Shakespeare's Champion (Lily Bard #2)

Shakespeare's Champion (Lily Bard #2) Page 21

When the knock came at the front door, I glanced at the clock on the wall. I'd been sitting and staring for an hour. My injured hip hurt when I rose, having been in the same position for so long.

I looked through the peephole. Bobo was on my doorstep, and he looked anxious. I let him in. He was wearing a brown coat over his gi.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked. "I missed you at karate. Marshall did, too." He added that hastily, as though I would accuse him of hogging all the missing that was going around.

If it had been anyone but Bobo, I wouldn't have opened the door. I'd known him since he was just beginning to shave; he'd sometimes been arrogant, sometimes too big for his britches, but he had always been sweet. I wondered how this boy had gotten to be my friend.

"Have you been crying, Lily?" he asked now.

I reached up to touch my cheek. Yes, I had been.

"It doesn't matter," I said, wanting him to not notice, to drop it.

"Yes, it does," he said. "You're always beating yourself up, Lily. It does matter." Amazingly, Bobo pulled a clean handkerchief from his coat pocket, and wiped my cheeks with gentle fingers.

This was not the way conversations with Bobo usually went. Usually he told me how his classes were going, or we talked about a new throw Marshall had taught us, or the boy Amber Jean was dating.

"Bobo," I began uneasily, puzzled. I was trying to think how to proceed when Bobo acted instead, decisively. He gathered me up and kissed me hard, with an unnerving degree of expertise. For a few shocked seconds I stood quietly accepting this intimacy, feeling the warmth of his mouth against mine, the hard pressure of his body, before my internal alarm system went off. I slid my hands up and pressed gently against his chest. He instantly released me. I looked into his face, and saw a man who desired me.

"I'm so sorry, Bobo," I said. "I hope I'm always your friend." It was a dreary thing to say, but I meant it.

Not that pushing him away was effortless: It was all too easy to envision welcoming Bobo - young, vigorous, strong, handsome, endearing - into my bed. I'd been hoping to wipe out bad memories with good ones; Bobo and I could certainly give each other a few. Even now I felt the pull of temptation, as I saw his face close around the pain.

"I - have someone else," I told him. And I hated the fact that what I said was true.

"Marshall?" he breathed.

"No. It's not important who it is, Bobo." I made another effort. "You have no idea how tempted and flattered I am." The unevenness of my voice gave witness to that. I saw the pride return to his face as he heard the truth in what I was saying.

"I've cared about you for a long time," he said.

"Thank you." I never meant anything as much. "That makes me proud."

Amazingly, after he'd opened the door to leave, he turned and lifted my hand and kissed it.

I watched his Jeep pull away.

"Touching scene," Jack Leeds said acerbically.

He stepped out of the shadows in the carport and walked across the little patch of lawn to my front door. He stood inches away, his arms crossed over his chest, a sneer on his face.

I could truly almost feel my heart sinking. I thought of closing the door and locking it in his face. I wasn't up to another scene.

"Did you give him the time of his life, Lily? Golden boy, no past to slow him down?"

I felt something snap in me. I'd been pushed beyond some limit. He could read it in my eyes, and I saw him start to uncross his arms in sudden alarm, but I struck him as hard as I could in the solar plexus. He made a sound and began to double over. I folded my arm, aimed the point of my elbow at the base of his skull. I pulled it at the very last instant, because it was a killing blow. But I had pulled the blow too soon, because he could launch himself at me. He knocked me back inside my front door onto the carpet. He kicked the door shut behind him.

This was the second time Jack had had me pinned. I wasn't going to have it. I struck his hurt shoulder, and over he went, and then I was on top. I had his jacket gripped with one hand while my other twisted his knit shirt, tightening the neck band, my knuckles digging into his throat while he made a gagging noise.

"Oh yes, Jack, this is love, all right," I said in a trembling voice that I hardly recognized. I rolled off him and sat with my back to him, my hands over my face, waiting for him to hit me or leave.

