Shakespeare's Trollop

I smiled. I couldn't help it. I explained about Deedra and about my desire to help by getting the tapes out of the apartment.

"I think you better tell me the whole story about Deedra from the beginning, all over again," he said. "Wasn't she that girl with no chin who lived across the upstairs hall from me?"

The previous fall, Jack had rented an apartment when he was working in Shakespeare undercover, on a job.

"Yep, that was Deedra," I told him. I sighed. The girl with no chin. What a way to be remembered. I began telling Jack, all over again, about finding Deedra in her car -  the call of the bobwhite, the silence of the forest, the gray dead woman in the front seat of the car.

"So, how long had she been dead?" Jack asked practically.

"In the newspaper article, Marta is quoted as saying she'd been dead for somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four hours."

"Still got the paper?" Jack asked, and I went to rummage through my recycle bin.

Jack stretched out on the floor, pretty much filling my little living room, to read. I recalled with a sudden start that he was moving in with me, and I could look at him as much as I liked, every day. I didn't have to fill up with looking so I could replay it while he was gone. And he'd be taking up just as much space, much more often. We had a few bumps in the road ahead of us, for sure.

"So, the last one to see her was her mother, when Deedra left church on Sunday to walk home to her apartment." Jack scanned the article again, his T-shirt stretching over his back, and his muscle pants doing good things for his butt. I felt pretty happy about him being displayed on my floor like that. I felt like taking the paper away from him. Tomorrow morning he had to leave, and I had to work, and we were not making the best use of the time we had.

"I wonder what she was doing," Jack said. He was thinking things through like the former cop he was. "Did she make it home to her apartment? How'd she leave?"

I told Jack what I knew about the population of the apartment building that Sunday afternoon. "Becca was in town but I don't know exactly where she was then," I concluded. "Claude was gone, the Bickels were gone, Terry Plowright was gone. Tick, I guess, was drunk. The woman who works at Wal-Mart, Do'mari Clayton, was at the store, according to Becca."

"Where was Becca?"

"I don't know, she didn't say." I had no idea what Becca usually did on Sundays. She wasn't a churchgoer, and though she often made an appearance at Body Time, she didn't stay long. Maybe on Sunday she just slopped around in her pajamas and read the papers, or a book.

"Had that brother of hers gotten here yet?"

"No, yesterday was the first time I'd seen him."

"So he never even knew Deedra." Jack rested his chin on his hands, staring at the wood of the floor. While he thought, I fetched the old TV Guide from my bedroom -  our bedroom - and opened it to Saturday. This would have been the one day pertinent to Deedra, since she'd died on Sunday.

I read all the synopses, checked all the sports listings, pored over the evening shows. When Jack snapped out of his reverie long enough to ask me what I was doing, I tried to explain it to him, but it came out sounding fuzzier than it was.

"Maybe the TV Guide had blood on it or something, so the killer took it with him," he said, uninterested. "Or maybe Deedra spilled ginger ale on it and pitched it in the garbage. It's the purse that's more interesting. What could have been in her purse? Did she carry those big bags you could put bricks into?"

"No. Hers were big enough for her billfold, a brush, a compact, a roll of mints, and some Kleenex. Not much else."

"Her apartment hadn't been tossed?"

"Not so I could tell."

"What's small enough to be carried in a purse?" Jack rolled onto his back, an even more attractive pose. His hazel eyes focused on the ceiling. "She have jewelry?"

"No expensive jewelry. At least nothing worth staging that elaborate death scene for. If she'd been knocked on the head with a brick while she was at an urban mall, that would be one thing. She had some gold chains, her pearls, they would be worth that. But this, this arrangement in the woods ... it seemed personal. And her pearls were there, hanging on the tree."

"Then we're back to her sex life. Who did she actually have sex with, that you know of?" Jack looked a little uncomfortable as he asked. That was sort of strange.

"Anyone she could," I said absently, beginning to think suspicious thoughts. "Do you want a list?"

