Shakespeare's Trollop (3 page)

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.”

Lacey Knopp called me the next morning. I was about to leave for Joe C Prader's house when the phone rang. Hoping it was Jack, though the time difference made me fairly surely it wasn't, I said, “Yes?”

“Lily, I need you to help me,” Lacey said. I hardly recognized her voice. She sounded like she'd been dragged over razor blades.

“How?”

“I need you to meet me at Deedra's tomorrow. I need help packing up the things in her apartment. Can you do that for me?”

I try to keep Wednesday mornings free for just such special projects. I wasn't more than a little surprised that Deedra's mother was in such a hurry to clear out Deedra's apartment. Many, many people react to grief with a furious flurry of activity. They figure if they don't hold still, it can't hit them.

“Yes, I can do that. What time?”

“Eight?”

“Sure.” I hesitated. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“Thank you.” Lacey sounded shakier, suddenly. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

I was so buried in thought that I took the wrong route to Mr. Prader's, and had to turn around and go back.

Joe Christopher Prader was as old as God but as mean as the devil. Called “Joe C” by all his family and cronies (those few still surviving), he'd been known for years for stalking around Shakespeare brandishing a cane at everyone who crossed his path, lamenting the passing of the better days, and bringing up old scandals at the most inopportune times.

Now Joe C's stalking-around days were pretty much done.

Some visits, I kind of enjoyed him. Others, I would have decked him gladly if he hadn't been so frail. More than once, I wondered if he was really as fragile as he seemed, or if maybe that show of frailty was a defense against just such impulses as mine.

Shakespeareans were inexplicably proud of having Joe C as a town character. His family was less thrilled. When his granddaughter Calla had hired me, she'd begged me to work for at least a month before I quit. By that time, she hoped, I would be over the shock of him.

“If we could get him to move out of that old house,” Calla Prader had said despairingly. “If we could get him into Shakespeare Manor…or if we could get him to agree to live-in help!”

Joe C was definitely not in the business of making life easier for anyone but himself, and that only when it suited him.

But I'd lasted my month, and was now into my third.

Joe C was up and dressed by the time I knocked on his door. He adamantly refused to let me have a key, so every week I had to wait for him to shuffle from his bedroom to the front door, which I tried to bear philosophically. After all, keeping his keys to himself was his right, and one I understood.

But I was sure he wouldn't give me a key simply out of meanness, rather than from principle. I'd noticed he came to the door especially slowly when the weather was bad, and I suspected he relished the idea of keeping me out in the rain or cold; anyway, keeping me at the mercy of Joe C Prader, all-powerful doorkeeper.

This morning he swung the door open after only a short delay. “Well, here you are, then,” he said, amazed and disgusted by my persistence in arriving on time for my job.

“Here I am,” I agreed. I tried not to sigh too loudly when he turned to go ahead of me to his bedroom, where I usually started by stripping the bed. Joe C always had to lead the way, and he always went very, very slowly. But the man was a nonagenarian: What could I say? I looked around me at the remains of the grand house as I followed the old man. The Prader House, the only remaining home on one of the main commercial streets of Shakespeare, was a showplace that had seen better days. Built about 1890, the house had high ceilings, beautiful woodwork, restored but cranky plumbing, and an electrical system that had seen better decades. The upstairs, with its four bedrooms and huge bathroom, was closed off now, though Calla had told me that she cleaned it about twice a year. Joe C wasn't fit to go up stairs anymore.

“I'm all stopped up this week.” Joe C opened the conversation, which would not let up until I left the house. He lowered himself into the old red velvet chair in a corner of the large back bedroom.

“Allergies?” I said absently, stripping the bedding off the four-poster and pitching it into the hall, where I'd gather it up and take it to the washer. I shook out the bedspread and draped it over the footboard.

“Naw, I reckon I ate too much cheese. You know, it binds you.”

I exhaled slowly, calmly, as I stepped out into the hall to open the linen cupboard.

“Did you get Calla to get you some prunes?”

He cackled. I was one ahead of him. “Yes, missy, I surely did, and ate them all. Today's the day.”

