Shakespeares Trollop Page 0,53

Plowright was gone. Tick, I guess, was drunk. The woman who works at Wal-Mart, Do'mari Clayton, was at the store, according to Becca."

"Where was Becca?"

"I don't know, she didn't say." I had no idea what Becca usually did on Sundays. She wasn't a churchgoer, and though she often made an appearance at Body Time, she didn't stay long. Maybe on Sunday she just slopped around in her pajamas and read the papers, or a book.

"Had that brother of hers gotten here yet?"

"No, yesterday was the first time I'd seen him."

"So he never even knew Deedra." Jack rested his chin on his hands, staring at the wood of the floor. While he thought, I fetched the old TV Guide from my bedroom - our bedroom - and opened it to Saturday. This would have been the one day pertinent to Deedra, since she'd died on Sunday.

I read all the synopses, checked all the sports listings, pored over the evening shows. When Jack snapped out of his reverie long enough to ask me what I was doing, I tried to explain it to him, but it came out sounding fuzzier than it was.

"Maybe the TV Guide had blood on it or something, so the killer took it with him," he said, uninterested. "Or maybe Deedra spilled ginger ale on it and pitched it in the garbage. It's the purse that's more interesting. What could have been in her purse? Did she carry those big bags you could put bricks into?"

"No. Hers were big enough for her billfold, a brush, a compact, a roll of mints, and some Kleenex. Not much else."

"Her apartment hadn't been tossed?"

"Not so I could tell."

"What's small enough to be carried in a purse?" Jack rolled onto his back, an even more attractive pose. His hazel eyes focused on the ceiling. "She have jewelry?"

"No expensive jewelry. At least nothing worth staging that elaborate death scene for. If she'd been knocked on the head with a brick while she was at an urban mall, that would be one thing. She had some gold chains, her pearls, they would be worth that. But this, this arrangement in the woods ... it seemed personal. And her pearls were there, hanging on the tree."

"Then we're back to her sex life. Who did she actually have sex with, that you know of?" Jack looked a little uncomfortable as he asked. That was sort of strange.

"Anyone she could," I said absently, beginning to think suspicious thoughts. "Do you want a list?"

Jack nodded, but kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Marcus Jefferson, that guy who used to live in the top front - the apartment you had for a while." I thought a little. "Brian Gruber's son, Claude, Terry Plowright, Darcy Orchard, Norvel Whitbread, Randy Peevely while he was separated from Heather, plus at least" - I counted on my ringers - "four others. And those are just the ones I saw there, actually saw in her apartment. But I wasn't about to give Marta Schuster a list."

"You didn't tell the police?"

"It wasn't their business. One of those men may have killed Deedra, but that's no reason for all of them to go through hell. And I'm not convinced any of them did kill her."

"Based on?"

"Why?" I asked, leaning forward, my hands on my knees. "Why would they?"

"Fear of exposure," Jack said, starting out assured but ending up uncertain.

"Who would fear exposure? Everyone in town knew Deedra was ....eally available. No one took her seriously. That was the tragedy of her life." I surprised myself, with my intensity and my shaking voice. I had cared more than I knew, for reasons I couldn't fathom. "Jack, were you lonely enough when you came to Shakespeare?"

Jack turned dark red. It was slow and unlovely.

"No," he said. "But it was a near thing. It was only because I thought of AIDS that I didn't. She had condoms, and I was horny, but I'd been tested and I was clean and I... could tell she was..."

"A whore?" I asked, feeling rage building up in me. And I could not understand it.

Jack nodded.

It's amazing how easily a good afternoon can evaporate.

"Can you tell me why you're so mad?" Jack asked my back. I was kneeling in the bathroom, scrubbing the floor by hand.

"I don't think so," I said curtly. My hands were sweating inside the rubber gloves, and I knew they'd smell like old sweat socks when I peeled the gloves off.

I was trying to figure it out myself. Deedra