Shakespeare’s Trollop

Chapter Two

Camille Emerson would hate me later for not telling her my little news item, but I just didn’t want to talk about Deedra’s death. Camille was on her way out, anyway, a list clutched in her plump hand.

“I remembered to put the clean sheets out this time,” she said with a touch of pride. I nodded, not willing to give a grown woman a pat on the back for doing a simple thing like putting out clean sheets for me to change. Camille Emerson was cheerful and untidy. Though I didn’t dislike her-in fact, I felt glad to work for her-Camille was trying to warm up our relationship into some kind of facsimile of friendship, and I found that as irritating as the employers who treated me like a slave.

“See you later!” Camille said finally, giving up on a response. After a second I said, “Good-bye.” It was lucky I was in a mood to work hard, since the Emersons had made more than their usual mess since my last visit. There were only four of them (Camille, her husband, Cooper, their two boys) but each Emerson was determined to live in the center of chaos. After spending fifteen minutes one day trying to sort out the different sizes of sheets I needed, I’d suggested to Camille that she leave the clean sheets on each bed, ready for me to change. That was much better than extending my time there, since Mondays were always busy for me, and Camille had blanched at the thought of paying me more. We were both happy with the result; that is, when Camille remembered her part.

My cell phone rang while I was drying the newly scrubbed sink in the hall bathroom.

“Yes?” I said cautiously. I still wasn’t used to carrying this phone.

“Hi.”

“Jack.” I could feel myself smiling. I grabbed my mop and cleaning materials in their caddy, awkwardly because of the telephone, and moved down the hall to the kitchen.

“Where are you?”

“Camille Emerson’s.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got news.” Jack sounded half excited, half uneasy.

“What?”

“I’m catching a plane in an hour.”

“For?” He was supposed to be coming to stay with me tonight.

“I’m working on a fraud case. The main suspect left last night for Sacramento.”

I was even more miserable than I’d been after finding Deedra’s body. I’d looked forward to Jack’s visit so much. I’d even changed my sheets and come home from the gym early this morning to make sure my own little house was spanking clean. The disappointment bit into me.

“Lily?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have to work,” I said, my voice flat and even. “I’m just…” Angry, unhappy, empty; all of the above.

“I’m going to miss you, too.”

“Will you?” I asked, my voice as low as if there were someone there to hear me. “Will you think of me when you’re alone in your hotel room?”

He allowed as how he would.

We talked a little longer. Though I got satisfaction out of realizing that Jack really would regret he wasn’t with me, the end result was the same; I wouldn’t see him for a week, at the very least, and two weeks was more realistic.

After we hung up I realized I hadn’t told him about finding Deedra dead. I wasn’t going to phone him back. Our good-byes had been said. He’d met Deedra, but that was about the extent of his knowledge of her… as far as I knew. He’d lived across the hall from her before I’d met him, I recalled with a surge of uneasiness. But I channeled it aside, unwilling to worry about a faint possibility that Jack had enjoyed Deedra’s offerings before he’d met me. I shrugged. I’d tell him about her death the next time we talked.

I tugged the crammed garbage bag out of the can, yanked the ties together in a knot, and braced myself as Camille Emerson staggered through the kitchen door, laden with grocery bags and good will.

I was late for my appointment with Marta Schuster, but I didn’t care. I’d parked my car in my own carport before striding next door to the eight-unit apartment building, noticing as I threw open the big front door that there were two sheriff’s department vehicles parked at the curb. I was in a bad mood, a truculent mood-not the frame of mind best for dealing with law-enforcement officials.

“Take a breath,” advised a cool, familiar, voice.

It was good advice, and I stopped to take it.

“Marta Schuster and her storm trooper are up there,” Becca Whitley went on, stepping from her apartment doorway at the back of the hall to stand by the foot of the stairs.

Becca Whitley was a wet dream about three years past its prime. She had very long blond hair, very bright blue eyes, strong (if miniature) features, and cone-shaped breasts thrusting out from an athletic body. Becca, who’d lived in Shakespeare for about five months, had inherited the apartment building from her uncle, Pardon Albee, and she lived in his old apartment.

I’d never thought Becca would last even this long in little Shakespeare; she’d told me she’d moved here from Dallas, and she seemed like a city kind of woman. I’d been sure she’d put the building up for sale and take off for some urban center. She’d surprised me by staying.

And she’d taken my place as the highest-ranking student in Marshall’s class.

But there were moments I felt a connection to Becca, and this was one of them. We’d begun a tentative sort of friendship.

“How long have they been up there?” I asked.

