parents had thought, maybe still thought, that I’d refused the consolation of religion because I was raging at fate. But it wasn’t that I was asking, “Why me?” That’s futility. Why not me? Why should I be exempt from suffering because I was a believer?

What had enraged me to the point of transforming my life was the question of what would happen to the men who had done such terrible things to me. My hatred was so strong, so adamant, that it required all my emotional energy. I’d shut down the parts of me that wanted to reach out to others, to cry about the pain and the fear, to be horrified because I’d killed a man. I’d made my choice, the choice to live, but it wasn’t always a comfortable choice. I was convinced it wasn’t the godly choice.

Now, pausing at the four-way stop a block away from the modest Shakespeare hospital, I shook my head. I always ran up against the same wall when I thought of my situation then; chained to a bed in a rotting shack, waiting for the man who’d abducted me to come claim me again, and holding a gun with one bullet. I could have shot myself; God wouldn’t have liked that. I could have shot my abductor, and did; killing him wasn’t good, either. I’d never thought of a third option. But in the years since then, from time to time I’d thought I might have been better off using the bullet on myself.

At that moment, in that shack, the look on his face had been worth it.

“What else could I have done?” I whispered out loud as I threaded through the cars in the hospital parking lot.

I still had no answer. I wondered what Joel McCorkindale would think of to say. I knew I’d never ask him.

Visiting hours were almost over, but the volunteer at the front desk seemed quite happy to give me Joe C’s room number. Our old hospital, always in danger of closing, had been expanded and updated to suit modern medicine, and the result was a maze hard to decipher even with a floor plan. But I found the right room. There were people standing out in the corridor, talking intently in low, hushed hospital voices; Bobo, his mother, Beanie, and Calla Prader. If I had learned the family tree correctly, Calla was a first cousin of Bobo’s father, once removed.

I was not ready to see Bobo again and almost spun on my heel to walk away until they’d left, but Calla spied me and was on me before I could blink.

I don’t expect much from people, but I did assume she was going to thank me for saving Joe C from the flames. Instead, Calla raised her hand to slap me in the face.

I don’t allow that.

Before her hand could reach my cheek, I’d gripped her wrist and held her arm rigid. We froze in a tense tableau. Then the fury seemed to drain out of Calla, taking her energy with it. The rush of angry color left her face, and even her eyes went pale and empty. When I was sure the purpose had left her, I released her wrist, and her arm dropped, dangling down by her side as if her bones had gone soft.

I looked over Calla’s shoulder at Beanie and raised my eyebrows. It seemed apparent to me that Calla had just now found out about Joe C’s will, and I wondered once again where she’d been when the fire started.

“I’m so sorry,” Beanie said, mortified almost beyond speech. “Our whole family owes you thanks, Lily.” And that must have choked her, considering the conversation we’d had when she’d terminated my employment. “Calla is just… beside herself, aren’t you, honey?”

Calla’s eyes had never left my face.

“Did you know, too?” she asked me in a low voice.

I couldn’t complete that sentence mentally. I shook my head at her.

“Did you know that he’s left me nothing? Did you know, too? Everyone in town seems to know that but me.”

Normally I tell nothing but the truth, though I don’t throw it around easily. But I could see that it was a good time to lie.

“No,” I said, in a voice just as low as hers. “That makes him an old bastard, doesn’t it?”

For all the violence of her feelings, that word shocked her back into herself.

Then she smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It wasn’t a middle-aged, church-going, rural-Arkansas-lady smile. Calla’s smile was delighted and mean and just a wee bit triumphant.

“Old bastards,” she said clearly, “have to cope for themselves, don’t they?”

I smiled back. “I guess they do.”

Calla Prader marched out of that hospital with a straight back and that happy, nasty smile still on her face.

Beanie stared after her, nonplussed. Beanie is in her midforties, an athletic, attractive woman whose most admirable trait is her love for her children.

“Thank you for handling that so well, Lily,” Beanie said uncertainly. She was wearing a beige and white linen dress, and against her tan skin and brunette hair, the dress looked wonderful. Bobo’s mother’s expensive exterior hid a selfish heart and a shallow intelligence, partially concealed by good manners.

I could feel Bobo hovering on my left, but could not bring myself to look up at his face.

“Thanks, Lily,” he echoed.

But his voice reminded his mother of his presence, and she turned on him like a snake about to strike.

“And you, young man,” she began, sounding happy to have found a focus for her excited feelings, “You were the one who let Calla know about the will.”

“I didn’t know she was standing behind me,” Bobo said plaintively, sounding about fourteen. “And anyway, now that we know, isn’t it only honest to tell her?”

That stopped Beanie’s anger like a dash of water; that question of morality, and the fact that she’d recollected that I was still standing there listening to all this family turmoil.

“Thank you for saving Uncle Joe C,” Beanie said more formally. “The police tell me that you saw someone in his yard before the fire started?”

“Yes.”

“But you couldn’t see who it was?”

“Too dark.”

“Probably some juvenile delinquent. These kids today will do anything, anything they see on television.”

I shrugged. Beanie had always reduced me to gestures and monosyllables.

“But it bothers me that it was cigarettes,” Beanie said, and then she sounded as if she were talking to a real person, me, instead of The Help.

I knew this from Bobo, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be wise to reveal that. “The fire was set with cigarettes?” That was expansive and unrevealing enough.

“Joe C says he didn’t have any. Of course, the fire marshal thought he might have set it himself, smoking in the living room. But Joe C says no. Would you like to go in and talk to him?”

“Just to see how he’s doing.”

“Bobo, take Lily in, please.” It might have been framed as a question, but it was clearly a demand.

“Lily,” Bobo said, holding open the wide door to Joe C’s room. As I went by him, he lay his hand on my shoulder briefly, but I kept right on walking and kept my eyes ahead.

Joe C looked like he was a thousand years old. With the liveliness knocked out of him, he seemed like a pitiful old man. Until he focused on me and snapped, “You could have moved a little faster, girl! I got my slippers scorched!”

I hadn’t spelled it out to myself, but I suddenly realized that now that Joe C didn’t have a house, I didn’t work for him. I felt my lips curl up. I bent down to him. “Maybe I should have just walked on by,” I said very softly, but he heard every word. His face told me.

Then I squirmed inwardly. Just as his trembling jaw had meant me to. No matter how mean he was, Joe C was very old and very frail, and he would not let me forget that, would trade on it as much as he could. But I could walk away, and that was what I chose to do.

I walked away from the old man, and from his great-nephew, and I closed my heart against them both.