Shakespeare's Trollop by Charlaine Harris Page A

right. The second closet was just as packed as the first, but with fall and winter clothes. Most of her suits and dresses would be categorized as Professional—Slut Subsection. Deedra had loved dressing up for work. She’d liked her job, too; since she’d completed two mediocre years at junior college, Deedra had been a clerk in the county clerk’s office. In Arkansas, the office of county clerk is an elected two-year position, quite often held by a woman. In Shakespeare’s county, Hartsfield, a man, Choke Anson, had won the last election. My friend Claude Friedrich, the chief of police, thought Choke intended to use the office as an entrance to county politics, and thence to the state arena.
    I was probably the least political person in Hartsfield County. In Arkansas, politics are a cross between a tabloid concoction and a brawl. Politicians in Arkansas are not afraid to be colorful, and they love to be folksy. Though my conscience would not permit to me to skip voting, I often voted for the lesser of two evils. This past election, Choke Anson had been the lesser. I knew his opponent, Mary Elwood, having observed her at the SCC while I served the board meeting there. Mary Elwood was a stupid, ultraconservative homophobe who believed with absolute sincerity that she knew the will of God. She further believed that people who disagreed with her were not only wrong, but also evil. I’d figured Choke Anson simply couldn’t be as bad. Now I wondered how Deedra had managed with a male superior.
    â€œDid you pick a jacket?”
    â€œWhat?” I was so startled I jumped.
    Lacey brought another box into the room. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said wearily. “I was just hoping you’d found a jacket you could use. Deedra thought so highly of you, I know she’d like you to have whatever you could use.”
    It was news to me that Deedra’d thought of me at all, much less that she’d had any particular regard for me. I would have been interested to hear that conversation, if it had ever taken place.
    There was a forest-green thigh-length coat with a zip-out lining that would be very useful, and there was a leather jacket that I admired. The other coats and jackets were too fancy, or impractical, or looked too narrow in the shoulders. I didn’t remember seeing Deedra wearing either of the ones I liked, so maybe they wouldn’t be such reminders to her mother.
    â€œThese?” I asked, holding them up.
    â€œAnything you want,” Lacey said, not even turning to look at my choices. I realized that she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to mark the clothes so when she saw me she wouldn’t think of Deedra. I folded the garments and went back into Deedra’s larger bedroom. There, I quickly placed the carved box into a reassembled carton, and put the plastic bag of “toys” in with it. I laid the two jackets on top, covering up the contraband. I wrote Lily on the top in Magic Marker, hoping that even if Lacey wondered why I’d put the jackets in a box instead of carrying them out over my arm, she’d be too preoccupied to ask.
    We worked all morning, Lacey and I. Twice, Lacey went into the bathroom abruptly and I could hear her crying through the door. Since the apartment was so quiet, I had time to wonder why some friend of Lacey’s wasn’t helping her with this homely task. Surely this was the time when family and friends stepped in.
    Then I noticed that Lacey was staring at a picture she’d pulled out of a drawer in the kitchen. I was in there only because the dust in the closet had made me thirsty.
    Though I couldn’t see the picture myself, Lacey’s reaction told me what it was. I saw her expression of confusion, and then her cheeks turned red as she held it closer to her eyes as if she disbelieved what she was seeing. She chucked it in a trash bag with unnecessary force. Maybe, I thought, Lacey