(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord

by Charlaine Harris

  “So…so then, I…well, I went back and got in my car. I had to go back to work even though I just had a few minutes left. You wouldn’t believe how ticky Celie Schiller is….”

  “Lower your voice and speed up,” I suggested quietly.

  “My maid tells me what to do,” she told the air. “Incredible.”

  But she looked in my face and went on. “And then I got in my car…and I backed out of my place, and put it in drive to go out, and I had to go out careful because of the Yorks’ stupid camper….”

  I held a finger to my lips. Her voice was rising.

  “That’s what I wanted,” I whispered.

  “Oh, don’t want to hear about the run in my hose that day?” she asked with killing sarcasm, then shut the door firmly in my face.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and gripped two handfuls of it. I stood there thinking, my eyes closed, still facing Deedra’s door. I took a few steps down the hall and tapped Claude’s door with one finger. I couldn’t risk more.

  No answer. I turned the handle. Locked, of course.

  I went back down the stairs quietly. Even if I’d been standing in the bottom hall, I wouldn’t have heard me.

  I didn’t know why I was so tense, why my mission seemed so urgent. But I never ignore the back of my neck, and the skin of it was crawling. There was tension in air. In the silent building, the air was humming with it. I opened the door with a feeling of relief to be getting out, and I eased through the opening as silently as I could manage. I re-locked the door behind me.

  Going from the lighted hall to the relative gloom of the parking area cost me some vision, and I stood still to let my eyes adjust. Pardon had installed one all-night security light in the middle of the garage, and it lit up that immediate area like stage lighting. But the illumination didn’t extend to the end stalls. I skirted the edge of the light and drifted to the outside wall of the garage. For maybe five minutes, I stood in the darkness, listening. I shifted my foot, and something clinked.

  Slowly, I crouched down in the weeds that had found life against the wall of the garage, sprouting through cracks in the pavement. I patted the ground gently. My fingers found a familiar shape, traced it. I tried to pick up what I’d found all in one piece, so it wouldn’t jingle. I held it up close to my face. Pardon Albee’s key ring. I had nowhere to put it; there were at least fifteen keys on the metal circle. The safest place was where they’d been, so I gently laid them back in the weeds, where they’d been since the day he died.

  Nothing moved. I didn’t hear anything but the faint sound of a car cruising by in the street. Even that died away. But as quiet as it was, I knew there were people near. I could feel the hair standing up on the nape of my neck. So I slowly rose to my feet, nearly moved away to the safety of my house, wondered if I would make it.

  I extended my hand to the knob on the camper. It was in the camper that Pardon’s body had been concealed; if any evidence remained, it would be in that little space.

  The Yorks hadn’t been due home until night. But they’d come home earlier, the day Pardon had died. I knew it.

  And then I turned the knob. The door popped open with a click, and just as I took in a breath of triumph, a huge shape launched itself at me from the black interior.

  I didn’t have a chance to defend myself. In ferocious silence, I was being beaten, and I needed all my breath to fend off the blows, to keep the fists from killing me. I knew only one person was there, but it was a person possessed of a demon, a man who seemed to have more than two hands.

  I had to fight back or I would die, but the frequency and pain of the blows left me scant brainpower. I formed a fist and struck the first thing I could see, some ribs, not an effective blow, but a start, a gesture. I was weakening and soon I would be down on the ground, and it would be all over if I fell. It was almost a miracle I’d managed to keep on my feet as long as this.

  Then I caught a glimpse of exposed neck and drove the edge of my hand in as hard as I could. My attacker gave a grunt and faltered, and I thrust-kicked with all my strength, not really caring where it landed as long as it sank into him. He staggered, and I could take a deep breath, and then a voice behind me said, “Stop right there.”

  Who? Who should stop? My attacker was in no doubt, and he threw himself at the source of the command, again moving so quickly and with so much determination that the speaker and I were unprepared.