I wasn't in the best mood to put up with Joe C this morning. The charm of this particular town character was lost on me; maybe the sightseers the Chamber of Commerce was trying to attract would appreciate hearing colorful stories about Joe C's intestines. I couldn't imagine why any tourist would want to come to Shakespeare, since its only possible attraction would have been antebellum homes—if they hadn't been burned to the ground in the Late Unpleasantness, as Joe C's best friend, China Belle Lipscott, called the Civil War. So all Shakespeare could boast was, “Yes, we're old, but we have nothing to show for it.”

Maybe Joe C could be propped on a bench on the square to amuse any soul who happened by. He could give a daily report on the state of his bowels.

“China Belle's daughter is dropping her off in a few minutes,” Joe C informed me. “Is my tie crooked?”

I straightened from putting on the fitted sheet. I suspected he'd been eyeing my ass. “You're okay,” I said unenthusiastically.

“China Belle's quite a gal,” he said, trying to leer.

“You creep,” I said. “Mrs. Lipscott is a perfectly nice woman who wouldn't go to bed with you if you owned the last mattress on earth. You stop talking dirty.”

“Oooh,” he said, in mock fear. “Bully the old man, why dontcha. Come on, darlin', make old Joe C feel good again.”

That did it.

“Listen to me,” I said intently, squatting before him. He put his cane between us, I noticed, so he hadn't completely ruled out the fact that I might retaliate.

Good.

“You will not tell me about your body functions. Unless you're dripping blood, I don't care. You will not make sexual remarks.”

“Or what? You're going to hit me, a man in his nineties who walks with a cane?”

“Don't rule it out. Disgusting is disgusting.”

He eyed me malevolently. His brown eyes were almost hidden in the folds of skin that drooped all over him. “Calla wouldn't pay you, you go to hit me,” he said in defiance.

“It'd be worth losing the pay.”

He glared at me, resenting like hell his being old and powerless. I didn't blame him for that. I might feel exactly the same way if I reach his age. But there are some things I just won't put up with.

“Oh, all right,” he conceded. He looked into a corner of the room, not at me, and I rose and went back to making up the bed.

“You knew that gal that got killed, that Deedra?”

“Yes.”

“She was my great-granddaughter. She as loose as they say?”

“Yes,” I said, answering the second part of the question before the first had registered. Then I glared at him, shocked and angry.

“When I was a boy, it was Fannie Dooley,” Joe C said reminiscently, one gnarled hand rising to pat what was left of his hair. He was elaborately ignoring my anger. I'd seen a picture of Joe C when he was in his twenties: he'd had thick black hair, parted in the middle, and a straight, athletic body. He'd had a mouthful of healthy, if not straight, teeth. He'd started up a hardware store, and his sons had worked there with him until Joe Jr. had died early in World War II. After that, Joe C and his second son, Christopher, had kept Prader Hardware going for many more years. Joe C Prader had been a hard worker and man of consequence in Shakespeare. It must be his comparative helplessness that had made him so perverse and aggravating.

“Fannie Dooley?” I prompted. I was
not
going to gratify him by expressing my shock.

“Fannie was the town bad girl,” he explained. “There's always one, isn't there? The girl from a good family, the kind that likes to do it, don't get paid?”

“Is there always one?”

“I think every small town's got one or two,” Joe C observed. “Course it's bad when it's your own flesh and blood.”

“I guess so.” At my high school, a million years ago, it'd been Teresa Black. She'd moved to Little Rock and married four times since then. “Deedra was your great-granddaughter?” I asked, surprised I'd never realized the connection.

“Sure was, darlin'. Every time she came around to see me, she was the picture of sweetness. I don't believe I ever would have guessed.”

“You're awful,” I said dispassionately. “Someone's going to push you off your porch or beat you over the head.”

“They's always going to be bad girls,” he said, almost genially. “Else, how's the good girls going to know they're good?”

I couldn't decide if that was really profound or just stupid. I shrugged and turned my back on the awful man, who told my back that he was going to get gussied up for his girlfriend.

