and I promised him I’d do it. Though when he thinks I’ll find the time, I don’t know!”
“All right.”
“Oh, and Lily-Bobo tells me you take karate. Can that be true?”
“Yes.” I knew I was being uncooperative. I was in a bloody mood today. And I hated the idea of the Winthrops discussing me. Most days, I find Beanie amusing but tolerable, but today she was irritating beyond measure. And Beanie felt the same way about me.
“Well, now, we always wanted Bobo to take tae kwan do, but there never was anyone here to teach it, except that man who went broke after six months. Who do you take from?”
“Marshall Sedaka.”
“Where does he teach it? At his gym?”
“He teaches goju karate to adults only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights in the aerobics room at Body Time, seven-thirty to eight-thirty.” Those three nights were the highlights of my week.
Beanie decided I was experiencing some kind of warming trend, and she beamed at me.
“So you don’t think he’d teach Bobo? After all, Bobo’s seventeen, and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s practically an adult-physically, at least,” Beanie added rather grimly.
“You can ask him,” I replied. There wasn’t a hope in hell of Marshall taking on a spoiled kid like Bobo, but it wasn’t my business to tell Beanie that.
“I just may do that,” Beanie said, making a little note in the tiny spiral-bound notebook she keeps in her purse all the time. (That’s something Beanie and Claude Friedrich have in common, I reflected.) And Beanie would call, too; one of the few things I find to admire about the woman is her devotion to her children. “Well,” Beanie said dismissively, looking up and turning slightly as if she was already half out the door, “I’m just going to freshen up for a minute and then I’m off to the club. Don’t forget about the checkbook, please!”
“I won’t.” I bent over to retrieve a sweatshirt Bobo had apparently used to clean his car’s windshield.
“You know,” Beanie said reflectively, “I think Pardon was that Marshall Sedaka’s partner.”
“What?” The sweatshirt slipped from my fingers; I groped around for it, hoping I hadn’t heard correctly.
“Yes,” said Beanie firmly. “That’s right. Howell Junior told me, and I thought it was funny at the time, because Pardon was the most unfit man I’ve ever seen. He wouldn’t walk down the street if he could ride. That gym’s been a great success. It must have made Pardon a lot of money. Wonder who he left it all to?”
I just kept tossing clothes into the plastic wash basket. When I finally looked up, Beanie had gone, and a moment later I heard splashing noises from Beanie’s big bathroom off the master bedroom.
After I heard the slam of the door to the garage, I said out loud, “I best start being nice to the mistress, else she sell me down the river.” I really shouldn’t be rude to her, I told myself seriously. Since they pay for me twice a week.
I got to Mrs. Hofstettler twice a week, too, but I charge her less-a lot less-because it takes me far less time and effort to straighten a two-bedroom apartment than it does the large Winthrop home, and also because the Winthrop children don’t do the slightest thing to help themselves, at least as far as I can tell. If only they would put their own dirty clothes in the hamper and pick up their own rooms, they could save their parents quite a bit of my salary.
Normally, I am able to maintain my indifference to the Winthrops’ personal habits, but this morning I was thrown off balance by what Beanie had said. Had Marshall and Pardon Albee really been in business together? Marshall had never mentioned a partner in the business he’d built up from scratch. Though Marshall and I knew each other’s bodies with an odd, impersonal intimacy from working out at the same time and taking karate together, I realized we really knew little about each other’s daily lives.
I wondered uneasily why I would worry about Marshall Sedaka, anyway. What difference would a partnership between Pardon and Marshall make? No matter how dim the light, I knew I’d have recognized Marshall if he’d been the person wheeling Pardon Albee’s body into the park.
That realization made me feel even more uneasy.
Bending my mind ferociously to the job at hand, I found Bobo’s errant checkbook and propped it on his mother’s dressing table, where she’d be sure to spot it. Thinking was slowing me down; I still had to do Howell Three’s room, and though he isn’t the pig Bobo is, he isn’t neat, either.
On my Tuesday at the Winthrops‘, I pick up, do the wash and put it away, and clean the bathrooms. On my Friday visit, I dust, vacuum, and mop. The Winthrops also have a cook, who takes care of the kitchen, or they’d have to hire me for a third time slot. Of course, on Fridays, too, I have to do a certain amount of picking up just to reach the surfaces of things I need to dust, and I get aggravated all over again at the people who are lazy enough to pay me to clean up their mess.
I soothed myself with a few deep breaths. Finally, I realized I was upset not because of the unthrifty Winthrops-their habits are to my benefit-or even because of Marshall Sedaka’s possible involvement with Pardon Albee, but because right after I’d finished here, I had to meet with Claude Friedrich.
Chapter Three
He was exactly on time.
As I stepped back to let him in, I was again impressed by his size and presence.
The big thing about fear, I reminded myself, is not to show it. Having braced myself with that piece of personal junk philosophy, I found myself unable to show the policeman much of anything, besides a still face that could be construed as simply sullen.
I watched him scanning my sparse furniture, pieces that were on sale at the most expensive local stores, pieces I’d carefully selected and placed exactly where I wanted. It is a small living room, and I’d chosen with its size in mind: a reclining love seat with a footrest, rather than a sofa; a wing chair; small occasional tables; small pictures. I have a television set, but it, too, is not large. There are no photographs. There are library books, a large stack, on the bottom level of the table by my chair.
The prevailing colors in both upholstery and pictures are dark blue and tan.
“How long have you lived in this house?” Friedrich asked when he’d finished looking.
“I bought it four years ago.”
“From Pardon Albee.”
“Yes.”
“And you bought it when you came to Shakespeare?”
“I rented it at first, with an option to buy.”
“What exactly do you do for your living, Miss-is it Miss?-Bard?”
Titles are not important to me, nor is political correctness. I didn’t tell him to call me Ms. But I saw that he had expected me to correct him.
“I clean houses.”
“But a few things more than that?”
He’d done his research. Or maybe he’d always known about me, every detail of my life here in Shakespeare. After all, how much could the chief of police in this town have to occupy his mind?
“A few things.” He required elaboration, his lifted eyebrows implying I was being churlish with my short answers. I suppose I was. I sighed. “I run errands for a few older people. I help families when they go out of town, if a neighbor can’t. I get groceries in before the family comes home, feed the dog, mow the yard, and water the plants.”
“How well did you know Pardon Albee?”
“I bought this house from him. I clean some apartments in the building he owned, but that is by arrangement with the individual tenants. I worked for him a couple of times. I saw him in passing.”
“Did you have a social relationship with him, maybe?”
I flared up to speak before I realized I was being goaded. I shut my mouth again. I breathed deeply. “I did not have a social relationship with Mr. Albee.” As a matter of fact, I’d always had a physical aversion to Pardon; he was white and soft and lumpy-looking, without any splendors of character to counterbalance this lack of fitness.
Friedrich studied his hands; he’d folded them together, fingers interlaced. He was leaning forward, his elbows