  The struggle came into the light, moving toward the center of the parking area, and I could see T. L. York and Claude rolling on the ground, struggling for a gun that I thought must be in Claude’s hand. Their hands and legs were so confused and I was so dazed by the suddenness of all this that for a second I stood staring blankly, as if I had no stake in the outcome. I was weak enough to be shaking, but I had to move, to help—whom?

  “Lily!” Claude said, in what he maybe intended as a shout, and that decided me. Only the innocent one would want my help.

  I circled them, looking for my chance. It came when T.L. rolled on top of Claude, still gripping both Claude’s wrists. I leaped in to straddle them, grabbed T. L. by his hair with one hand and cupped his chin with the other, and pulled back hard, almost hearing the faint echo of Marshall’s voice adjuring me to be careful practicing this in class, since a wrong move could cause serious injury.

  Well, this was serious-injury time. I twisted his head and pulled up. You have to follow your head. The rest of his body had to come up, too, or his neck would break. With a howl, he let go of Claude and raked backward, trying to get me off him, but I had my fingers sunk in his still-thick hair. In agony, he reared back, but my legs were locked on either side of him, I was gripping him with my knees, and the only way he could get rid of me was to do what he did next—fall backward on top of me. I wrapped my legs around him as he left the ground and heaved back, and I never loosened my grip on his head. I began squeezing with my strong legs, my ankles crossed over his gut, and he rolled from side to side trying to dislodge me.

  “Hold still, goddamn it!” said a voice I could hardly recognize as Claude’s, and again I didn’t know if he meant me or T. L. I didn’t have a lot of options, since I couldn’t breathe and I could tell only my own rage was keeping me attached to him.

  Then the gun went off. It was deafening. T. L. screamed, and since my grip had loosened at the shock of the sound, he could roll off me and continue to scream. Suddenly, I could breathe. I didn’t feel like getting up, though. It was enough to lie on the filthy concrete and look up at the moths circling in the light.

  Chapter 11

  I WASN’T IN THE HOSPITAL, BUT I WAS UNDER HOUSE arrest.

  The chief of police had confined me to my own home for a week. He had coaxed Mrs. Hofstettler into calling all my clients and explaining (as if they hadn’t heard) that I’d been a little hurt and had to recuperate. I told Mrs. Hofstettler, via Claude, to tell them I didn’t expect to get paid, since I wasn’t going to work. I don’t know if she passed the message along. Everyone sent me a check but the Winthrops, which figured. However, Bobo came by to bring me a fruit basket he said was from his mother. I was sure he’d bought it himself.

  Marshall really had gone out of town; he wasn’t just avoiding me. He called me from Memphis to tell me his father had had a heart attack and he and the rest of his family were just circling the hospital room in a holding pattern, waiting to see what would happen. I assured him several times that I would be all right, and after I’d detailed my wounds to him and explained what I was doing for their treatment, he seemed satisfied I would live. He called me every other day. I was stunned to receive flowers with his name on the card. He was eloquently silent when I told him Claude was with me one night when he called.

  Mrs. Rossiter brought the damn dog by to see me. Claude told her I was asleep.

  Carrie Thrush paid me a house call.

  “You should be in the hospital,” she said sternly.

  “No,” I said. “My insurance won’t cover enough of it.”
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  She didn’t say any more after that, since she wouldn’t question me about my finances, but all the medicine she gave me was in sample boxes.

  Claude came every day. He had gone with me in the ambulance to the hospital, following the one carrying T. L.

  He had shot T. L. in the leg.

  “I wanted to hit him in the head with the pistol butt,” he said when we were waiting for the doctor in a white cubicle that night. I was glad to listen to him talking, so I wouldn’t moan and disgrace myself. “I’ve never shot anyone before—at least to actually hit them.”

  “Um-hum,” I said, concentrating fiercely on his voice.

  “But I was sure I would hit you instead, and I didn’t want to beat up my ally.”

  “Good.”

  “So I had to shoot him.” His big hand came up to touch my shoulder, stroke it. That hurt like hell. But I didn’t say anything.

  “Why were you there?” I asked after a long pause.

