Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,32

stayed out, I scrubbed the sink and polished it in uninterrupted industry.

Just as I'd cleaned the counters, Howell Three came in. This second son was Howell Winthrop the Third, but he'd been called Howell Three since birth thanks to his mother, who thought the nickname was cute. Reedy, slender, plain, and an honor-roll student, Howell was the bridge between Bobo (beautiful and moderately book smart) to Amber Jean (fairly pretty and book dumb).

"Hi, Lily," Howell Three said. "Oops, sorry, the floor." He took huge steps to get across the linoleum as quickly as possible.

"Quite all right," I said. "It's almost dry." Now that he was on the carpet in the living room area, Howell Three heard the noise from the pool and looked out. A look of disgust crossed his face. "Amber Jean," he said angrily, as though she was right by him. "She's sunning with her top off," Howell Three told me, sounding about ten years younger than his age, which I realized with some surprise was seventeen. "Lily, she shouldn't do that."

"Will she listen to you?" I asked, after some hesitation. I felt a little responsible in a roundabout way. If I had brought her drinks and chips, Amber Jean would not be exposing her breasts now. That made no sense, but it was a fact.

"No. I'm gonna call Mom," he said, reaching a resolution. "I hate to rat on her, but this is embarrassing. She thinks she's being cool, that they won't talk about her, but that's not true. Those girls and those guys, they'll tell everyone." He looked at me with some appeal in his face, but I had no authority to assume the role of Amber Jean's mother. I doubted if Amber Jean would listen to me, even if I did speak; she'd probably just strip off her bikini bottom, too, to spite me.

So while Howell Three called his mother (she was at one of the family businesses meeting with an accountant) and got her promise that she was on her way home instantly, I gathered up my stuff and got out of there. The last thing I wanted was to witness a Winthrop family blowup.

And to think, I'd been so happy a month or two before when Beanie had called me to come back to work for the family. I'd missed the income the Winthrops had given me, and in a weird way, I'd missed them. What had I been thinking? Was I falling victim to the Mammy syndrome?

Shaking my head at myself, I went home for lunch.

The afternoon was supposed to be free, but I had messages on my answering machine.

"Lily, hey, we're going to try to have our meeting tonight, since Tuesday didn't work out. I hate to lose our momentum," Tamsin said. "Oh, this is Tamsin Lynd calling. I hope I see you tonight, same time as usual."

Tuesday didn't work out? That was one way to put it.

I trudged unwillingly into the building that night. It was still light, of course, but the day was lying on my shoulders like a heavy coat. I craved sleep, and the aching of my back and breasts reminded me that my cycle was coming full circle.

I saw Janet getting out of her car when I entered the parking lot.

"How are you?" I called.

"Lots better," she said, trying to smile normally and failing. "I still have a headache, but there wasn't any fracture and everything looks normal in the X rays."

"What does the doctor think happened to you?" I fell into step beside her and tried to slow my steps to match hers.

Janet heaved a deep sigh. "He thinks that someone hit me with something hard on the back of the head, that my head bounced forward and hit another hard surface, and that was all she wrote. I was completely out for maybe five minutes, total. I could kind of hear you and Firella when you were waiting with me. So I wasn't really out of it that long."

"It felt like a long time to us," I told her. "We were pretty worried about you."

"I'm glad you all came in. The detective told me what happened. I don't remember seeing the dead woman, so I guess I should thank the person who bopped me. That's not a memory I want."

"So you don't remember seeing anyone in the building?"

"Nope. I just barely remember getting here Tuesday evening. It seems to me I sort of recall walking down the hall, but even that's not exactly clear."

The