Shakespeare's Trollop (4 page)

“So you, Becca Whitley and her brother, and the Winthrops are all related,” I concluded. Since I was cleaning the kitchen counter, I had been gainfully employed while listening to this long and fairly boring discourse.

Calla nodded. “I was so glad when Becca moved here. I was crazy about Alice, and I hadn't gotten to see her in so many years.” Calla looked wistful, but her mood changed abruptly. “Though you see who owns a whole building, who ended up in the mansion, and who's sitting in the house that's about to be zoned commercial,” she said sourly. Becca had the rent income, the Winthrops were wealthy from the lumber yard, the sporting goods store, and oil, while Calla's little house was sandwiched between an insurance office and small engine repair service.

There was no response to that. I was mostly indifferent to Calla, but I felt sorry for her some days. Other days, the resentment that was a cornerstone of her character grated at me, made me ornery.

“So, they all come around,” she said, staring out the kitchen window, the steam from her cup of fresh coffee rising in front of her face in a sinister way. I realized for the first time that the day had become overcast, that the darkness was reaching into the room. Like lawn furniture, Joe C and China Belle had to be brought in before they blew away or got wet.

“Great grandchildren—Becca Whitley, all painted up; Deedra, in her slutty dresses…Joe C just loved that. And the great-nieces and-nephews—Howell III, asking can he help by mowing the yard…like he'd ever mowed his own yard in his life.”

I hadn't realized Calla was quite this bitter. I turned around to look at the older woman, who almost seemed to be in a spell. I needed to go get the old people in, or else rouse Calla to do it. Thunder rumbled far away, and Calla's dark eyes scanned the sky outside, looking for the rain.

Finally she slid her gaze toward me, cold and remote.

“You can go,” she said, as distant as if I'd tried to claim relationship to Joe C myself.

I gathered my paraphernalia and left without another word, leaving Calla to handle the business of relocating her grandfather and his girlfriend all by herself.

I wondered if Calla was glad of Deedra's death. Now there was one less person to come by, one less painted woman to titillate the old man and rob Calla of her possible inheritance.

The sheriff was talking to Lacey Dean Knopp. Lacey, barely into her fifties, was a lovely blond woman with such an innocent face that almost everyone instantly wanted to give her his or her best manners, most conscientious opinion, hardest try. When I'd first met Lacey, the day she'd hired me to clean Deedra's apartment, that innocence had irritated me violently. But now, years later, I pitied Lacey all the more since she'd had farther to come to meet her grief.

The sheriff looked as though she'd slept only an hour or so for two nights in a row. Oh, her uniform was crisp and clean, her shoes were shiny, but her face had that crumpled, dusty look of sheets left too quick. I wondered how her brother Marlon was looking. If Marta Schuster had been thinking clearly, she'd deposited the grief-stricken young man away from public scrutiny.

“We're through in there,” she was telling Lacey, who nodded numbly in response. Marta gave me the thousand-yard stare when I leaned against the wall, waiting for Lacey to give me the word to enter.

“Lily Bard,” Marta said.

“Sheriff.”

“You're here for what reason?” Marta asked, her eyebrows going up. Her expression, as I perceived it, was disdainful.

“I asked Lily,” Lacey said. Her hands were gripping each other, and as I watched, Lacey drove the nails of her right hand into the skin on the back of her left hand. “Lily's going to help me clean out my daughter's apartment,” Lacey went on. Her voice was dull and lifeless.

“Oh, she is,” the sheriff said, as though that was somehow significant.

I waited for her to move, and when she got tired of pondering, she stepped aside to let us in. But as I passed her, she tapped my shoulder. While Lacey stood stock still in the living room, I hung back and looked at the sheriff inquiringly.

She peered past me to make sure Lacey was not listening. Then she leaned uncomfortably close and said, “Clean out the box under the bed and the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in the second bedroom.”

I understood after a second, and nodded.

Lacey hadn't registered any of this. As I closed the apartment door behind me, I saw that Lacey was staring around her as though she'd never seen her daughter's place before.

She caught my eyes. “I never came up here much,” she said ruefully. “I was so used to my house being ‘home,' that's where I always felt Deedra belonged. I guess a mother always thinks her child is just playing at being a grown-up.”

I'd never felt so sorry for anyone. But feeling sorry for Lacey wasn't going to help her. She had plenty of pity available, if she wanted it. What she needed was practical help.

“Where did you want to start?” I asked. I could hardly march into the bedrooms to start looking for whatever Marta Schuster had wanted me to remove.

“Jerrell carried these up earlier,” she said, pointing at the pile of broken-down boxes and two rolls of trash bags. Then she stood silently again.

“Do you want to keep any of Deedra's things?” I asked, trying to prod her into giving me directions. “For yourself?”