“Hours.” Becca looked up the stairs as if, through the floors and doors, she could watch what the sheriff was so busy doing. “Did they tell you to come?”

“Yes.”

“What about Marlon?”

“He was at the crime scene bawling his eyes out.”

“Ew.” Becca scrunched her nose in distaste. “He’s the one been seeing her so hot and heavy.”

I nodded. I wondered how well the sheriff would investigate her own brother.

“Do you have your key?” Becca asked.

“I gave it to them.”

“Good move,” she said. “They got my copy of her key, too.”

I shifted from foot to foot. “I better go up. I’m supposed to tell them if anything’s missing.”

“See you tonight,” she called after me, and I lifted my hand in acknowledgment.

Deedra’s apartment was the right rear, just above Becca’s. It overlooked the paved rear parking lot, not an inspiring view. It held a carport divided into eight stalls, a Dumpster, and not much else. I wasn’t sure who, besides Deedra, lived on the second floor now, but I’d known many of the people who’d passed through. Claude Fried-rich, the chief of police and a friend of mine, had moved from the second floor to the first after a leg injury. I figured he and Deedra had been the in the building the longest. Generally, the eight units of the so-called Shakespeare Garden Apartments stayed full because the units were a nice size and fairly reasonable. I was pretty sure Becca had gone up on the rent as the leases ran out, because I had a faint memory of Deedra complaining, but it hadn’t been an outrageous increase.

I knocked on Deedra’s door. The same tall officer answered, the guy who’d been at the crime scene. He filled up the doorway; after a long second, he stepped aside so I could enter. He was lucky looking at me was a free activity, or he would be broke by now.

“Sheriff’s in there,” he said, pointing toward Deedra’s bedroom. But instead of following his hint, I stood in the center of the living room and looked around. I’d been in to clean the past Friday, and today was Monday, so the place still looked good; Deedra was careless with herself, but she had always been fairly tidy with everything else.

The furniture seemed to be in the same spots, and all the cushions were straight. Her television and VCR were untouched; rows of videotapes sat neat and square on their little bookcase by the television. The brand-new CD player was on the stand by the television. All Deedra’s magazines were in the neat stack I’d arranged a few days before, except for a new issue left open on the coffee table in front of the couch, where Deedra usually sat when she watched television. Her bills were piled in the shallow basket where she’d tossed them.

“Notice anything different?” The tall deputy was standing by the door and keeping quiet, a point in his favor.

I shook my head and resumed my examination.

“Emanuel,” he said suddenly.

Was this some kind of religious statement? My eyebrows drew in and I regarded him with some doubt.

“Clifton Emanuel.”

After a distinct pause, I understood. “You’re Clifton Emanuel,” I said tentatively. He nodded.

I didn’t need to know his name, but he wanted me to know it. Maybe he was a celebrity freak, True Crime Division, Famous Victims Subsection. Like Sharon Tate, but alive.

Maybe he was just being polite.

I was relieved when the sheriff stuck her head out of Deedra’s bedroom and jerked it back in a motion that told me I’d better join her.

“Everything in the living room okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What about this room?”

I stood at the foot of Deedra’s bed and turned around slowly. Deedra had loved jewelry, and it was everywhere; necklaces, earrings, bracelets, an anklet or two. The impression was that the jewelry was strewn around, but if you looked closer, you would notice that the backs were on the earrings and the earrings were in pairs. The necklaces were lain straight and fastened so they wouldn’t tangle. That was normal. Some of the drawers were not completely shut-there again, that was typical Deedra. The bed was made quite tidily; it was queen-size, with a high, carved headboard that dominated the room. I lifted the corner of the flowered bedspread and peered beneath it.

“Different sheets than I put on last Friday,” I said.

“Does that mean something?”

“Means someone slept in it with her since then.”

“Did she ever wash the sheets and put them right back on the bed?”

“She never washed anything, especially sheets. She had seven sets. I did her laundry.”

Marta Schuster looked startled. Then she looked disgusted. “So if I count the sheet sets in the laundry hamper, I’ll come up with the number of times she entertained since last Friday morning?”

I sighed, hating knowing these things about someone else, much less revealing them. But it was the nature of my job. “Yes,” I said wearily.

“Did she have a video camera? I noticed all the tapes out there.”

“Yes, she did. She kept it up there, on the closet shelf.” I pointed, and Marta fetched. She opened the soft black case, removed the camera, turned it on, and opened the tape bay. Empty.

“Who paid you to clean this place?” she asked out of the blue.

“I thought we’d covered that. Her mother, Lacey, gave Deedra the money so she could afford me.”

