(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord (22 page)

As I plugged in the ancient Althaus vacuum cleaner, I thought about Tom O’Hagen. What if Tom had lied about Pardon’s living room being empty? What if Pardon’s body had been lying on the couch, as Deedra said it had an hour or so later?

I worked over that idea determinedly but got nowhere. I simply could not think of a good reason for Tom O’Hagen to lie about that. He could have said he thought Pardon was asleep, as Deedra had. He could have said everything looked as normal, so he assumed Pardon had stepped out or retreated to the bathroom for a moment. Instead, Tom had insisted the furniture had been moved, the throw rug rumpled, as if something had taken place in the room.

Finally, I abandoned Tom O’Hagen in disgust. It was Marcus Jefferson’s turn in the lineup of suspects. Marcus was certainly strong enough to move Pardon’s body. Marcus also had a grudge against Pardon; he obviously adored the little boy Pardon’s policies prevented him from bringing home. But that was hardly sufficient motivation to strike Pardon hard enough to kill him, at least to my mind. I could only picture that happening if Pardon had provoked Marcus in some way—had threatened to tell Marcus’s ex-wife that Marcus was having a fling with a white woman, say. Could Marcus’s former wife have kept the child away from Marcus if she’d received that information? Would it make such a difference to her, in this day and age? And Pardon had called Marcus’s workplace the day he died. But then, two hundred–odd people worked in the factory besides Marcus—among them, I recalled, was Deedra Dean’s stepfather, Jerrell Knopp, whom I knew as an upright, polite, softspoken bigot, who would undoubtedly have violent feelings about any relationship his stepdaughter might have with a black man.

But Jerrell, if he killed anyone, wouldn’t kill Pardon. He’d kill Marcus. Surely Marcus was supposed to work from eight to five? And Pardon had almost certainly died sometime before five. Marcus could have killed Pardon on his lunch hour, maybe. After all, if anyone had seen or heard from Pardon after the phone call he’d placed to his friend at eleven and Tom’s knocking on Pardon’s door at three, I hadn’t heard about it.

Well, then, Deedra. Deedra had been at work until about four-thirty. She’d left her job early to give Pardon her rent check. Every Shakespeare Garden Apartments tenant knew Pardon was a stickler for getting paid on the dot. Why would the living room be in disarray at three if Deedra killed Pardon later? I tried to picture Deedra enraged, Deedra lifting something heavy and striking her landlord the crushing blow that had killed him. What would Deedra lift? There was nothing at hand there by the door to the apartment, and I didn’t think Pardon had been fool enough to stand talking to a young woman with a poker in her hand. Besides, if I knew Deedra, Deedra was more likely to vamp her way out of a bad situation than to resort to violence. I sighed. Scratch Deedra.

Then there was the hopeless, hapless Norvel, at this moment languishing—desolately, I hoped—in the Shakespeare jail, which was so outdated and decrepit that the town was wondering when, instead of if, it would be ordered to build a new one. Norvel was certainly dumb enough to commit murder at a time when other people were in and out of the apartment building. He was panicky enough to try to hide the body. He was prone to get angry enough to attack, as I knew from firsthand experience.

But though I tried to picture it while I gathered the wastebaskets from each room, I could not imagine anything Pardon could have on Norvel that would provoke Norvel to that much rage. Norvel was not especially strong after years of drinking, eating improperly, and avoiding hard work. The blow that had killed Pardon had been delivered by someone strong and someone furious. It could have been Norvel, by some extraordinary circumstance, but I was inclined to doubt it.

As I carried bags of garbage out to the Rubbermaid trash receptacles, dropped them in, and clamped the lids shut against loose dogs or raccoons, I felt glad I’d chosen housecleaning as my livelihood and not private detecting. This murder, I thought, pausing to stretch my back muscles, had been a murder of impulse, though whose impulse, I hadn’t the foggiest notion.

Pardon had finally spoken the sentence, the one sentence in his lifetime of watching, prying, and telling, the hearer could not bear to hear.

And that person had struck two blows, the second one closing Pardon’s mouth forever.

I locked the door to the Althaus home behind me, feeling satisfied at having, however temporarily, restored neatness to the Althauses’ chaotic environment. I could not figure out the identity of the murderer of Pardon Albee, but I could bring order to chaos.

