Shakespeare's Trollop by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

from Texas, moved there with him and had two children by him) and Pardon, who had been the owner of the Shakespeare Garden Apartments. When Pardon had died, he’d left the apartments to Alice Albee Whitley’s children, Becca and Anthony, since the widowed Alice had herself died of cancer two years before.
    The final complication was Joe C’s sister, Arnita, who was much younger than Joe C. In the way of those times, the two babies their mother had had between them had died at birth or in infancy. Arnita married Howell Winthrop and they became the parents of Howell Winthrop, Jr., my former employer. Therefore, Joe C’s sister was the grandmother of my young friend Bobo Winthrop and his brother, Howell III, and his sister, Amber Jean.
    â€œSo you, Becca Whitley and her brother, and the Winthrops are all related,” I concluded. Since I was cleaning the kitchen counter, I had been gainfully employed while listening to this long and fairly boring discourse.
    Calla nodded. “I was so glad when Becca moved here. I was crazy about Alice, and I hadn’t gotten to see her in so many years.” Calla looked wistful, but her mood changed abruptly. “Though you see who owns a whole building, who ended up in the mansion, and who’s sitting in the house that’s about to be zoned commercial,” she said sourly. Becca had the rent income, the Winthrops were wealthy from the lumber yard, the sporting goods store, and oil, while Calla’s little house was sandwiched between an insurance office and small engine repair service.
    There was no response to that. I was mostly indifferent to Calla, but I felt sorry for her some days. Other days, the resentment that was a cornerstone of her character grated at me, made me ornery.
    â€œSo, they all come around,” she said, staring out the kitchen window, the steam from her cup of fresh coffee rising in front of her face in a sinister way. I realized for the first time that the day had become overcast, that the darkness was reaching into the room. Like lawn furniture, Joe C and China Belle had to be brought in before they blew away or got wet.
    â€œGreat grandchildren—Becca Whitley, all painted up; Deedra, in her slutty dresses…Joe C just loved that. And the great-nieces and-nephews—Howell III, asking can he help by mowing the yard…like he’d ever mowed his own yard in his life.”
    I hadn’t realized Calla was quite this bitter. I turned around to look at the older woman, who almost seemed to be in a spell. I needed to go get the old people in, or else rouse Calla to do it. Thunder rumbled far away, and Calla’s dark eyes scanned the sky outside, looking for the rain.
    Finally she slid her gaze toward me, cold and remote.
    â€œYou can go,” she said, as distant as if I’d tried to claim relationship to Joe C myself.
    I gathered my paraphernalia and left without another word, leaving Calla to handle the business of relocating her grandfather and his girlfriend all by herself.
    I wondered if Calla was glad of Deedra’s death. Now there was one less person to come by, one less painted woman to titillate the old man and rob Calla of her possible inheritance.

F OUR
    The sheriff was talking to Lacey Dean Knopp. Lacey, barely into her fifties, was a lovely blond woman with such an innocent face that almost everyone instantly wanted to give her his or her best manners, most conscientious opinion, hardest try. When I’d first met Lacey, the day she’d hired me to clean Deedra’s apartment, that innocence had irritated me violently. But now, years later, I pitied Lacey all the more since she’d had farther to come to meet her grief.
    The sheriff looked as though she’d slept only an hour or so for two nights in a row. Oh, her uniform was crisp and clean, her shoes were shiny, but her face had that crumpled, dusty look of sheets left too quick. I wondered how her brother Marlon was looking.