“Deedra get along with her mother?”

“Yes.”

“What about her stepfather?”

I considered my answer. I’d heard a fight between the two so intense I’d considered intervening, maybe three or four months ago. I didn’t like Jerrell Knopp. But it was one thing not to like him, another thing to tell the sheriff words he’d spoken in anger.

“They weren’t close,” I said cautiously.

“Ever see them fight?”

I turned away, began putting Deedra’s earrings into her special compartmented box.

“Stop,” the sheriff said sharply.

I dropped the pair I was holding as if they’d burst into flames. “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head at my own error. “It was automatic.” I hoped Marta Schuster stayed diverted.

“She always have this much jewelry lying around?”

“Yes.” I was relieved she’d asked a question so easily answered. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at Deedra’s chest of drawers, wondering if Marta Schuster had already found the pictures. I wondered whether mentioning them would help in some way.

“They’re in my pocket,” she said quietly.

My eyes met hers. “Good.”

“What do you know about her sex life?”

I could see that this was supposed to signal a tradeoff. My mouth twisted in distaste. “Your brother was mighty interested in Deedra, from what I could see. Ask him.”

Marta Schuster’s hard, square hand shot out and gripped my wrist. “He’s just the latest in her long string,” she said, her jaw as rigid as the grip of her hand. “He’s so new to her that he’s dumb enough to be sorry she’s dead.”

I looked down at her fingers and took slow breaths. I met her eyes again. “Let go of me,” I told her in a very careful voice.

Keeping her eyes on my face, she did. Then she took a step away. But she said, “I’m waiting.”

“You already know that Deedra was promiscuous. If a man was willing, she was, with very few exceptions.”

“Name some names.”

“No. It would take too long. Besides, they were almost always gone when I got here.” That was my first lie.

“What about the exceptions? She turn anyone down?”

I thought that over. “That kid who worked at the loading dock over at Winthrop Lumber and Supply,” I said reluctantly.

“Danny Boyce? Yeah, he’s out on parole now. Who else?”

“Dedford Jinks.”

“With the city police?” she asked, incredulity written all over her face. “He must be in his fifties.”

“So he doesn’t want sex?” What universe did Marta Schuster inhabit?

“He’s married,” Marta protested. Then she flushed red. “Forget I said that.”

I shrugged, tired of being in this room with this woman. “He was separated from his wife. But Deedra didn’t go with married men.”

The sheriff looked openly skeptical. “Anyone else?”

I actually had a helpful memory. “She’d had trouble with someone calling her.” Deedra had mentioned that to me the last time I’d cleaned the apartment, just this past Friday. She’d been running late for work, as she all too often did. “Last Friday, she told me that she was getting calls at two or three in the morning. Really nasty calls from a guy… somehow disguising his voice, talking about sexual torture.”

I could see Deedra, sitting on the end of the very bed we stood by now, easing up her pantyhose and sliding her narrow feet into brown low-heeled pumps. Deedra’s head, crowned by its sexily tousled and newly red hair, had been bent to her task, but Deedra kept her head tucked quite a bit anyway to minimize her sharply receding chin, without a doubt her worst feature. She’d stood and scanned herself in the mirror, tugging at the top of the beige suit she thought appropriate for her job in the courthouse. A typical Deedra selection, the suit was just a bit too tight, a smidge too short, and a half-inch too low in the neckline.

Deedra had leaned over to peer into the mirror to apply her lipstick. Her dresser, with its triple mirror, was literally covered with bottles and plastic cases of makeup. Deedra was a virtuoso with foundation, rouge, and eye shadow. She’d had a real gift for it, for using cosmetics to make her look her very best with every outfit she wore. She’d studied the human face and the alterations and illusions a skilled applicator could effect.

I could still see how Deedra had looked as she’d half-turned to tell me what the caller had proposed to do to her; her lower lip a glossy peach and her upper lip bare, her clothes and hair and demeanor just a careful step away from floozy.

“Did she say who she thought he was, the man calling her?”

I shook my head. “Can you check her phone records?” I asked.

“It’ll take a while, but we’ll get ‘em,” Marta said.

Her deputy stuck his head into the room. “I’ve finished searching the bathroom,” Emanuel said, his eyes scanning us curiously. “What now?”

“Extra bedroom,” the sheriff said. “And bag the sheets on the top of the washer.”

His head vanished.

“What about him?” I asked.

“What?” she said, as if she was about to get angry.

“Did he know Deedra?”

Her face changed, then, and I knew she was involved with Clifton Emanuel to some degree.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ll find out.”