  “I’d been staking out the camper for the last week.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, thinking that all my inspiration had been for nothing. Claude had been there mentally before me.

  “No, I thought that someone else had killed Pardon, not T. L. I thought the Yorks didn’t want to tell anybody Pardon’s body had been in their camper, but I didn’t think they had put him there.”

  “The curtains,” I said.

  “Curtains? What curtains?”

  But by then the doctor had come in and told Claude he had to step outside. It was the emergency room doctor, who’d just finished sending T. L. up to the operating room. His eyebrows flew up when he saw my scars, but for once I didn’t care.

  “Your X rays,” he said.

  “Mmm?”

  “You have no broken bones,” he said, as if that was the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. “But many of your muscles are badly strained. You are very thoroughly bruised. But I can tell you’re a workout buff; underneath all that, you’re physically fit. Normally, I’d put you in the hospital, just for a night or two, just as a precaution. What do you think?” He observed me closely from behind glasses that reflected the glaring overhead light. His ponytail was caught up neatly in an elastic band at the nape of his neck.

  “Home,” I said.

  “Anyone there to take care of you?”

  “I am,” rumbled Claude from outside the curtain.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but the doctor said, “Well, if you have someone to help…Believe me, you’re not going to be able to get to the bathroom without help for a few days.”

  I stared at him, dismayed.

  “You have some healing injuries. You seem to be prone to get into trouble,” the doctor observed, sticking his pen behind his ear.

  I heard Claude snort.

  I HAD A couple of emergency room pain pills, and Carrie came by and supplemented. Claude proved to be an unexpectedly good nurse. His big hands were gentle. He knew about the scars beforehand from the Memphis police report, which was good, because there was no way I could conceal them from someone who helped me with a sponge bath. He also helped me hobble to the toilet, and he changed my sheets. The food I’d frozen ahead came in very handy, since I couldn’t stand long enough to cook, and when I was by myself, I could take my time getting to the kitchen to heat it up.

  A couple of times, Claude brought carryout and we ate together, the first time in my bedroom—he improvised a bed tray—and the second time, I was able to sit at the table, though it exhausted me.

  The swelling was almost gone and I had evolved from black and blue to sickly shades of green and yellow when we finally talked about the Yorks.

  “How did you come to be watching?” I asked him. I felt good. I’d just taken a pain pill, I was clean and my sheets were clean, and I’d managed to brush my hair. I lay there neatly, my hands resting by my sides, a little sleepy and relaxed. That was as good as it got, that week.

  “I went over everyone’s statement several times. I drew up a timetable, and a list of alibis; it was just like a TV special,” he said, his legs extended comfortably in front of him, his fingers laced across his belly. He’d hauled the armchair into my bedroom.

  “Marcus was my hottest suspect for a long time,” he continued. “But he just couldn’t have left work—too many witnesses. Deedra, too. She was gone from work for maybe thirty minutes, and she was out on a date while Pardon’s body was being dumped. After you told me exactly when that was,” and he shot me a mildly reproachful look, “I could eliminate her. Marie Hofstettler is just too old and infirm. Norvel was a possibility, and Tom O’Hagen. But Tom was at work when Pardon was killed, and Jenny was working at the country club on decorations for the spring dance…lots of witnesses. She couldn’t have killed Pardon.

  “And I didn’t think it was you, at least not after a few days.”

  “Why?” The pill was taking effect, and I was only mildly interested in the answer.

  “Maybe because the only secret you’d kill for is what happened to you in Memphis. And when I let it slip, you didn’t try to kill me.”

  I was faintly amused. I looked off in a corner.

  “So that left Norvel,” I said quietly.

  “Unless the Yorks had come home early.”

  “I would have picked Norvel.”

  “I couldn’t decide. In a way, it seemed too smart for Norvel to think of. But in a way, it seemed exactly like Norvel, drunk. Wavering between one hidey-hole and the next. Moving Pardon here. Moving him there. We looked in every apartment in the building, in one way or another.”

  I wasn’t going to ask questions.

