Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,64

hand until she understood that she had become ridiculous, and then she did what she had to do - she walked away.

Aunt Betty and Roy began talking about something else right away, and the other diners went back to their own concerns, leaving Jack and me in a sort of cocoon. I picked up a long-handled spoon and stirred my iced tea. It was too weak. I like tea that's something more than colored water.

"Uh, Lily," Jack began, "listen, I..."

I made a chopping motion with my hand. "Over and done."

"But she never meant - "

"Over and done."

Later, when Aunt Betty and I were discussing a recent court verdict, I heard Roy ask Jack if I'd really meant it when I'd said we'd never talk about Lindsey again.

"Absolutely," Jack's voice somewhere between amused and grim.

"That's a woman in a million," Roy said, "not wanting to hash over every little thing."

"You said it." Jack didn't sound totally delighted.

Later, when we'd eaten, paid, and gone back to Jack's car, we found a long scratch down the paint. I looked at Jack and raised my eyebrows.

"Yeah, I figure it was her," he said. "Vindictive is her middle name. Lindsey Vindictive Wilkerson."

"Will this be the end of it?"

"No." He finally looked me in the eyes. "If Betty and Roy hadn't been there, maybe. But she got beat, and in front of witnesses she cares about."

"If she keeps this up," I told him, "she'll be sorry."

Jack gave me a look. But at length, his troubled face gave way to a smile. "I have no doubt of that," he said, and we went back to the office for the afternoon. He filed, and I cleaned. He gave me another lesson on the computer, and a lecture on billing procedures. As a kind of treat for Jack, on our way back to Shakespeare we stopped at Sneaky Pete's, one of Jack's favorite businesses. Jack wanted to report to Pete on the success of the panda-bear camera.

As was often the case, Pete's was empty of customers but crammed with goods. Most of the store's income came from a stock of high-end cameras and home security systems, but Pete Blanchard had founded the shop with the idea that you could buy any sort of expensive electronic surveillance device there.

Pete Blanchard hadn't made up his mind about me yet, and I wasn't sure what to think of him, so our conversations tended to be tentative and oblique. Mostly, I was content to watch Jack prowl around and have fun, but Pete seemed to feel it was his duty to entertain me while Jack shopped. The fact that Jack seldom bought anything didn't seem to bother Pete. He'd known Jack for several years, and he liked him.

Every time I'd seen him, Pete had been wearing the same sort of clothing. He wore a golf shirt and khakis and Adidas. He seemed to have several versions of this outfit, but he liked it and that was what he wore. I could respect that. A former cop, Pete had probably had trouble fitting into a patrol car; he had to be six foot four or five. His mustache and hair were graying, but his toffee-colored skin had few wrinkles, and I couldn't begin to guess his age.

This particular afternoon, Pete's son was working in the store. A college student who picked up some money wherever he could, Washington Blanchard considered himself much smarter than his father and vastly more sophisticated. Jack had told me he just hoped Wash, as the young man was called, would learn better before too long. Otherwise, in Jack's opinion, someone was likely to sock Wash in the mouth. Jack had had a gleam in his eye that had said the sight wouldn't be unwelcome.

Though I hadn't noted it on my calendar that morning, today had apparently been designated as Pick a Fight with Lily Day. Most men are put off by me. I just don't seem, I don't know, womanly or something. Especially if they know what happened to me. A small sampling of men, the ones that are sick, are turned on by that very same thing. Wash Blanchard was a member of that small group.

While Pete showed Jack a pair of glasses that took pictures, Wash asked me questions about the woman who'd been murdered in Tamsin Lynd's office. That death had made the Little Rock paper mostly due to its bizarre circumstances. Little Rock as a whole seems to try to forget there's anything south of