By the time I'd worked my way through the ground floor of the old house, whose floors were none too level, Joe C and China Belle Lipscott were ensconced on the front porch in fairly comfortable padded wicker chairs, each with a glass of lemonade close to hand. They were having a round of “What Is This World Coming To?” based on Deedra's murder. There may have been a town bad girl when they were growing up, but there'd also been plenty to eat for everyone, everyone had known their place, prices had been cheap, and almost no one had been murdered. Maybe the occasional black man had been hung without benefit of jury, maybe the occasional unwed mother had died from a botched abortion, and just possibly there'd been a round of lawlessness when oil had been discovered…but Joe C and China Belle chose to remember their childhood as perfect.

I found evidence (a filtered butt) that Joe C had once again been smoking. One of my little jobs was to tell Calla if I found traces of cigarettes, because Joe C had almost set the house afire once or twice by falling asleep with a cigarette in his hands. The second time that had happened, he'd been unconscious and his mattress smoldering when Calla had happened to drop by. Who could be smuggling the old man cigarettes? Someone who wanted him to enjoy one of his last pleasures, or someone who wanted him to die faster? I extricated the coffee mug he'd used as an ashtray from the depths of his closet and took it to the kitchen to wash.

I wondered if the old house was insured for much. Its location alone made it valuable, even if the structure itself was about to fall down around Joe C's ears. There were businesses now in the old homes on either side of the property, though the thick growth around the old place made them largely invisible from the front or back porch. The increased traffic due to the businesses (an antique store in one old home and a ladies' dress shop in the other) gratified Joe C no end, since he still knew everyone in town and related some nasty story about almost every person who drove by.

As I was putting my cleaning items away, Calla came in. She often timed her appearance so she'd arrive just as I was leaving, probably so she could check the job I'd done and vent her misery a little. Perhaps Calla thought that if she didn't keep an eye on me, I'd slack up on the job, since Joe C was certainly no critic of my work (unless he couldn't think of another way to rile me). Calla was a horse of a different color. Overworked (at least according to her) at her office job in the local mattress-manufacturing plant, perpetually harried, Calla was determined no one should cheat her any more than she'd already been cheated. She must have been a teenager once, must have laughed and dated boys, but it was hard to believe this pale, dark-haired woman had ever been anything but middle-aged and worried.

“How is he today?” she asked me in a low voice.

Since she'd passed her grandfather on her way in, and he was loudly in fine form, I didn't respond. “He's been smoking again,” I said reluctantly, since I felt like a spy for telling on Joe C. At the same time, I didn't want him to burn up.

“Lily, who could be bringing him cigarettes?” Calla slapped the counter with a thin white hand. “I've asked and asked, and no one will admit it. And yet, for someone who can't go to the store himself, he seems to have unlimited access to the things he's not supposed to have!”

“Who visits him?”

“Well, it's a complicated family.” Though it didn't seem complicated to me, as Calla began to explain it. I knew already that Joe C had had three children. The first was Joe Jr., who had died childless during World War II. The second boy, Christopher, had been the father of Calla, Walker, and Lacey. These three were the only surviving grandchildren of Joe C. Calla had never married. Walker, now living in North Carolina, had three teenage children, and Lacey had Deedra during her first marriage.

Calla's aunt (Joe C's third child), Jessie Lee Prader, had married Albert Albee. Jessie Lee and Albert had had two children, Alice (who'd married a James Whitley from Texas, moved there with him and had two children by him) and Pardon, who had been the owner of the Shakespeare Garden Apartments. When Pardon had died, he'd left the apartments to Alice Albee Whitley's children, Becca and Anthony, since the widowed Alice had herself died of cancer two years before.

The final complication was Joe C's sister, Arnita, who was much younger than Joe C. In the way of those times, the two babies their mother had had between them had died at birth or in infancy. Arnita married Howell Winthrop and they became the parents of Howell Winthrop, Jr., my former employer. Therefore, Joe C's sister was the grandmother of my young friend Bobo Winthrop and his brother, Howell III, and his sister, Amber Jean.