Shakespeare's Trollop

She talked at me for some time, giving me details, showing me the list of workmen who kept a tab for the apartment-building repairs, and explaining how to deposit the rent checks. Becca was a sensible woman under all that makeup, and she explained things well.



The extra money would be welcome, and I needed the job just for the visibility. Used to be, I cleaned maybe four out of the eight apartments in the building, but that was a couple of years ago. And Pardon had hired me to clean the public parts of the building from time to time. I told Becca I'd do it, and she seemed pleased and relieved.



I stood up to go, and in that moment of silence before Becca began the courtesies of saying good-bye, I heard something upstairs.



From Deedra's apartment.



Becca said, "Well, Lily ...," and I raised my hand. She stopped speaking immediately, which I liked, and she mouthed, "What?" I pointed at the ceiling.



We stood looking up as if we had X-ray vision and could see what was going on overhead. Again, I heard movement in the apartment of the dead woman. Just for moment, my skin crawled.



"Is Lacey here?" I breathed, trying to catch any sound I could. Becca and I stood together like statues, but statues whose heads were rotating slightly to hear as well as possible.



Becca shook her head, and the ribbon she'd tied around the elastic band holding back her long blond hair rustled on her shoulders.



I jerked my head toward Becca's door. I looked questioningly.



She nodded and we went quietly across to her apartment door.



"Police?" I asked in the lowest voice that would carry.



She shook her head. "Might be family," she whispered, with a shrug.



Nothing could creep like Becca and I up those stairs. We were familiar enough with the apartment building to know what creaked and what didn't, and we were at Deedra's door before I was ready for it.



We had no gun, no weapon of any kind besides our hands, while the person inside might have an armory. But this was Becca's property, and she seemed determined to confront the intruder here and now. We both became comfortable with our stance, and I rotated my shoulders to loosen them.



Becca knocked on the door.



All movement inside the apartment stopped. There was a frozen silence as we two, hardly breathing, waited to find out what the intruder's next move would be.



That silence went on too long for Becca's taste, and she rapped on the door again, more impatiently.



"We know you're in there, and there's no way out but this door." That was true, and it made the apartments something of a fire hazard. I remember Pardon handing out rope ladders to the tenants of the second floor for a while, but he got discouraged when they all left taking the rope ladders with them, so the second floor people would just have to fend for themselves if there was a fire. I had time to remember the rope ladders while the silence continued.



More silence.



"We're not going away," Becca said quite calmly. I had to admire her assurance. "Okay, Lily," she said more loudly, "call the police."



The door popped open as if it were on springs.



"Don't call my sister," Marlon Schuster begged.



Becca and I looked at each other simultaneously, and if I looked like she did, we looked pretty silly. Becca's bright blue eyes were about to pop out of her head with astonishment and chagrin. To trap the brother of the sheriff in such a position, in the apartment of a murder victim... We'd cut our own throats with our bravado. No one, but no one, would thank us for this.



"Oh, hell," Becca said, disgust in her voice. "Come down to my place."



Like a whipped puppy, Marlon slunk down to the landlady's apartment, looking smaller than ever. His black hair had been cut very short, I was guessing for the funeral, and now that I could watch him for a minute I realized that the young man was fine-boned and spare. I doubted if he could lift seventy-five pounds. I'd hoped we were catching Deedra's murderer, but now I didn't know what to think.



Without being told, Marlon sank onto the single chair that was squeezed in across from the couch. Becca and I faced him, and Becca told him to start talking.



Marlon sat staring at his hands, as if answers would sprout on them. He wasn't too far from crying.



"How'd you get in?" I asked, to get him rolling.



"Deedra gave me a key," he said, and he had a trace of pride in his voice.



"She didn't give out keys." I waited to see what he'd say next.



"She gave me one." The pride was unmistakable now.



Becca shifted beside me. "So why didn't you turn it in?" she asked. "I had to give the cops my key, and I own the place."



"I kept it because she gave it to me," Marlon said simply. I scanned his face for the truth. I am no human lie detector, but it looked to me like he believed what he said. I'd noticed before that Marlon was more like his father than his mother, at least as far as looks went. But Sheriff Schuster's size had been belied by his ferocious reputation as a lawman who swung his nightstick first and asked questions later. If there was a similar ferocity in his son, it was buried mighty deep.



"So, you went in with a key given you by the tenant," Becca said thoughtfully, as if she was considering the legality of his entry.



Marlon nodded eagerly.



"Why?" I asked.



Marlon flushed a dark and unbecoming shade of red. "I just wanted to ...," and he trailed off, aware that a sentence that began that way wasn't going to end up sounding convincing.



"You went to get... ?" Becca prompted.



Marlon took a deep breath. "The film."



"You and Deedra made a video?" I kept my voice as neutral as possible, but the young man flushed even deeper. He nodded, and buried his face in his hands.



"Then you're in luck, because I have all the home videos at my house," I said. "I'll go through them, and when I find yours, I'll give it to you."



I thought he would collapse from relief. Then he appeared to be screwing up his courage again. "There were other things," he said hesitantly. "Mrs. Knopp shouldn't see them, you know?"



"It's taken care of," I told him.



Becca's eyes flicked from me to the boy, absorbing this information.



"You found her, Miz Bard," Marlon said. He was staring at me longingly, as if he wanted to open my head and see the images there. "What had happened to her? Marta wouldn't let me go see."



"Marta was right. If you cared for Deedra, you wouldn't have wanted to see her like that."



"How was it?" he asked, pleading.



I felt very uneasy. I tried to keep looking the boy steadily in the eyes, so he'd believe me. "She was naked in the car with no visible wounds," I said carefully. "She was sitting up."



"I don't understand."