Lacey forced herself to answer. “Some of the jewelry, maybe,” she said, in a fairly steady voice. “None of the clothes; she wore a size smaller than I do.” Plus, Lacey Knopp wouldn't be caught dead in her daughter's just-this-side-of-tarty clothes. “Could you use any of them?”

I took a moment so I wouldn't look like I was rejecting the offer without thinking it over. “No, I'm too broad in the shoulders,” I said, which was on a par with Lacey claiming the clothes would be a size small. Then I thought of my bank account and I remembered I needed a winter coat. “If there's a coat or a jacket that fits me, maybe I'd need that,” I said reluctantly, and Lacey looked almost grateful. “So, where do you want the rest of the clothes to go?”

“SCC has a clothes closet for the needy,” Lacey said. “I should take them there.” Shakespeare Combined Church was right down the street from the apartment building. It was the busiest church in Shakespeare, at the moment, having just added a new Sunday-school wing.

“Won't that bother you?”

“Seeing some poor woman go around in Deedra's old clothes?” She hesitated. “No, I know Deedra would have wanted to help others.”

I was trying to remember someone Deedra had helped (other than by relieving sexual tension) during her life when Lacey added, “All the kitchen things can go to the community relief fund. SCC doesn't keep anything but clothes.” The town of Shakespeare kept a few rooms at the old community center filled with odds and ends cleaned out from people's cabinets and attics: pots and pans, dishes, sheets, blankets, utensils. The purpose of this accumulation was to re-equip families who had met with a disaster. In our part of the country, “disasters” generally translate as fires or tornadoes.

Again Lacey stood in silence for a few long moments.

“Where would you like me to begin?” I said as gently as I could.

“Her clothes, please. That would be hardest for me.” And Lacey turned and went into the kitchen with one of the boxes.

I admired her courage.

I got a box of my own, reassembled it, and went into the larger bedroom.

Everything had been searched, of course. I guess the police always hope to find a piece of paper with
Am meeting Joe Doe at 8:00. If evil befalls me, he is the guilty one
written on it. But I was pretty sure no one had found such a note, and I didn't find it either, though I conscientiously checked the pockets of each garment and the inside of every shoe as I packed boxes.

When I was sure Lacey was busy in the kitchen, I reached under Deedra's bed and slid out a box she'd stuffed under there. I'd only cleared under the bed a couple of times before, when Deedra (actually Lacey) had paid for a spring-cleaning. Then, Deedra had had plenty of warning to conceal this carved wooden box with its tight-fitting lid. I lifted it a little to look inside. After a long, comprehensive stare at the contents I slammed it shut and wondered where I could hide it from Lacey.

It had been years since I'd thought of myself as naive. But I discovered that not only could I still be shocked, but also I could say that whole areas of my life were unsophisticated.

I peeked again.

A couple of the sex toys in the box were easily identifiable, even to someone like me who'd never seen the like. But one or two baffled me. I knew their function was something I'd puzzle over in odd moments for some time to come, and the idea didn't make me happy. As I pushed the box back under the edge of the bedspread till I could think of a way to get it out of the apartment surreptitiously, I found myself wondering if Jack had ever used such items. I was embarrassed at the thought of asking him, to my astonishment. I hadn't realized there was anything we could say or do between us that would be embarrassing. Interesting.

I glanced out into the hall before I slipped into the guest bedroom. I opened the drawer the sheriff had designated, and discovered it was full of odds and ends like handcuffs, stained silk scarves, heavy cord…and movies.

“Oh, man,” I muttered as the titles registered. I could feel my face grow hot with shame. How could she have made herself so vulnerable? How could she have put herself at someone's mercy this way? It seemed to me that only a woman who'd never experienced sexual violence would think the imitation of it a turn-on. Maybe I was being naive about that, too, I thought gloomily.

I stuffed all the paraphernalia into a garbage bag, and deposited it under the bed with the carved box. Then I started packing clothes swiftly to make up for the lost time.

I resumed my task by opening the top drawer of Deedra's lingerie chest. I wondered how pleased the women's group at Shakespeare Combined Church would be to get some of Deedra's exotic play clothes. Would the deserving poor be thrilled with a leopard-print thong and matching baby-doll nightie?

Soon I moved to the chest of drawers and more mundane items. As I folded everything neatly, I tried to keep all the categories together: slacks, spring dresses, T-shirts, shorts. I assumed Deedra had moved her out-of-season clothes to the closet of the second bedroom. That was where the jackets would be.

