Thea. She curled her lip at my workout clothes.
She guided her cart until she was at my side, right in the middle of the canned vegetables. I watched her lips curve in a venomous grin, and I knew she was about to say something she hoped would be painful.
So I beat her to the punch.
I leaned down to Thea and said with the widest smile I could stretch my lips into, “Drive past my house one more time and I’ll have Clause Friedrich arrest you.”
Thea’s expression was priceless. But she snapped back together quickly.
“Marshall is mine,” she hissed, reminding me vividly of my seventh-grade school play. “You’re trying to break up a happy marriage, you home-wrecker.”
“Not good enough,” I said. “You’d better warn Tom David to find another parking place.”
Once again, Thea was disconcerted. But being Thea, belle of Shakespeare, she rallied.
“If you’re the one leaving those awful things at my house”-and here she actually managed tiny tears- “please stop.” She said this just loudly enough for an older lady who was comparing soup cans to absorb her meaning and then eye me in horror.
“What things?” I asked blankly. “You poor little gal, has someone been leaving things on your doorstep? What did the police say?”
Thea turned red. Of course she hadn’t called the police; the police, in the person of Tom David Meiklejohn, had already been on hand.
“You know,” I said, with as much concern as I could muster, “I’m sure Claude would station someone outside your house all night if you think there’s a prowler.” The older woman gave me an approving nod and ventured down the aisle to compare the prices of tomato sauce.
I hadn’t said anything insincere in so long that it actually felt refreshing and creative.
Thea had to content herself with a low-voiced “I’ll get you” and a flounce as she laboriously pushed her cart toward the meat counter. A very weak finale.
I left the grocery store with several bags, and I managed to feel almost like myself when I got home.
Damned if the chief of police wasn’t still there. He’d just moved his car, probably to its parking space behind the apartments, but he’d returned his body to my carport. I pulled into my driveway and unlocked my trunk. I would not be kept out of my own home. Friedrich uncrossed his arms and sauntered over.
“What is it with you?” I asked. “Why do you keep turning up here? I didn’t do anything.”
“I might think I wasn’t welcome if I didn’t know better,” Friedrich rumbled. “Your face is looking a lot better. How’s the side?”
I unlocked my kitchen door and pitched in my purse and workout bag. I went back to the car for the first two bags of groceries. Friedrich wordlessly gathered the next two and followed me into the kitchen.
In silence, I put the cans away in the pantry, stowed the meat in the refrigerator, and slid the juice containers into the freezer of my side-by-side. When all that was done, when the bags were folded and put under the sink in their designated place, I sat down at my plain wooden table opposite Friedrich, who’d seated himself, and said, “What?”
“Tell me what you saw the night Pardon was killed.”
I looked down at my hands. I thought it over carefully. My goal in keeping quiet had been to keep the police from asking questions about my past. Well, Friedrich had done that anyway, and been too trusting of his subordinates; my past was out, and the results hadn’t been as dreadful as I’d always thought they would be. Or maybe I had changed.
If only Claude Friedrich was here to listen to me tell it, and I didn’t have to go down to the police station again, why not tell him the little I knew?
And maybe Marshall had spooked me a little, with his “woman who knows too much” scenario.
Friedrich was waiting patiently. I would feel much more comfortable in this big man’s presence if I had nothing to conceal; he would then drench me with his warm approval. My mouth went up at one corner in a sardonic grin. This ambience was undoubtedly what made Claude Friedrich such a good policeman.
“I’ll tell you what I saw, but it won’t make any difference,” I told him, making my decision abruptly. I looked him in the eyes and spread my hands flat on the table. “That’s why I didn’t see the need to tell you before.”
“It was you that called me that night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was me. Partly because I didn’t want him to lie out there all night, but mostly because I was scared some kids might find him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this to begin with?”
“Because I didn’t want to come to your attention. What I saw wasn’t important enough for me to risk you calling Memphis, getting the story about what happened to me. I didn’t want people here to know. And yet it’s happened, anyway.” And I looked him directly in his eyes.
“That’s a mistake I can’t make up to you,” he said. “I regret letting that report sit around on my desk, more than I can tell you. I’m taking steps to minimize the damage.”
That was as much apology as I’d ever receive; and really, what more could he say?
I shrugged. My anger against him deflated gently. I had known all along that someday it was inevitable that my past would block my path again.
“What I saw was someone wearing a raincoat with a hood, wheeling Pardon over to the arboretum,” I said flatly. “I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure it was someone from the apartments. I figured you already knew that, since Pardon’s body appeared and disappeared so many times. Gone when Tom O’Hagen paid his rent, back when Deedra paid hers. It had to have been hidden in a different apartment, though I can’t imagine why anyone would move Pardon’s corpse around.”
“How was the body moved over to the arboretum?”
“It was in some garbage bags, one pulled on from the feet and another pulled on from the head. Then it was loaded in my garbage-can cart and rolled over there.” I felt mad all over again when I thought of the use of my cart.
“Where are the garbage bags?”
“Gone to the incinerator.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“My fingerprints were on them. I checked to see if Pardon was dead.”
Friedrich gave me the strangest look.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Start at the beginning,” he rumbled.
I began with my walk. Friedrich’s eyebrows went up when he realized I walked by myself in the dead of night quite frequently, but he said nothing until I had given him the whole account.
“Do me a favor, Lily,” he said finally.
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
“Next time, just call me to start with.”
It took me a moment to realize he was joking. I smiled. He smiled back, no great big grin, but companionable. He was letting that warmth wash over me, and I was enjoying it just as much as any other suspect who’d just come clean. Why not? I thought, forgoing scolding myself for being a chump. I was prepared for Friedrich to take his leave, but there he stayed, seemingly content at my clean, bare kitchen table.
“So,” the policeman said. “Happening in the same time frame, we have the murder of Pardon Albee and the strange persecution of Lily Bard and Thea Sedaka. Thea never called us in, officially. But Tom David said a few things to Dolph, who figured he better tell me. I like to know what’s going on in my town. Don’t you think it’s strange, Lily, that so many unusual things are happening at the same time in Shakespeare?”
I nodded, though I had my own ideas about the “strange persecution.” Moving quietly, I gathered my cutting board, a knife, and a package of chicken breasts. I began to skin and debone the chicken.
“The Yorks were gone on Monday. They returned that night late,” Claude said. I worked and listened. “Mrs. Hofstettler was there all the time, but she’s partially deaf and sometimes almost immobile. Jenny O’Hagen was at work, and Tom O’Hagen was sleeping. When he got up, he played a round of golf at the country club. He came home and went upstairs to pay blackmail to Norvel Whitbread, who was home from work ‘sick.’ Then Tom went down to pay his rent. You were unlocking the Yorks’ apartment. When Tom found Pardon’s door open, the body wasn’t there, but the furniture was not in its usual order. An hour and a half later, Deedra came home from work,