I actually work harder for Carol Althaus than for any client I have, because frankly, Carol arouses my pity, which is not an easy thing to do. Carol is a nice, plain woman coping with a blended family of two children of her own and two of her husband’s, and Carol has limited brainpower to handle the load. She works hard at a low-paying job, comes home to try to feed and chauffeur four children under ten, and every now and then fields a phone call from her husband, whose job involves a lot of traveling. I often picture Jay Althaus in his quiet motel room, all alone, bed with clean sheets, TV with remote control that he alone wields, and contrast Jay Althaus’s evenings with Carol’s.

I had a break from ten-thirty to noon; at noon, I’d clean a lawyer’s office during his lunch hour. During this time every week, I usually run errands and pay bills. The first thing on my list for today was collecting the money owed me by the Yorks. As I drove back into town, for the very first time it occurred to me that Jay Althaus might be longing desperately for his wife and children every night he spends on the road.

Nah.

Rather than park on the street, which was too narrow for my comfort, I drove behind the apartment building. At this time of day on a weekday, there would be plenty of spaces empty.

Since I’d been considering the garage as a possible storage place for Pardon’s body, I took the time to look it over. I pulled into Norvel’s parking space—the apartment number is above each space, the effect remarkably like horse stalls at a big racetrack—and stood back to scan the white-painted wooden structure.

The garage, never a thing of beauty, didn’t look its best empty. Since Shakespeare Garden Apartments doesn’t have a basement, always a chancy thing in Arkansas, everyone in the building uses his or her stall for storage.

Starting from the left, the gap between the first stall and the fence surrounding the apartments was filled by the controversial York camper. The first stall is Norvel’s. He doesn’t own a car, but he’d leaned a broken framed mirror and a set of fireplace instruments in his allotted space: scroungings, I figured, that he hoped to sell. Marcus had put a wooden crate in the corner of his stall, and from it protruded a fat red plastic baseball bat and a tiny basketball goal. Claude Friedrich had put in a set of metal shelves that held car repair odds and ends and some tools. Deedra’s space held a folded tent and a pair of muddy rubber boots. I have always thought it an odd sidelight to Deedra that she enjoys camping; of course, she doesn’t enjoy camping alone. But it has always interested me that Deedra is willing to get away from her hot curlers for a weekend every now and then.

The first-floor tenants had scantier pickings. Marie has a car that I drive her around in, but other than that, her stall was empty. The Yorks, like Claude, have a set of shelves, but they were almost empty, and I thought they’d even been dusted; that was typical of Alvah. The O’Hagens had two expensive bicycles, covered with a tarp, at the back of their stall, and Pardon’s car and a lawn mower were parked in his stall. I felt a little bleak as I looked at them. There is something melancholy about a dead person’s possessions, no matter how impersonal they are, and there’s nothing personal about a lawn mower.

This careful examination had told me absolutely nothing. The stalls are so open to view, it was hard to see how Pardon’s body could have been hidden in any one of them. Maybe at the back of the stall between Mrs. Hofstettler’s car and the wall? Or the same place in Pardon’s stall? Those were the only two cars the killer could have counted on remaining in place. Self-consciously, I checked the two stalls. Not a stain or a thread from the green-and-orange shirt.

The camper would be a great hiding spot, but the Yorks had been driving it home at the time Pardon died.

Well, I had to get my money from those upright people. I turned to go into the building and got an unpleasant shock. Norvel Whitbread was standing in the doorway.

“How’d you get out?” I asked.

“Church put up my bail.” He grinned at me, an unnerving sight, since Norvel is missing some teeth. Perhaps I’d knocked one of those out myself? I hoped so. His nose was many-colored and swollen.

“Get out of my way,” I said.

“Don’t have to. I live here and you don’t.” Norvel hadn’t wasted any time consoling himself for his ordeal, I saw, and smelled.

“This time, the police won’t come and I won’t stop,” I said.

I could tell from his eyes that Norvel had made up his mind to move, but before he could shift his feet, a shove from behind sent him flying out the door, staggering to keep his feet under him.

T. L. stood in the doorway, his arm still extended, his mouth in a tight line of anger.

“You piece of trash,” he told Norvel, who had spun around to face this unexpected attack, “if the next landlord don’t evict you, it won’t be for lack of my trying. You leave this woman alone. I don’t care where you go, but you get out of my sight.”

