"Take a breath," advised a cool, familiar, voice.
It was good advice, and I stopped to take it.
"Marta Schuster and her storm trooper are up there," Becca Whitley went on, stepping from her apartment doorway at the back of the hall to stand by the foot of the stairs.
Becca Whitley was a wet dream about three years past its prime. She had very long blond hair, very bright blue eyes, strong (if miniature) features, and cone-shaped breasts thrusting out from an athletic body. Becca, who'd lived in Shakespeare for about five months, had inherited the apartment building from her uncle, Pardon Albee, and she lived in his old apartment.
I'd never thought Becca would last even this long in little Shakespeare; she'd told me she'd moved here from Dallas, and she seemed like a city kind of woman. I'd been sure she'd put the building up for sale and take off for some urban center. She'd surprised me by staying.
And she'd taken my place as the highest-ranking student in Marshall's class.
But there were moments I felt a connection to Becca, and this was one of them. We'd begun a tentative sort of friendship.
"How long have they been up there?" I asked.
"Hours." Becca looked up the stairs as if, through the floors and doors, she could watch what the sheriff was so busy doing. "Did they tell you to come?"
"Yes."
"What about Marlon?"
"He was at the crime scene bawling his eyes out."
"Ew." Becca scrunched her nose in distaste. "He's the one been seeing her so hot and heavy."
I nodded. I wondered how well the sheriff would investigate her own brother.
"Do you have your key?" Becca asked.
"I gave it to them."
"Good move," she said. "They got my copy of her key, too."
I shifted from foot to foot. "I better go up. I'm supposed to tell them if anything's missing."
"See you tonight," she called after me, and I lifted my hand in acknowledgment.
Deedra's apartment was the right rear, just above Becca's. It overlooked the paved rear parking lot, not an inspiring view. It held a carport divided into eight stalls, a Dumpster, and not much else. I wasn't sure who, besides Deedra, lived on the second floor now, but I'd known many of the people who'd passed through. Claude Fried-rich, the chief of police and a friend of mine, had moved from the second floor to the first after a leg injury. I figured he and Deedra had been the in the building the longest. Generally, the eight units of the so-called Shakespeare Garden Apartments stayed full because the units were a nice size and fairly reasonable. I was pretty sure Becca had gone up on the rent as the leases ran out, because I had a faint memory of Deedra complaining, but it hadn't been an outrageous increase.
I knocked on Deedra's door. The same tall officer answered, the guy who'd been at the crime scene. He filled up the doorway; after a long second, he stepped aside so I could enter. He was lucky looking at me was a free activity, or he would be broke by now.
"Sheriff's in there," he said, pointing toward Deedra's bedroom. But instead of following his hint, I stood in the center of the living room and looked around. I'd been in to clean the past Friday, and today was Monday, so the place still looked good; Deedra was careless with herself, but she had always been fairly tidy with everything else.
The furniture seemed to be in the same spots, and all the cushions were straight. Her television and VCR were untouched; rows of videotapes sat neat and square on their little bookcase by the television. The brand-new CD player was on the stand by the television. All Deedra's magazines were in the neat stack I'd arranged a few days before, except for a new issue left open on the coffee table in front of the couch, where Deedra usually sat when she watched television. Her bills were piled in the shallow basket where she'd tossed them.
"Notice anything different?" The tall deputy was standing by the door and keeping quiet, a point in his favor.
I shook my head and resumed my examination.
"Emanuel," he said suddenly.
Was this some kind of religious statement? My eyebrows drew in and I regarded him with some doubt.
"Clifton Emanuel."
After a distinct pause, I understood. "You're Clifton Emanuel," I said tentatively. He nodded.
I didn't need to know his name, but he wanted me to know it. Maybe he was a celebrity freak, True Crime Division, Famous Victims Subsection. Like Sharon Tate, but alive.
Maybe he was just being polite.
I was relieved when the sheriff stuck her head out of Deedra's bedroom and jerked it back in a motion that told me I'd better join her.
"Everything in the living room okay?" she asked.
"Yes."
"What about this room?"
I stood at the foot of Deedra's bed and turned around slowly. Deedra had loved jewelry, and it was everywhere; necklaces, earrings, bracelets, an anklet or two. The impression was that the jewelry was strewn around, but if you looked closer, you would notice that the backs were on the earrings and the earrings were in pairs. The necklaces were lain straight and fastened so they wouldn't tangle. That was normal. Some of the drawers were not completely shut - there again, that was typical Deedra. The bed was made quite tidily; it was queen-size, with a high, carved headboard that dominated the room. I lifted the corner of the flowered bedspread and peered beneath it.
"Different sheets than I put on last Friday," I said.
"Does that mean something?"
"Means someone slept in it with her since then."
"Did she ever wash the sheets and put them right back on the bed?"
"She never washed anything, especially sheets. She had seven sets. I did her laundry."
Marta Schuster looked startled. Then she looked disgusted. "So if I count the sheet sets in the laundry hamper, I'll come up with the number of times she entertained since last Friday morning?"
I sighed, hating knowing these things about someone else, much less revealing them. But it was the nature of my job. "Yes," I said wearily.
"Did she have a video camera? I noticed all the tapes out there."
"Yes, she did. She kept it up there, on the closet shelf." I pointed, and Marta fetched. She opened the soft black case, removed the camera, turned it on, and opened the tape bay. Empty.
"Who paid you to clean this place?" she asked out of the blue.
"I thought we'd covered that. Her mother, Lacey, gave Deedra the money so she could afford me."
"Deedra get along with her mother?"
"Yes."
"What about her stepfather?"
I considered my answer. I'd heard a fight between the two so intense I'd considered intervening, maybe three or four months ago. I didn't like Jerrell Knopp. But it was one thing not to like him, another thing to tell the sheriff words he'd spoken in anger.
