Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

Angry with myself for babbling, I realized just how battered I felt.

Then I began feeling angry.

Even as I tried to remember all the other questions she’d asked so I could begin to respond, I thought, Why bother? I got up.

“You sit your butt back down in that chair,” Alicia Stokes told me.

I fixed my eyes on her face.

“Before I make you,” she added.

Rage hit me like fireball. “You can’t make me do shit,” I said, slow and low. “I came in to give a statement. I gave it. Unless you arrest me, I don’t have to sit here and answer any questions.”

Stokes loomed over me, leaning across her desk, her knuckles resting on its surface. A patrolman I’d never met, a wiry freckled man, peered in the entrance to the cubicle, went wide eyed, and backed away.

“This looks like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” Claude’s voice said behind me.

I let out my breath in a long gust. I speculated on what could’ve happened if the new patrolman hadn’t fetched him- would Stokes have launched herself across her desk at me? Would I have hit a police officer?

“I was just leaving,” I told Claude. I edged past him and strode out the front door, picking my way through the desks and chairs and a few assorted people with my eyes fixed on the floor. The freckled patrolman held open the front door for me. His nametag read “G. McClanahan.” I made a mental note that I owed G. McClanahan a free house cleaning. Right now, getting in the car and driving away appeared to be my best move.

I wondered if Claude would have a talk with Stokes now, and what that talk would be like. I knew she would have no cause to like me any better afterward, that was for sure, and I didn’t know if I’d care or not. What was more certain was the fact that as fast as I could think, the detective could think faster, and I added that to the list of her sins, as I was sure her fellow officers would. Stokes was northern, black, a woman, aggressive, very tall (and I’d bet strong), and smart as hell. She would have to perform like a one-woman band to be popular, or even tolerated.

How would she live in Shakespeare? Why had she taken the job?

To my mind, that was as much a puzzle as the woman pinned to the wall in the health center. Maybe the city paid better than I’d assumed, or maybe Stokes had a master plan that included some time in a small force-a very small force. Maybe Stokes had family in the area.

But it hadn’t escaped my attention that a puzzling and bizarre murder had occurred in Shakespeare (where the norm was a Saturday night knifing) just when a puzzling and mysterious detective had turned up to solve it.

Some might think that suspicious, too.

I felt groggy when I woke up. I had to force myself to obey the clock. This was one of my days in Shakespeare, and I had to clean Carrie’s office in addition to putting in a stint at the Winthrops’ house. Forcing myself every step of the way, I got dressed and ate; though my head was aching and the rest of me felt exhausted already, as if I’d already put in a hard day. I wondered if I had dreamed a lot-dreams that were best forgotten-and had therefore slept restlessly. I caught no echoes of it as I cleaned my teeth and fluffed my hair. I expected my new sneakers to make me perk up; I don’t often get new things, and these black high-tops had been on extreme sale. But after they were laced and tied I stared down at them as if I’d never seen them before; or my feet, either, for that matter.

I saw a car already parked in the lot to the rear of Carrie’s office, and I had a feeling I’d seen it before. I just couldn’t place where and when. It was an hour earlier than any of the staff should appear. When I tried the back door, it was already unlocked.

“Hello?” I said cautiously, not wanting to scare anyone.

“Good morning!” called a horribly happy voice. Cliff Eggers stuck his head out of one of the doors on the left. “Carrie left a message you’d be coming in.”

I brought in my cleaning caddy and a few other things. I didn’t know what Carrie’s new cleaner kept here, so I’d piled my car with stuff. I had to do a great job for Carrie.

“And you’re here so early to do medical transcriptions?” I said in a voice that would carry down the hall as I deposited my burdens.

“That’s right.” Cliff appeared in the doorway again, beaming at me as though I’d said something very clever. “It works out better for me this way. I can do the rest of my doctors at home.”

“And you like your job,” I prodded.

“It’s fascinating. I learn something every day. Well, I’d better get back to it.” Cliff retreated to his desk, and I started with the waiting room. Dust, straighten, polish, vacuum, mop. In short order, the magazines were lined up on the square table in the middle of the room; the chairs were sitting in neat rows against the wall. The large mat in front of the door where most of the dirt from patients’ shoes was supposed to fall had been shaken out the front door and replaced, exactly square with the door.

Cliff squeaked down the hall in rubber shoes, and I cleaned the glass barrier between the patient sitting room and the clerks’ office. I saw with disapproval that Carrie’s new maid had been slacking off there. And the counter in the reception clerk’s area was just nasty.

“Want a cup of coffee?” he called to me after a few minutes had passed.

“No, thank you,” I said politely.

I was able to get on with the other rooms and the hall, and cleaned as fast as a dervish whirls until I reached the room in which Cliff was working.

The burly man was sitting at a desk, a headset on, and his fingers flying across the keys of a computer. His leg was moving slightly, and as I mopped behind him, I saw that he was operating a pedal. He wasn’t listening to music on a CD player, as I’d at first believed. He was listening to Carrie’s voice. I could barely hear it while I dusted. Carrie was saying, “temperature of one hundred and one. Mr. Danby said he’d had episodes of fever for the past two days, and his stomach had become very sore and tender to the touch. Upon examination, when the lower left quadrant of his abdomen was palpated…”

“You know anything about medicine?” Cliff said out loud, as I wiped the picture frames.

“No, not much,” I confessed.

“It’s like listening to a soap opera every day,” he said, as if I’d asked.

“Ummm,” I said, lifting an open magazine to wipe underneath, ready to set it down exactly the same way.

“How’s Tamsin doing?” I asked, just to stop him from asking me any more questions. I had seen his lips begin to form a phrase.

“She’s doing well, considering what a shock she got,”

Cliff said, his heavy face grim. He hesitated for a second, then said, “And considering this has ruined our new life here.”

That seemed a strange way to put it. Here I was thinking it was Saralynn’s life that had been ruined.

“It’s awful about the woman who was killed,” Cliff went on, echoing my thoughts. “But I’m Tamsin’s husband, so I can’t help worrying about her more than anyone. For someone whose joy is to help others, her life has been full of trouble this past couple of years.”

From what I’d seen, that was certainly true.

“You moved here from the Midwest?” I asked, trying to confirm the accent. I realigned a stack of insurance forms and put a stapler in the drawer below.

“I’m originally from northern Kentucky,” he said. “But we’ve moved a lot these past few years since we both got out of school. It’s been hard to find a place where we both can have the jobs we like and a good lifestyle.”

Jack and I were facing the same sort of problem right now. “So you’ve been here in Shakespeare for how long?”