Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,60
As we stood there in the tiny backyard, the rain blew in again. The sky was a solid dark mass of clouds. They let go their burden, and soon our hair was again wet and plastered down. So was the red hair of the corpse. It was too bad about the crime scene; though plastic tents were put up as quickly as possible, I was sure if there were any small clues in the hedge and the yard, they were lost. A portable generator powered lights that exposed every blade of grass to a brilliant glare, and people up and down the street began coming out of their back doors to watch, despite the rain.
It was very lucky I'd told Jack I'd come with him, since Jack would have made a dandy murder suspect, given the mood he'd been in after he'd learned Gerry McClanahan's other identity. Claude had thought of that, too. I could tell from the way his eyes kept returning to Jack. The two men liked each other, and they were well on their way to being as good friends as Carrie and I were - but I'd always known Claude recognized the wild streak that more than once had led to Jack's downfall.
I said, "I was with Jack every second until we heard Cliff yelling."
"I believe you, Lily," Claude said, his voice deceptively mild. "But I know why you were coming over here in the first place. This man could've caused you no end of trouble."
"That's why Jack got the call," I said, feeling as if I'd just seen a piece of machinery crank up smoothly.
"What?"
I told Claude - and Alicia Stokes, too, since she drifted up at that moment - about the anonymous call Jack had gotten at his office in Little Rock. It was hard to tell if Detective Stokes believed me or not, but I made myself assume that Claude did. It was a pretty stupid story to tell if it wasn't true, since Jack's phone records could be checked.
Stokes seemed more interested in questioning Cliff Eggers. Someone who was spying on Tamsin would naturally be in Cliff's bad graces, but Cliff gave no sign of realizing that the policeman had been leading a double life. It was a piece of information Claude seemed to be keeping under his hat, at least for the moment. It would have to come out soon. Most often, writers aren't celebrities the way movie stars are, but Gibson Banks had very nearly attained that status.
Cliff was telling Alicia (for the third time) he'd just come out to put two bags of garbage in the can when he'd heard a moan, or anyway some kind of sound, in the backyard catty-cornered to his. That noise, of course, had prompted him to investigate. If I had been the object of as many vicious attacks as Cliff and Tamsin had, I am not sure I would have been so quick to find out what was making the noise.
Just as Cliff wound up his explanation, Tamsin emerged from the house wrapped in a bathrobe with wet hair. The bathrobe and hair made her look faintly absurd when she crossed the backyard under an umbrella. Predictably, she crumbled when she learned why we were all out in the rain. Stokes showed her the knife, encased in a plastic bag. "I never saw it before," she said.
"Did you know Officer McClanahan?" Stokes asked, her voice cold and hard. Did Stokes know, yet, about Officer McClanahan's secret identity? I thought not.
"Yes, we'd talked over the hedge. It made me feel so much safer to have a policeman living so close!" Tamsin said, which struck me as the height of irony. I could feel my lips twitch, and I had to turn my back to the group clustered in the yard, a group at that moment consisting of Alicia, Claude, Cliff, Tamsin, and a deputy I didn't know.
Stokes sent Tamsin over to stand by me to clear the way for the hearse. Tamsin was shivering. "This is so close to home, Lily. First Saralynn gets killed at my office, and now this Officer McClanahan gets killed right behind my house. I have got to start carrying something to protect myself. But I can't carry a gun. I hate them."
"You can get some pepper spray at Sneaky Pete's up by Little Rock," I said. "It's on Fontella Road." I told her how to get there.
After all the recent rain, the heat of the night made the