Shakespeare's Trollop (15 page)

There was a pickup truck backed in toward the rear door of the apartment building. It was half-full of boxes. Separated from Lacey or not, Jerrell was helping to empty the apartment. He wasn't anywhere in sight, so I assumed he was up in Deedra's place.

Anthony answered Becca's door. He looked as though he'd just stepped out of the shower and pulled on his clothes.

“Becca here?” I asked.

“Sure, come on in. Pretty day, isn't it?”

I nodded.

“She'll be right out. She's in the shower. We've been running,” he explained.

I finally sat down to wait when a moment or two didn't produce Becca. I thought I heard the bathroom door open at one point, but if she'd peeked out she'd gone right back in. Becca was a high-maintenance woman. Her brother kept up his end of the small-talk convention with considerable determination, but I was glad when Becca showed and we could both give up. Anthony didn't seem to want to talk about anything but his experiences with the prisoners he counseled. He was on the verge of sounding obsessed, I thought.

Becca emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a robe. Even fresh from the shower, she was groomed.

“Lily,” she said, surprised to see me. “When did you get here?”

“About ten minutes ago,” I said.

“You should have called me,” Becca told Anthony, punching him in the shoulder. “I could have hurried.”

I waited for her to work her way around to the reason she'd wanted me to come over. She had arranged for the bank to send me a check for the building maintenance, and she assured me the checks would keep arriving until she returned to town and rescinded the order. She'd arranged for the utilities to be paid by automatic withdrawal, and she'd included extra in my check to pay for unexpected repairs.

Then I noticed that Anthony Whitley was looking at me a little too long, making more of a response to everything I said than it was worth. Could Becca have asked me to come over because her brother had an attraction to me? Could that have been the reason for her prolonged stay in the bathroom? The idea made me very uneasy. Some women enjoy all the male attention shown them. I am not one of those women.

I gradually worked my way out of the conversation and closer to the door. I had it half-open when Becca asked me if I had the tapes from Deedra's apartment. I nodded, and kept right on inching out of the apartment.

“If you come across a tape I'm in, would you please let me know?” Becca asked.

I stared at her, thinking of the kind of home movies Deedra had made. “Sure,” I said. “But I've almost finished looking at them, and you weren't in a one. Remember, I had to go through them for Marlon?”

Becca looked puzzled. “That's funny. I borrowed Deedra's camera to tape myself doing the first five
katas
so I could see what I was doing wrong. When I returned it, I'm afraid I left the tape in the camera. I wondered if it was up there.”

She looked so sincere. I was perplexed. Was she covering up in front of her brother, not wanting to say that she and Deedra had engaged in some girl-girl activities? Or was she serious about filming her
katas
so she could improve her form?

“The sheriff opened the camera and it was empty. If I come across a tape featuring you, I'll bring it over,” I told her, covering all the bases. That made a good closing line, so I shut the door and turned to leave the building. I glanced down at my watch. I would be late for my next appointment if I didn't hurry.

When I looked up, there was a large, angry man standing in my way.

Jerrell Knopp looked twice as big and three times as mean when he was angry, and he was very, very upset.

“Lily, why you stickin' your nose in somebody's business?” he asked furiously.

I shook my head. This was my day for confusion. What could I have done to Jerrell?

“You gone and told the police about that day I fought with Deedra, that day the boy wrote on her car.”

“I did no such thing,” I said promptly.

Jerrell didn't expect that. He looked at me suspiciously.

“You shittin' me, girl?” He'd certainly taken off the polite face he wore around his wife.

“I would never,” I told him.

“Someone told the police that I fought with Deedra. Would you consider that morning as fighting? I told her a few home truths that she needed to hear from someone, sure enough, but as far as fighting…hell, no!”

That was true enough. He'd told his stepdaughter quite bluntly that she needed to keep her pants on, and she especially needed to be discreet if she was sleeping with a man of another color. He'd also, if I was remembering correctly, told her she was nothing but a whore who didn't get paid.

