no business at the crime scene. But I wasn't the law. I let him pass, though I'd stopped leaning against the sheriff's car and uncrossed my arms.
At that moment Marta Schuster came back into sight and yelled, "No, Marlon!" The big deputy dogging her stepped around her neatly, grabbed the smaller man's shoulders, and held him fast. I'd seen the smaller man around the apartments, I recalled, and I realized for the first time that this boy was Marlon Schuster, Marta's brother. My stomach clenched at this bombshell of a complication.
"Marlon," the sheriff said in a harsh voice. It would've stopped me. "Marlon, get ahold of yourself."
"Is it true? Is it her?"
From only five feet away, I could hardly avoid hearing this conversation.
Marta took a deep breath. "Yes, it's Deedra," she said, quite gently, and motioned to the deputy, who let go of the boy's arm.
To my amazement, the young man drew back that arm to swing at his sister. The deputy had turned to walk to his car, and Marta Schuster seemed too astounded to defend herself, so I covered the ground and seized his cocked right arm. The ungrateful fool swung around and went for me with his left. Well, I too had a free hand, and I struck him - seiken, a thrust - right in the solar plexus.
He made a sound like "oof" as the air left him, and then went down on his knees. I released him and stepped away. He wouldn't be bothering anyone for a few minutes.
"Idiot," the sheriff said, crouching down by him. The deputy was right by me, suddenly, his hand playing nervously around his gun. I wondered which of us he'd draw on. After a second his hand relaxed, and I did too.
"Where'd you learn that?" asked the deputy. I looked up at him. He had bitter-chocolate brown eyes.
"Karate class," I said, throwing it away, not wanting to talk about it. Marshall Sedaka, my sensei, would be pleased.
"You're that woman," the deputy said.
All of a sudden, I felt real tired. "I'm Lily Bard," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "And if you all are through with me, I need to be getting to my next job."
"Just tell me again how you happened to find her," Marta Schuster said, leaving her brother to fend for himself. She looked sideways at her deputy. He nodded. They seemed to be good at nonverbal communication. She addressed me again. "Then you can go, long as we know where to reach you."
I gave her the Joe-Friday facts: Mrs. Rossiter's phone number, my cell phone number, my home phone number, and where I'd be working this afternoon if I ever got to leave this stretch of road.
"And you knew the deceased how?" she asked again, as if that was a point she hadn't quite gotten straight in her head.
"I cleaned her place. I live next to her apartment building," I said.
"How long had you worked for Deedra?"
The tall deputy had gone down the path with a camera after making sure that Marlon was off his tear. The sheriff's brother had recovered enough to haul himself up to the hood of his Subaru. He was sprawled over it, weeping, his head buried in his hands. His sister completely ignored him, though he was making a considerable amount of noise.
Two more deputies arrived in another squad car and emerged with rolls of crime-scene tape, and Marta Schuster interrupted me to give them directions.
"I worked for Deedra - though I'm sure her mother subsidized her - for over three years," I said, when the sheriff turned her attention back to me. "I cleaned Deedra's apartment once a week."
"So, you were friendly with her?"
"No." That didn't require any thought.
"Yet you knew her for more than three years," Marta Schuster observed, pretending to be surprised.
I shrugged. "She was most often gone to work while I was at her place." Though sometimes she was still there; and sometimes the men would still be there, but the sheriff hadn't asked me about the men. She would, though.
While the sheriff gave more directions to her deputies, I had a little time to think. The pictures! I closed my eyes to contain my dismay.
One of the least explicable things about Deedra was her fondness for nude pictures of herself. She'd kept a little pile of them in her lingerie drawer for years. Every time I'd put her clean clothes away, I'd felt an uncomfortable stab of disapproval. Of all the things Deedra did to