“Yes?” Marshall asked, a little groggy but conscious.
“I’m at home, Marshall,” I said.
“I knew you’d left,” he said curtly.
“I had a fight.”
“Are you all right?”
“Not entirely. But not as bad off as he is.”
“I’m out the door.”
And suddenly, I was talking to a dial tone.
I wanted more than anything else to lie down on the bed. But I knew I could not. I forced myself to get to my feet again, to move slowly back out to where Claude Friedrich was still holding a gun on “the whiner,” who had covered his now-blood-soaked ski mask with both hands.
I still didn’t know the identity of my attacker.
“I guess you get to pull off his mask, Lily,” Friedrich said. “He can’t seem to manage.”
I bent painfully over, said, “Put your damn hands down,” and was instantly obeyed. I grasped the edge of the ski mask with my right hand and pulled it up. It couldn’t come off entirely because the back of his head pinned it down, but enough of the knit front slid up for me to recognize its wearer.
Blood slid from Norvel Whitbread’s nostrils. “You done broke my nose, you bitch,” he said hoarsely, and my hand snapped back to strike. Norvel cringed.
“Cut it out!” barked the chief of police, no trace of comforting rumble in his official voice, and with an effort of will, I relaxed and stepped away.
“I can smell the bourbon from here,” Friedrich said disgustedly. “What were you doing when he came at you, Lily?”
“I was walking up to my own house in my own yard, minding my own business,” I said pointedly.
“Oh. Like that, huh?”
“Like that,” I agreed.
“Norvel, you are the stupidest son of a bitch who ever drew breath,” the chief of police said conversationally.
Norvel did some moaning and groaning and then he vomited.
“Good God Almighty, man!” exclaimed Friedrich. He looked over at me. “Why you think he did this, Lily?”
“He gave me some trouble at the church the other day when I was working there, so I thumped him,” I said flatly. “This is his idea of revenge, I guess.” Norvel seemed to stick to tools of his trade when he planned an assault. I was willing to bet the staff was the same broom he’d tried to hit me with at the church, with the straw sawed off.
A city police car came around the corner, lights rotating but siren silent, which was something to be thankful for.
A thought struck me and I squatted a few feet away from Norvel, who now smelled of many unpleasant things. “Listen, Norvel, did you leave that doll on my car tonight?” I asked.
Norvel Whitbread responded with a stream of abuse and obscenity, the burden of which was that he didn’t know what I meant.
“What’s that about?” asked Friedrich.
“Okay, let’s try again, Norvel,” I said, struck by a sudden inspiration. I held up a wait-a-minute hand to Friedrich. “Why did Tom O’Hagen go upstairs to see you the day Pardon was killed?”
“Because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” snarled Norvel, in no mood to keep anyone else’s potentially lucrative secret any longer. “He gave me sixty lousy bucks not to tell his wife he’s been screwing Deedra.”
Claude Friedrich was standing closer now. He’d moved in imperceptibly when he heard my question. Now he exploded in a cold kind of anger. “Little something you forgot to mention to me, Norvel?” he asked furiously. “When we get you into a cell after a side trip to the hospital, we’re going to have a serious conversation.” He nodded to the deputy who’d trotted over from the patrol car, a young man I mentally classified as a boy.
While the deputy handcuffed Norvel and inserted him into the patrol car, Claude Friedrich stood by my side and stared down at me. I was still squatting, just because I knew getting up was going to hurt pretty bad. Tucking his gun in his waistband, Friedrich extended a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached up to grasp it, and he pulled hard. I rose with a gasp.
“No point asking you where you’ve been-well, maybe I don’t need to,” he said, eyeing Marshall’s car as it pulled in behind the patrol car. He let go of my hand, which he’d retained.
Marshall launched himself out of his car with gratifying speed. He did not grab me or hug me; he looked me over carefully, as if he was scrutinizing a piece of sale furniture for scratches and dents.
“We need to go inside,” he muttered. “I can’t see well enough out here.”
Claude Friedrich stirred. “Mr. Sedaka, good evenin‘,” he said.
Marshall looked at him for the first time. “Chief,” he acknowledged, with a brief nod, before going back to his scrutiny of my facial scratches. “Her face is bleeding,” he informed Friedrich, “and I need to take her in and clean the cuts up so I can see their depth.”
I felt a sudden urge to giggle. I hadn’t been examined this carefully since my mother had gotten a letter from the school about head lice.
“Norvel Whitbread attacked Lily,” observed the older man, who was beginning to feel the cool air against his bare chest, judging from the goose pimples I could see popping up. Friedrich seemed determined to push Marshall into acting like a proper boyfriend, perhaps consoling me on my ordeal and threatening death to Norvel.
“I’m assuming you whipped his butt,” Marshall told me.
“Yes, sensei,” I said, and suddenly the giggle burst out.
Both men stared at me in such complete amazement that I giggled all the harder, and then shook with laughter.
“Maybe she should go to the hospital along with Norvel?”
“Oh, he has to go to the hospital?” Marshall was as proud as if his much-coached Little Leaguer had hit a home run.
“Broke his nose,” I confirmed between the sporadic giggles that marked the wind-down of my fit.
“He armed?”
“Broomstick, I think,” I said. “It’s over there.” The staff had landed in the low shrubs around my front porch.
Friedrich went over to retrieve it. Evidence, I assumed.
“Lily,” he rumbled, carrying the wood gingerly by one end, “you’re gonna have to come in tomorrow and make a statement. I won’t make you come in tonight. It’s late and you need some attention. I’m prepared to take you to the hospital if you want.”
“No thank you,” I said soberly, completely over my mirth. “I really want to go into my house.” More than anything, I was realizing, I wanted a shower. I’d had my usual workday, then karate class, two longish walks, sex, and a fight. I felt, and surely was, pretty gamy.
“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Friedrich said quietly. “I’m glad you came out on the good side. And I’m assuming when I go into the station I’ll find out what this is about a doll left on your car?”
I could not forbear raising my eyebrows significantly in Marshall’s direction. It was lucky my good sense had propelled me to the police station earlier in the evening. Marshall glared at me. I smiled back. “Yes, sir,” I said, trying not to sound smug. “I reported it earlier, to Tom David Meiklejohn. He wanted me to come in tomorrow and make a statement, too.”
“You got jobs on Saturday morning?”
“Yes, I do, but I’ll be in at noon, anyway.”
“I’ll see you then. Good night to you both.” And the policeman strode off, carrying the broom handle.
With his departure, my exhaustion hit me in the face.
“Let’s go in,” I said. I scanned the grass, dimly lit by the streetlights at the corners of the arboretum. My key ring had broken. Luckily, the broken key ring was my personal one, with only my house, car, and lockbox key on it. I spotted a gleam of metal in the grass-my car key. Without thinking, I bent to retrieve it and felt a ripple of pain in the side that had taken the brunt of the first blow. I gave a little hiss of shock, and Marshall, who’d been staring after the departing lawman, helped me straighten.
