Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,74

Tamsin and her situation. She was the first person I saw when I stepped into Body Time. She was talking to Marshall, and she was looking haggard and unkempt. Her sweats looked dirty, and her hair was disheveled. Marshall gave her a dismissive pat on the back and glided over to me. Marshall is so fit that you could bounce a dime off his abs, so dangerous as a martial artist that he's made me cry from pain. I was glad to have him for a friend.

I could tell he wanted to ask me if it was true that Jack and I were married, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. He knew I hated personal questions, so he was determined to avoid that most personal one.

"Since Jack's not here, why don't we work out together?" he suggested. I agreed, since it's always nice to have a spotter, and the workout always goes better with a partner to challenge you. It was triceps day for me, though I was so far behind my normal schedule I could start just about anywhere. Triceps were fine with Marshall, so we went over to the heavy weights rack to begin. Assuming the pushup position, my hands on the pair of seventies on the top rack, I began my first set, concentrating on my breathing. Marshall was propped on the hundreds farther down the rack, and his body moved as though he had springs embedded in his arms.

"Tamsin was telling me about Cliff," Marshall said, as we rested between sets. "She came in this morning because he finally fell asleep and she didn't know what to do with herself."

I nodded.

"Yeah." Marshall did some stretches, and then we did our second set of pushups. "I guess you knew she has been followed by this crazy person," he said, when we were through.

"Yeah, I heard about that," I said carefully. "Hard to believe in a town this size, we wouldn't notice someone new."

Marshall turned an inquiring face to me as we assumed the pushup position for the third and last time. "That's true," he said, "but what other explanation is there? I guess you've thought of something."

"What if it's her?" I asked.

Marshall gave a derisive snort. "Yeah, right. She's a nice enough woman but she doesn't have enough grit in her to say boo to a goose. You think she's doing this to herself so she can get a lot of sympathy as Velma Victim? That seems a little far-fetched."

I shrugged as I stood up and shook my arms out to relieve the ache. "Who else could it be?" I really wanted to know what Marshall was thinking.

"I hadn't given it a thought," he said. "Ah ....liff, but he'd hardly want to stab himself in the back, and he's nuts about Tamsin. Okay, not him... well, what about the new police detective? The tall black woman?"

"She worked on Tamsin's case when Tamsin lived in Ohio," I said. "If Stokes stabbed Cliff, believe me, he'd be dead."

I was serious, but Marshall laughed as though I were joking.

"There was the other new cop, the patrolman, but he's dead now, too," Marshall said, thinking out loud. "Oh, there's Jack! He's new in town."

"Ha-ha-ha," I said, my voice showing clearly how unfunny I found this.

"And there's the guy that's started dating my ex."

"I thought Thea was getting married."

"Me, too. But he got to know her a little too well."

"And now she's dating someone else?"

"Sure. You know Thea. She's nothing if not flexible, when it comes to men."

I disliked Thea intensely. She gave women a bad name.

"Who's the guy?"

"The new mortician at the funeral home."

"Oh, that's right up Thea's alley," I said. "I bet she loves that."

Marshall laughed again, but less happily. This time he knew I was serious, and he agreed with me. Thea had a cruel and macabre streak, and making love in a funeral home would suit her sexual playbook, if all I'd heard were true. "But he and Thea were in Branson when Saralynn Kleinhoff was killed," Marshall said.

So I'd developed and eliminated a suspect in the space of five minutes. I was sure all these crimes had been committed by one person. Anything else would have been too much of a coincidence.

Not that I didn't believe in coincidence. I did. But I thought it would be stretching, in this case, to even entertain it as a possibility.

Jack's car was in the driveway when I got home. I was very glad to see it there.

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