(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord

by Charlaine Harris

  I go to Mrs. Hofstettler twice a week, too, but I charge her less—a lot less—because it takes me far less time and effort to straighten a two-bedroom apartment than it does the large Winthrop home, and also because the Winthrop children don’t do the slightest thing to help themselves, at least as far as I can tell. If only they would put their own dirty clothes in the hamper and pick up their own rooms, they could save their parents quite a bit of my salary.

  Normally, I am able to maintain my indifference to the Winthrops’ personal habits, but this morning I was thrown off balance by what Beanie had said. Had Marshall and Pardon Albee really been in business together? Marshall had never mentioned a partner in the business he’d built up from scratch. Though Marshall and I knew each other’s bodies with an odd, impersonal intimacy from working out at the same time and taking karate together, I realized we really knew little about each other’s daily lives.

  I wondered uneasily why I would worry about Marshall Sedaka, anyway. What difference would a partnership between Pardon and Marshall make? No matter how dim the light, I knew I’d have recognized Marshall if he’d been the person wheeling Pardon Albee’s body into the park.

  That realization made me feel even more uneasy.

  Bending my mind ferociously to the job at hand, I found Bobo’s errant checkbook and propped it on his mother’s dressing table, where she’d be sure to spot it. Thinking was slowing me down; I still had to do Howell Three’s room, and though he isn’t the pig Bobo is, he isn’t neat, either.

  On my Tuesday at the Winthrops’, I pick up, do the wash and put it away, and clean the bathrooms. On my Friday visit, I dust, vacuum, and mop. The Winthrops also have a cook, who takes care of the kitchen, or they’d have to hire me for a third time slot. Of course, on Fridays, too, I have to do a certain amount of picking up just to reach the surfaces of things I need to dust, and I get aggravated all over again at the people who are lazy enough to pay me to clean up their mess.

  I soothed myself with a few deep breaths. Finally, I realized I was upset not because of the unthrifty Winthrops—their habits are to my benefit—or even because of Marshall Sedaka’s possible involvement with Pardon Albee, but because right after I’d finished here, I had to meet with Claude Friedrich.

  Chapter 3

  HE WAS EXACTLY ON TIME.

  As I stepped back to let him in, I was again impressed by his size and presence.

  The big thing about fear, I reminded myself, is not to show it. Having braced myself with that piece of personal junk philosophy, I found myself unable to show the policeman much of anything, besides a still face that could be construed as simply sullen.

  I watched him scanning my sparse furniture, pieces that were on sale at the most expensive local stores, pieces I’d carefully selected and placed exactly where I wanted. It is a small living room, and I’d chosen with its size in mind: a reclining love seat with a footrest, rather than a sofa; a wing chair; small occasional tables; small pictures. I have a television set, but it, too, is not large. There are no photographs. There are library books, a large stack, on the bottom level of the table by my chair.

  The prevailing colors in both upholstery and pictures are dark blue and tan.

  “How long have you lived in this house?” Friedrich asked when he’d finished looking.

  “I bought it four years ago.”

  “From Pardon Albee.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you bought it when you came to Shakespeare?”

  “I rented it at first, with an option to buy.”

  “What exactly do you do for your living, Miss—is it Miss?—Bard?”

  Titles are not important to me, nor is political correctness. I didn’t tell him to call me Ms. But I saw that he had expected me to correct him.

  “I clean houses.”

  “But a few things more than that?”

  He’d done his research. Or maybe he’d always known about me, every detail of my life here in Shakespeare. After all, how much could the chief of police in this town have to occupy his mind?

  “A few things.” He required elaboration, his lifted eyebrows implying I was being churlish with my short answers. I suppose I was. I sighed. “I run errands for a few older people. I help families when they go out of town, if a neighbor can’t. I get groceries in before the family comes home, feed the dog, mow the yard, and water the plants.”

  “How well did you know Pardon Albee?”

  “I bought this house from him. I clean some apartments in the building he owned, but that is by arrangement with the individual tenants. I worked for him a couple of times. I saw him in passing.”

