Read (LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord for Free Online Page B

Alvah has gone downhill sharply since the move, and she might actually need help for the two-bedroom apartment this year.
    The Yorks’ apartment is on the ground floor of the Garden Apartments, next to Marie Hofstettler’s, and its front door is opposite the door of the apartment Pardon Albee kept for himself. I couldn’t help glancing at it as I knocked. There was crime-scene tape across the door. I’d never seen any in real life; it was exactly like it was on television. Who was supposed to want to get into Pardon’s apartment? Who would have had a key but Pardon? I supposed he had relatives in town that I didn’t know of; everyone in Shakespeare is related in some way to at least a handful of the other inhabitants, with very few exceptions.
    For that matter, how had he died? There’d been blood on his head, but I hadn’t investigated further. The examination had been too disgusting and frightening alone in the park.
    I glanced at my man-sized wristwatch. Eight on the dot; one of the primary virtues Alvah admires is punctuality.
    Alvah looked dreadful when she answered the door.
    “Are you all right?” I asked involuntarily.
    Alvah’s gray hair was matted, obviously uncombed and uncurled, and her slacks and shirt were a haphazard match.
    “Yes, I’m all right,” she said heavily. “Come on in. T. L. and I were just finishing breakfast.”
    Normally, the Yorks are up at five-thirty and have finished breakfast, dressed, and are taking a walk by eight-thirty.
    “When did you get home?” I asked. I wasn’t in the habit of asking questions, but I wanted to get some response from Alvah. Usually, after one of their trips out of town, Alvah can’t wait to brag about her grandchildren and her daughter, and even from time to time that unimportant person, the father of those grandchildren and husband of that daughter, but today Alvah was just dragging into the living room ahead of me, in silence.
    T. L., seated at their little dinette set, was more like his usual bluff self. T. L. is one of those people whose conversation is of 75 percent platitudes.
    “Good morning, Lily! Pretty as ever, I see. It’s going to be a beautiful day today.”
    But something was wrong with T. L., too. His usual patter was thudding, and there wasn’t any spring in his movement as he rose from the little table. He was using his cane this morning, the fancy silver-headed one his daughter had given him for Christmas, and he was really leaning on it.
    “Just let me go shave, ladies,” he rumbled valiantly, “and then I’ll leave the field to you.”
    Folding the paper beside his place at the table, he went down the hall. T. L. is a big, shrewd gray-haired man, running to fat now, but still strong from a lifetime of hard physical work. I watched T. L. duck into the bedroom doorway. Something else was different about him. After a moment, it came to me: This morning, he walked in silence. T. L. always whistles, usually country-and-western songs or hymns.
    “Alvah, would you like me to come back some other time?”
    Alvah seemed surprised I’d asked. “No, Lily, though it’s right sweet of you to be concerned. I may as well get on with spring cleaning.”
    It looked to me as if it would be better for Alvah to go back to bed. But I began carrying the breakfast things into the kitchen, something I’d never had to do at the Yorks’ before. Alvah had always done things like that herself.
    Alvah didn’t comment at all while I did the dishes, dried them, and put them away. She sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring into the dark fluid as if it would tell her the future. T. L. emerged from the bedroom, shaven and outwardly cheerful, but still not whistling. “I’m going to get a haircut, honey,” he told his wife. “You and Lily don’t work too hard.” He gave her a kiss and was out the door.
    I was wrong again in thinking Alvah would be galvanized by her husband’s departure. All she did was drink the coffee. I