As if thinking of Howell Jr. had conjured him up, I heard a key in the lock and he came in from the carport. Following behind him was the man who’d been out walking last night.
Now that I saw him in the daylight, I was sure he was also the man who’d been working out with Darcy Orchard the day Raphael had left Body Time.
The two men were each carrying a long, heavy black bag with a shoulder strap.
Howell stopped in his tracks. His face reddened, and he was obviously flustered.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at your work,” he said. “I didn’t see your car.”
“I parked in front.” Howell must have pulled into the garage from the side street.
“We won’t get in your way,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “Okay,” I said cautiously. It was his house.
I looked past Howell at his companion. I was close enough to see his eyes. They were hazel. He was wearing a poly-filled vest, deep green, with a Winthrop Sporting Goods sweatshirt under it. The Winthrop sweats and tees, worn by all employees, were dark red with gold and white lettering. The man was eyeing me as intently as I was looking at him.
He didn’t look like I would expect a friend of Howell’s to look. This man was far too dangerous. I recognized that, but I also knew that I was not afraid of him. I nearly forgot Howell was there until he cleared his throat, said, “Well, we’ll be…” and walked into the living room to cross to his study. With a backward glance, the man in the red sweatshirt followed him, and the study door closed behind him. I was left to finish dusting the living room and bedroom, all the while trying to figure out what was going on. It crossed my mind that Howell might be gay, but when I recalled Black Ponytail’s eyes, I jettisoned the idea.
I had to cross the living room one more time, and I saw that the door to Howell’s study was still shut. At least, I thought with obscure relief, I’d already dusted and vacuumed Howell’s study. It was one of my favorite rooms in the house. Its walls were paneled, with bookcases galore. A leather chair was flanked by a reading lamp, Ducks Unlimited prints were hanging on the walls, and a very important-looking desk that was hell to polish stood before the bay window with its window seat.
I didn’t want to look nosy, so I worked hard and fast trying to finish and get out of there before they emerged, but I didn’t make it. The study door opened and out they came, just as I was mopping the kitchen. They were empty-handed.
Howell and the stranger stood in the middle of the floor making footprints I’d have to mop over. I was wearing yellow plastic gloves, my nose was surely shiny, and I was wearing my oldest jeans and an equally ancient T-shirt. All I wanted was for them to leave, and all Howell wanted was to obscure the oddity of the situation by making conversation.
“I hear you’re the one who found poor Del?” Howell was asking sympathetically.
“Yes.”
“You’re going with Marshall Sedaka, I hear? You have a key to Body Time?”
“No,” I said firmly, without being sure which question I was answering. “I opened that morning for Marshall as a favor. He was sick.”
“My son admires you a great deal. He mentions you often.”
“I like Bobo,” I said, trying to keep my voice very small and even.
“There was no indication that anyone was with him when the accident occurred?”
I stood perplexed, unable to follow. Then I made the leap. All the intervening conversation had just been waffling. Howell wanted to know about the death of Del Packard.
I wondered what “indication” Howell imagined there might have been. Footprints on the indoor/outdoor carpet? A monogrammed handkerchief clutched in Del’s fingers?
“Excuse me, Howell, I have to finish here and get to my next job,” I said abruptly, and rinsed out my mop. Though it took him a second, the man who signed so many local paychecks took the hint and hurried out the kitchen door. His companion lingered a moment behind him, long enough for me to meet his eyes when I looked up to see if they’d gone. I kept my gaze down until I heard the car start up in the carport.
After conscientiously mopping up their footprints, I wrung the mop and put it outside the back door to dry. With some relief, I locked the Winthrop house behind me and got into my car.
The Winthrops had irritated me, interested me, been a source of thought and observation for me for four years. But they had never been mysterious. Howell’s sudden swerve from the straight-and-narrow of predictability made me anxious, and his association with the night-walking stranger with the black ponytail baffled me.
I discovered I had feelings ranging from tolerant to fond for the members of the Winthrop family. I had worked for them long enough to absorb a sense of their lives, to feel a certain loyalty to them.