  “Did you have a social relationship with him, maybe?”

  I flared up to speak before I realized I was being goaded. I shut my mouth again. I breathed deeply. “I did not have a social relationship with Mr. Albee.” As a matter of fact, I’d always had a physical aversion to Pardon; he was white and soft and lumpy-looking, without any splendors of character to counterbalance this lack of fitness.

  Friedrich studied his hands; he’d folded them together, fingers interlaced. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his thighs.

  “About last night,” he rumbled, shooting a sudden look over at me. I’d seated him on the love seat, while I was in the wing chair. I didn’t nod; I didn’t speak. I just waited.

  “Did you see anything unusual?” He leaned back suddenly, looking straight at me.

  “Unusual.” I tried to look thoughtful, but felt I was probably just succeeding in looking stubborn.

  “I went to bed about eleven,” I said hastily. I had—the first time, when I’d found I couldn’t sleep. “Marie—Mrs. Hofstettler—told me this morning there was a lot of activity outside, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear it.”

  “Someone called me about two-thirty in the morning,” Friedrich said gently. “A woman. This woman said there was a body in the park, across the street from me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh yes, Miss Bard. Now I think this woman saw something, something about how that body got into that park, and I think that woman got scared, or knew who did it and was scared of that person, or maybe had a hand in Pardon Albee’s turning up out there and just didn’t want the poor man to lie in the park all night and get covered in dew this morning. So I think whoever it was, for whatever reason, had some concern about what happened to Pardon’s remains. I sure would like to talk to that woman.”

  He waited.

  I did my best to look blank.

  He sighed, heavily and wearily.

  “Okay, Miss Bard. You didn’t see anything and you don’t know anything. But if you think of something,” he said with heavy irony in his voice, “call me day or night.”

  There was something so solid about Police Chief Claude Friedrich that I was actually tempted to confide in him. But I thought of my past, and of its emerging, ruining the sane and steady existence I’d created in this little town.

  And at this moment, I knew the man was dangerous. I came out of my reverie, to find he was waiting for me to speak, that he knew I was contemplating telling him something.

  “Good-bye,” I said, and rose to show him to the door.

  Friedrich looked disappointed as he left. But he said nothing, and those gray eyes, resting on me, did not look hostile.

  After I’d locked the door behind him, I realized, apropos of nothing, that he was maybe the fifth person who’d entered my house in four years.

  On Tuesday evenings at five-thirty, I clean a dentist’s office. When I first moved to Shakespeare and was living off my savings (what was left after I’d finished paying what the insurance didn’t cover on my medical bills), while I built up my clientele, Dr. Sizemore had stayed until I got there, watched me clean, and locked the door behind me when I left. Now I have a key. I bring my own cleaning supplies to Dr. Sizemore’s; he prefers it that way, so I charge him a little more. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I use my own supplies or the client’s; I ha
ve my favorites, but they have theirs, too. I want to be Lily Bard who cleans; I don’t want to be Busy Hands or Maids to Go or anything business-sounding.

  Strictly privately, I call myself Shakespeare’s Sanitary Service.

  I’d thought of housecleaning as the ultimate in detachment when I’d decided how I would try to support myself, but cleaning has turned out to be an intimate occupation. Not only have I found out physical details about the people who employ me (for example, Dr. Sizemore is losing his hair and has problems with constipation) but I’ve learned more about their lives, involuntarily, than I feel comfortable with.

  Sometimes I amuse myself by writing a fictional column for the biweekly Shakespeare Journal while I work. “Dr. John Sizemore recently received a bill from a skin magazine—and I don’t mean the kind for dermatologists—so he’s hiding the copies somewhere…. His receptionist, Mary Helen Hargreaves [when the locals said it, it sounded like Mare Heln] does her nails at work and reads English mystery novels on her lunch hour…. His nurse, Linda Gentry, finished a package of birth control pills today, so next cleaning night, there’ll be Tampax in the bathroom.”

