Chapter Eleven

I wasn't in the hospital, but I was under house arrest.

The chief of police had confined me to my own home for a week. He had coaxed Mrs. Hofstettler into calling all my clients and explaining (as if they hadn't heard) that I'd been a little hurt and had to recuperate. I told Mrs. Hofstettler, via Claude, to tell them I didn't expect to get paid, since I wasn't going to work. I don't know if she passed the message along. Everyone sent me a check but the Winthrops, which figured. However, Bobo came by to bring me a fruit basket he said was from his mother. I was sure he'd bought it himself.

Marshall really had gone out of town; he wasn't just avoiding me. He called me from Memphis to tell me his father had had a heart attack and he and the rest of his family were just circling the hospital room in a holding pattern, waiting to see what would happen. I assured him several times that I would be all right, and after I'd detailed my wounds to him and explained what I was doing for their treatment, he seemed satisfied I would live. He called me every other day. I was stunned to receive flowers with his name on the card. He was eloquently silent when I told him Claude was with me one night when he called.

Mrs. Rossiter brought the damn dog by to see me. Claude told her I was asleep.

Carrie Thrush paid me a house call.

"You should be in the hospital," she said sternly.

"No," I said. "My insurance won't cover enough of it."

She didn't say any more after that, since she wouldn't question me about my finances, but all the medicine she gave me was in sample boxes.

Claude came every day. He had gone with me in the ambulance to the hospital, following the one carrying T. L.

He had shot T. L. in the leg.

"I wanted to hit him in the head with the pistol butt," he said when we were waiting for the doctor in a white cubicle that night. I was glad to listen to him talking, so I wouldn't moan and disgrace myself. "I've never shot anyone before—at least to actually hit them."

"Um-hum," I said, concentrating fiercely on his voice.

"But I was sure I would hit you instead, and I didn't want to beat up my ally."

"Good."

"So I had to shoot him." His big hand came up to touch my shoulder, stroke it. That hurt like hell. But I didn't say anything.

"Why were you there?" I asked after a long pause.

"I'd been staking out the camper for the last week."

"Oh, for God's sake," I said, thinking that all my inspiration had been for nothing. Claude had been there mentally before me.

"No, I thought that someone else had killed Pardon, not T. L. I thought the Yorks didn't want to tell anybody Pardon's body had been in their camper, but I didn't think they had put him there."

"The curtains," I said.

"Curtains? What curtains?"

But by then the doctor had come in and told Claude he had to step outside. It was the emergency room doctor, who'd just finished sending T. L. up to the operating room. His eyebrows flew up when he saw my scars, but for once I didn't care.

"Your X rays," he said.

"Mmm?"

"You have no broken bones," he said, as if that was the most amazing thing he'd ever heard. "But many of your muscles are badly strained. You are very thoroughly bruised. But I can tell you're a workout buff; underneath all that, you're physically fit. Normally, I'd put you in the hospital, just for a night or two, just as a precaution. What do you think?" He observed me closely from behind glasses that reflected the glaring overhead light. His ponytail was caught up neatly in an elastic band at the nape of his neck.

"Home," I said.

"Anyone there to take care of you?"

"I am," rumbled Claude from outside the curtain.

I opened my mouth to protest, but the doctor said, "Well, if you have someone to help... Believe me, you're not going to be able to get to the bathroom without help for a few days."

I stared at him, dismayed.

"You have some healing injuries. You seem to be prone to get into trouble," the doctor observed, sticking his pen behind his ear.

I heard Claude snort.

I had a couple of emergency room pain pills, and Carrie came by and supplemented. Claude proved to be an unexpectedly good nurse. His big hands were gentle. He knew about the scars beforehand from the Memphis police report, which was good, because there was no way I could conceal them from someone who helped me with a sponge bath. He also helped me hobble to the toilet, and he changed my sheets. The food I'd frozen ahead came in very handy, since I couldn't stand long enough to cook, and when I was by myself, I could take my time getting to the kitchen to heat it up.

A couple of times, Claude brought carryout and we ate together, the first time in my bedroom—he improvised a bed tray—and the second time, I was able to sit at the table, though it exhausted me.

The swelling was almost gone and I had evolved from black and blue to sickly shades of green and yellow when we finally talked about the Yorks.

"How did you come to be watching?" I asked him.

I felt good. I'd just taken a pain pill, I was clean and my sheets were clean, and I'd managed to brush my hair. I lay there neatly, my hands resting by my sides, a little sleepy and relaxed. That was as good as it got, that week.

"I went over everyone's statement several times. I drew up a timetable, and a list of alibis; it was just like a TV special," he said, his legs extended comfortably in front of him, his fingers laced across his belly. He'd hauled the armchair into my bedroom.

"Marcus was my hottest suspect for a long time," he continued. "But he just couldn't have left work— too many witnesses. Deedra, too. She was gone from work for maybe thirty minutes, and she was out on a date while Pardon's body was being dumped. After you told me exactly when that was," and he shot me a mildly reproachful look, "I could eliminate her. Marie Hofstettler is just too old and infirm. Norvel was a possibility, and Tom O'Hagen. But Tom was at work when Pardon was killed, and Jenny was working at the country club on decorations for the spring dance... lots of witnesses. She couldn't have killed Pardon.

"And I didn't think it was you, at least not after a few days."

"Why?" The pill was taking effect, and I was only mildly interested in the answer.

"Maybe because the only secret you'd kill for is what happened to you in Memphis. And when I let it slip, you didn't try to kill me."

I was faintly amused. I looked off in a corner.

"So that left Norvel," I said quietly.

"Unless the Yorks had come home early."

"I would have picked Norvel."

"I couldn't decide. In a way, it seemed too smart for Norvel to think of. But in a way, it seemed exactly like Norvel, drunk. Wavering between one hidey-hole and the next. Moving Pardon here. Moving him there. We looked in every apartment in the building, in one way or another."

I wasn't going to ask questions.

"No traces of the body anywhere. He'd bled a little from the mouth. No hairs, and the only fibers on the body were from a cotton blend, deep red and bright gold and blue."

"Alvah's curtains," I murmured.

"I didn't know about Alvah's curtains," Claude rumbled. "But I didn't see anything in anyone else's apartment that came close to matching those."

I remembered him walking through my house the first time he'd come in. He'd been looking for something that would ring a bell.

"We went all over the parking stalls, trying to find one that could have been used for the body. No luck there. I saw you looking that day, and I wondered what you were up to."

"Saw me from where?"