Surely it was stretching credulity to think that Del Packard's death in the gym was totally unrelated to the deaths of Darnell Glass and Len Elgin. How could three men be done to death in a town the size of Shakespeare in a space of two months and the killings all be mysterious? If Darnell Glass had been knifed behind a local bar during a fight over a girl, if Len Elgin had been shot in Erica Moore's bed, if Del had been in the habit of lifting alone and maybe had some undiagnosed physical weakness...

I was making another circuit by the apartments. I looked up at Claude's window, thinking sadly about the man inside. Would I change my mind about what I'd said, given another chance? I was genuinely fond of Claude, and grateful to him, and he had a lot on his shoulders.

But that was his chosen job. And Darnell Glass's death had taken place in the county, so that investigation was Sheriff Marty Schuster's headache. I didn't know too much about the sheriff, except that he was good at politicking and was a Vietnam veteran. I wondered if Schuster could calm the rising storm that was rattling Shakespeare's windows.

I had to walk another hour before I could sleep.

Chapter Four

I woke up and looked out at sheets of rain, a chilly autumnal gray rain. I'd slept a little late since I'd had such a hard time getting to bed the night before. I'd have to hurry to make it to Body Time. Before I dressed, I poured myself a cup of coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, the morning paper unopened beside me. I had a lot to think about.

I worked out without talking to anyone. I drove home feeling a lot better.

I showered, dressed, put on my makeup, and fluffed my hair.

I wondered if the black-haired man had been out walking in the night, too.

As my car lurched slowly along the driveway that led to the back of the small Shakespeare Clinic, an uninspiring yellow brick office structure dating from the early sixties, I was betting that Carrie Thrush would be working today.

Sure enough, Carrie's aging white Subaru was in its usual place behind the building. I used my key and called "Hi!" down the hall. Carrie's clinic was depressing. The walls were painted an uninspiring tan and the floors were covered with a pitted brown linoleum. There wasn't enough money yet for renovation. The doctor had massive debts to pay off.

Carrie's answer came floating back, and I stepped into the doorway of her office. The best thing you could say about Carrie's office was that it was large enough. She did a lot of scut work herself, to save money to pay back the loans that had gotten her through med school. The doctor was in black denims and a rust-red sweater. Carrie is short, rounded, pale, and serious, and she hasn't had a date in the two years since she's come to Shakespeare.

For one thing, she's all too likely to be interrupted in any free time she might manage. Then, too, men are intimidated by Carrie's calm intelligence and competence. At least that was what I figured.

"Anything interesting happen this week?" she asked, as if she wanted to take her mind off the heap of paper. She shoved her brown chin-length hair behind her ears, resettled her glasses on her snub nose. Her beautiful brown eyes were magnified many times by the lenses.

"Becca Whitley, the niece, is living in Pardon's apartment," I said, after some thought. "The man who's taken Del Packard's place at Winthrop Sporting is living in Norvel Whitbread's old apartment. And Marcus Jefferson moved out in a hurry after the Deedra Dean car-painting incident." I'd seen the U-Haul trailer attached to Marcus's car the morning before.

"That was probably a good move," Carrie said. "Sad though that state of affairs is."

I tried to think of other items of interest. "I ate out in Montrose with the chief of police," I told her. Carrie hungered for something frivolous after being a sober, God-like decision-maker all week.

"Is that the niece everyone was talking about, the one he left everything to?" Carrie had fastened on the first item. But she would get around to all of them.

I nodded.

"What's she like?"

"She's got long blond hair, she wears heavy makeup, she works out and takes karate, and she probably features in the wet dreams of half the guys she meets."

"Smart?"

"Don't know."

"Has she rented out Marcus's apartment yet? A lab tech at the hospital is looking for a place to live." Shakespeare had a tiny hospital, perpetually in danger of being closed.

"I don't think the dust has had time to settle on the windowsill yet. Tell the lab tech to get on down there and knock on the apartment to the rear right."

"So what's with the chief? He show you his nightstick?"

I smiled. Carrie had a ribald sense of humor. "He wants to, but I don't think it's a good idea."

"He's been hanging around you for months like a faithful hound, Lily. Cut him loose or give in."

I was reminded yet again of how much people in a small town knew about you even when you tried to keep your life private.

"He's cut loose as of last night," I said. "I just enjoy his company. He knows that."

"Do you think you can be comfortable with him now?"

I thought of a quick answer and a longer truer one. I sat down in one of the two patient chairs and said, "It was possible until Claude started talking about the Darnell Glass lawsuit."

"Yeah, I hear Mrs. Glass is talking to a lawyer from Little Rock about bringing a suit. You'd be a witness, huh?"

"I reckon."

"Tom David Meicklejohn is such a jerk."

"But he's Claude's jerk. She'd be suing the Shakespeare Police Department, not just Tom David or Todd."

Carrie shook her head. "Rough waters ahead. Think you and Claude can weather it as friends?"

I shrugged.

Carrie's smile was wry. "It's uphill work being your confidant, Bard."

I sat silent for a minute. "I expect that's from being Victim of the Year after I got raped. Too many people I talked to, people I'd known all my life, turned around and told everything I said to the press."

Carrie looked at me, her mouth slightly open in surprise. "Gosh," she said finally.

"Got to work." I got up and pulled on my yellow rubber gloves, prepared to tackle the patients' bathroom first, since it was always the nastiest.

When I left the room, Carrie was bending over her paperwork with a little smile on her lips.

Another favorite woman of mine was Marie Hofstettler, and I was sorry to see today was not one of her "limber" days. When I used my key to enter her ground-floor apartment, I could see at a glance that she wasn't in her usual chair. Marie had been living in the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, next door to me, for years. Her son, Chuck, who lives in Memphis, pays me to clean once a week and take Mrs. Hofstettler wherever she wants to go on Saturdays.

"Mrs. Hofstettler," I called. I didn't want to scare her. Lately, she'd been forgetting when I was due to come.

"Lily." Her voice was very faint.

I hurried back to her bedroom. Marie Hofstettler was propped up, her long silky white hair in an untidy braid trailing over one shoulder. Somehow she seemed smaller to me, and her myriad wrinkles looked deeper, chiseled into her fine skin. Her color was bad, both pale and gray-tinged.

She looked like she was dying. The effort of calling out to me had clearly exhausted her. She gasped for breath. I picked up the phone on the bedside table, jammed between a framed picture of her great-grandchild and a box of Kleenex.

"Don't call," Marie managed to say.

"You have to go to the hospital," I said.

"Want to stay here," she whispered.

"I know, and I'm sorry. But I can't..." My voice trailed off as I realized I'd been about to say "be responsible for your death." I cleared my throat. I thought about her courage in the face of the pain she'd endured for years, from arthritis and a bad heart.