After a long time I risked a look at him. He was still lying on his back, his eyes fixed on me. He was visibly shaken, and I was glad to see it. He beckoned me with an inward curl of his fingers. I shook my head violently.

After another long time I heard him move. He sat behind me, his legs spread, and pulled me back against him. His arms crossed in front of me, holding me to him, but gently. Gradually I calmed, stopped shaking.

"We're okay, Lily," he said. "We're okay."

"Can this poor sense of timing be why you have such a -  checkered career - as a lover?" I asked.

"I - am - sorry," he said between clenched teeth.

"That helps."

"Really sorry."

"Good."

"Can I - ?"

"What? What do you want to do, Jack?" He told me. I told him he could try.

Later, in the quiet of my bed, he began to talk about something else. And all the pieces began to fall into place.

"Howell Winthrop, Jr., hired me," he said. We were lying facing each other. "He told me a week ago not to trust you." I could feel my eyes open wide as I absorbed all this. "You saw the men last night. You have to have figured it out."

"I guess Darcy is involved. All the others?"

"Yes, and a few more. Not the whole town, not even a sizable proportion of the white males. Just a few mental misfits who think their dicks are on the line. They think their manhood is tied up in keeping blacks, and women for that matter, in their place."

"So they meet at Winthrop's Sporting Goods."

"The group evolved that way. Most of them are passing through there to buy things pretty often anyway, so it just happened. Ninety-eight percent of the people that patronize Winthrop's are just regular nice people, but the two percent... Howell didn't know anything about it until he noticed that guns were being bought through the store accounts that didn't show up in the store. And it wasn't even Howell that noticed it."

"Oh no." I thought for a moment. "It was Del."

"Yeah, Del Packard. He went to Howell. Howell told him not to tell anyone else. But he must have."

"Poor Del. Who killed him?"

"I don't know yet. I don't know if Del knew more than he told Howell, or if they were just scared of him telling it to the police - maybe they even asked Del to join them and he refused - but one of them took Del out."

"Surely not all the Winthrop's employees are in on it?" So many people worked at Winthrop's, at least twenty men and four or five women who did office work. Added to the staff of the Winthrop-owned lumber and home supply business right next door... and there was Winthrop Oil...

"No, not by a long shot. Only three or four men at the Sporting Goods place, that I've been able to make sure of. And a couple, maybe three men from the place next door. Plus a few guys who just joined in, like Tom David and the one you told me was Cleve Ragland. The day they came to steal back the bags at the Winthrops' house, they were in Cleve Ragland's car."

Since Jack was in a tell-all mood, I decided I would ask as many questions as I could.

"What was in the black bags?"

"Guns. And rifles. For the past four years Jim Box has been the man who ordered for the store. Someone got the bright idea for Jim to order a little more than he thought Winthrop's could sell. Then they were going to stage a robbery and list those arms as stolen, which is why that excuse popped into their minds so quickly last night, I guess. They'd figured if they set up a robbery, no one could blame the store - Howell - if the guns were used for illegal stuff. Instead of walking out with one weapon at a time, they began stockpiling what they wanted in the storeroom at the back of the store in two black bags, waiting for the right moment to stage the break-in. They should've gone on and moved their pile after Del died, but we're not talking big brains here."

"Then you and Howell took the bags."

"Yeah, everyone in on it was gone to lunch, so we loaded them into Howell's car and drove out to his house." He kissed me. "The day I saw you there. You had the strangest expression on your face."

"I couldn't figure you two out. I was thinking you and Howell were maybe - thataway."

Jack laughed out loud. "Beanie's safe."

"Why did you put them in Howell's house?"

"We wanted to see who'd come after them. We knew by then who on Howell's payroll was involved, but not the names of the rest of the group. I also figured lying concealed in Howell's house would be safer than hiding at the store every night, waiting for the staged burglary to take place. So Howell told Darcy about this strange cache of arms he'd found in the store, how he thought he'd keep them at his house until he decided whether he should call the police or not."