Jack nodded, but kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Marcus Jefferson, that guy who used to live in the top front - the apartment you had for a while." I thought a little. "Brian Gruber's son, Claude, Terry Plowright, Darcy Orchard, Norvel Whitbread, Randy Peevely while he was separated from Heather, plus at least" - I counted on my ringers - "four others. And those are just the ones I saw there, actually saw in her apartment. But I wasn't about to give Marta Schuster a list."

"You didn't tell the police?"

"It wasn't their business. One of those men may have killed Deedra, but that's no reason for all of them to go through hell. And I'm not convinced any of them did kill her."

"Based on?"

"Why?" I asked, leaning forward, my hands on my knees. "Why would they?"

"Fear of exposure," Jack said, starting out assured but ending up uncertain.

"Who would fear exposure? Everyone in town knew Deedra was ....eally available. No one took her seriously. That was the tragedy of her life." I surprised myself, with my intensity and my shaking voice. I had cared more than I knew, for reasons I couldn't fathom. "Jack, were you lonely enough when you came to Shakespeare?"

Jack turned dark red. It was slow and unlovely.

"No," he said. "But it was a near thing. It was only because I thought of AIDS that I didn't. She had condoms, and I was horny, but I'd been tested and I was clean and I... could tell she was..."

"A whore?" I asked, feeling rage building up in me. And I could not understand it.

Jack nodded.

It's amazing how easily a good afternoon can evaporate.

"Can you tell me why you're so mad?" Jack asked my back. I was kneeling in the bathroom, scrubbing the floor by hand.

"I don't think so," I said curtly. My hands were sweating inside the rubber gloves, and I knew they'd smell like old sweat socks when I peeled the gloves off.

I was trying to figure it out myself. Deedra hadn't valued herself. That was not the fault of the men who screwed her. And she offered herself to them, no doubt about it. She asked nothing in return except maybe a little attention, a little kindness. She never asked for a long-term relationship, she never asked for money or gifts. She had wanted to be the object of desire, however fleeting, because in her eyes that gave her worth.

So could the men be considered at fault for giving her what she wanted? If something was freely offered, could you grudge the takers?

Well, I could. And I did.

And I was just going to have to swallow it. There were too many of them, among them men I liked and a very few I respected. Men just following their natures, as Deedra had been following hers. But I regretted not giving the sheriff their names. Let them sweat a little. It might be uncomfortable for them, but after all, Deedra was the one who'd suffered.

And yet, in the end, Deedra had finally found Marlon Schuster. He seemed to be a weak reed, but he wanted to be her reed. Would she have been strong enough to turn her back on her way of life and stick with Marlon? Did she even care for him? Just because he offered what she'd always been searching for didn't mean she was obliged to take it.

Now we'd never know. Two years down the road from now, Deedra might've been married to Marlon, a whitewashed woman, maybe even pregnant with their child.

But that option had been taken away from Deedra, and from Marlon.

And that made me angry.

I felt better when the bathroom shone. I had relaxed by the time we went to bed, and as I listened to Jack's heavy, even breath beside me, I decided that somehow Jack's near-brush with Deedra absolved me of mine with Bobo. Though Jack hadn't known me well at the time, he'd known me, and now I felt as though my sin had been canceled by his.

I tossed and turned a little, unable to get to sleep. I thought of having to go to work in the morning, of Jack leaving to go back to Little Rock. I wondered if Birdie Rossiter would need me to bathe poor Durwood; I wondered if Lacey would need more help in Deedra's apartment.

Finally, it occurred to me that the remedy for my sleeplessness lay right beside me. I snuggled against Jack's back, reached over him, and began a gentle massage that I knew would wake him up in no time.

I was right.

Chapter Eleven

It was warmer the next day, with just a hint of the sweltering heat of summer: a wake-up call to the inhabitants of southern Arkansas.

Jack and I had gotten up early and gone to work out together at Body Time. We'd done triceps; I was sure to be sore after working triceps with Jack, because I tried heavier weights when he was with me, and I pulled harder for that extra set of reps.