I was right. The second closet was just as packed as the first, but with fall and winter clothes. Most of her suits and dresses would be categorized as Professional—Slut Subsection. Deedra had loved dressing up for work. She'd liked her job, too; since she'd completed two mediocre years at junior college, Deedra had been a clerk in the county clerk's office. In Arkansas, the office of county clerk is an elected two-year position, quite often held by a woman. In Shakespeare's county, Hartsfield, a man, Choke Anson, had won the last election. My friend Claude Friedrich, the chief of police, thought Choke intended to use the office as an entrance to county politics, and thence to the state arena.

I was probably the least political person in Hartsfield County. In Arkansas, politics are a cross between a tabloid concoction and a brawl. Politicians in Arkansas are not afraid to be colorful, and they love to be folksy. Though my conscience would not permit to me to skip voting, I often voted for the lesser of two evils. This past election, Choke Anson had been the lesser. I knew his opponent, Mary Elwood, having observed her at the SCC while I served the board meeting there. Mary Elwood was a stupid, ultraconservative homophobe who believed with absolute sincerity that she knew the will of God. She further believed that people who disagreed with her were not only wrong, but also evil. I'd figured Choke Anson simply couldn't be as bad. Now I wondered how Deedra had managed with a male superior.

“Did you pick a jacket?”

“What?” I was so startled I jumped.

Lacey brought another box into the room. “Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you,” she said wearily. “I was just hoping you'd found a jacket you could use. Deedra thought so highly of you, I know she'd like you to have whatever you could use.”

It was news to me that Deedra'd thought of me at all, much less that she'd had any particular regard for me. I would have been interested to hear that conversation, if it had ever taken place.

There was a forest-green thigh-length coat with a zip-out lining that would be very useful, and there was a leather jacket that I admired. The other coats and jackets were too fancy, or impractical, or looked too narrow in the shoulders. I didn't remember seeing Deedra wearing either of the ones I liked, so maybe they wouldn't be such reminders to her mother.

“These?” I asked, holding them up.

“Anything you want,” Lacey said, not even turning to look at my choices. I realized that she didn't want to know, didn't want to mark the clothes so when she saw me she wouldn't think of Deedra. I folded the garments and went back into Deedra's larger bedroom. There, I quickly placed the carved box into a reassembled carton, and put the plastic bag of “toys” in with it. I laid the two jackets on top, covering up the contraband. I wrote
Lily
on the top in Magic Marker, hoping that even if Lacey wondered why I'd put the jackets in a box instead of carrying them out over my arm, she'd be too preoccupied to ask.

We worked all morning, Lacey and I. Twice, Lacey went into the bathroom abruptly and I could hear her crying through the door. Since the apartment was so quiet, I had time to wonder why some friend of Lacey's wasn't helping her with this homely task. Surely this was the time when family and friends stepped in.

Then I noticed that Lacey was staring at a picture she'd pulled out of a drawer in the kitchen. I was in there only because the dust in the closet had made me thirsty.

Though I couldn't see the picture myself, Lacey's reaction told me what it was. I saw her expression of confusion, and then her cheeks turned red as she held it closer to her eyes as if she disbelieved what she was seeing. She chucked it in a trash bag with unnecessary force. Maybe, I thought, Lacey had had an inkling she would be finding items like this, and maybe she'd decided she couldn't risk any of her friends she saw socially having a peek at her daughter's playthings. Maybe Lacey was not quite as oblivious as she seemed.

I was glad I'd followed the sheriff's hints, glad I was the one to dispose of the items now in the box marked with my name. Lacey might happen upon a thing or two I'd missed, but there wasn't any point in grinding her face in her daughter's misbehavior.

I began to think better of Marta Schuster. She'd gotten rid of most of the pictures, so now they wouldn't be added to the local lore; and she'd warned me about the other stuff, so I'd had a chance to get it out of sight before Lacey had had to look at it. We couldn't block her from all knowledge, but we could dispose of a lot of the more graphic evidence.

By noon, when I had to go, we'd accomplished a lot. I'd emptied the closet and the chests in the larger bedroom, and made a beginning on the closet in the spare bedroom. Lacey had packed most of the kitchen items and some of the towels in the bathroom. I'd made five or six trips to the Dumpster in the parking lot.

A life couldn't be dismantled so quickly, but we'd made quite a start on Deedra's.

As I picked up the labeled box and my purse, Lacey asked me when I had more time to spare, and I realized that now I had Friday mornings open, since my client was dead.

“I can meet you here on Friday,” I said. “Early as you want.”

“That would be great. Eight o'clock too early?”

I shook my head.

“I'll see you then,” Lacey said, “and maybe before Friday I can have Jerrell come over with his truck and get some of these boxes delivered, so we'll have more room to work.”

She sounded detached, but I knew that couldn't be true. Numb was probably more accurate.

“Excuse me,” I began, and then I hesitated. “When will the funeral be?”

“We're hoping to get her back here in time for a funeral on Saturday,” Lacey said.