Shakespeare's Landlord

"Give me a break!" Carlton said, and I felt a little shame at driving him so hard.

"Don't scare him away, Lily," Marshall said behind me.

"No, sir." I tried to look repentant.

"Back in line," Marshall called to the paired students, and we scampered (or hobbled) back into place.

"Kiotske!" We came to attention. "Rai!" We bowed. "Class dismissed!"

"My favorite words," Carlton murmured to Janet, who laughed - too much for such a feeble joke, I thought.

Marshall came up to me and said very quietly, "I'll pick you up at your house," which answered all my questions.

I sat on the floor to pull on my shoes. After I tied them, it was an effort to get up smoothly, but it was also a point of pride. Carlton was sitting in one of the folding chairs that lined the room, his head cocked. He was looking at me as if he was examining a suspect hundred-dollar bill.

"Good night," I said briefly.

"Good night," he answered, and bent to tie his sneakers, a scowl on his handsome face.

I shrugged and went through the double doors, passing Marshall's office and waving to him. He was looking at employee time sheets. The main room was empty except for Stephanie Miller, one of Marshall's hired hands who teaches some of the aerobic classes. Stephanie was running the big industrial vacuum cleaner over the worn green carpet. I gave her a casual nod and passed through the front door and over to my Skylark, one of four cars left in the parking lot. There was something on the hood of my car.

I wouldn't let myself stop, but I slowed down to get a better look. It was a ... doll?

Then I was standing a foot away and I dropped my gym bag. It was a doll, a Ken doll.

The eye had been defaced with red nail polish. It was fresh. I could smell it from where I stood. It had been used to create artistic drops of blood down the doll's face. Someone had made the doll look as if it had been shot in the left eye, the eye I had hit when I shot Nap.

I remembered exactly how it had looked, the sound the man had made, the way he'd hit the floor. He hadn't looked anything like a Ken doll... .

"What's wrong?" Carlton asked. "Car trouble?"

I was glad to be dragged back from the edge of the nightmare. I stood back so Carlton could see.

"Was this on your car?"

"Yes. I left the car locked, so someone put it on the hood."

I shivered at the malignancy of the "gift."

"What's up?" Marshall asked. He'd just locked the front doors of the gym. Across the parking lot, Stephanie got in her car and pulled out to go home.

I pointed to the doll. I couldn't bring myself to touch it.

"Oh, Lily, I'm sorry," he said after a moment.

"I get the feeling there's something about this I don't know?" Carlton asked.

I puffed out my cheeks with a gust of air. I was so tired. "I guess I ought to take this by the police station," I said.

"Lily, let it wait until tomorrow," Marshall said. "Go on home now. I'll see you in a little while."

"No. I want to get rid of it. I'll call you when I get home."

"Lily, do you want me to go to the police station with you?" Carlton asked.

I'd had almost forgotten Carlton was still there. I found myself feeling the unaccustomed emotions of warmth and gratitude toward my neighbor.

"That's very kind of you," I said stiffly, wishing I could sound more gracious. "But I think I better go by myself. Thank you for offering."

"Okay. If you need me, call me." Carlton hobbled over to his Audi and went home, doubtless anticipating a hot bath and a welcoming bed.

I watched him go because I didn't want to turn to meet Marshall's eyes.

"I'm wondering," I said, still looking into the night, "whether you have a secret admirer - someone who could find out my history and leave these little gifts for me, someone who could kill a rat and leave it on Thea's table."

"So, it's scaring you off, and we should forget about us?" Marshall leaped to the thought. He was upset and angry.

Well, I'm not exactly happy, either, I fumed to myself.

"No, that's not what I'm saying."

"Are you saying you don't want to see me tonight?"

"I don't know. No, that's not what I'm saying. I've been looking forward to it as much as you have." I raised my hands, palms upward, in a gesture of frustration. "But this is bad, isn't it? To think someone's watching me? Sneaking around with things like this?" I waved my hand toward the doll. "Thinking about what to do to me next?"

