Shakespeare's Trollop

"Joe C's not leaving Calla anything?" Jack was incredulous. "After she's taken care of him for the past fifteen years or however long he's been too frail?"



"At least fifteen," I said. "According to what she's told me. He's leaving the more distant kids, the great-niece and great-nephews - Bobo, Amber Jean, and Howell Three, the Winthrop kids - an item of furniture apiece. Of course, that's probably not going to happen now, though there may be something worth saving in the house. I don't know. And the direct descendants are going to split the proceeds from the sale of the house."



"Who are the direct descendants again?"



"Becca and her brother, Anthony," I began, trying to remember what Calla had told me weeks before. "They descended from - "



"Just give me the list, not the begats," Jack warned me. I remembered Jack had gone to church as a child; I remembered that he'd been brought up Baptist. I wondered if we had some other things to talk about.



"Okay. Also there are Sarah, Hardy, and Christian Prader, who live in North Carolina. I've never seen them. And Deedra, who's out of the picture."



"And you think the house and lot are worth what?"



"Three hundred and fifty thousand was the figure I heard."



"Seventy thousand apiece isn't anything to sneer at."



I thought of what seventy thousand dollars could do for me.



In the newspaper, almost every day, I read about corporations that have millions and billions of dollars. On the television news, I heard about people who are "worth" that much. But for a person like me, seventy thousand dollars was a very serious amount of money.



Seventy thousand. I could buy a new car, a pressing need of mine. I wouldn't have to scrimp to save enough to pay my property taxes and my gym membership and my insurance payments, both car and health. If I got sick, I could go to the doctor and pay for my medicine all at one time, and I wouldn't have to clean Carrie's office for free for months afterward.



I could buy Jack a nice present.



"What would you like me to get you when I get seventy thousand dollars?" I asked him, an unusual piece of whimsy for me.



Jack leaned close and whispered in my ear.



"You can get that for next to nothing," I told him, trying not to look embarrassed.



We'd walked to the front of Joe C's house, and I pointed, drawing Jack's attention to the blackened front windows. Without commenting, Jack strode up the driveway and circled the house. Through the high bushes (the ones that hadn't been beaten out of shape by the firefighters) I glimpsed him at different points, looking up, looking at the ground, scoping it out. I watched Jack's face get progressively grimmer.



"You went in there," Jack commented as he rejoined me. He stood by my side, looking down at me.



I nodded, not quite focusing on him because I was assessing the damage. The upstairs looked all right, at least from the sidewalk. There was debris scattered on the yard, charred bits of this and that. When the breeze shifted direction, I could smell that terrible burned smell.



"You went in there," Jack said.



"Yes," I said, more doubtfully.



"Were you out of your fucking mind?" he said in a low, intense voice that gathered all my attention.



"It was on fire."



"You don't go in buildings on fire," Jack told me, and all the anger he'd suppressed this morning erupted. "You walk away."



"I knew Joe C was in the house!" I said, beginning to get angry myself. I don't like explaining the obvious. "I couldn't let him burn."



"You listen to me, Lily Bard," Jack said, starting down the sidewalk almost too swiftly for me to keep up. "You listen to me." He stopped dead, turned to face me, began waving a finger in my face. I stared down at my feet, feeling my mouth begin to purse and my eyes narrow.



"When a house is on fire, you don't go in," he informed me, keeping his voice low with a visible effort. "No matter who is in that house ... if your mom is in that house, if your dad is in that house, if your sister is in that house. If I am in that house. You. Don't. Go. In."



I took a very deep breath, kept focused on my Nikes.



"Yes, my lord," I said gently.



He threw his hands up in the air. "That's it!" he told the sky. "That's it!" Off he strode.



I wasn't about to pursue him, because I'd have to scramble to keep up, and that just wasn't going to happen. I took off in the opposite direction.



"Lily!" called a woman's voice behind me. "Lily, wait up!"



Though I was tempted to start running, I stopped and turned.



Becca Whitley was hurrying down the sidewalk after me, her hand wrapped around the bicep of a huge man with pale curly hair. My first thought was that this man should get together with Deputy Emanuel and form a tag-team to go on the wrestling circuit.



Becca was as decorated as ever, with rhinestone earrings and lips outlined with such a dark pencil she looked positively garish. When she was in full warpaint, it was always a little jarring to remember she was so graceful and precise in karate class, and managed the apartments quite efficiently. I was pretty sure that meant I was guilty of stereotyping, something I had good reason to hate when people applied it to me.



"This is my brother, Anthony," Becca said proudly.



I looked up at him. He had small, mild blue eyes. I wondered if Becca's would be that color without her contact lenses. Anthony smiled at me like a benevolent giant. I tried to focus on my manners, but I was still thinking of Jack. I shook hands with Becca's brother and approved of the effort he made to keep his grip gentle.



"Are you visiting Shakespeare long, Anthony?" I asked.



"Just a week or so," he said. "Then Becca and I might go on a trip together. We haven't seen some of my dad's relations in years."



"What kind of work do you do?" I asked, trying to show a polite interest.



"I'm a counselor at a prison in Texas," he said, his white teeth showing in a big smile. He knew he'd get a reaction from that statement.



"Tough job," I said.



"Tough guys," he said, shaking his head. "But they deserve a second chance after they've served their sentence. I'm hoping I can get them back outside in better shape than when they came in."



"I don't believe in rehabilitation," I said bluntly.



"But look at that boy who just got arrested," he said reasonably. "The boy who vandalized Miss Dean's car last year. Now he's back in. Don't you think an eighteen-year-old needs all the help he can get?"



I looked to Becca for enlightenment.



"That boy who works over at the building supply," she explained. "The sheriff matched his voice to the one who made those phone calls to Deedra, the nasty ones. Deedra had saved the little tapes from her answering machine. They were in her night-table drawer."



