(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord (17 page)

But I woke soon, anxious and ill at ease. Moving as quietly as I could, I got up and began pulling on my clothes. Marshall’s breathing was still heavy and even and he shifted position, taking up more of the bed now that I wasn’t in it. For a moment, I bent over the bed, my hand an inch from his shoulder. Then I drew back. I hated to wake him: I felt compelled to leave.

I eased out of the back door, punching in the button on the knob so it would lock behind me.

I’d begun thinking, as Marshall talked about Thea, of the dead rat someone had left on Thea’s kitchen table in that neat white house on Celia. When I’d woken, the rat had worried me more and more.

The Ken doll, the toy handcuffs, the dead rat. Obviously, the tokens left for me referred to my past. The dead rat seemed cut from an entirely different pattern. A thought trailed through my mind like a slug: Had Thea perhaps tortured animals in her childhood? Was the rat also from Thea’s past? I grimaced as I moved through the darkness. I could not bear cruelty to a helpless thing.

At this time of night, the streets were deserted, the town deep in sleep. I wasn’t being as careful as I usually was. The only people likely to see me at this hour were the two patrolling policemen, and I knew where one of the two was; I’d checked on my way home, and Tom David was still at Thea’s. Surely he’d gone off duty; wouldn’t the dispatcher be trying to raise him otherwise?

I was yawning widely as I walked up my driveway. I’d pulled my keys from my pocket and was about to step off the drive to go to my front door when the attack came. Tired and inattentive as I’d been, I had trained for this moment for three years.

When I heard the rush of feet, I whirled to face the attacker, the keys clenched in my fist to reinforce my blow. But the man in the ski mask had a staff, maybe a mop or broom handle, and he swung it under my guard and whacked my ribs. I kept myself upright by a supreme effort, and when my assailant tried to swing the staff again, I let the keys fall, grabbed the staff with both hands, swung up my leg, and kicked him hard in the chest—not a very effective kick, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. He did have to let go of the staff, which was good, but I staggered when he released it and dropped it myself, which was bad.

My kick had made him fall back, too, though, and that gave me time to recover my footing before he launched himself at me with a savage growl, like a dog out of control.

I was close to that point myself. When I saw the face coming toward me, shrouded in a ski mask but otherwise unguarded, I inhaled deeply, then struck as hard as I could with my fist, exhaling and locking into position automatically. The man screamed and began falling, his hands going up to clutch his nose, and on his way down, my knee came up, striking him sharply under the chin.

And that was the end of it.

Though I stood in a fighting stance in the dim light, the man was rolling and gurgling in a whipped way on my grass. Lights were coming on in the apartments—the man’s scream had been piercing, if not long—and Claude Friedrich, the man used to dealing with emergencies, dashed around the dividing fence with speed rather amazing for a man of his age. His gun was drawn. I took him in at a glance, then resumed guarding the man on the grass.

Friedrich stopped short.

“What the
hell
are you doing, Lily Bard?” he asked rather breathlessly. I glanced at him again, long enough to notice that he was clad only in khaki slacks. He looked pretty good.

“This son of a bitch attacked me,” I said, very pleased to hear my voice come out even.

“I would think it was the other way around, Miss Lily, if he didn’t have a mask on and you weren’t in your own yard.”

I saw no point in responding. I kept my attention focused on the writhing, whimpering figure.

“I think he’s pretty much whipped,” Friedrich said, and I thought I detected a note of sarcasm. “What I really wish you would do, Lily, is go inside your little house there and call the police station and tell them I need some backup here.”

What I longed to do was jump on my attacker and hit him a few more times, because the adrenaline was still pumping through my system, and by God, he had startled me. But Friedrich was making sense; there was no point in my getting into trouble. I stood straight, dropping my hands, and took a cleansing breath to relax. I took a step toward my house and felt a stab of pain, sharp enough to cause me to stop dead.

“You all right?” Friedrich said sharply, anxiously.

I found I was aching from more than the wish to punish my attacker. His first blow had been a good one, and he’d managed to rake my face with his fingers, though I couldn’t remember how or when. As the rage ebbed away, the pain seeped in to take its place.

“I’ll make it,” I told him grimly, and reached out to pull my keys from the grass. To my dismay, the little chain had snapped and the keys had scattered under our feet. I could find only one, but at least that one was my house key. I hobbled into the house, making my way to my bedroom. I called the police station first. After I hung up, my hand stayed wrapped around the receiver. I had no idea what I’d said to the dispatcher, the unseen Lottie. It was now one-thirty in the morning.

Marshall had made me promise to call him if I had trouble.

I checked the little piece of paper he’d scrawled his new phone number on, and I punched it in.

“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.

I spotted my lockbox key on the way to the porch, and Marshall retrieved it for me. He helped me up the steps and into the house. Until I saw him look around, I had forgotten he’d never been in it.

He said, “We need the bathroom,” and waved me into preceding him. Marshall undressed me quite…clinically. First, he cleaned the scratches on my face, put antibiotic ointment on them, and then he turned his attention to my ribs. He ran his fingers over each rib, gently but firmly, asking me questions as his fingers evaluated my injury.

“Take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” he said finally. “I don’t think anything’s broken. But you’ll have a bad bruise and you’ll be sore. I’ll tape you. It’s lucky he’s a sedentary alcoholic, or you’d be in the hospital now. How much warning did you have?”

“Not as much as I should have,” I admitted. “He was waiting for me in the carport, with the mask and dark clothes on. But still…” and my voice trailed off, as I found I could not put one coherent thought together. He got my first-aid kit from the little linen closet and worked on me for a while.