Janet Shook aimed a kick at my stomach, and I arched back to dodge it. My hand shot out and gripped her ankle, and then I had her.

“Stop!” called a commanding voice. “Okay, what are you going to do now, Janet?” our sensei continued. He was leaning against the mirrored wall, his arms folded across his chest.

We had frozen in position, Janet balancing easily on one foot, my fingers still circling her ankle. The seated class, looking like a strange nursery school in their loose white gis, studied the problem.

Janet looked grim. “Land on my butt, looks like,” she conceded, after a moment’s evaluation. I heard a couple of snorts of laughter.

“Lily, what would you do next, now that you’re in control of the situation?” Marshall’s faintly Asian face gave me no hint of the best answer.

“I’d keep going up on the ankle,” I told him, “like so.” I lifted Janet’s right foot another inch, and the knee of her supporting left leg began to buckle.

Marshall nodded briefly. He faced the other class members. Like the rest of us, Marshall was barefoot and wearing his gi. Its snowy whiteness, broken only by the black belt and the fist patch on his chest, emphasized the ivory of his skin. “How could Janet have avoided this situation?” he asked the motley group sitting against the mirrored wall. “Or having gotten into it, how can she get out?”

Raphael Roundtree, the largest and darkest man in the class, said, “She should’ve drawn her kick back quicker.” I let go of Janet, though Marshall hadn’t told me to, because she was beginning to have trouble keeping her balance. Janet looked relieved to have both feet on the floor, and she nodded to me by way of saying thanks.

“She shouldn’t have kicked at all,” Becca Whitley rebutted.

“What should Janet have done instead?” Marshall asked her, a sweep of his hand inviting Becca to show us. She got up in one fluid movement. Becca often braided her hair for class-and she’d done so tonight-but she didn’t lay off the makeup. Her toenails were bright scarlet, which for some reason struck me as improper for karate… though scarlet toenails didn’t seem to bother Marshall, and it was his class.

Marshall Sedaka, our sensei, was also the owner of Body Time, where we were holding the class in the big aerobics room. I’d known Marshall for years. At one time, he’d been more to me than a friend. Now he straightened and moved closer to get a better view.

Janet moved away and Becca took her place, lifting and cocking her leg slowly so everyone could see what she meant to do.

“So,” she said, her narrow face intent, “I kick, like so…” Her foot began moving toward my abdomen, as Janet’s had. “Then Lily takes a little hop back and her hand reaches for my ankle. That’s what she did with Janet.”

I obliged, imitating my movements of moments ago.

“But,” continued Becca cheerfully, “that was a feint. I snap it back and aim it higher this time.” Her leg floated back toward her, bent double at the knee, and lashed out again at my head. Becca was one of the few people in the class who could even attempt a head kick with any hope of success. “See,” Becca pointed out, “she’s leaning to reach my ankle, so her head’s a little lower than usual.”

I held still, with some effort, while Becca’s foot with its bright nails flashed toward my face. Becca pulled the kick about an inch from my nose. I exhaled, I hoped silently. Becca winked at me.

“Good move, Becca,” Marshall said. “But not an option open to many of the people in this class. Carlton, what would you do?”

Carlton was my next-door neighbor. He owned a little house almost identical to mine on Track Street, so if I stood facing my house, his would be on the right, and the Shakespeare Garden Apartments slightly uphill to my left. With his thick dark hair and large brown eyes, Carlton, single and self-supporting, was a real honeypot to Shakespeare’s buzzing little hive of single women. Carlton went from one to the other, dating one for a month or two, then another; he wasn’t as reckless as Deedra by a long shot, but he wasn’t as careful as I was, either. In karate, Carlton was too slow and cautious, to his detriment. Maybe that caution, that deliberation, came from his being an accountant.

“I wouldn’t kick at Lily at all,” Carlton said frankly, and Janet and Raphael laughed. “I’m heavier than she is, and that’s my only advantage with her. I’d try to strike her harder and hope that would take her out of the fight.”

“Come try.” Marshall returned to his spot against the wall.

With a marked reluctance, my neighbor scrambled to his feet and approached me slowly, while Becca folded gracefully to the floor with the rest of the students. I dropped into my fighting stance, knees slightly bent, one side turned toward Carlton.

“I’m supposed to stand and let him try to hit me?” I asked Marshall.

“No, give him some trouble,” Marshall directed, so Carlton and I began circling each other. I moved in a sort of smooth, sideways glide that kept me evenly balanced. My hands were up, fisted and ready. Carlton was a lot taller and heavier than I was, so I kept reminding myself not to discount him as an opponent. What I didn’t allow for was the macho factor and Carlton’s inexperience. Carlton was determined to best me, and inexperienced enough to gauge his strike wrong.

