Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Counselor

Claude was in and willing to see us. I had half hoped he’d be out fighting crime or swamped in paperwork.

We went into his office. Claude looked puzzled, but glad to see us, a reaction so far off base that I came pretty close to turning around and leaving. But conscience demanded that we take the wooden chairs in front of Claude’s old desk and state our business.

I glanced at Jack, took a deep breath, and launched in to our theory.

Claude said, when he was sure I’d finished, “That’s pretty interesting stuff, there. What do you have to prove it?”

My heart sank. “You haven’t found any evidence to point to Cliff, or Tamsin… or anyone else?”

“You mean, in general? Or in the death of Saralynn Kleinhoff? In the murder of my police officer? Let’s just take Saralynn’s murder. Let’s see,” Claude rumbled, scooting lower in his chair and crossing his ankles. “Got to be someone that had a key to the health center. That’s forty present and past employees, plus their families.”

I hadn’t even thought of that.

“Got to be someone who doesn’t mind getting their hands messy. Well, who knows? My grandmother, the most finicky woman on God’s green earth, could butcher a chicken as fast as you can say Jack Robinson,” Claude continued. “Got to be someone with a personal dislike of Tamsin Lynd. Mental health workers get all kinds of enemies, right? And as for thinking it has to be the same person here as was stalking her in Illinois-well, why? Could be a copycat. Doesn’t have to be someone who followed her down here. As far as hanging the squirrel, anyone could’ve done that at any time. You could tie up the squirrel ahead of time and take it over there, get it strung on the branch in a minute or less.”

This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. Jack was looking pretty bleak, too.

“Then, Gerry. Now that I know about Gerry, I can understand a lot of things about him better. But that doesn’t stop me from being mad at him for deceiving me, and I’ll bet a lot of other people were mad at him, too. Just because he told you that he was watching Tamsin’s house doesn’t mean that was why he was killed. And Cliff is the only one giving Tamsin an alibi for that one; he says she was in the shower. Well, maybe she was and maybe she wasn’t.”

I closed my eyes and wished I were somewhere else.

“About this scenario you two have worked out-you may be right. May be. But if Cliff did stab himself, that doesn’t necessarily mean he killed Saralynn and Gerry. That doesn’t mean he’s been terrorizing his own wife. We have no proof either way.”

“No forensic evidence?” Jack was leaning forward in his chair.

“There were fibers on Saralynn that came from a pair of slacks a lot like the ones Cliff was wearing that day. Khaki Dockers. Everyone’s got a pair of those. And Cliff readily told us that he’d been in there earlier in the day, when he’d brought Tamsin her lunch. Fibers could’ve been left there then.”

“Say we’re right,” Jack said. “Say that the one behind everything is Cliff. What do you think he’ll do next?”

My eyes flicked to Claude, who was thinking the matter over.

“If he follows his pattern, he’ll quit. They’ll move. It’ll start all over again.”

Jack nodded.

Claude continued, his face looking as seamed and careworn as that of a man ten years older. “But he’s escalated and escalated. From nasty pranks, to small deaths like the squirrel, to human deaths like Saralynn’s and Gerry’s. What could be left? Next time, I reckon he’ll try to kill her.”

With regret, I agreed.

Chapter Thirteen

“We might as well not have gone to Claude,” I said to Jack.

We were on our way home from Body Time the next morning when I reopened the subject.

“Yeah.” He stared straight ahead, his face like a thundercloud and his posture just as aggressive as mine. “We can’t just wait for her to be killed.”

“What else can we do? We can’t stay outside her house for days or weeks. We can’t follow her everywhere she goes, or kill Cliff before he kills her.”

Jack looked at me sidelong, and I could see the idea of taking Cliff out appealed to him. “We can’t,” I said, in the voice my fifth grade teacher had used when she recited the Golden Rule to us every morning. “We are not going to get in trouble with the law again.”

When we got home, at least part of our problem was solved. There was a message on the answering machine from Tamsin. Even her voice sounded quavery. “Lily, this is Tamsin. I just can’t get up the energy to do any housework, and the place is a wreck. If you’re feeling better-only if you’re well enough-I would really appreciate hearing from you.”

I called her back right away. “This is Lily,” I said.

“Oh. Oh, Lily! Can you come to help me clean house today? I don’t know if I can go in to work this week… and I’m definitely staying home today. I’m so shaken up.”

“I think I can come over,” I told her. After all, it was Sunday morning, when I never scheduled anything so I could have a break from work. But I’d definitely had enough down time this week.

“Oh, thank God!”

We talked a little more-well, she did-and I hung up. Jack, standing beside me for the whole conversation, was sunk in thought. We looked at each other for a second or two.

“Do you have to go over there?” He ran a hand through his hair to push it over his shoulders.

“Yes. I owe her.”

“Do you think Cliff’s there?”

“She didn’t say.”

“I don’t know about this, Lily. I hate for you to be anywhere close to the woman. I feel sorry for her, but she’s a human lightning rod.”

I wasn’t too enthusiastic about Tamsin’s request myself. “Maybe she really wants me over there to clean. But I’m thinking maybe she needs company, and doesn’t know anyone well enough to just ask for it.”

“So, you’re going to go?” Jack was still reluctant.

“Yes, but I’ll call you when I get there. If you don’t hear from me, come over to see how everything’s going. I don’t know if I could take a lot of weeping.” At odd moments, the loss of the baby still struck me with a peculiar pain.

“You won’t forget to call?” Jack touched my hair.

“No, I won’t forget.”

I showered and changed, so it was about ten when I left my house, ten o’clock on a hot and peaceful Sunday morning. Shakespeare was at its best. The church parking lots were full. A little towheaded boy was in his driveway operating a remote-control car. Everything looked absolutely normal on Tamsin’s street. Both the cars were parked in the drive, and I wedged in behind them.

I wasn’t too pleased that Cliff was home, but I had only suspicion, after all. Lugging my cleaning-material caddy, I went up the front steps and knocked. With professional eyes I examined the porch; it needed to be swept, if not hosed down.

Tamsin came to the door immediately. She looked as awful as she had the day before. Her hair was straggly and dirty, her cutoff jeans and truncated sweatshirt were anything but pristine, and she was free of makeup and jewelry.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, in a limp voice. “I just can’t stand for everything to be so dirty, with people dropping by all the time. I can’t ever tell who’ll be seeing my house, with the police coming in all the time.”

“Cliff home?” The litter of the big edition of the paper and a couple of stained coffee mugs in the living room were like a tableau called “Sunday morning.”

“Yes, he’s in the small den back there where we keep the TV.” This living room, decorated in inexpensive American comfortable, did not contain a television or music system. Shelves hung on the wall held little china statues of wide-eyed children.