  “No traces of the body anywhere. He’d bled a little from the mouth. No hairs, and the only fibers on the body were from a cotton blend, deep red and bright gold and blue.”

  “Alvah’s curtains,” I murmured.

  “I didn’t know about Alvah’s curtains,” Claude rumbled. “But I didn’t see anything in anyone else’s apartment that came close to matching those.”

  I remembered him walking through my house the first time he’d come in. He’d been looking for something that would ring a bell.

  “We went all over the parking stalls, trying to find one that could have been used for the body. No luck there. I saw you looking that day, and I wondered what you were up to.”

  “Saw me from where?”

  “Pardon’s apartment. I’d been sitting in it some days and every night, watching people go in and out and do their curious things, and trying to get some idea of where to take this.”

  I was definitely feeling dimmer.

  “We’d searched the garbage the day Pardon’s body was found.”

  I smiled to myself.

  “We’d looked in every apartment. We’d kept a watch on the movements of everyone for a day or two, then only on Norvel and the Yorks.”

  “Not a close enough watch on Norvel.”

  “Goddamn it, Lily, he goes out walking, we don’t know he’s got a ski mask stuffed in his pocket. He must have stuck the broom handle by the fence earlier in the day. I never saw him with it.”

  “But that was how you were able to get there so fast. You were awake. Did you pull your shirt off on purpose?”

  “Yeah,” he confessed, looking embarrassed. “I thought it would look more like I’d been awakened by you yelling.”

  “So, you were watching the Yorks and Norvel.”

  “I’d caught Deedra’s reference to the camper, too. She might have gotten confused. She pulls in and out of the parking lot every day. But she sounded sure. I couldn’t grill her without even her getting the drift, but the more I thought about it, the more possible I thought the Yorks’ presence was. I called the Creek County courthouse. Harley Don Murrell’s trial was over in time for the Yorks to have driven home. I checked with their daughter over there, real casually, and she said they’d left at one, right after lunch, too upset to stay any longer. Alvah and T. L. had said they’d stopped at the Hillside flea market and wa
lked around a little to stretch their legs, but if that wasn’t true, they could have gotten here before three.”

  “They did. Alvah had watered the plant in the kitchen. It was wet when I went to water it at three,” I said. “Her bedroom blinds were open. Those were the things she did when she first came home. And her living room curtains were down. I didn’t notice that day, but I did notice on Wednesday. I thought Alvah had started spring cleaning, but T. L. wrapped the body in them.” That, I had figured out all by myself.

  Claude stretched his long arms above his head and lapsed back into his former position. “Alvah told me today that when they got back to Shakespeare, she went in the apartment with her suitcase and left T. L. unloading the rest of the stuff. She watered the plant and opened the blinds.” He tipped an imaginary hat to me.

  “Outside, she could hear voices. Their door was open, and so was Pardon’s; T. L. had stopped by to pay the rent. Pardon had found out about the trial and the verdict from his friend in Creek County, but instead of consoling the Yorks over the difficulty of living through a trial like that, Pardon chose to quote what Murrell’s wife had said about the Yorks’ granddaughter. And after the worst day of his life, T. L. just couldn’t take it. T. L. and Pardon exchanged words, and he hit Pardon in the mouth. Pardon jumped back and bumped into the couch. It was like running from a hostile dog. T. L. went after him. He was going to hit Pardon in the jaw, but Pardon turned and slipped, and he hit Pardon in the neck with his fist, as hard as he could. It crushed Pardon’s throat.”

  “And they put him in the camper,” I said.

  “Yep. T. L. ran into his apartment, past Alvah, ripped down the curtains without asking her, and ran back in to Pardon’s place. Alvah followed. They loaded Pardon into the camper, wrapped in the curtains—his keys fell out then—and they drove around with him for a little while. They were completely panicked. They couldn’t decide what to do. The Yorks had never broken the law in their lives. They were going to dump him by a back road, to make it seem he hadn’t been killed by an apartment resident. But they realized they could establish an alibi, since no one had seen them return, if Pardon’s body was found closer to the apartments to make that alibi valid.