feet. I’d wrapped it in a paper towel from a roll in my housekeeping kit. Now I spread the towel open.
Tom David gradually uprighted himself and put the RC Cola down. He stubbed out his cigarette, staring at the Ken doll.
“That’s ugly,” he said. “That’s real ugly. Did you see anyone around your car?”
“No. I was in Body Time for over an hour. Anyone could have pulled into the parking lot, put the doll on my car, and pulled out without anyone seeing them. Not many people there tonight-most people don’t work out on Friday evenings.”
“You were at that martial arts class that Marshall Sedaka runs?”
There was something about the way he said Marshall’s name… not just distaste but also personal dislike. I went on full alert.
“Right.”
“He thinks he’s tough,” Tom David remarked. There was a cold light in his mean, bright eyes. “Orientals think they can order women around like they was sheep or something.”
I raised my eyebrows. If anyone thought of women as interchangeable parts, it was Tom David Meiklejohn.
“Sedaka see this?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He have a chance to put it on your car? You two have any personal relationship?”
“He didn’t have a chance to put it on my car. He was inside Body Time when I got there, and he left after I did.”
“Listen, I’m the only one here right now, and when Lottie comes back with her McNuggets, I gotta go on patrol. You want to come back in tomorrow and make a statement?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll try fingerprinting this, and we’ll see what happens.”
I nodded and turned to go. As my hand touched the door, Tom David said abruptly, “I guess you
I could feel the color draining from my face.
I looked out through the glass door into the darkness.
“Any woman should be interested in self-defense,” I said, and walked out into the night.
I drove home tense with rage and fear, thinking of the bloody-eyed Ken doll, thinking of Tom David Meiklejohn mulling over what had happened to me with his buddies over a few beers. I had found the source of the leak in the police department, I was pretty sure.
I parked the car where it belonged, unlocked the back door, and threw everything but my keys and my driver’s license into the house. Those I stuck in my T-shirt pocket, where they made a strange bulge over my breast. I had to walk. It was the only thing that would help.
The street was deserted at the moment. It was about 9:00 p.m. The night was much warmer than it had been the last time I walked, the humidity high, a precursor of the dreadful hot evenings of summer. It was fully dark, and I drifted into the shadows of the street, padding silently along to pass through the arboretum. Marshall’s house on Farraday was not far. I didn’t know the number, but I would see his car.
It relaxed me, moving through the night invisibly. I felt more like the Lily who had had a stable existence before the murder of Pardon Albee. Then, my only problem had been the sleepless nights, which came maybe twice a week; other than that, I’d had things under control.
Standing concealed in the undergrowth of the arboretum, I waited for a car to pass on Jamaica Street, so I could steal across.
I hadn’t considered my route at all, but now sheer curiosity led me to drift toward the house Marshall had up until recently called home. There is very little cover on Celia Street, which is one of modest but spruce white houses with meticulously kept yards. I planned my approach. It was earlier than I usually walked, and there were more people on the move, which in Shakespeare isn’t saying a hell of a lot-a car would pass occasionally, or I would see someone come out of his house, retrieve something from a pickup or jeep, and hurry back inside.
In the summer, children would be playing outside till late, but on this spring night, they all seemed to be inside.
I worked my way down the street, trying to be unobtrusive but not suspicious, since there were people still up and active. It was not a workable compromise. I’d rather be seen than reported, so I moved at a steady pace rather than drifting from one cover to another. After all, I was wearing white, hardly a camouflage color. Still, no one seemed to notice me, and curtains up and down the little street were uniformly drawn against the dark.
I only saw the police car when I was directly opposite Marshall’s former home. It was parked up against Thea’s next-door neighbor’s hedge, which divides their yards from the street to the back of the lot. The cruiser was pulled right up behind a car that I assumed must be Thea’s, which looked dark red or brown in the dim light of the streetlamp. So it didn’t exactly seem the driver was paying an official visit; in fact, I concluded, Tom David Meiklejohn, whose car number 3 was parked in the driveway, was inside chitchatting with the rat-plagued Mrs. Sedaka, while he was supposed to be patrolling the streets of Shakespeare to keep them safe for widows and orphans.
Instead, it seemed Tom David Meiklejohn was personal bodyguard to one about-to-be-divorcee.
I had a fleeting desire to make yet one more anonymous phone call to Claude Friedrich, before I reflected that not only would that be sneaky and dishonorable but also that a possible relationship between Thea and Tom David was none of my business.
I began moving again, ghosting silently down the dark, quiet street, thinking hard as I passed from shadow to shadow.
In five minutes, I was on Farraday. Marshall’s car was parked in the gravel driveway of the house on the corner, a little house smack in the middle of a small lot needing a great deal of yard work. The rental was definitely a step down from Celia Street.
I wondered if it had been hard for Marshall to leave the Sedaka house in Thea’s possession.
The porch light was glowing yellow, but I continued on through the yard and around to the back door, my eyes adapting quickly to the darkness. I rapped three times, hard, and heard Marshall’s quick footsteps.
“Who’s there?” he asked. He’s not a man who likes surprises, either.
“Lily.” He opened the door quickly. I went up the step and into the house. And despite what he had said about having an evening of conversation, the minute the door shut, his arms went around me and his mouth found mine. My hands snaked underneath his T-shirt, eager to touch his body again.
I did not have time to marvel at my ability to have sex without fear; I did not have time to wonder if what I was doing was wise, since I carried burdens enough for two, and Marshall was not exactly an unencumbered man. But we did take a moment for protection this time, and I hoped we wouldn’t pay for our previous stupidity.
Afterward, it was hard to feel the limitations of my own skin, to feel myself shrinking back into the mold in which I’d cast myself before I’d come to Shakespeare. For the first time in years, it felt confining rather than comfortable.
And yet, as I looked around Marshall’s Spartan bedroom-the queen-size mattress and box spring on a frame, no headboard or footboard; a dresser clearly retrieved from someone’s attic; a thrift store night table-I felt uneasy at being out of my own home. In many months, I hadn’t been in anyone’s house except to clean it.
We’d been lying together quietly since making love, my back to his front, his arm around me. Every now and then, Marshall would kiss my neck or stroke my side. The intimacy of the moment both excited and threatened me.
“You know Thea is seeing someone else,” I said quietly.
If he wanted to get divorced, he needed to know that. If he wanted to reconcile with Thea, he needed to know that.
“I thought so,” he said after a long moment. “Do you know who it is?”
“What will you do if I tell you a name?” I turned over to face him, automatically reaching down for the sheet to cover my scars. Before he answered, he took the sheet, pulled it back down, and kissed my chest.
“Don’t hide from me, Lily,” he whispered.
My hands twitched with the effort I was making not to grab the sheet. Marshall moved even closer to me so