He struck at my ribs, seiken, with his left fist, and I blocked him, my right forearm coming up under his striking arm to deflect it upward. I didn’t propel his arm sideways enough-definitely my mistake-so instead of his punch landing in the air to my right, as I’d intended, his momentum carried him forward and his fist smacked my jaw.

The next thing I knew, I was down on the mat and Carlton was leaning over me, looking absolutely horror-struck.

“Dammit, Lily, say something!” he said frantically, and then Marshall shoved him aside and took his place.

He peered at my eyes, asked me several interesting questions about what parts of my body I could move and how many fingers I could see, and then said, “I think you’re gonna be okay.”

“Can I stand up?” I asked peevishly. I was deeply chagrined at having been knocked down by Carlton Cockroft, of all people. The rest of the class was crowding around me, but since Marshall had said I was in no danger, I swore I could see some suppressed grins.

“Here,” Janet Shook said, her square little face both worried and amused. I gripped her outstretched hand and she braced her feet and pulled. With a little help from my own feet, I stood upright, and though everything looked funny for a second, I decided I was almost normal.

“Line up!” Marshall barked, and we took our places in line. I was sandwiched between Becca and Raphael.

“Kiotske!”

We put our heels together and stood to attention.

“Rei!”

We bowed.

“Class dismissed.”

Still feeling a tad shaky, I walked carefully over to my little pile of belongings, pulled off my sparring pads, and stowed them in my gym bag. I slid my feet into my sandals, thankful I didn’t have to bend over to tie sneakers.

Janet joined me as I walked out to my old car.

“Are you really feeling all right?” she asked quietly.

My first impulse was to snarl at her, but instead I admitted, “Not quite.” She relaxed, as if she’d expected the snarl and was pleasantly surprised at the admission.

I fumbled with unlocking my car, but finally got it right.

Janet said, “I’m sorry about Deedra. I’m sorry you had to find her. It must have been awful.”

I tilted my head in a brief nod. “I guess you and Deedra had known each other for a long time, both growing up here and all.”

Janet nodded, her thick brown hair swinging against each cheek. She’d let it grow to chin length, and wore bangs. It became her. “Deedra was a little younger,” she said, leaning against my car. I threw my gym bag in to land on the passenger’s seat, and propped myself against the open door. It was a beautiful night, clear and just a little cool. We wouldn’t have many more evenings like this; summer practically pounces on spring in southern Arkansas.

“I was a year ahead of her in school,” Janet continued after a minute. “I went to Sunday school with her at First Methodist. That was before they formed Shakespeare Combined Church, and way before Miss Lacey’s first husband died and she married Jerrell Knopp and began going to SCC. My mom is still real good friends with Miss Lacey.”

“Was Deedra always… promiscuous?” I asked, since I seemed to be expected to keep the conversation going.

“No,” Janet said. “Not always. It was her chin.”

And I understood. Her severely recessive chin was the only feature that had kept Deedra from real prettiness, the flaw that had kept her from being homecoming queen, head cheerleader, most prized girl to date-everything. It was easy to imagine Deedra gradually coming to feel that if she couldn’t achieve those things, she could be remarkable in another way.

“Wonder why her parents didn’t do anything about it?” I asked. “Is there anything you can do about chins?”

“I don’t know.” Janet shrugged. “But I can tell you that Lacey has never believed in plastic surgery. She’s real fundamentalist, you know. A great lady, but not a liberal bone in her body. That’s why she took to Shakespeare Combined Church so well, when she married Jerrell and he wanted her to go to church with him.”

A tap on the jaw seemed to have much the same effect on me as a glass or two of wine. I felt disinclined to move, oddly content to be standing in a parking lot having an idle conversation with another human being.

“Jerrell and Deedra didn’t get along so well,” I commented.

“No. Frankly, I’ve always wondered…” and Janet hesitated, her face compressing into an expression of both reluctance and distaste. “Well, I’ve always wondered if he ever visited Deedra… you know? Before Lacey’s husband died, before Jerrell ever imagined being able to marry Lacey?”

“Ugh,” I said. I turned this over in my mind for a minute. “Oh, yuck.”

“Yeah, me too.” Our eyes met. We had matching expressions.

“I would think he would hate remembering that,” Janet said, slowly and carefully. “I would think he’d hate wondering if Deedra would ever tell.”

After a long, thoughtful moment, I replied, “Yes. I’d think he certainly would.”