Discovering this did not make me especially happy.
Chapter 3
DRIVING HOME FROM MY LAST JOB OF THE DAY, I BEcame acutely aware of how tired I was. I’d had little sleep the night before, I’d had a full working day, and I’d observed a lot of puzzling behavior.
But Claude’s personal car, a burgundy Buick, was parked in front of my house. On the whole, I was glad to see it.
His window was rolled down, and I could hear his radio playing “All Things Considered,” the public-radio news program. Claude was slumped down in the driver’s seat, his eyes closed. I wondered how long he had been waiting, since someone had stuck a blue sheet of paper under his windshield wiper. I could feel a smile somewhere inside me as I pulled into my carport and turned off the ignition. I’d missed him.
I walked quietly down the drive. I bent to his ear.
“Hey, hotshot,” I whispered.
He smiled before his eyes flew open.
“Lily,” he said, as if he enjoyed saying it. His hand went up to smooth his mustache, now more salt-and-pepper than brown.
“You going to sit out here or you going to come in?”
“In, now that you’re here to offer.”
As Claude emerged from his Buick, I pulled the blue flyer from under his passenger-side wiper. I figured it was an ad for the new pizza place. I glanced at the heading idly.
“Claude,” I said.
He’d been retucking his shirtail. “Yep?”
“Look.”
He took the sheet of blue paper from me, studied the dark print for a moment.
“Shit,” he said disgustedly. “This is exactly what Shakespeare needs.”
“Yes indeed.”
TAKE BACK YOUR OWN, the headline read. In smaller print, the text read:
The white male is an endangered species. Due to government interference, white males cannot get the jobs they want or defend their families. ACT NOW!! BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!! Join us in this struggle. We’ll be calling you. TAKE BACK YOUR OWN. We’ve been shoved enough. PUSH BACK!
“No address or phone number,” Claude observed.
“Dr. Sizemore got one, too.” I remembered the color, though naturally I hadn’t extracted the sheet from the dentist’s garbage can.
Claude shrugged his heavy shoulders. “No law against it, stupid as it seems.”
Northern Arkansas had hosted several white supremacist organizations over the past few decades. I wondered if this was an offshoot of one of them, one that had migrated south.
Everywhere I went, in the grocery, in the doctor’s office, the rare occasions I worked at one of the churches, people all complained about not having enough time, having too much to do in the time they had available. It seemed to me after reading “Take Back Your Own” that some people just weren’t busy enough.
I crumpled the thing in my hand, turned and went up the stepping stones to my front door, my keys already out and ready to turn in both locks. Claude stretched. It was a large stretch for a large man.
He followed me in. I tensed, thinking he’d try to kiss me again, but he just began a rambling monologue about the trouble he was having scheduling enough cars on the streets during Halloween, when the fun tended to get too rowdy.<
br />
I was occupied in emptying my pockets onto the kitchen counter, a soothing little ritual. I don’t carry a purse when I’m working—it’s just one more thing to tote in and out.
“Thank you for the flowers,” I said, my back still to him.
“It was my pleasure.”
“The flowers,” I began, and then stopped to take another deep breath. “They are very pretty. And I liked the card,” I added, after another moment.
“Can I give you a hug?” he asked cautiously.
“Better not,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
On the card, he’d written that he missed my company. Of course, that wasn’t true. Claude might enjoy my conversation, but his fundamental goal was getting me in bed. I sighed. So what else was new on the man/woman front?
I was more convinced than ever that intimacy wasn’t a good idea for either of us.
I didn’t say so, not just then; and that wasn’t normal for me. But that evening, I wanted a friend. I wanted the company of a person I liked, to sit with me and drink coffee at my table. Though I knew it would prolong Claude’s expectations, I temporarily bought into the illusion that it was only my companionship he wanted.
We did have coffee and a piece of fruit together, and a casual sort of conversation; but maybe because I was being in some sense deceptive, the warmth I’d hoped to feel didn’t come.
