Shakespeare's Landlord

Page 22

I had a break from 10:30 to noon; at noon, I'd clean a lawyer's office during his lunch hour. During this time every week, I usually run errands and pay bills. The first thing on my list for today was collecting the money owed me by the Yorks. As I drove back into town, for the very first time it occurred to me that Jay Althaus might be longing desperately for his wife and children every night he spends on the road.
Nah.
Rather than park on the street, which was too narrow for my comfort, I drove behind the apartment building. At this time of day on a weekday, there would be plenty of spaces empty.
Since I'd been considering the garage as a possible storage place for Pardon's body, I took the time to look it over. I pulled into Norvel's parking space -  the apartment number is above each space, the effect remarkably like horse stalls at a big racetrack - and stood back to scan the white-painted wooden structure.
The garage, never a thing of beauty, didn't look its best empty. Since Shakespeare Garden Apartments doesn't have a basement, always a chancy thing in Arkansas, everyone in the building uses his or her stall for storage.
Starting from the left, the gap between the first stall and the fence surrounding the apartments was filled by the controversial York camper. The first stall is Norvel's. He doesn't own a car, but he'd leaned a broken framed mirror and a set of fireplace instruments in his allotted space: scroungings, I figured, that he hoped to sell. Marcus had put a wooden crate in the corner of his stall, and from it protruded a fat red plastic baseball bat and a tiny basketball goal. Claude Friedrich had put in a set of metal shelves that held car repair odds and ends and some tools.
Deedra's space held a folded tent and a pair of muddy rubber boots. I have always thought it an odd sidelight to Deedra that she enjoys camping; of course, she doesn't enjoy camping alone. But it has always interested me that Deedra is willing to get away from her hot curlers for a weekend every now and then.
The first-floor tenants had scantier pickings. Marie has a car that I drive her around in, but other than that, her stall was empty. The Yorks, like Claude, have a set of shelves, but they were almost empty, and I thought they'd even been dusted; that was typical of Alvah. The O'Hagens had two expensive bicycles, covered with a tarp, at the back of their stall, and Pardon's car and a lawn mower were parked in his stall. I felt a little bleak as I looked at them. There is something melancholy about a dead person's possessions, no matter how impersonal they are, and there's nothing personal about a lawn mower.
This careful examination had told me absolutely nothing. The stalls are so open to view, it was hard to see how Pardon's body could have been hidden in any one of them. Maybe at the back of the stall between Mrs. Hofstettler's car and the wall? Or the same place in Pardon's stall? Those were the only two cars the killer could have counted on remaining in place. Self-consciously, I checked the two stalls. Not a stain or a thread from the green-and-orange shirt.
The camper would be a great hiding spot, but the Yorks had been driving it home at the time Pardon died.
Well, I had to get my money from those upright people. I turned to go into the building and got an unpleasant shock. Norvel Whitbread was standing in the doorway.
"How'd you get out?" I asked.
"Church put up my bail." He grinned at me, an unnerving sight, since Norvel is missing some teeth. Perhaps I'd knocked one of those out myself? I hoped so. His nose was many-colored and swollen.
"Get out of my way," I said.
"Don't have to. I live here and you don't." Norvel hadn't wasted any time consoling himself for his ordeal, I saw, and smelled.
"This time, the police won't come and I won't stop," I said.
I could tell from his eyes that Norvel had made up his mind to move, but before he could shift his feet, a shove from behind sent him flying out the door, staggering to keep his feet under him.
T. L. stood in the doorway, his arm still extended, his mouth in a tight line of anger.
"You piece of trash," he told Norvel, who had spun around to face this unexpected attack, "if the next landlord don't evict you, it won't be for lack of my trying. You leave this woman alone. I don't care where you go, but you get out of my sight."
T. L. was absolutely sincere, and that evidently impressed Norvel, no matter what Norvel's condition was. He looked sullen, but he acted swiftly, heel-and-toeing it out of the parking area.
Now I had to thank T. L., and I didn't much want to.
"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 unnerved by this little exchange. I wondered what the Yorks' future would be like.
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 running (at the mouth) the minute she came to the door. She told me I'd been beaten up by that drunk Norvel Whitbread, that the SCC people were saying it was because I'd made Norvel angry at church, though why that would make it okay for Norvel to hide in my yard and jump out at me, she couldn't figure.
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 gonna be okay? Your ribs? I heard you put that guy in the emergency room. Way to go, Lily!"
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.
Carlton was there again. Most people faltered after the second time, so I saw his attendance as a good sign. He wasn't quite as sore, I could tell by the way he moved, and he was stretching better. It wouldn't be long before he'd be able to do things that would amaze him. Raphael called us to attention, we bowed, and once again we began our uncomfortable routine.
Sit-ups reawakened the pain in my side, and I had to stop after thirty.
"Slacker," said Raphael, and Janet laughed. I told myself they were teasing, and made myself smile. Carlton came over and extended a hand to help me up, and, surprising even myself, I took it.
"Seriously, Lily, don't hurt yourself worse. Marshall told me to be sure and watch you don't overdo it," Raphael said as we drifted back in after our water break. I ducked my head to hide my expression and went back to my place, but when I faced forward for his next command, I saw Raphael looking at me with some speculation. We practiced some restraint moves, nothing I hadn't learned already. Everyone pretended to be scared to be my partner.
"So, woman of steel, when's your next match?" Carlton asked as we pulled on our shoes. He, Raphael, and Janet were the only ones left in the big room.