  But who would be interested in a column like that? The things I’ve learned are not things of real interest to anyone, though I was among the first to know that Jerri Sizemore wanted a divorce (the summons from the lawyer had been open on John Sizemore’s desk), and I learned last week that Bobo Winthrop was practicing safe sex with someone while his parents were at the country club dance.

  There are lots of things I know, and I’ve never told anyone or even thought of it. But this thing I know, about the death of Pardon Albee…this, I thought, I might have to tell.

  It would lead to exposure, I felt in my bones.

  My life might not be much, but it’s all I have and it’s livable. I’ve tried other lives; this one suits me best.

  I was through at Dr. Sizemore’s at seven-thirty, and I locked the door carefully, then went home to eat a chicken breast, a roll, and some broccoli sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. After I’d cleaned up the kitchen, I fidgeted around the house, tried a library book, slammed it shut, and at last resorted to turning on the television.

  I’d forgotten to check the time. I’d turned the TV on during the news. The pictures were among the worst: women holding screaming children, bombs exploding, bodies in the street in the limp grip of death. I saw the face of one desperate woman whose family was buried in rubble, and before my finger could punch the channel changer, tears were running down my face.

  I haven’t been able to watch the news in years.

  Chapter 4

  WEDNESDAY MORNINGS ARE FLEXIBLE. IT’S THE TIME I set aside for emergencies (special cleanings for ladies who are going to host the bridge club or give a baby shower) or rare cleanings, like helping a woman turn out her attic. This Wednesday, I had long been scheduled to help Alvah York with her spring cleaning. Alvah observes this rite even though she and her husband, T. L., live in one of Pardon Albee’s apartments now that T. L. has retired from the post office.

  Two years before, I’d helped Alvah spring-clean a three-bedroom house, and Alvah had started work before I arrived and kept on going at noon when I left. But Alvah has gone downhill sharply since the move, and she might actually need help for the two-bedroom apartment this year.

  The Yorks’ apartment is on the ground floor of the Garden Apartments, next to Marie Hofstettler’s, and its front door is opposite the door of the apartment Pardon Albee kept for himself. I couldn’t help glancing at it as I knocked. There was crime-scene tape across the door. I’d never seen any in real life; it was exactly like it was on television. Who was supposed to want to get into Pardon’s apartment? Who would have had a key but Pardon? I supposed he had relatives in town that I didn’t know of; everyone in Shakespeare is related in some way to at least a handful of the other inhabitants, with very few exceptions.

  For that matter, how had he died? There’d been blood on his head, but I hadn’t investigated further. The examination had been too disgusting and frightening alone in the park.

  I glanced at my man-sized wristwatch. Eight on the dot; one of the primary virtues Alvah admires is punctuality.

  Alvah looked dreadful when she answered the door.

  “Are you all right?” I asked involuntarily.

  Alvah’s gray hair was matted, obviously uncombed and uncurled, and her slacks and shirt were a haphazard match.

  “Yes, I’m all right,” she said heavily. “Come on in. T. L. and I were just finishing breakfast.”

  Normally, the Yorks are up at five-thirty and have finished breakfast, dressed, and are taking a walk by eight-thirty.

  “When did you get home?” I asked. I wasn’t in the habit of asking questions, but I wanted to get some response from Alvah. Usually, after one of their trips out of town, Alvah can’t wait to brag about her grandchildren and her daughter, and even from time to time that unimportant person, the father of those grandchildren and husband of that daughter, but today Alvah was just dragging into the living room ahead of me, in silence.

  T. L., seated at their little dinette set, was more like his usual bluff self. T. L. is one of those people whose conversation is of 75 percent platitudes.

  “Good morning, Lily! Pretty as ever, I see. It’s going to be a beautiful day today.”

  But something was wrong with T. L., too. His usual patter was thudding, and there wasn’t any spring in his movement as he rose from the little table. He was using his cane this morning, the fancy silver-headed one his daughter had given him for Christmas, and he was really leaning on it.

