“The police. Pardon was here yesterday. It was the first of the month, you know. I get a check from Chuck toward the end of the month, and I deposit it, and every first, here comes Mr. Albee, regular as clockwork. I always have my check made out and sitting on the table for him, and he always… Oh, I think I should tell the police he was here!”
“I’ll call, then.” I hoped Mrs. Hofstettler could ease her agitation with a phone call. To my surprise and dismay, the dispatcher at the Shakespeare Police Department said someone would be right by to listen to Mrs. Hofstettler’s story.
“You’d better make some coffee, Lily, please,” the old lady said. “Maybe the policeman will want some. Oh, what could have happened to Pardon? I can’t believe it. Just yesterday, he was standing right
There was no safe response to that, so I straightened the room very quickly. The coffee was perking, everything in the apartment was dusted, and I’d given the bathroom a quick once-over by the time the doorbell rang. I was pulling the clothes from the dryer, but I’d become infected by Marie’s house-pride, so I hastily carried the clean wash back to deposit in the guest bedroom and shut the louver doors that concealed the washer and dryer on my way back to answer the bell.
I had expected some underling. With a pang of dismay, I recognized the chief of police, the man I’d called in the middle of the night, Claude Friedrich.
I stood aside and waved him in, cursing my conscience-stricken call, afraid anything I said would cause him to recognize my voice.
It was the first time I’d seen Claude Friedrich close up, though of course I had glimpsed him driving in and out of the apartment house driveway, and occasionally passed him in the hall when I was in the building on a cleaning job.
Claude Friedrich was in his late forties, a very tall man with a deep tan, light brown hair and mustache streaked with gray, and light gray eyes that shone in the weathered face. He had few wrinkles, but the ones he had were so deep, they might have been put in with a chisel. He had a broad face and a square jaw, broad shoulders and hands, a flat stomach. His gun looked very natural on his hip. The dark blue uniform made my mouth feel dry, made something inside me twitch with anxiety, and I reacted with anger.
Macho man, I thought. As if he could hear me, Friedrich suddenly turned to catch me with my brows raised, one side of my mouth pulled up sardonically. We locked stares for a tense moment.
“Mrs. Hofstettler,” he said politely, transferring his gaze to my employer, who was twisting a handkerchief in her hands.
“Thank you for coming-maybe you didn’t even need to,” Mrs. Hofstettler said in one breath. “I would hate to bother you. Please have a seat.” She gestured toward the flowered sofa at right angles to the television and to her own favorite recliner.
“Thank you, ma’am, and coming here is no trouble at all,” Friedrich said comfortingly. He knew how to be soothing, no doubt about it. He sat down gratefully, as if he’d been standing for a long time. I moved into the kitchen, which has a hatch cut in the wall behind the counter, and opened it to stick out the coffeepot behind our guest’s back. Mrs. Hofstettler, thus reminded, went into her hostess mode, helping her regain her calm.
“I’m not being polite,” Mrs. Hofstettler accused herself, turning her mild, faded blue eyes on her guest. “Please, have some coffee. Do you take cream and sugar?”
“Thanks,” Friedrich said. “I’d love some coffee. Black, please.”
“Lily, would you mind bringing Chief Friedrich some black coffee? I don’t believe I want any. But you get yourself a cup and come join us. I believe, young man, that I knew your father…” And Mrs. Hofstettler was off on the inevitable establishing of connections that made southern introductions so cozy and drawn-out.
Knowing it would please Mrs. Hofstettler, I fixed a tray with napkins, a plate of cookies (a secret indulgence of Marie’s-she likes Keebler Elves, chocolate with chocolate filling), and two generous cups of coffee. While I was assembling the tray, I was listening to Friedrich telling Marie about his years as a police officer in Little Rock; his decision to return to Shakespeare when, in quick succession, his father died, he himself divorced his wife, and the position of chief of police became vacant; and his pleasure at rediscovering the slower pace of life in little Shakespeare.
This guy was good.
As I aligned the napkins in overlapping triangles on the brightly painted tole tray, I admitted to myself that I was worried. After all, how long could I go without speaking before it looked just plain peculiar? On the other hand, he’d been asleep when I’d made the call. And I’d said so little, maybe he wouldn’t recognize my voice?
I lifted the tray easily and carried it out to the living room. I handed Friedrich his cup. Now that I was close to him again, I was even more aware of how big he was.
“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’ve actually met you…” Friedrich said delicately as I perched on the hard armchair opposite him.
“Oh, you’ll have to excuse me!” Mrs. Hofstettler said ruefully, shaking her head. “This awful news has just taken away all my manners. Chief Friedrich, this is
Trust Mrs. Hofstettler not to ignore a matchmaking opportunity; I should have anticipated this.
“I’ve seen you around, of course,” the big man said, with the courtly implication that no man could ignore me.
“I clean Deedra Dean’s apartment,” I said briefly.
“Did you work in this building yesterday?”
“Yes.”
He waited for me to continue. I didn’t.
“Then we need to talk later, when you’re not working,” he said gently, as if he was talking to a shaky centenarian, or a mental deficient.
I nodded curtly. “I have a break between four and five-thirty.”
“I’ll come to your house then,” he said, and without giving me any time to agree or disagree, he focused his light gray eyes on his hostess.
“Now, Miss Marie, you tell me about seeing Mr. Albee yesterday.”
“Well,” Mrs. Hofstettler said slowly, gathering herself together with a kind of morbid pleasure, “Pardon always comes about nine in the morning on the first day of the month… to collect the rent. I know he likes the other tenants to stop by his apartment, but he comes to me because I have limber days and I have stiff days, and I never know till I open my eyes in the morning which it’s going to be.” She shook her head at the vagaries of illness and old age, and Friedrich responded with a sympathetic rumble.
“So he rang the doorbell, and I let him in,” Mrs. Hofstettler said, concentrating hard on her narrative. “He was wearing an orange-and-green plaid shirt and dark green polyester pants… kind of bad colors for anyone, but for a fair man, really not… well, that’s neither here nor there. But especially if you’re kind of heavyset… well… So he commented on the weather, and I answered-you know, the usual kind of thing people say to old ladies they don’t know very well!”
Claude Friedrich smiled at this particular sharp old lady, took a sip of his coffee, then raised his cup to me in silent appreciation.
“Did he say anything about his plans for the day?” the police chief rumbled. His voice was like the sound of far-off thunder; it made you feel quite safe right where you were.
I was
“He just said he had to go back to his place to wait for everyone to come by with the rent. Since you’ve been living here, Mr. Friedrich, you know how Pardon was about getting the rent right on the dot. He did say something about interesting things on the news…”
“Local news? National news?” Friedrich queried gently. He wasn’t breaking into Mrs. Hofstettler’s stream of thought, I observed. He was more directing it with a gentle insinuation every now and then. It was skillful. And I