Janet was there, and after she greeted Jack and went back to her leg presses, I noticed that Marshall himself came out of his office to spot her. I was pleased. Marshall needed to notice Janet, who had long had a soft spot for him.

Jack, on the other hand, would never be very partial to my sensei because he was well aware that Marshall and I once shared some time together. He wasn't ridiculous about it, but I noticed a stiffness in the way he chatted with Marshall.

Marshall seemed to be in a very good mood, laughing and joking with Janet, and generally going around the room in a circuit to meet and greet.

"What's up?" Jack asked when Marshall reached us.

"My ex is getting remarried," Marshall said, beaming, an expression that sat oddly on his face.

I'd had some dealings with Thea, who was tiny, lovely, and widely respected. So are small poisonous snakes.

"Who's the unlucky man?" I stood up straight after my second set of tricep pushups. Jack and I usually did them against the rack that held the heavier weights. We would put our hands close together on the top rack, and with our feet as far back as our height allowed, we would begin to lean down until our noses touched the weights, and then we'd push back up. I shook my arms to relieve the ache.

"A guy from Montrose," Marshall said, actually laughing out loud. "And I stop paying alimony when she remarries."

"When is the wedding?" Jack asked, planting his hands to do his set.

"Three months." Marshall beamed at me. "No more Thea. And he owns the John Deere dealership, so she'll be set. She's not even going to go back to work." Thea had been a child-care worker, and a very poor one, at the SCC day-care center.

"That sounds good," I said. "I hope nothing happens to the man before she marries him."

"He's in my prayers," Marshall said, and he wasn't being facetious. He slapped me on the shoulder, nodded at Jack, and strolled back over to Janet, who was patting her face with a towel. She was trying to restrain her pleasure at being singled out by Marshall, but it wasn't working. She was glowing with something besides sweat.

Back home, I showered and put on my makeup for work while Jack repacked and ate some breakfast. Then he took his turn in the bathroom while I ate some toast and made the bed.

We could make cohabiting work, I figured. It might take some adjustments, since both of us were used to living alone, and it might take some time, but we could do it.

Jack and I pulled out of the driveway at the same time, he to head back to Little Rock, and me to work for Birdie Rossiter.

Birdie was in full spate that morning. Unlike most people, who'd leave when they saw me pull up to their house, Birdie looked on me as a companion who was incidentally a housecleaner. So from the time I entered until the time I left, she provided a constant accompaniment, chattering and questioning, full of gossip and advice.

It wore me out.

I wondered if she talked to Durwood when I wasn't there. I figured Durwood qualified to be some kind of dog saint.

But sometimes, in the middle of all the inconsequential gossip, Birdie let drop a nugget of something useful or interesting. This morning, Birdie Rossiter told me that Lacey Dean Knopp had made Jerrell Knopp move out.

"I guess she's just got unhinged since poor little Deedra got killed," Birdie said, her mouth pursed in commiseration tinged with pleasure. "That Deedra, she was the light of Lacey's life. I know when Jerrell was courting her, he was mighty careful not to say one thing about Deedra. I bet he was after Lacey's money. Chaz Dean, the first husband, he died before you came to Shakespeare.... Well, Chaz left Lacey one nice pot of money. I knew she'd get remarried. Not just for the money. Lacey is pretty, no doubt about it, and no 'for fifty' or whatever age. Lacey is just plain pretty. If you marry somebody good-looking who has money, you just get a bonus, don't you?"

I didn't know which element would be the bonus, the money or the looks. Lacey, who had both, did not seem to me to be a particularly lucky person.

While Birdie went to pour herself another cup of coffee, I thought about Lacey making Jerrell move out, and I thought about the nasty speculation Janet and I had developed. I'd thought no one would worry if Deedra said she was going to make a relationship public, but I'd temporarily forgotten Jerrell. If she'd endangered his relationship with his wife, Deedra would have to be ruthlessly eliminated. Jerrell was crazy about Lacey. I'd never liked the man, and from my point of view it would be a great solution to Deedra's murder if her stepfather could be found guilty.