Claude objected when I changed for karate class, but I never miss it if I can help it. I promised him that when I returned we’d go to dinner in Montrose, and I invited him to stay at my place and watch the football game on my TV while I was gone, since it had a bigger screen than his little portable. As I got in my car, I had a weary conviction that I should have told him to go on home.
I strode through the main room at Body Time, trying to look forward to the stress-reducing workout I was about to get. But mostly I felt…not very pleased with myself.
Though I’d been in there many times since Del had died, I always glanced at the corner where Del’s body had rested on the bench. A smaller copy of Del’s second-place trophy from the Marvel Gym competition the year before was still in its prominent position in the display case by the drinks cooler, since the gym where a winner trained was always recognized along with the winner.
I stopped to admire the shiny cup on its wooden stand, read the engraving. In the glass front of the display case, I could see the reflection of other potential champions as they went through their evening routines. I moved my hand up and down slightly to make sure I was there, too.
I shook my head at my reflection and continued down the hall to the open double doors of the aerobics/karate room. I bowed in the doorway to show respect, and entered. Janet Shook was already in her gi, its snowy whiteness setting off her dark hair and eyes. She was holding on to the barre, practicing side kicks. Marshall was talking to Carlton Cockroft, my next-door neighbor and my accountant, whom I hadn’t seen in at least a week. There was a new woman limbering up, a woman with very long blond hair and a deep sun-bed tan. She was wearing a gi with a brown belt, and I regarded her with respect.
Raphael, who hadn’t set foot in Body Time since the morning he’d left in a huff, was practicing the eight-point blocking system with Bobo Winthrop. I was glad to see Raphael, glad that whatever had eaten at him had eased up. As I watched the two spar, I noticed for the first time that Bobo was as tall as Raphael. I had to stop thinking of him as a boy.
“Yee-hah, Lily,” Bobo called cheerfully. I hadn’t thought Bobo’s naturally sunny nature would keep him down for long, and it was reassuring to see him smile and look less troubled. He and Raphael finished, and Bobo walked over to me as I finished tying my obi. I had time to think that Bobo looked like an all-American action hero in his white gi, when he simply reached over to place a large hand on each side of my waist, squatted slightly, and picked me up.
I had not been handled like that since I’d become an adult, and the sensation of being lifted and held up in the air abruptly returned me to childhood. I found myself laughing, looking down at Bobo, who was grinning up at me. Over his shoulder, I glimpsed the black-haired stranger, standing in the hall. His eyes were on me, and he was smiling a little as he patted his face with a towel.
Marshall, nodding at Black Ponytail, shut the double doors.
Bobo put me down.
I made a mock strike to his throat and he blocked me too late.
“Would’ve gotten you,” I warned him. “You’re stronger, but I’m quicker.”
Bobo was grinning at the success of his horseplay, and before I could move away, he gripped my wrists with his strong hands. As I stepped closer to him, I turned my palms up, bringing my hands up against his thumbs, and was free. I pantomimed chopping him in the neck with the sides of my hands. Then I patted him on his big shoulder and stepped away before he had any more ideas.
“Someday I’ll get you,” Bobo called after me, shaking his finger.
“You get Lily, you’re going to be sorry,” Raphael remarked. “This gal can eat you for breakfast.”
Bobo turned dark red. I realized he’d read a double entendre into Raphael’s remark. I turned away to hide my grin.
“Line up!” Marshall said sternly.
The blond woman was the highest-ranking student present. She took her place first in line. My belt is green, with one brown stripe. I took a deep breath, warned myself against unworthy feelings, and prepared myself to be pleasant.
“Kiotske,” Marshall said. We snapped to attention, our heels together.
“Rei.” We bowed to him, and he to us.
We worked through the familiar pain of three minutes in the shiko dachi position—pretty much like sitting on air—and calisthenics. Marshall was in a tough mood tonight. I didn’t want to be petty enough to think he was giving us extra work because he was trying to impress the new class member; but he extended our sit-ups to one hundred. So we also did a hundred leg lifts and a hundred push-ups.