What was to understand? The plainest explanation of the scene was probably the true one, no matter what problems I had accepting it. Deedra had had one man too many. That man had lured her out to the woods, become angry with her or simply decided she was expendable, and killed her.



"Had she been raped?" he asked.



"I don't do autopsies," I said, and my voice was too hard and angry. Deedra had been so quick to have consensual sex that it would be hard to even theorize she'd been raped unless there was a lot of damage, I was sure. Maybe the insertion of the bottle covered up damage from another source? Maybe it indicated the man couldn't perform normally?



And maybe it was just a gesture of contempt.



Becca told him, not unkindly, "You know, Marlon, that Deedra had lots of friends." Her tone made it clear what kind of friends Deedra had had.



"Yes, I know. But that had changed, she told me it had. Because of me. Because she really loved me and I really loved her."



I believed that like I believed Becca's hair was really blond. But everyone should have some illusions... well, maybe other people. I felt about a million years old as I sighed and nodded at Marlon Schuster. "Sure," I said.



"You have to believe me," he said, suddenly on fire. He straightened on Becca's chair, his eyes flashed, and for the first time I could see what Deedra had seen, the passion that made the boy handsome and desirable.



Becca said, "She told me that."



We both stared at her. Becca looked quite calm and matter-of-fact as she went on. "The last time I talked to Deedra, she told me she'd finally met someone she cared about, someone she thought she could love."



Marlon's face became radiant with relief and pride. Seeing a chance to act, I silently extended my hand and he put the key in it without thinking. I slid it out of sight, and he didn't say a word of protest.



A couple of minutes later, he left the apartment a happier man than he'd entered it. He'd been told not to worry about the video he and Deedra had made, he'd had the key removed so he no longer had that guilt weighing on him, and he'd had the ego-stroking consolation that his latest love had also loved him, enough to change her life for him.



Who wouldn't feel good?



"Did you make all of that up?" I asked Becca when the door had closed behind Marlon.



"Mostly," she admitted. "The last time I talked to Deedra, she was still complaining about the rent going up. But when I said something about seeing Marlon real often, she did say that she'd decided to be monogamous for a while."



"I wouldn't think she'd know that word," I said absently.



"Well, maybe she didn't use the term 'monogamous,' but that's what she meant."



"When was that, Becca?"



"I know exactly when that was, because the police asked me over and over. It was Saturday afternoon. We were both bringing in groceries at the same time."



"Who was here that weekend?"



"They asked me that, too. Your friend the chief of police spent the weekend over at his fiancée's. The Bickels were out of town, too, at their mother's in Fayetteville." Daisy and Dawn Bickel were twin sisters who worked at junior management level, Daisy at the local branch of a big chain of clothing stores and Dawn at Goodnight Mattress Manufacturing. "Terry Plowright was gone Saturday, to a monster truck rally somewhere on the other side of Little Rock. He didn't get in 'til about one in the morning and as far as I could tell he slept most of Sunday. He lives right across from me. That's the first floor."



I nodded.



"The upstairs front apartment by Deedra's is vacant. The one across the stairwell from her is a woman who works at Wal-Mart, and she was working most of the weekend - at least Sunday, I know, and I think some hours on Saturday. And the other front apartment is Tick Levinson, and you know how he is."



"How he is" was alcoholic. Tick was still managing to turn up to work at the local paper, where he was a pressman, but if there wasn't a dramatic intervention, Tick wouldn't be doing that in a year.



"So out of those, who do you think had anything to do with Deedra?"



"Well, Terry, for sure. He had a lot to do with her, real often. But I don't think either of them took it to heart," Becca said slowly. "Terry just isn't serious about anything besides cars and trucks. He loves being single. I don't think the Bickel twins even speak - even spoke - to Deedra, besides hello. Claude . .. well, you know, actually I think Claude might have visited Deedra once or twice, if you get my drift."



I could not have been more surprised. I was sure my face showed it.



I was disgusted, too.



"You know how men are," Becca said dryly.



I did, for sure.



"But from what Deedra said, I think it was a long time ago, maybe after he first moved back to Shakespeare from Little Rock. Before he kind of knew what was what. Right after his divorce."



Still.



"Anyway, nothing recent. And Tick? I don't think Tick lusts after anything but the next bottle, you know? You ever see him coming down the stairs after the weekend, trying to go to work? It's grim. If he smoked, I'd worry about being burned up in our beds."



That was only sensible.



"And before you ask me just like the cops did, I didn't see any strangers around that weekend, but that's not to say there weren't any. Everyone's got their own key to the outside doors." Those doors were locked at ten at night, after which the residents used their own keys.



"Speaking of keys," Becca said suddenly, and went to the desk by the door. She opened the top drawer, pulled out a key. "Here's the outside door key for when Anthony and I go on our trip."



I put it in my pocket and stood to leave as Anthony came in. He'd been to Stage, where one of the Bickel twins worked, I could see from his bag. He'd bought a lot of clothes. Getting excited about his trip, I guess.



"Where are you-all going?" I asked. I was trying to be polite.



"Oh, who can tell!" Becca laughed. "We might go to Mexico, we might go to the Dominican Republic! If we really like someplace, we might just stay there."



"You'd sell up here?"



"I think that's a possibility," Becca said, more soberly. "You gotta admit, Lily, I'm a fish out of water here."



That was true enough.



"Becca needs to see the world," Anthony said proudly.



They sure were excited. The idea of travel wouldn't make me happy at all, but I could tell Becca was ready to leave town. She'd never really been at home in Shakespeare.



I went home to find a baffled Jack squatting by the television, two stacks of tapes to his right. "Lily, would you like to tell me where you got these tapes?" he growled, staring at the episode of The Bold and the Beautiful unfolding on the screen. "Some of these are homemade porn, and some of them are Oprah or soaps."