  “Just let me go shave, ladies,” he rumbled valiantly, “and then I’ll leave the field to you.”

  Folding the paper beside his place at the table, he went down the hall. T. L. is a big, shrewd gray-haired man, running to fat now, but still strong from a lifetime of hard physical work. I watched T. L. duck into the bedroom doorway. Something else was different about him. After a moment, it came to me: This morning, he walked in silence. T. L. always whistles, usually country-and-western songs or hymns.

  “Alvah, would you like me to come back some other time?”

  Alvah seemed surprised I’d asked. “No, Lily, though it’s right sweet of you to be concerned. I may as well get on with spring cleaning.”

  It looked to me as if it would be better for Alvah to go back to bed. But I began carrying the breakfast things into the kitchen, something I’d never had to do at the Yorks’ before. Alvah had always done things like that herself.

  Alvah didn’t comment at all while I did the dishes, dried them, and put them away. She sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring into the dark fluid as if it would tell her the future. T. L. emerged from the bedroom, shaven and outwardly cheerful, but still not whistling. “I’m going to get a haircut, honey,” he told his wife. “You and Lily don’t work too hard.” He gave her a kiss and was out the door.

  I was wrong again in thinking Alvah would be galvanized by her husband’s departure. All she did was drink the coffee. I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle with anxiety. I’d worked with Alvah side by side on many mornings, but the woman at the table seemed altogether different.

  Alvah suffers from a pinched nerve in her back and is having increasing problems getting around, but she is normally a practical, good-natured woman with decided ideas about how she wants things done and a plain way of expressing them. She could offend by this straightforwardness, and I’ve seen it happen, but I’ve never minded her ways myself. There are few unexpressed thoughts hanging around in Alvah York’s head, and very little tact, but Alvah is a good person, honest and generous.

  Then I saw the supplies I’d brought in for the Yorks on Monday afternoon were exactly where I’d left them. The butter was in the refrigerator in the same place I’d laid it down, and the lettuce beside it hadn’t been washed. At least the paper towels had been unwrapped, put on the dispenser, and used, and the bread had been put into the bread
box.

  I couldn’t say anything more than I’d already said. Alvah wouldn’t tell me what to do. So I mopped the kitchen.

  Alvah has her own way of spring cleaning, and I thought I remembered she began by getting all the curtains down; in fact, the pair that hung in the living room on the window facing the street had already been removed, leaving the blinds looking curiously naked. So until very recently, Alvah had been operating normally. I cleaned the exposed blinds. They were dusty; Alvah had stopped just at that point, after she’d taken down the first pair of curtains.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked reluctantly.

  Alvah maintained her silence for so long that I began to hope she wouldn’t tell me whatever it was. But finally, she began speaking. “We didn’t tell anyone around here,” she said with a great weariness. “But that man over in Creek County—that Harley Don Murrell, the one who was sentenced for rape—well, that man…the girl he raped was our granddaughter Sarah.”

  I could feel the blood drain from my face.

  “What happened?” I sat across from Alvah.

  “Thank God they don’t publish the victim’s name in the paper or put it on the news,” Alvah said. “She’s not in the hospital anymore, but T. L. thinks maybe she should be—the mental hospital. She’s just seventeen. And her husband ain’t no help—he just acts mad that this happened to her. Said if she hadn’t been wearing that leotard and tights, that man would have left her alone.”

  Alvah heaved a sigh, staring down at her coffee cup. She would have seen a different woman if she’d looked up, but I was hoping she wouldn’t look up. I was keeping my eyes open very wide so they wouldn’t overflow.

  “But he wouldn’t have,” I said. “Left her alone.”

  Wrapped in her own misery, Alvah replied, “I know that, her mother knows that, and you know that. But men always wonder, and some women, too. You should have seen that woman Murrell’s married to, her sitting up there in court when she should have been at home hiding her head in shame, acting like she didn’t have any idea in the world what her husband was up to, telling the newspaper people that Sarah was…a bad girl, that everyone in Creek County knew it, that Sarah must have led him on….”