T. L. was absolutely sincere, and that evidently impressed Norvel, no matter what Norvel’s condition was. He looked sullen, but he acted swiftly, heel-and-toeing it out of the parking area.

Now I had to thank T. L., and I didn’t much want to.

“Lily, you probably wanted to get in a few more licks,” T. L. said, with a smile that looked like his old self. “But I just can’t sit still when I hear something like that. And I am the acting landlord. At least the lawyer asked me to lock the doors at night like Pardon did.”

I had to smile. “I appreciate it, T. L.,” I said.

“You come to see us? Alvah said you were going to drop by.”

“Yep.”

“Come on in.”

The door to the York apartment was still open. I couldn’t help glancing over at Pardon’s. The crimescene tape was still across the door. I followed T. L. into his living room, where Alvah was cross-stitching something blue and pink.

If T. L. was close to recovery, Alvah was not. I was sorry to see her face looked old, far older than it had the week before. She moved slowly and stiffly as she rose to get my money.

“Will you be needing me to help finish up?” I asked. I was babbling, but there was something awful and self-conscious about Alvah’s sudden decline that made me want to fill the silence.

“I pretty much done it,” Alvah said listlessly. But the curtains were still off the windows, and the ceiling fan above their little dining table hadn’t been dusted, a quick look told me.

T. L. had sat himself down in his favorite chair, a leather easy chair with a pouch hanging over one arm that held a
TV Guide,
the remote control, and a
Sports Illustrated.
He opened the
Sports Illustrated,
but I had a feeling he wasn’t really reading the page in front of him.

“Harley Don Murrell killed himself,” Alvah said, handing me the money.

“Oh,” I said slowly. “Well, that’s…” My voice trailed off. I had no idea what that was. Good—a bad man dead? Bad—he hadn’t had time to get the full horror of being in prison? A relief—their granddaughter no longer had to fear the day he got out on parole?

“How’d he do it?” I asked briskly, as if it mattered.

“He was on the third tier. He jumped over the rail and landed on his head.” Alvah’s eyes were fixed on my face, but I didn’t think she was seeing me any more than T. L. was reading
Sports Illustrated.

“Quick then,” I said, almost at random. “Well, see you soon.”

I had barely cleared the door when I heard it close and lock behind me.

I was unnerved by this little exchange. I wondered what the Yorks’ future would be like.

I went to the lawyer’s office, and I cleaned, but I was absorbed in my thoughts the whole time and hardly remember doing it afterward. I was recalled to my self when I nodded to his secretary on my way out the door. Now I had to drive two miles out of town to Mrs. Rossiter’s. I had forgotten my earplugs, damn it.

Today was Durwood’s biweekly bath. Durwood is Mrs. Rossiter’s old cocker spaniel, and Mrs. Rossiter likes him to smell good, which is not a normal state for Durwood. When Mrs. Rossiter had fallen out with the local pet groomer, she’d been in a quandary, since Durwood doesn’t travel by car well enough to handle a drive to Montrose. She’d been explaining her problem at her church-circle meeting, and God bless Mrs. Hofstettler, she’d chimed in to say she was sure Lily Bard could bathe that little dog.

Durwood isn’t a bad dog, but bathing him is a hard job, and drying him is worse, to say nothing of cleaning the bathroom afterward. As I went to Mrs. Rossiter’s front door, my rubber apron under my arm, I thought for the twentieth time that the worst thing of all was Mrs. Rossiter, who always regards Durwood’s bath as a monologue opportunity, with me cast as the listener. I’d done everything in my not-inconsiderable power to quell the woman. It hadn’t worked. And I didn’t have my earplugs.

Mrs. Rossiter was off and running (at the mouth) the minute she came to the door. She told me I’d been beaten up by that drunk Norvel Whitbread, that the SCC people were saying it was because I’d made Norvel angry at church, though why that would make it okay for Norvel to hide in my yard and jump out at me, she couldn’t figure.

When I’d filled Mrs. Rossiter’s guest bathtub and set the shampoo handily within reach and pulled on my gloves, she told me that I lived next to Pardon Albee, who’d been murdered a week ago, and she’d heard I was seeing that strong young man who ran the health club, and did I know that he was still married to that cute little gal who worked at the SCC Day Care? Did I know that someone had left a rat on that gal’s table, and written a dirty word in spray paint on her door?