“Lily, why you stickin‘ your nose in somebody’s business?” he asked furiously.
I shook my head. This was my day for confusion. What could I have done to Jerrell?
“You gone and told the police about that day I fought with Deedra, that day the boy wrote on her car.”
“I did no such thing,” I said promptly.
Jerrell didn’t expect that. He looked at me suspiciously.
“You shittin‘ me, girl?” He’d certainly taken off the polite face he wore around his wife.
“I would never,” I told him.
“Someone told the police that I fought with Deedra. Would you consider that morning as fighting? I told her a few home truths that she needed to hear from someone, sure enough, but as far as fighting… hell, no!”
That was true enough. He’d told his stepdaughter quite bluntly that she needed to keep her pants on, and she especially needed to be discreet if she was sleeping with a man of another color. He’d also, if I was remembering correctly, told her she was nothing but a whore who didn’t get paid.
“I didn’t tell anyone about that morning,” I repeated.
“Then how come the police know about it? And why the hell did Lacey just pack my bag and tell me to go to a motel?” Jerrell’s face, rugged and aging and handsome, crinkled in baffled anger.
The sheriff’s department could only have found out from someone else who’d been in the apartment building at the time the quarrel had occurred. My money would be on Becca. Voices had been raised, and she lived right below Deedra. But I had my own idea about why Lacey had told Jerrell to move out. “Maybe Lacey’d heard that you slept with Deedra before you started dating her,” I suggested. This was strictly a stab in the dark, but it looked like I’d hit an artery. Jerrell went white. I saw him sway as if I’d struck him. If he got any shakier, I’d have to grab hold of him so he wouldn’t fall, and I didn’t want to do that. I just plain didn’t like Jerrell Knopp, any more than he liked me.
“Who’s been saying that?” he asked me, in a choked voice that made me more worried about him than I wanted to be.
I shrugged. While he was thinking of more words, I was walking away.
I was sure he wouldn’t follow me, and I was right.
There was a message on my answering machine when I returned home about five o’clock. Jump Farraclough, Claude’s second-in-command, wanted me to come to the police station to sign my statement about the night I’d pulled Joe C from his house, and he wanted to ask me a few more questions. I’d forgotten all about signing the statement; too much had happened. I replayed the message, trying to read Jump’s voice. Did he sound hostile? Did he sound suspicious?
I was reluctant to go to the police station. I wanted to erase the traces of Deedra Dean from my life, I wanted to think about Jack coming to live with me, I wanted to read or work out-anything, rather than answer questions. I performed a series of unnecessary little tasks to postpone answering Jump’s summons.
But you don’t ignore something you’re told to do by the police, at least if you want to keep living and working in a small town.
Shakespeare’s police station was housed in a renovated ranch-style house right off Main Street. The old police station, a squat redbrick building right in front of the jail, had been condemned. While Shakespeareans balked over raising the money to build a new station, the town police were stuck in this clumsily converted house about a block from the courthouse. This particular house had formerly been the perquisite of the jailer, since it backed onto the jail.
I came in quietly and peered over the counter to the left. The door to Claude’s office was closed and the window in it was dark, so Claude hadn’t yet come back to work, or maybe he’d left early. I didn’t like that at all.
An officer I didn’t know was on desk duty. She was a narrow-faced blonde with crooked teeth and down-slanting, tobacco-colored eyes. After taking my name, she sauntered to the partitioned rear of the big central room. Then she sauntered back, waving a hand to tell me I should come behind the counter.
Jump Farraclough was waiting in his own cubbyhole, marked out with gray carpeted panels, and the fire chief was with him. Frank Parrish looked better than he had the last time I’d seen him in his working clothes, sweating in their heat and streaked with smoke from Joe C’s fire, but he didn’t seem any happier. In fact, he looked downright uncomfortable.
I reminded myself there were other people in the building, while at the same time I made fun of myself for the sense of relief that gave me. Did I seriously fear harm from the assistant police chief and the fire chief? I told myself that was ridiculous.
And it might be. But I’d never feel comfortable in any kind of isolated situation with men. A glance out the window told me the sun was setting.
Jump indicated an uncomfortable straight-back chair opposite his desk. Frank Parrish was sitting to Jump’s left.
“Here’s your statement,” Jump said brusquely. He handed me a sheet of paper. It seemed like years since the fire; I barely remembered giving this statement. There hadn’t been much to include. I’d been walking, I’d seen the person in the yard, I’d checked it out, I’d found the fire going, I’d extricated Joe C.
I read the statement carefully. You don’t want to just scan something like that. You don’t want to trust that it’s really what you said. But this did seem to be in my words. I thought hard, trying to figure if I’d left anything out, trying to remember any other detail that might be important to the investigators.
No. This was an accurate account. I took a pen from the cup on the desk and signed it. I returned the pen and stood to leave.
“Miss Bard.”
I sighed. Somehow I’d had a feeling this wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Yes.”
“Please sit down. We want to ask you a few more questions.”
“This is everything.” I pointed at the sheet of paper on the lieutenant’s desk.
“Just humor us, okay? We just want to go over the same thing again, see if you remember anything new.”
I felt wary all of a sudden. I felt my hair stand up on my neck. This wasn’t just routine suspicion. They should have asked me this before I signed my statement.
“Any special reason?” I asked.
“Just… let’s us go over this thing again.”
I sat down slowly, wondering if I should be calling a lawyer.
“Now,” Jump began, stretching out his legs under the small desk, “you say that when you went to the back door at the Prader house, you used your key to get in.”
“No. The door was unlocked.”
“Did you ever know Joe C to leave the door unlocked at night?”
“I’d never been there at night before.”
For some reason, Jump flushed, as if I’d been making fun of him.
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “So, since the back door was unlocked, you didn’t need to use your key. Did you have it with you?”
“I’ve never had a key to the Prader house.” I blessed all the times Joe C had so slowly come to let me in. I blessed him for his suspicion, his crotchety nature.
Jump permitted himself to look skeptical. Frank Parrish looked off into the distance as if he were willing himself to be elsewhere.
“Your employer didn’t give you a key to the property? Isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re still sure that’s what happened?”
“Ask Calla.”
“Miss Prader would know?”
“She would.”
For the first time, Jump looked uncertain. I pressed my advantage. “You can ask any member of his family. He always makes me wait while he comes to the door as slowly as he can manage. He really enjoys that.”
Parrish turned his head to look at Jump with surprise. I began to worry even more.
“Are you planning to charge me with anything?” I asked abruptly.
“Why, no, Miss Bard.”