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"Lily, you probably wanted to get in a few more licks," T. L. said, with a smile that looked like his old self. "But I just can't sit still when I hear something like that. And I am the acting landlord. At least the lawyer asked me to lock the doors at night like Pardon did."
I had to smile. "I appreciate it, T. L.," I said.
"You come to see us? Alvah said you were going to drop by."
"Yep."
"Come on in."
The door to the York apartment was still open. I couldn't help glancing over at Pardon's. The crime-scene tape was still across the door. I followed T. L. into his living room, where Alvah was cross-stitching something blue and pink.
If T. L. was close to recovery, Alvah was not. I was sorry to see her face looked old, far older than it had the week before. She moved slowly and stiffly as she rose to get my money.
"Will you be needing me to help finish up?" I asked. I was babbling, but there was something awful and self-conscious about Alvah's sudden decline that made me want to fill the silence.
"I pretty much done it," Alvah said listlessly. But the curtains were still off the windows, and the ceiling fan above their little dining table hadn't been dusted, a quick look told me.
T. L. had sat himself down in his favorite chair, a leather easy chair with a pouch hanging over one arm that held a TV Guide, the remote control, and a Sports Illustrated. He opened the Sports Illustrated, but I had a feeling he wasn't really reading the page in front of him.
"Harley Don Murrell killed himself," Alvah said, handing me the money.
"Oh," I said slowly. "Well, that's..." My voice trailed off. I had no idea what that was. Good—a bad man dead? Bad—he hadn't had time to get the full horror of being in prison? A relief—their granddaughter no longer had to fear the day he got out on parole?
"How'd he do it?" I asked briskly, as if it mattered.
"He was on the third tier. He jumped over the rail and landed on his head." Alvah's eyes were fixed on my face, but I didn't think she was seeing me any more than T. L. was reading Sports Illustrated.
"Quick then," I said, almost at random. "Well, see you soon."
I had barely cleared the door when I heard it close and lock behind me.
I was u
I went to the lawyer's office, and I cleaned, but I was absorbed in my thoughts the whole time and hardly remember doing it afterward. I was recalled to my self when I nodded to his secretary on my way out the door. Now I had to drive two miles out of town to Mrs. Rossiter's. I had forgotten my earplugs, damn it.
Today was Durwood's biweekly bath. Durwood is Mrs. Rossiter's old cocker spaniel, and Mrs. Rossiter likes him to smell good, which is not a normal state for Durwood. When Mrs. Rossiter had fallen out with the local pet groomer, she'd been in a quandary, since Durwood doesn't travel by car well enough to handle a drive to Montrose. She'd been explaining her problem at her church-circle meeting, and God bless Mrs. Hofstettler, she'd chimed in to say she was sure Lily Bard could bathe that little dog.
Durwood isn't a bad dog, but bathing him is a hard job, and drying him is worse, to say nothing of cleaning the bathroom afterward. As I went to Mrs. Rossiter's front door, my rubber apron under my arm, I thought for the twentieth time that the worst thing of all was Mrs. Rossiter, who always regards Durwood's bath as a monologue opportunity, with me cast as the listener. I'd done everything in my not-inconsiderable power to quell the woman. It hadn't worked. And I didn't have my earplugs.
Mrs. Rossiter was off and ru
When I'd filled Mrs. Rossiter's guest bathtub and set the shampoo handily within reach and pulled on my gloves, she told me that I lived next to Pardon Albee, who'd been murdered a week ago, and she'd heard I was seeing that strong young man who ran the health club, and did I know that he was still married to that cute little gal who worked at the SCC Day Care? Did I know that someone had left a rat on that gal's table, and written a dirty word in spray paint on her door?
I was only surprised Mrs. Rossiter didn't tell me I'd been raped in Memphis a few years ago.
By now I was soaping down the shivering Durwood. Letting Mrs. Rossiter's words run over me like water, I rubbed the lather gently through the dog's coat, wondering at the omission.
So far no one, no one, except for members of the Shakespeare Police Department, had mentioned Memphis to me or even looked at me as if they'd heard something. I simply couldn't believe that Tom David Meiklejohn, for instance, wouldn't want to share the sensational details with his drinking buddies—for that matter, wouldn't he enjoy even more giving the gory details to Thea?
I mulled this over while Mrs. Rossiter, perched on the closed toilet so she wouldn't miss a minute of my mute company, ran down the scale of gossip to arrive at her own blood pressure, which was always a prime topic.
I interrupted her once to ask her to turn on the ceiling heat lamp so Durwood could dry faster, and once again to ask her to pass me a towel that had fallen from its rack. By the time I'd gotten the dog dry and he'd pranced off with his owner to get a treat in the kitchen, I had arrived at the only possible reason the Shakespeare police force hadn't talked: Claude had threatened them with dismissal if they did. That was what he'd meant when he'd told me he was taking steps to minimize the damage he'd caused.
I shook gentle scouring powder into the fiberglass tub, having pulled the rubber mat off the bottom to pop into the wash pile on my way out. I scrubbed the tub slowly, turning this idea over in my mind. Though I rummaged through my brain, I could come up with no other solution that fit the facts.
After I'd cleaned up, Mrs. Rossiter handed me a twenty-dollar bill, and I nodded, my hand on the doorknob.
"See you in two weeks, won't we, Durwood?" she said, looking down at the sweet-smelling Durwood. He looked as if he hoped not, but he wagged his tail, since she seemed to expect it.
The rest of the day was a slump time for me. I would see Marshall that night in class, and for the first time since I'd come to Shakespeare, I was not looking forward to it. I was grateful to Claude Friedrich for trying to make up for his error, but I didn't want to be. I couldn't be sure what his motive was. The stop at the Yorks' had upset me, not that I was bothered that a piece of trash like Harley Don Murrell was dead, but I hated seeing the Yorks in such a state.
There was nothing I could do about any of this.
I brooded my way through my last job, went home to get my gi, still dragging my feet. I even considered skipping class, a first. I couldn't quite bring myself to do that: It seemed like cowardice. But I deliberately waited till the last minute to go, so I wouldn't have to talk to Marshall before class began.
I had a definite feeling of deflation when I bowed and straightened and realized Marshall was not in the room. He'd been afraid to face me, too. Oddly enough, this made me feel good, proud.
"You leading class tonight?" I asked Raphael, the only student who has been there longer than I.
"That's what the man told me," he said, pleased under his offhandedness. "You go
To my amazement, the other class members strolled up for their turn at congratulating me. I saw that from their point of view, my short skirmish with Norvel had validated what they were doing in the class, the time and pain they were expending to learn how to defend themselves. Janet Shook actually patted me on the shoulder. It was an effort to keep still. I took my place in line—first, tonight, since Raphael was facing us—in a daze. Whatever I had expected, this wasn't it.