that his body covered the scars, and I gradually relaxed against him.
“Are you thinking I might track him down and beat him up for Thea’s honor?” he asked after letting enough time pass to let me know he didn’t consider Thea’s affair a personal thing.
“I don’t know you well enough to know what you would do.”
“Thea is a hometown sweetheart, because she’s pretty and she was born and bred here. She knows when to act charming and sunny. She’s good with children. But the people you won’t find talking about Thea with this exaggerated awe are the men she’s dated for a while-the men she’s dated long enough to go to bed with.”
I pulled back a little to look at Marshall’s face. He looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.
“Lily, by the time I came to town, Thea had run through the few locals she felt were worthy of her. She could tell, I think, that people were starting to wonder why pretty, sweet Thea couldn’t seem to form a lasting relationship with anyone, so she dated me and married me quickly. I didn’t go to bed with Thea before I married her. She said she wanted to wait and I respected that, but I found out after maybe a month, that was just because she didn’t want me to back out like other men had.”
“She doesn’t like sex?” I asked hesitantly. I should be the last one to criticize a woman who had problems dealing with men.
Marshall laughed in an unamused way. “Oh, no. She likes it. But she doesn’t like it like we do it,” and his hand ran down my back, caressed my hips. “She likes to do… sick things, things that hurt. Because I loved her, I tried to oblige, but it ended up making me feel bad. Sad.”
Degraded, I thought.
“Then she decided she wanted a baby, and I wondered if that might save our marriage, so I tried to oblige. But I’d lost my interest by then, and… I couldn’t.” This cost Marshall a great deal to say. “So she called me names and taunted me, only in private, only when no one else could hear. Not because she cared about me, but because she didn’t want anyone else to know she was capable of saying those things. Going home was like going to hell. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I haven’t had sex in six months, Lily, but that wasn’t the worst of it, not by a long shot. So here I am, in this dump, wondering how to file for divorce without Thea taking my business away from me.”
I had no response to his money worries. I have very little available cash myself because I am saving strenuously against the day when I have to have a new car, or a new roof, or any of the sudden catastrophic expenses that can wipe out a one-income household. But at least all my finances, good or bad, are dependent on me and me only. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had to give half of my business away to someone who had found pleasure in degrading and humiliating me.
“Tom David Meiklejohn.”
His eyes had been focused far away, staring past my shoulder at a bleak vista. Now he looked at me.
“The cop.” His dark eyes stared into mine. I gave a tiny nod. “I’ll bet she loves the handcuffs,” he said.
I tried not to shrink at the thought of a woman handcuffed, but my breath came out in a little whine that drew Marshall’s attention to me instantly. “Don’t think of it, Lily,” he said quietly. “Don’t think of it; think of this.” And his hand slid gently between my legs, his mouth found my breast, and I did indeed think of other things.
“Marshall,” I said afterward, “if you hadn’t noticed, I wanted to tell you I have absolutely no complaints about your virility.” He laughed a little, breathlessly, and for a while we dozed together.
But I woke soon, anxious and ill at ease. Moving as quietly as I could, I got up and began pulling on my clothes. Marshall’s breathing was still heavy and even and he shifted position, taking up more of the bed now that I wasn’t in it. For a moment, I bent over the bed, my hand an inch from his shoulder. Then I drew back. I hated to wake him: I felt compelled to leave.
I eased out of the back door, punching in the button on the knob so it would lock behind me.
I’d begun thinking, as Marshall talked about Thea, of the dead rat someone had left on Thea’s kitchen table in that neat white house on Celia. When I’d woken, the rat had worried me more and more.
The Ken doll, the toy handcuffs, the dead rat. Obviously, the tokens left for me referred to my past. The dead rat seemed cut from an entirely different pattern. A thought trailed through my mind like a slug: Had Thea perhaps tortured animals in her childhood? Was the rat also from Thea’s past? I grimaced as I moved through the darkness. I could not bear cruelty to a helpless thing.
At this time of night, the streets were deserted, the town deep in sleep. I wasn’t being as careful as I usually was. The only people likely to see me at this hour were the two patrolling policemen, and I knew where one of the two was; I’d checked on my way home, and Tom David was still at Thea’s. Surely he’d gone off duty; wouldn’t the dispatcher be trying to raise him otherwise?
I was yawning widely as I walked up my driveway. I’d pulled my keys from my pocket and was about to step off the drive to go to my front door when the attack came. Tired and inattentive as I’d been, I had trained for this moment for three years.
When I heard the rush of feet, I whirled to face the attacker, the keys clenched in my fist to reinforce my blow. But the man in the ski mask had a staff, maybe a mop or broom handle, and he swung it under my guard and whacked my ribs. I kept myself upright by a supreme effort, and when my assailant tried to swing the staff again, I let the keys fall, grabbed the staff with both hands, swung up my leg, and kicked him hard in the chest-not a very effective kick, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. He did have to let go of the staff, which was good, but I staggered when he released it and dropped it myself, which was bad.
My kick had made him fall back, too, though, and that gave me time to recover my footing before he launched himself at me with a savage growl, like a dog out of control.
I was close to that point myself. When I saw the face coming toward me, shrouded in a ski mask but otherwise unguarded, I inhaled deeply, then struck as hard as I could with my fist, exhaling and locking into position automatically. The man screamed and began falling, his hands going up to clutch his nose, and on his way down, my knee came up, striking him sharply under the chin.
And that was the end of it.
Though I stood in a fighting stance in the dim light, the man was rolling and gurgling in a whipped way on my grass. Lights were coming on in the apartments-the man’s scream had been piercing, if not long-and Claude Friedrich, the man used to dealing with emergencies, dashed around the dividing fence with speed rather amazing for a man of his age. His gun was drawn. I took him in at a glance, then resumed guarding the man on the grass.
Friedrich stopped short.
“What the
“This son of a bitch attacked me,” I said, very pleased to hear my voice come out even.
“I would think it was the other way around, Miss Lily, if he didn’t have a mask on and you weren’t in your own yard.”
I saw no point in responding. I kept my attention focused on the writhing, whimpering figure.
“I think he’s pretty much whipped,” Friedrich said, and I thought I detected a note of sarcasm. “What I really wish you would do, Lily, is go inside your little house there and call the police station and tell them I need some backup here.”
What I longed to do was jump on my attacker and hit him a few more times, because the adrenaline was still pumping through my system, and by God, he had startled me. But Friedrich was making sense; there was no point in my getting into trouble. I stood straight, dropping my hands, and took a cleansing breath to relax. I took a step toward my house and felt a stab of pain, sharp enough to cause me to stop dead.
“You all right?” Friedrich said sharply, anxiously.
I found I was aching from more than the wish to punish my attacker. His first blow had been a good one, and he’d managed to rake my face with his fingers, though I couldn’t remember how or when. As the rage ebbed away, the pain seeped in to take its place.
“I’ll make it,” I told him grimly, and reached out to pull my keys from the grass. To my dismay, the little chain had snapped and the keys had scattered under our feet. I could find only one, but at least that one was my house key. I hobbled into the house, making my way to my bedroom. I called the police station first. After I hung up, my hand stayed wrapped around the receiver. I had no idea what I’d said to the dispatcher, the unseen Lottie. It was now 1:30 in the morning.
Marshall had made me promise to call him if I had trouble.
I checked the little piece of paper he’d scrawled his new phone number on, and I punched it in.