"So you'll let that person make your life even more miserable?"

I swung around to face Marshall so suddenly that his shoulders tensed. I had so many thoughts, it was a struggle as to which one would be voiced first. "I think I gave that up a good many years ago," I said. I was stiff with fury, felt like hurting him. "And while I looked forward to screwing you tonight, missing it would not make me miserable."

"I wanted to sleep with you, too," Marshall said, equally angry now. "But I also wanted just to be with you. Just talk to you. Have a normal conversation with you - if that's possible."

I struck, aiming for his diaphragm. Like a senseless person who didn't want teeth anymore, I told myself later. Quicker than I could block with my left arm, Marshall's hand shot out and gripped the wrist of my striking right arm when my knuckles were within an inch of his abdomen. His other hand had formed the knife, and was starting for my neck. For a long moment, we stared at each other, eyes wide and angry, before coming to our senses. His hand relaxed and he placed his fingers gently against my throat, feeling my pulse racing. My fist uncurled and fell to my side.

"Almost got you," I said, embarrassed to find my voice was shaking.

"Almost," he admitted. "But you would've been down first."

"Not so," I argued. "The diaphragm blow would've doubled you over and you would've missed my neck."

"But the blow would've landed somewhere," he argued back, "and the force would have knocked you backward. Admittedly, after you had already hit me ..." His voice trailed off and we looked at each other sheepishly.

"Maybe," I said, "I'm not the only person who has trouble carrying on a 'normal' conversation?"

"You're right. This is probably pretty weird."

Very carefully, as though we were covered with thorns, we eased into each other's arms.

"Relax," whispered Marshall. "Your neck muscles are like wires."

I tentatively laid my head on his shoulder. I turned my mouth into his neck. "What I'm going to do," I said gently, "is take the doll to the police department, tell them where I found it, and go home. When I get there, I'll call you. You'll come get me. We'll eat at your place, and then we'll do good things together."

His hand massaged my neck. "I can't get you to reverse the order?"

"I'll see you soon," I promised, then slid from his arms and got in the car, stowing the grotesque doll on the seat beside me. I drove to the police department, which is housed in a former drugstore a couple of blocks from the center of town. There was only one police car in the parking lot, a dark blue city of Shakespeare car with a big number 3 on the side.

Tom David Meiklejohn was sitting inside, his feet propped up on a desk. He had an RC Cola in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Tom David, whom I know by sight, is good-looking in what I think of as a honky-tonk way. He has short, curly hair, bright, mean eyes flanking a sharp nose, and thin lips, and he dresses western on his days off. He'd been sleeping with Deedra around last Christmas, and during that month or two I'd seen him go in and out of the Garden Apartments regularly.

Tom David had been married at the time to a woman as hard-edged as he was, or so one travel agent had told another as I was cleaning their office. A few months later, I had seen the Meiklejohns' divorce notice in the local paper.

Now, Tom David, whom I'd observed patrolling many times during my night prowls, was slowly looking me up and down, making a show of trying to figure out my all-white outfit.

"Going to a pajama party?" he asked.

So much for courtesy to the public he serves, I reflected, though I'd anticipated as much. Not every policeman was a Claude Friedrich. Friedrich might make mistakes, but he didn't mind admitting them.

"This was left on my car outside of Body Time," I said briefly, and deposited the doll on the desk in front of his feet. I'd wrapped it in a paper towel from a roll in my housekeeping kit. Now I spread the towel open.

Tom David gradually uprighted himself and put the RC Cola down. He stubbed out his cigarette, staring at the Ken doll.

"That's ugly," he said. "That's real ugly. Did you see anyone around your car?"

"No. I was in Body Time for over an hour. Anyone could have pulled into the parking lot, put the doll on my car, and pulled out without anyone seeing them. Not many people there tonight - most people don't work out on Friday evenings."

"You were at that martial arts class that Marshall Sedaka runs?"