I was paired with the new woman, instead of Janet, for sit-ups. Her legs, hooked with mine, felt like bands of iron. She wasn’t breathing heavily after eighty reps, though the next twenty were a little work. She broke into a light sweat after leg lifts, and was breathing a little hard after a hundred push-ups. But she had the energy to smile at me as she rose to her feet. I turned slightly to Raphael and gave him a look. He wiggled his eyebrows at me. We were impressed.
“Sanchin dachi blocking posture for jodan uki,” Marshall instructed. “Komite!”
We assumed the correct position, right foot sweeping inward and forward, stopping when its heel was parallel with the toes of the left foot. I watched the blond out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she was from another discipline. She was, but she was also a quick study; watching Marshall intently, she swept her right foot in the correct half-arc and turned her toes in at a forty-five-degree angle to her body, her knees flexed slightly. Her left hand moved into chamber by her ribs, and her right formed a fist, as her right arm bent so that the fist faced her body at shoulder height.
As we went through kihon, practicing our strikes and blocks, I found myself distracted by my new neighbor. I made a determined effort to block her out of my consciousness. From then on, I felt more comfortable, and class went better. Marshall paired me with Carlton for practice. Between breaking free from each other and restraining each other, Carlton and I exchanged neighborhood news. He’d heard we were going to get new streetlights, and that the ownership of the empty lot at the corner—which I’d always thought was waste ground—had been decided among the five children of an elderly lady who’d passed away four years ago. What the new owner would do with the area, which would certainly be a challenge to fit a house on, Carlton hadn’t yet discovered.
As I used one finger to jab the pressure point in Carlton’s upper forearm, the one that made his knees crumple, he told me that he’d found a sheet of blue paper on his car when he’d come out to get his mail that afternoon. “Nuts,” he commented.
; I hoped everyone would dismiss the flyer so thoroughly. Then Carlton took his turn and pressed too hard, and from my position on the floor I looked up at him with my eyebrows raised.
When we had been dismissed, the blond drifted over to Marshall. Her hair flowed down to her butt, thick and straight, and though the youthful style didn’t exactly match her apparent age, the effect was definitely enough to attract lots of attention. Janet was scowling as she sat on the floor to tie her shoes.
I was ready to go, having grabbed my gym bag and keys, when Marshall beckoned me over.
“Lily,” he said, with a broad smile, “this is Becca Whitley, Pardon’s niece.”
Pardon Albee, the owner of the apartment building next to my house, had passed away the previous spring. Becca Whitley had taken her own sweet time in coming to check out her inheritance. One of the tenants in the apartment house, Marie Hofstettler, a very old woman who was one of my favorite clients, had told me the same lawyer who’d hired me to clean the halls had been collecting the rent for the past few months. And Deedra had told me that when her lease had expired her rent had gone up.
“I know I’ve been slow to get to Shakespeare to see to settling Uncle Pardon’s estate,” the blond said, chiming in on my thoughts in a way that focused my wandering attention firmly. I looked at her directly for the first time. She was narrow-faced, with strong but scaled-down features. The deep tan was freckled. Her eyes were a bright I-wear-blue-contacts sapphire, and heavily made up. She also wore candy-pink lipstick and lined her lips with a darker shade. The effect stopped short of vampiric; but it was definitely predatory.
Becca Whitley was saying, “I had a divorce to settle in Dallas, and an apartment to clean out.”
“So you’re moving to Shakespeare?” I asked, hardly able to conceal my amazement. I took in her long mane of Lady Clairol hair, and the cone-shaped breasts bulging at her gi, and thought she would surely stir the local roosters up. Marshall was strutting around practically wiggling his crest and crowing. No wonder tonight he’d spared me most of those wounded looks he’d been casting me the past two weeks. I had to repress an impulse to snort.
(LB1) Shakespeare's Champion Page 6