Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

“I’m going home,” I said.

“Jack there tonight?”

“No, he’s on the road.”

“You need me to be there? I’ll be glad-”

“No.” Clipped and final, it was as definite as it was possible to be. Dammit, when would Bobo find a girlfriend or stop coming home during the summer and the holidays? There must be a special word for someone you were fond of, someone who aroused a deep-rooted lust, someone you would never love. There was nothing as idiotic, as inexplicable, as the chemistry between two people who had almost nothing in common and had no business even being in the same room together. I loved Jack, loved him more than anything, and reacting to Bobo this way was a constant irritant.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, abandoning his hope that I would prolong our encounter. He took a step back, watched me get into my car and turn the key. When I looked out my window again, he was gone.

When Jack called that night, he sounded weary to the bone. He was following the trail of a sixteen-year-old runaway from Maumelle, a boy from the proverbial good home who’d become caught up in the subculture of drugs and then prostitution. His family hadn’t seen him in a year, Jack told me, yet they kept getting hang-up phone calls from different cities and towns around the South. Convinced their son was on the other end of the phone, sure the boy wanted to come home but was ashamed to ask, this family was getting into seriously shaky financial shape in their search for him.

“How can you keep it up?” I asked Jack, as gently as I could.

“If I don’t look, they’ll hire someone else,” he said. Jack sounded older than thirty-five. “People this driven always do. At least I’ll really try my best to find the boy. Ever since we found Summer Dawn Macklesby, I’m the guy to see for missing kids.”

“Have you even had a glimpse of this kid?”

“Yes.” Jack didn’t sound happy about it. “I saw him last night, in the Mount Vernon area, on Read Street.” Jack was in Baltimore. “He looks awful. Sick.”

“You didn’t get to talk to him?”

“He went off with a man and didn’t come back. I’ll be out there again tonight. I might have to pay him for his time, but I’ll have that talk.”

There was nothing to say.

“How is the surveillance going?” he asked, ready for some good news.

“She won’t bend over. She’s wearing a neck brace and walking with a cane, and any bending she does, she must be doing it where I can’t see her. Maybe Bonnie Crider’s really hurt. It would be nice to find an honest woman.”

“Not a chance. All the warning signs are there. She’s a fraud. We gotta think of a way to catch this woman. Put your mind to it.”

“Okay,” I said. I said it very neutrally, because I am used to taking orders, but I am not used to taking them from Jack. However, I reminded myself in a flattening way, he was my boss now.

“Please,” Jack said suddenly.

“Okay,” I repeated, in a more agreeable tone. “Now I have a thing or two to tell you.”

“Oh?” Jack sounded apprehensive.

“Therapy group was unexpectedly exciting tonight,” I told him.

“Oh, new woman?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“She’d gotten raped in some new way?”

“I don’t know about the rape. She never got a chance to tell us. Someone killed her dead and left her in Tamsin’s office.”

After Jack exclaimed for a minute or two, and made sure I hadn’t been in personal danger, he became practical. “That’s all your group needed, right-a dead woman, on top of dealing with a pack of traumas. Who was she, did anyone know?” Jack was interested in my story, even more so when I told him about the dead woman, Tamsin’s actions, and the new detective, Alicia Stokes.

“I can see why Claude would snap up a woman that qualified, but why in hell would a woman that qualified want to come to Shakespeare?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know anyone on the Cleveland force, but maybe I know someone who does. I might make a few phone calls when I get back.” Jack’s curiosity, which made him such a good detective, could also make him a little uncomfortable to be with from time to time. But in this case, I was just as curious about Stokes as he was.

I tossed and turned that night, seeing the wound in the woman’s chest, the pale body and the red blood. I kept wondering why the body had been arranged in Tamsin’s office. That was sending a message, all right: a woman murdered and displayed in the middle of all those articles about how women could overcome violence and keep themselves safe.

I thought time was overdue for Tamsin to give us a rundown on the stalker that was going to such lengths to terrorize her. After all, now the whole group was involved in Tamsin’s problem, though we had come to her to get rid of our own.

Finally, I got out of bed and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, socks and walking shoes. Jack wasn’t home, and I couldn’t sleep, so it was back to the old pattern. I slipped my cell phone and my keys into my pocket and left my house, making a beeline across the street to the arboretum that filled the whole block opposite mine. Estes Arboretum is one of the town’s less popular bequests, since the land will only belong to Shakespeare as long as it remains in its leafy state. If the trees are cut down for another use, the city loses the land to the nearest living descendant of Harry Estes. Every now and then there’s a flurry of resentment in the local paper about Estes. A group will protest that the city should either sell it or let it revert to the family because the trails through it are not being maintained and the trees are not properly labeled. Then there’ll be a storm of cleaning up across the street, and dead branches and leaves will be carted off and new plaques affixed to the trees. The trails will be edged and new trashcans will be positioned discreetly. An elementary school class or two will visit the arboretum and collect leaves in the fall, and a few women from one of the garden clubs will come to plant some perennials in the spring. Then lovers and druggies will start visiting the park at night, trashcans will be vandalized, signs will disappear, and the whole cycle will begin again.

Right now the arboretum was in the upswing, and the petunias were being pinched back by the women of the Shakespeare Combined Church every week, Sandy McCorkindale among them, I was sure. The paths were free of downed branches and debris, and there weren’t any used condoms decorating the bushes. I went over all the trails quickly and silently.

Suddenly and without warning, my right leg cramped. I hit the cement of the path a lot faster than I wanted to, and I made an awful noise doing it. The pain was intense. I knew if I could get up and stretch the leg I could recover. It was easier to imagine than to do, but I finally managed to push myself to a kneeling position, and from there I lurched to my feet. I almost screamed when I put my right foot to the ground, but within seconds the cramp had lost its hold on me.

I staggered home, my leg weak and aching. My face was covered with sweat and my hands were shaking. When I got into the house, I went to the kitchen and took an Advil. I didn’t know if it would help, but a pain like that would surely leave soreness in its wake. Limping a little, I made my way into the bathroom and washed my face, patting a wet hand along the back of my neck as well.

I was grateful to be back in bed, and stretching the leg out felt so good that I was asleep within minutes of crawling between the sheets.

By the next morning I had almost forgotten about the incident. When I got out of bed to get ready to drive to my surveillance job, the muscle that had cramped was only a faint shadow of discomfort. I wondered if the cramp had anything to do with the approaching onset of my period, which was due any day, judging by my symptoms. I slipped a couple of plastic pouches in my purse to be on the safe side.