There was something about the way he said Marshall's name... not just distaste but also personal dislike. I went on full alert.

"Right."

"He thinks he's tough," Tom David remarked. There was a cold light in his mean, bright eyes. "Orientals think they can order women around like they was sheep or something."

I raised my eyebrows. If anyone thought of women as interchangeable parts, it was Tom David Meiklejohn.

"Sedaka see this?"

"Yes," I said.

"He have a chance to put it on your car? You two have any personal relationship?"

"He didn't have a chance to put it on my car. He was inside Body Time when I got there, and he left after I did."

"Listen, I'm the only one here right now, and when Lottie comes back with her McNuggets, I gotta go on patrol. You want to come back in tomorrow and make a statement?"

"Okay."

"I'll try fingerprinting this, and we'll see what happens."

I nodded and turned to go. As my hand touched the door, Tom David said abruptly, "I guess you would be interested in self-defense."

I could feel the color draining from my face.

I looked out through the glass door into the darkness.

"Any woman should be interested in self-defense," I said, and walked out into the night.

I drove home tense with rage and fear, thinking of the bloody-eyed Ken doll, thinking of Tom David Meiklejohn mulling over what had happened to me with his buddies over a few beers. I had found the source of the leak in the police department, I was pretty sure.

I parked the car where it belonged, unlocked the back door, and threw everything but my keys and my driver's license into the house. Those I stuck in my T-shirt pocket, where they made a strange bulge over my breast. I had to walk. It was the only thing that would help.

The street was deserted at the moment. It was about 9:00 p.m. The night was much warmer than it had been the last time I walked, the humidity high, a precursor of the dreadful hot evenings of summer. It was fully dark, and I drifted into the shadows of the street, padding silently along to pass through the arboretum. Marshall's house on Farraday was not far. I didn't know the number, but I would see his car.

It relaxed me, moving through the night invisibly. I felt more like the Lily who had had a stable existence before the murder of Pardon Albee. Then, my only problem had been the sleepless nights, which came maybe twice a week; other than that, I'd had things under control.

Standing concealed in the undergrowth of the arboretum, I waited for a car to pass on Jamaica Street, so I could steal across.

I hadn't considered my route at all, but now sheer curiosity led me to drift toward the house Marshall had up until recently called home. There is very little cover on Celia Street, which is one of modest but spruce white houses with meticulously kept yards. I planned my approach. It was earlier than I usually walked, and there were more people on the move, which in Shakespeare isn't saying a hell of a lot - a car would pass occasionally, or I would see someone come out of his house, retrieve something from a pickup or jeep, and hurry back inside.

In the summer, children would be playing outside till late, but on this spring night, they all seemed to be inside.

I worked my way down the street, trying to be unobtrusive but not suspicious, since there were people still up and active. It was not a workable compromise. I'd rather be seen than reported, so I moved at a steady pace rather than drifting from one cover to another. After all, I was wearing white, hardly a camouflage color. Still, no one seemed to notice me, and curtains up and down the little street were uniformly drawn against the dark.

I only saw the police car when I was directly opposite Marshall's former home. It was parked up against Thea's next-door neighbor's hedge, which divides their yards from the street to the back of the lot. The cruiser was pulled right up behind a car that I assumed must be Thea's, which looked dark red or brown in the dim light of the streetlamp. So it didn't exactly seem the driver was paying an official visit; in fact, I concluded, Tom David Meiklejohn, whose car number 3 was parked in the driveway, was inside chitchatting with the rat-plagued Mrs. Sedaka, while he was supposed to be patrolling the streets of Shakespeare to keep them safe for widows and orphans.

Instead, it seemed Tom David Meiklejohn was personal bodyguard to one about-to-be-divorcee.

I had a fleeting desire to make yet one more anonymous phone call to Claude Friedrich, before I reflected that not only would that be sneaky and dishonorable but also that a possible relationship between Thea and Tom David was none of my business. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">