Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

As we were led to their table in the Cracker Barrel (a favorite of Roy’s) I spied Aunt Betty first. With her fading brown hair, nice business suit, and sensible shoes, Elizabeth Fry certainly did look like everyone’s favorite aunt. She had the kind of slightly wrinkled, well-bred, kindly face that inspires universal trust. Betty was one of the best private detectives in the Southeast, Jack had told me.

At the moment, Betty was telling Roy some story that had him smiling. Roy doesn’t smile a lot, especially since his heart attack. Though he has a sense of humor, it leans toward the macabre.

When I sat across from him, I could look Roy right in the eyes. He’s not tall.

“Hey,” I said.

Betty leaned over to pat my hand, and Roy looked stricken. “Hey, baby, you feelin‘ okay?” He reached over with one of his stubby hands and patted the same place Betty had. “Thelma and me, we’re sorry.” Thelma was Roy’s wife, to whom he was devoted.

Of course, Jack had told them about the miscarriage. I should have expected that.

“I’m feeling much better,” I said, trying very hard not to sound cold and stiff. I failed, I could see, by the glances Roy and Aunt Betty exchanged. Personal exchanges with near strangers in public places are just not my thing, even though I knew I was being a pill. I made a tremendous effort. “I’m sorry, it’s hard to talk about.” That was truer than I’d realized, because I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I grabbed up a menu and began trying to focus on it. It persisted in being blurry.

“Lily caught Beth Crider this morning,” Jack said. I knew he was diverting them, and from their hasty exclamations I could tell they were glad to be diverted. I recovered, after a minute or two, and was able to look pleasant, if nothing else.

I had my back to the entry, so I couldn’t see what made Roy stiffen and look angry a moment or two after we’d ordered. “Crap,” he said under his breath, and his eyes flicked to my face, then back over to Jack. “Trouble coming,” he said, a little more audibly.

“Who is it?” Jack asked, sounding as though he were afraid he already knew the answer.

“Her,” Aunt Betty said, her voice loaded down with significance.

“Why, it’s the private detective table, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me, a youngish woman’s voice with a Southern accent so heavy you could have used it to butter rolls. “My goodness me, and I wasn’t invited along. But who have we here, in my old place?” A navy-and-beige pantsuit, well packed, twitched by me, and I looked up to see a pretty woman, maybe a couple of years my senior, standing by the table. She was looking down at me with false delight. The perfect makeup and honey-colored shoulder-length tousled hair were designed to distract attention from a nose that was a little too long and a mouth that was a little too small.

“You are just too precious,” said this sleek newcomer. I don’t believe anyone had called me “precious” in my life, even my parents. “Let me introduce myself, since Jack seems to have lost his tongue. His wonderful tongue.” She gave me a roguish wink.

Well, well, well. I didn’t dare to look at Jack. I wavered between amusement and anger.

Roy said, “Lindsey, this is Lily. Lily, Lindsey Wilkerson.”

I nodded, not extending my hand. If I shook with her, some of my fingers might come up missing. You don’t often meet people who will lay an unattractive emotion out on the table like that. Showing your hand so clearly is a big mistake.

“Dear old Betty, how you been doing?” Lindsey asked.

“Fine, thank you,” said ‘dear old Betty,’ her voice as weathered as old paint. “And I hear you’re flourishing on your own.”

“I’m paying the rent,” Lindsey said casually. She was carrying a leather handbag that had cost more than two of my outfits, which mostly come from Wal-Mart. Her beautiful shoes had two-inch heels, and I wondered how she walked in them. “Lily, how do you like working under Jack?”

I shrugged. She was about as subtle as a rattlesnake.

“You watch out, Lily, Jack’s got himself a reputation for fooling around with his co-workers,” Lindsey warned me with mock concern. “Then he just leaves ‘em high and dry.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said, my voice mild. I could feel Jack relax prematurely.

“Where’d he find you?” she said. Her southern Arkansas accent was beginning to grate on my nerves. “You” comes out “yew,” and “where’d” was awful close to “whar’d.”

Not under the same rock he found you, was my first, discarded answer. I exercised my option of not speaking at all. I looked into her eyes, instead. She began to shift from pump to pump, and her nasty smile faded.

But she rallied, as I’d been willing to bet she would.

“Jack,” she said, leaning over the table right in front of me, “I need to come by your place and pick up some clothes I left there.”

Her throat was exposed, right in front of me. I felt my fingers stiffen into Knife Hand. At the same time, the part of my brain that hadn’t lost its temper was telling me that it’s not right to hurt someone just because she’s a bitch.

“I don’t believe I have anything of yours,” Jack said. From the corner of my eyes I could see his hands clenching the edge of the table. “And I don’t live in that apartment any more.”

She hadn’t known that. “Where’d you move to?”

“Are you a detective, too?” I asked.

“Why, yes, honey, I sure am.” She straightened up, now that she knew I’d had a good time to look at her impressive cup size.

“Then you can find out.” She would also find out we were married.

“Listen, bitch…” she leaned back down toward me, extending a pointing finger. People around us were beginning to stop eating in order to listen.

My hand darted up, quick as an arrow, and I seized her hand and dug my thumb into the pit between her thumb and first finger. She gasped in pain. “Let go of me!” she hissed. After a second’s more pressure, I did. Tears had come into her eyes and she stood there nursing her hand until she understood that she had become ridiculous, and then she did what she had to do-she walked away.

Aunt Betty and Roy began talking about something else right away, and the other diners went back to their own concerns, leaving Jack and me in a sort of cocoon. I picked up a long-handled spoon and stirred my iced tea. It was too weak. I like tea that’s something more than colored water.

“Uh, Lily,” Jack began, “listen, I…”

I made a chopping motion with my hand. “Over and done.”

“But she never meant-”

“ Over and done .”

Later, when Aunt Betty and I were discussing a recent court verdict, I heard Roy ask Jack if I’d really meant it when I’d said we’d never talk about Lindsey again.

“Absolutely,” Jack’s voice somewhere between amused and grim.

“That’s a woman in a million,” Roy said, “not wanting to hash over every little thing.”

“You said it.” Jack didn’t sound totally delighted.

Later, when we’d eaten, paid, and gone back to Jack’s car, we found a long scratch down the paint. I looked at Jack and raised my eyebrows.

“Yeah, I figure it was her,” he said. “Vindictive is her middle name. Lindsey Vindictive Wilkerson.”

“Will this be the end of it?”

“No.” He finally looked me in the eyes. “If Betty and Roy hadn’t been there, maybe. But she got beat, and in front of witnesses she cares about.”

“If she keeps this up,” I told him, “she’ll be sorry.”

Jack gave me a look. But at length, his troubled face gave way to a smile. “I have no doubt of that,” he said, and we went back to the office for the afternoon. He filed, and I cleaned. He gave me another lesson on the computer, and a lecture on billing procedures. As a kind of treat for Jack, on our way back to Shakespeare we stopped at Sneaky Pete’s, one of Jack’s favorite businesses. Jack wanted to report to Pete on the success of the panda-bear camera.