Charlaine Harris: Shakespeare’s Landlord

I started thinking about Pardon’s shirt on the way home. I’ve done laundry. I know the way clothes look when they’ve been washed hundreds of times. Pardon’s shirt was a cheap shirt to begin with and he’d worn it and washed it repeatedly for years. It had been almost thin enough to read through. I remembered in my flashlight’s beam seeing the ripped chest pocket. The threads had been frayed. I did not doubt that some of those threads remained at the site of Pardon’s death, which had probably occurred in his apartment. More of them had to be at the place where his body had been stored. And where were his keys?

I prepared a baked potato and vegetables when I got home, but I hardly tasted the meal. That body had been hidden on the street I considered my turf. My cart had been used to haul Pardon to the dump site. Now that my mind was unclouded by thoughts of Marshall-or at least mostly unclouded- it began to run around the track of speculation about Pardon’s death.

Suddenly, the parking garage popped into my mind. Something about it had sparked an uneasiness; something not as it was supposed to be? A memory jogged by something I’d seen there?

It bothered me while I washed my dishes, bothered me while I showered. I wasn’t going to sleep. I put on black spandex shorts and a black sports bra, then pulled a red UA sweatshirt over that. Black socks and black cross-trainers completed my outfit. I punched in Claude’s number, sure that if I heard his voice, I’d know what I wanted to tell him. But his answering machine came on. I don’t leave messages on machines. I paced up and down my hall. I tried his number again.

Finally, I had to get out. Dark night. Cool air on my bare legs. Walking. It was a relief to be outside, to be silent, to be moving. I passed Thea’s house without so much as a glance. And then I passed Marshall’s. His car wasn’t there. I walked on. I heard someone else coming on Indian Way and glided behind some azaleas. Joel McCorkindale ran by, wearing sweats, Nikes, and a determined expression. I waited till the sound of his running feet faded into the night before I stepped back out on the street.

The wind was blowing, making the new leaves rustle together, a sound almost like the sea.

I walked faster and faster, until I, too, was running down the middle of the street in silent Shakespeare, seeing no one, wondering if I was invisible.

I entered the arboretum from the far side, plunging into the trees and stopping to catch my breath in their concealment.

It came to me what I had to do. I had to go back to the garage. Looking at it would be better than visualizing. I would remember what had been niggling at me if I stood there long enough.

It was maybe 11:45 when I walked silently up the north side of the apartment driveway. I hugged the brick wall so anyone glancing out a window would not see me. I checked the lights. Mrs. Hofstettler’s was out-no surprise there. A dim glow lit up the Yorks’ bedroom window; maybe one of them was reading in bed. I had a hard time imagining that. Maybe a night-light? Norvel’s second-floor apartment was dark, as was Marcus’s.

As long as I was doing a bed check, I circled the building.

Of course Pardon’s rooms were dark, and the O’Hagens‘. Tom would be at work and Jenny would have to be in bed at this hour. Upstairs, Deedra’s lights were out. She was in bed either solo or duo. There was a light in Claude’s bathroom window, so I walked around front to check his bedroom window. It was lit.

I didn’t want to go in the building. I squatted and patted the ground around me until I found a rock the size of my thumbnail. I threw it at his window. It made quite a sound. I flattened myself against the wall again in case someone other than Claude had heard the noise. But no one came to see what it was, not even Claude.

All right, then, I’d remember on my own.

And suddenly, I did.

I’d have to go in the building after all. I moved around to the back door, taking a terrible chance. I pulled the key no one had thought to take away from me, the key to the back door, from my bra. I unlocked the door as quietly as it could be done, then went in. The stairs creak less by the wall, so I went up them quietly and carefully, one foot in front of the other. I passed Claude’s door and went to Deedra’s, decorated with a little grapevine wreath wrapped with purple ribbon and dried flowers. I knocked quietly.

The door opened so quickly, I was sure Deedra had been lying on the floor right inside it, with company. In the light falling through from the hall, I could see a male leg, and since it was dark, I deduced that Marcus Jefferson had succumbed to temptation once again.

Deedra looked very pissed off, and I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t have time for it.

“Tell me again what you told me-about when you came home from work early to give Pardon the rent check.”

“I swear to God you are the weirdest cleaning woman in Arkansas,” Deedra said.

“Talk to me. For once, I want to listen.”

“Will you go away right after? No more questions?”

“Probably.”

“Okay. I came home from work. I ran upstairs to get the check Mama had given me. I took it down to Pardon’s. The door was a little open. He was lying on the couch, his back to the door. The area rug was all rumpled and the couch was crooked. I said his name, I said it a lot, but he didn’t move. I figured he’d maybe had a drink and passed out or he was taking a hell of a nap, so I just put the check on his desk, to the left of the door. This what you want?”

I beckoned to her to keep on.

“So… so then, I… well, I went back and got in my car. I had to go back to work even though I just had a few minutes left. You wouldn’t believe how ticky Celie Schiller is…”

“Lower your voice and speed up,” I suggested quietly.

“My maid tells me what to do,” she told the air, “Incredible.”

But she looked in my face and went on. “And then I got in my car… and I backed out of my place, and put it in drive to go out, and I had to go out careful because of the Yorks’ stupid camper…”

I held a finger to my lips. Her voice was rising.

“That’s what I wanted,” I whispered.

“Oh, don’t want to hear about the run in my hose that day?” she asked with killing sarcasm, then shut the door firmly in my face.

I ran my fingers through my hair and gripped two handfuls of it. I stood there thinking, my eyes closed, still facing Deedra’s door. I took a few steps down the hall and tapped Claude’s door with one finger. I couldn’t risk more.

No answer. I turned the handle. Locked, of course.

I went back down the stairs quietly. Even if I’d been standing in the bottom hall, I wouldn’t have heard me.

I didn’t know why I was so tense, why my mission seemed so urgent. But I never ignore the back of my neck, and the skin of it was crawling. There was tension in air. In the silent building, the air was humming with it. I opened the door with a feeling of relief to be getting out, and I eased through the opening as silently as I could manage. I re-locked the door behind me.

Going from the lighted hall to the relative gloom of the parking area cost me some vision, and I stood still to let my eyes adjust. Pardon had installed one all-night security light in the middle of the garage, and it lit up that immediate area like stage lighting. But the illumination didn’t extend to the end stalls. I skirted the edge of the light and drifted to the outside wall of the garage. For maybe five minutes, I stood in the darkness, listening. I shifted my foot, and something clinked.

Slowly, I crouched down in the weeds that had found life against the wall of the garage, sprouting through cracks in the pavement. I patted the ground gently. My fingers found a familiar shape, traced it. I tried to pick up what I’d found all in one piece, so it wouldn’t jingle. I held it up close to my face. Pardon Albee’s key ring. I had nowhere to put it; there were at least fifteen keys on the metal circle. The safest place was where they’d been, so I gently laid them back in the weeds, where they’d been since the day he died.