Then Deedra had taken the calls seriously. And their source was a real nobody of a person, a man everyone seemed to call a boy.



I told Anthony Whitley, "See how much he learned in jail?"



Anthony Whitley seemed to consider trying to persuade me that saving the boy through counseling was worthwhile, but he abandoned the attempt before he began the task. That was wise.



"I wanted to thank you for rescuing Great-grandfather," he said a little stiffly, after an uneasy pause. "Becca and I owe you a lot."



I flicked my right hand, palm up; it was nothing. I glanced down the block, wondering how far Jack had gotten.



"Oh, Lily, if you could come by the apartment later, I need to talk to you about something," Becca said, so I guess I looked liked I was ready to go. I murmured a good-bye, turned in the other direction - maybe I'd follow Jack after all - rendering the two Whitleys out of sight and out of mind.



Jack was coming back. We met in the middle of the next block. We gave each other a curt nod. We wouldn't repeat the same quarrel. It was a closed subject now.



"Who was that?" he asked, looking past me. I glanced back over my shoulder.



"That's Becca Whitley, you know her," I said. "And her brother, Anthony. I just met him. Big guy."



"Hmm. Brother?"



"Yep. Anthony. Brother."



Jack put his arm around me and we strolled off as if he'd never been angry.



"They don't look much alike," he said after a moment.



"Not much, no," I agreed, wondering if I'd missed something. "Do you look like your sister?"



"No, not anything," Jack said. "She's got lots more pink in her complexion, and she's got lighter hair than I have."



We didn't talk much on our way back to my place. The fact that we loved each other seemed enough to contemplate for the moment. Jack decided he wanted to go work his abs while Body Time was open, but I was awfully sore after wrestling Joe C through his bedroom window.



"I'll start your laundry if you want to go on," I said.



"You don't have to do that," Jack protested.



"It's no trouble." I knew Jack hated doing laundry.



"I'll make supper," he offered.



"Okay, as long as it's not red meat."



"Chicken fajitas?"



"Okay."



"Then I'll go by the Superette on my way home."



As Jack pulled out of my driveway, I reflected on how domestic that little exchange had been. I didn't exactly smile, but it hovered around my heart somewhere as I opened Jack's suitcase, which was really a glorified duffel bag. Jack didn't look as though he'd be neat, but he was. He had several days' worth of clothes compactly folded in the bag, and they all needed washing. In the side pockets Jack kept his time-fillers: a crossword puzzle book, a paperback thriller, and a TV Guide.



He always carried his own when he traveled because it saved him some aggravation. This week's was new and smooth; the one for the week just past was crumpled and dog-eared.



I was about to pitch the older one in the garbage until I realized that this was the same edition as the one missing from Deedra's coffee table. I flipped through the pages of Jack's magazine as if it could tell me something. Once more, I almost tossed it into the trash, but I reconsidered and put it on my kitchen table. It would serve as a reminder to tell Jack the odd little story of the only thing missing from Deedra's apartment.



As I sorted Jack's laundry, my thoughts drifted from Deedra's apartment to Becca's. She'd wanted to talk to me. I glanced down at my watch. Jack wouldn't be home for another hour, easy. I started a load of his jeans and shirts and put my keys in my pocket, locking my door behind me as I went to the apartments. It was a cooler evening after a cool day, and I wished I had thrown on a jacket. Taking the driveway to the rear of the apartment building, I strolled through the parking lot with its numbered shed - one stall for every apartment. Because it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and because two of the apartments in the building were temporarily vacant, there were only two vehicles parked in the shed, Becca's blue Dodge and Claude's new pickup.



Looking at Deedra's empty stall, I was seized by a sudden idea. I don't like loose ends. I went into the open wood structure - really a glorified shed - and began examining the items hanging from nails pounded into the unfinished walls. Some long-ago tenant had hung tools there. Deedra had left an umbrella, and on a shelf there was a container of windshield-wiper fluid, a rag for checking the oil, an ice scraper, and some glass cleaner. I unhooked the umbrella from its nail, upended it, and out fell... nothing. Deedra's spare key was no longer in its usual hiding place.



I found that even more peculiar than her purse being missing from the crime scene. Her killer had known even this about Deedra, the small secret of where she kept her extra key. Now the killer could have in his possession two keys to Deedra's apartment, the other keys on the big ring in her purse, the other contents of the purse, and Deedra's TV Guide.



There didn't seem to be anything to do about this missing key. I'd tell the sheriff when I saw her next. I shrugged, all to myself.



I went to the rear door of the apartment building and stepped in. Becca's was the rear door to my left; Claude Friedrich lived in the front apartment next to it. Claude and Carrie were due to return from their mini-honeymoon this evening, and I assumed they'd go to Carrie's house permanently. Three apartments empty, then; I hoped Becca would be too busy to clean them for the next tenants. I could use some extra money.



I rapped on Becca's door. She answered almost instantly, as if she'd been standing right inside. She looked surprised.



"You said you needed to talk to me," I prompted her.



"Oh, yes, I did! I just didn't think... Never mind. It's good to see you." Becca stood aside to let me come in.



I tried to remember if I'd ever been in her apartment before. Becca had left it much the same as it had been in her Uncle Pardon's day. She'd just rearranged the furniture, added a small table or two, and bought a new television (Pardon had had a small, old model).



"Let me get you something to drink?"



"No, thank you."



Becca urged me to sit down, so I perched on the edge of the couch. I didn't want to stay long.



"Anthony's gone to the car wash," Becca told me. "I was sure it was him when you knocked."



I waited for her to get to the point.



"If Anthony and I do go on this trip he's planning," she began, "would you be interested in being responsible for the apartments while I'm gone?"



"Tell me exactly what that means."