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

If Marta Schuster had been thinking clearly, she’d deposited the grief-stricken young man away from public scrutiny.
    â€œWe’re through in there,” she was telling Lacey, who nodded numbly in response. Marta gave me the thousand-yard stare when I leaned against the wall, waiting for Lacey to give me the word to enter.
    â€œLily Bard,” Marta said.
    â€œSheriff.”
    â€œYou’re here for what reason?” Marta asked, her eyebrows going up. Her expression, as I perceived it, was disdainful.
    â€œI asked Lily,” Lacey said. Her hands were gripping each other, and as I watched, Lacey drove the nails of her right hand into the skin on the back of her left hand. “Lily’s going to help me clean out my daughter’s apartment,” Lacey went on. Her voice was dull and lifeless.
    â€œOh, she is,” the sheriff said, as though that was somehow significant.
    I waited for her to move, and when she got tired of pondering, she stepped aside to let us in. But as I passed her, she tapped my shoulder. While Lacey stood stock still in the living room, I hung back and looked at the sheriff inquiringly.
    She peered past me to make sure Lacey was not listening. Then she leaned uncomfortably close and said, “Clean out the box under the bed and the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in the second bedroom.”
    I understood after a second, and nodded.
    Lacey hadn’t registered any of this. As I closed the apartment door behind me, I saw that Lacey was staring around her as though she’d never seen her daughter’s place before.
    She caught my eyes. “I never came up here much,” she said ruefully. “I was so used to my house being ‘home,’ that’s where I always felt Deedra belonged. I guess a mother always thinks her child is just playing at being a grown-up.”
    I’d never felt so sorry for anyone. But feeling sorry for Lacey wasn’t going to help her. She had plenty of pity available, if she wanted it. What she needed was practical help.
    â€œWhere did you want to start?” I asked. I could hardly march into the bedrooms to start looking for whatever Marta Schuster had wanted me to remove.
    â€œJerrell carried these up earlier,” she said, pointing at the pile of broken-down boxes and two rolls of trash bags. Then she stood silently again.
    â€œDo you want to keep any of Deedra’s things?” I asked, trying to prod her into giving me directions. “For yourself?”
    Lacey forced herself to answer. “Some of the jewelry, maybe,” she said, in a fairly steady voice. “None of the clothes; she wore a size smaller than I do.” Plus, Lacey Knopp wouldn’t be caught dead in her daughter’s just-this-side-of-tarty clothes. “Could you use any of them?”
    I took a moment so I wouldn’t look like I was rejecting the offer without thinking it over. “No, I’m too broad in the shoulders,” I said, which was on a par with Lacey claiming the clothes would be a size small. Then I thought of my bank account and I remembered I needed a winter coat. “If there’s a coat or a jacket that fits me, maybe I’d need that,” I said reluctantly, and Lacey looked almost grateful. “So, where do you want the rest of the clothes to go?”
    â€œSCC has a clothes closet for the needy,” Lacey said. “I should take them there.” Shakespeare Combined Church was right down the street from the apartment building. It was the busiest church in Shakespeare, at the moment, having just added a new Sunday-school wing.
    â€œWon’t that bother you?”
    â€œSeeing some poor woman go around in Deedra’s old clothes?” She hesitated. “No, I know Deedra would have wanted to help others.”
    I was trying to remember someone Deedra had helped (other than by relieving sexual tension) during her life when Lacey added, “All the kitchen things