"Wasn't that just a little more dangerous for Howell and his family?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

"Well, I knew the day they were going to try. And Howell has this conviction they won't hurt him or his family. He has this weird sense of - like he owes them, because they work for him. He doesn't even seem to want to turn them in when he finds out who it is ... and he wants to know exactly. It's strange. He doesn't want anyone falsely accused, and I can respect that. But it's like there's something he's not telling me."

I should have listened to that sentence harder, mulled over it like I mulled over so many things. But I was still trying to understand Jack and Howell's plan of action. So far, frankly, it didn't seem that much better than the thieves'. "So you hid out in Beanie's closet. To wait and see who came to call."

"Yeah. And you came in. I knew who you were the minute you hit me, but I didn't know your name."

"You hadn't heard the men talk?"

"I'd heard people mention Lily, but I didn't know that was you. You didn't look like any maid I'd ever seen, or any karate expert, either. Or any weight lifter."

"What did I look like?" I asked, very close to his face.

"Like the most exciting woman I'd ever seen."

Every now and then, Jack said exactly the right thing.

He whispered, "I wanted to touch you. I just wanted to lay my hands on you." He demonstrated. "When Howell heard about the bomb he called me and told me to go down to the hospital to verify how many hurt and dead there were. He knew it would seem strange if he did it. He's sure one of his employees set the bomb, and he wanted to know if one of them had been brought in hurt. He thought maybe they'd hang around to see the explosion, get caught in it. So I went down to the hospital. It was eerie. I just walked in, and strolled through the halls looking. No one stopped me, or asked me what my business was there. The idea was a good one, but it didn't pan out. No one associated with the group was brought in injured. But I saw you on the gurney."

"You were at the hospital! I thought it was a dream."

"It was me. I wanted to stay, but I knew that would look strange."

"You asked me if there was anyone you could call for me."

"I wanted someone to come take care of you. And I wanted to know if there was anyone ahead of me. Everyone had told me you were with Marshall. I felt he was pretty formidable competition. If you'd asked me to call him ..."

"What would you have done?"

"I would have called him. But I would have tried to find some way to pry you loose when you were feeling better."

We didn't talk for a while.

I got up to get a drink, came back.

"Why do you think Howell doesn't trust me?" I asked. That stung me. I had kept faith with the Winthrop family over and above the demands of my paycheck.

"I don't know. When I was asking him who had keys to the house, as a matter of routine, he said, 'The maid,' and he said you'd worked for him for four years and he was sure you were absolutely reliable. But then, about a week ago, he called me into his office first thing in the morning to tell me to avoid you, that he thought you were in on something."

He kissed me to show me how little he'd listened.

"I can't think of what I've done to earn Howell's mistrust." I stowed that away to think of later. "What's their goal in stockpiling all these weapons?"

"From what I've pieced together, their goal is to start a white supremacist militia group here, using Cleve Ragland's hunting camp as a training base. They want to be a big-time organization rather than a few bastards who grouse and murder children in bombings."

"Have you heard anything about Darnell Glass?" I asked.

Jack lay back, pushed his hair back with his fingers. "It's strange," he said finally. "It's like there were two things going on. After meeting most of the men who are involved in this, at least I think I've met most of them, what I've been impressed with most is their stupidity. Keeping the arms they were stealing at the store: dumb. Trying to steal them back from Howell's house: dumb. Spray-painting Deedra's car, and that was the boy who works at the loading dock at the Home Supply store - I actually saw him do it - there again, dumb. I think Deedra snubbed him when she went in the store to get a new curtain rod, so he got her back. Then the bomb. The day after the bomb went off, when they'd heard Claude Friedrich and you were hurt and Sheriff Schuster was killed -  they were all hangdog as hell. I think it bothered them about the little girl, too. You know why that all happened? The bomb didn't go off at the right time. That I did overhear, directly, Jim and Darcy venting their guilt. They were trying to shift the blame to the victims - you shouldn't have been there in the first place. Sheriff Schuster shouldn't have agreed to attend the meeting. Claude should have gotten out faster. The little girl should have been home doing her homework. Crap like that."