Shakespeares Champion Page 0,65

were taped to the wall behind her.

There was a pile of library books on the desk, studded with slips of paper marking pages she wanted to refer to.

"How does a genealogist work?" I asked.

For once, she'd been engrossed in what she was doing, and she took a minute to focus on my question.

"Mostly by computer these days," she answered. "Which is great for me. I do work for a company that advertises in small specialty magazines, or regional mags, like Southern Living. We trace your ancestry for you if you give us some basic information. The Mormons, oddly enough, have the best records; I think they believe they can baptize their ancestors and get them into heaven that way, or something. Then there are county records, and so on.

"Did you want your folks traced?" she asked me now, a hint of amusement in the set of her mouth.

"I know who my family is," I said, and spoke the truth, for my mother's idea of a great Christmas present was a family tree ready-framed for my wall. For all I knew, she'd hired Mookie Preston's company to do the research.

"Then you're lucky. Most Americans can only name as far back as their great-grandparents. They're shaky after that."

I tried to think of myself as lucky.

I failed.

I wanted to sit in the battered armchair in front of her desk and ask her what I really needed to know. Why was she here? What trouble was she getting into? Would I come to work next week and find her dead, for sticking her nose into a hornet's nest and getting stung?

Mookie laughed uneasily. "You're looking at me funny, Lily."

Bits of information slid around in my head and rearranged into a pattern. Lanette had come looking for Mookie secretly one night. Mookie had moved to town right after Darnell Glass had been killed. Mookie had an Illinois license plate.

Lanette had returned to Shakespeare after living in Chicago for a time. I studied the round line of Mookie's cheeks and the strong column of her neck, and then I knew why she seemed familiar.

I gave Mookie a brisk nod and went back to work on the kitchen. Mookie was Darnell's half-sister. But there seemed no point in talking to Mookie about it: Strictly speaking, it wasn't my business, and Mookie knew better than anyone who she was and what she had to mourn. I wondered whose idea it had been to keep silent. Had Mookie wanted to do some kind of undercover work on the murder of her brother, or had Lanette been unwilling to admit to the town that she'd had a liaison with a white man?

I wondered if Lanette had left for Chicago pregnant.

I wondered if the father was still alive, still here in Shakespeare. I wondered if he and Mookie had talked.

The rifle, black and brown and deadly, had spooked me. I hadn't seen loose firearms in anyone's house since I began cleaning. I'd polished my share of gun cabinets, but I'd never found one unsecured and its contents easily available; which didn't mean the guns hadn't been there, in night tables and closets, just that they hadn't been quite so ... accessible. I felt I hadn't been meant to see the rifle, that Mookie's carelessness had been a mistake. I had no idea what Arkansas gun laws were, since I'd never wanted to carry a gun myself. Maybe the rifle was locked in Mookie's car trunk.

I remembered the targets. If they were typical of Mookie's marksmanship, she was a good shot.

I thought of the pack of men who'd been after Jack. Darcy knew Mookie's name and address. I thought of him thinking the same thoughts about Mookie that I'd been thinking.

I gathered up my things and told Mookie I was leaving. She was coming outside to check her mailbox at the same time, and after she'd paid me we walked down the driveway together. I thought hard about what to say, if to speak at all.

Almost too late, I made up my mind. "You should go," I said. Her back was to me. I already had one foot in the car.

She twisted halfway around, paused for a moment. "Would you?" She asked.

I considered it. "No," I said finally.

"There, then." She collected her mail and passed me again on her way back into that half-empty echoing house. She acted as though I wasn't there.

When I got home that night, all the sleeplessness of the night before and the emotional strain of the day