"They weren't close," I said cautiously.
"Ever see them fight?"
I turned away, began putting Deedra's earrings into her special compartmented box.
"Stop," the sheriff said sharply.
I dropped the pair I was holding as if they'd burst into flames. "Sorry," I said, shaking my head at my own error. "It was automatic." I hoped Marta Schuster stayed diverted.
"She always have this much jewelry lying around?"
"Yes." I was relieved she'd asked a question so easily answered. I couldn't stop myself from glancing over at Deedra's chest of drawers, wondering if Marta Schuster had already found the pictures. I wondered whether mentioning them would help in some way.
"They're in my pocket," she said quietly.
My eyes met hers. "Good."
"What do you know about her sex life?"
I could see that this was supposed to signal a tradeoff. My mouth twisted in distaste. "Your brother was mighty interested in Deedra, from what I could see. Ask him."
Marta Schuster's hard, square hand shot out and gripped my wrist. "He's just the latest in her long string," she said, her jaw as rigid as the grip of her hand. "He's so new to her that he's dumb enough to be sorry she's dead."
I looked down at her fingers and took slow breaths. I met her eyes again. "Let go of me," I told her in a very careful voice.
Keeping her eyes on my face, she did. Then she took a step away. But she said, "I'm waiting."
"You already know that Deedra was promiscuous. If a man was willing, she was, with very few exceptions."
"Name some names."
"No. It would take too long. Besides, they were almost always gone when I got here." That was my first lie.
"What about the exceptions? She turn anyone down?"
I thought that over. "That kid who worked at the loading dock over at Winthrop Lumber and Supply," I said reluctantly.
"Danny Boyce? Yeah, he's out on parole now. Who else?"
"Dedford Jinks."
"With the city police?" she asked, incredulity written all over her face. "He must be in his fifties."
"So he doesn't want sex?" What universe did Marta Schuster inhabit?
"He's married," Marta protested. Then she flushed red. "Forget I said that."
I shrugged, tired of being in this room with this woman. "He was separated from his wife. But Deedra didn't go with married men."
The sheriff looked openly skeptical. "Anyone else?"
I actually had a helpful memory. "She'd had trouble with someone calling her." Deedra had mentioned that to me the last time I'd cleaned the apartment, just this past Friday. She'd been running late for work, as she all too often did. "Last Friday, she told me that she was getting calls at two or three in the morning. Really nasty calls from a guy... somehow disguising his voice, talking about sexual torture."
I could see Deedra, sitting on the end of the very bed we stood by now, easing up her pantyhose and sliding her narrow feet into brown low-heeled pumps. Deedra's head, crowned by its sexily tousled and newly red hair, had been bent to her task, but Deedra kept her head tucked quite a bit anyway to minimize her sharply receding chin, without a doubt her worst feature. She'd stood and scanned herself in the mirror, tugging at the top of the beige suit she thought appropriate for her job in the courthouse. A typical Deedra selection, the suit was just a bit too tight, a smidge too short, and a half-inch too low in the neckline.
Deedra had leaned over to peer into the mirror to apply her lipstick. Her dresser, with its triple mirror, was literally covered with bottles and plastic cases of makeup. Deedra was a virtuoso with foundation, rouge, and eye shadow. She'd had a real gift for it, for using cosmetics to make her look her very best with every outfit she wore. She'd studied the human face and the alterations and illusions a skilled applicator could effect.
I could still see how Deedra had looked as she'd half-turned to tell me what the caller had proposed to do to her; her lower lip a glossy peach and her upper lip bare, her clothes and hair and demeanor just a careful step away from floozy.
"Did she say who she thought he was, the man calling her?"
I shook my head. "Can you check her phone records?" I asked.
"It'll take a while, but we'll get 'em," Marta said.
Her deputy stuck his head into the room. "I've finished searching the bathroom," Emanuel said, his eyes scanning us curiously. "What now?"
"Extra bedroom," the sheriff said. "And bag the sheets on the top of the washer."
His head vanished.
"What about him?" I asked.
"What?" she said, as if she was about to get angry.
"Did he know Deedra?"
Her face changed, then, and I knew she was involved with Clifton Emanuel to some degree.
"I don't know," she said. "But I'll find out."
Janet Shook aimed a kick at my stomach, and I arched back to dodge it. My hand shot out and gripped her ankle, and then I had her.
"Stop!" called a commanding voice. "Okay, what are you going to do now, Janet?" our sensei continued. He was leaning against the mirrored wall, his arms folded across his chest.
We had frozen in position, Janet balancing easily on one foot, my fingers still circling her ankle. The seated class, looking like a strange nursery school in their loose white gis, studied the problem.
Janet looked grim. "Land on my butt, looks like," she conceded, after a moment's evaluation. I heard a couple of snorts of laughter.
"Lily, what would you do next, now that you're in control of the situation?" Marshall's faintly Asian face gave me no hint of the best answer.
"I'd keep going up on the ankle," I told him, "like so." I lifted Janet's right foot another inch, and the knee of her supporting left leg began to buckle.
Marshall nodded briefly. He faced the other class members. Like the rest of us, Marshall was barefoot and wearing his gi. Its snowy whiteness, broken only by the black belt and the fist patch on his chest, emphasized the ivory of his skin. "How could Janet have avoided this situation?" he asked the motley group sitting against the mirrored wall. "Or having gotten into it, how can she get out?"
Raphael Roundtree, the largest and darkest man in the class, said, "She should've drawn her kick back quicker." I let go of Janet, though Marshall hadn't told me to, because she was beginning to have trouble keeping her balance. Janet looked relieved to have both feet on the floor, and she nodded to me by way of saying thanks.
"She shouldn't have kicked at all," Becca Whitley rebutted.