“I didn't tell anyone about that morning,” I repeated.

“Then how come the police know about it? And why the hell did Lacey just pack my bag and tell me to go to a motel?” Jerrell's face, rugged and aging and handsome, crinkled in baffled anger.

The sheriff's department could only have found out from someone else who'd been in the apartment building at the time the quarrel had occurred. My money would be on Becca. Voices had been raised, and she lived right below Deedra. But I had my own idea about why Lacey had told Jerrell to move out. “Maybe Lacey'd heard that you slept with Deedra before you started dating her,” I suggested. This was strictly a stab in the dark, but it looked like I'd hit an artery. Jerrell went white. I saw him sway as if I'd struck him. If he got any shakier, I'd have to grab hold of him so he wouldn't fall, and I didn't want to do that. I just plain didn't like Jerrell Knopp, any more than he liked me.

“Who's been saying that?” he asked me, in a choked voice that made me more worried about him than I wanted to be.

I shrugged. While he was thinking of more words, I was walking away.

I was sure he wouldn't follow me, and I was right.

There was a message on my answering machine when I returned home about five o'clock. Jump Farraclough, Claude's second-in-command, wanted me to come to the police station to sign my statement about the night I'd pulled Joe C from his house, and he wanted to ask me a few more questions. I'd forgotten all about signing the statement; too much had happened. I replayed the message, trying to read Jump's voice. Did he sound hostile? Did he sound suspicious?

I was reluctant to go to the police station. I wanted to erase the traces of Deedra Dean from my life, I wanted to think about Jack coming to live with me, I wanted to read or work out—anything, rather than answer questions. I performed a series of unnecessary little tasks to postpone answering Jump's summons.

But you don't ignore something you're told to do by the police, at least if you want to keep living and working in a small town.

Shakespeare's police station was housed in a renovated ranch-style house right off Main Street. The old police station, a squat redbrick building right in front of the jail, had been condemned. While Shakespeareans balked over raising the money to build a new station, the town police were stuck in this clumsily converted house about a block from the courthouse. This particular house had formerly been the perquisite of the jailer, since it backed onto the jail.

I came in quietly and peered over the counter to the left. The door to Claude's office was closed and the window in it was dark, so Claude hadn't yet come back to work, or maybe he'd left early. I didn't like that at all.

An officer I didn't know was on desk duty. She was a narrow-faced blonde with crooked teeth and down-slanting, tobacco-colored eyes. After taking my name, she sauntered to the partitioned rear of the big central room. Then she sauntered back, waving a hand to tell me I should come behind the counter.

Jump Farraclough was waiting in his own cubbyhole, marked out with gray carpeted panels, and the fire chief was with him. Frank Parrish looked better than he had the last time I'd seen him in his working clothes, sweating in their heat and streaked with smoke from Joe C's fire, but he didn't seem any happier. In fact, he looked downright uncomfortable.

I reminded myself there were other people in the building, while at the same time I made fun of myself for the sense of relief that gave me. Did I seriously fear harm from the assistant police chief and the fire chief? I told myself that was ridiculous.

And it might be. But I'd never feel comfortable in any kind of isolated situation with men. A glance out the window told me the sun was setting.

Jump indicated an uncomfortable straight-back chair opposite his desk. Frank Parrish was sitting to Jump's left.

“Here's your statement,” Jump said brusquely. He handed me a sheet of paper. It seemed like years since the fire; I barely remembered giving this statement. There hadn't been much to include. I'd been walking, I'd seen the person in the yard, I'd checked it out, I'd found the fire going, I'd extricated Joe C.

I read the statement carefully. You don't want to just scan something like that. You don't want to trust that it's really what you said. But this did seem to be in my words. I thought hard, trying to figure if I'd left anything out, trying to remember any other detail that might be important to the investigators.

No. This was an accurate account. I took a pen from the cup on the desk and signed it. I returned the pen and stood to leave.

“Miss Bard.”

I sighed. Somehow I'd had a feeling this wasn't going to be that easy.

“Yes.”

“Please sit down. We want to ask you a few more questions.”

“This is everything.” I pointed at the sheet of paper on the lieutenant's desk.

“Just humor us, okay? We just want to go over the same thing again, see if you remember anything new.”

I felt wary all of a sudden. I felt my hair stand up on my neck. This wasn't just routine suspicion. They should have asked me this before I signed my statement.

“Any special reason?” I asked.

“Just…let's us go over this thing again.”

I sat down slowly, wondering if I should be calling a lawyer.

“Now,” Jump began, stretching out his legs under the small desk, “you say that when you went to the back door at the Prader house, you used your key to get in.”

“No. The door was unlocked.”

“Did you ever know Joe C to leave the door unlocked at night?”

“I'd never been there at night before.”

For some reason, Jump flushed, as if I'd been making fun of him.

“Right,” he said sarcastically. “So, since the back door was unlocked, you didn't need to use your key. Did you have it with you?”

“I've never had a key to the Prader house.” I blessed all the times Joe C had so slowly come to let me in. I blessed him for his suspicion, his crotchety nature.

Jump permitted himself to look skeptical. Frank Parrish looked off into the distance as if he were willing himself to be elsewhere.

“Your employer didn't give you a key to the property? Isn't that unusual?”

“Yes.”

“But you're still sure that's what happened?”

“Ask Calla.”

“Miss Prader would know?”

“She would.”

For the first time, Jump looked uncertain. I pressed my advantage. “You can ask any member of his family. He always makes me wait while he comes to the door as slowly as he can manage. He really enjoys that.”

Parrish turned his head to look at Jump with surprise. I began to worry even more.

“Are you planning to charge me with anything?” I asked abruptly.

“Why, no, Miss Bard.”

The fire chief hadn't said anything since I'd come in. Parrish still looked uncomfortable, still sat with arms crossed over his chest. But he didn't look as though he was going to gainsay Jump Farraclough, either.

“Just tell us everything from the beginning…if you don't mind.” The last phrase was obviously thrown in for padding, as Southern and soft as cotton.

“It's all in my statement.” I was getting a feeling I couldn't ignore. “I have nothing new to add.”

“Just in case you missed something.”

“I didn't.”

“So if someone says they saw you elsewhere, doing something else, they're mistaken?”

“Yes.”

“If someone says they saw you behind the house with a gas can in your hand, instead of in front of it seeing this mysterious vanishing figure, that someone would be wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't you dislike Joe C?”

“Doesn't everyone?”

“Answer the question.”

“No. I don't think I have to. I've made my statement. I'm leaving.”

And while they were still thinking about it, I did.

I would call Carlton's cousin Tabitha if they followed me and arrested me, I decided, keeping my pace steady as I headed toward the door in the police station. Tabitha, whom I'd met once or twice when she was visiting Carlton, was an attorney based in Montrose.

Gardner McClanahan, one of the night patrol officers, was fixing a cup of coffee at the big pot next to the dispatcher's desk. He nodded to me as I went by, and I nodded back. I'd seen Gardner the night I'd been walking, the night of the fire. I was sure that Farraclough knew that. Gardner's seeing me didn't prove anything either way except that I hadn't been trying to hide myself, but knowing he'd seen me and could vouch for at least that little fact made me feel better.

I crossed the floor, keeping my eyes ahead. Now I was almost at the front door. I tried to recall if Tabitha Cockroft's Montrose phone number was in my address book. I wondered with every step if a voice would come from behind, a voice telling me to stop, ordering Gardner to arrest me.

I pushed the door open, and no one grabbed me, and no one called after me. I was free. I hadn't realized how tense I'd been until I relaxed. I stood by my car fumbling with my keys, taking big gulps of air. If they'd put handcuffs on me…I shuddered when I thought of it.