(LB1) Shakespeare's Champion Read online

  (LB1) Shakespeare's Champion

  Harris, Charlaine

  Penguin (1997)

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  Shakespeare, Arkansas, is a small Southern town with plenty of secrets, and Charlaine Harris's Lily Bard is just one more of its residents - albeit one harboring a few secrets of her own - with a desire to live quietly. Lily keeps to herself, between her job as a cleaning woman for several townspeople and her visits to the gym, where she's a devotee of karate and bodybuilding. These two pursuits seem a bit odd for the petite Southern woman, but as work and play, they keep her focused and balanced. When a fellow gym member is found dead after a workout with a barbell across his throat, Lily wants to believe it's an accident. But looking at the incident against the background of other recent events in Shakespeare, including a few incidents that appear to be racially motivated, she's afraid it could be a part of something much, much bigger - and much more sinister.

  LILY BARD IS

  “…one of the best-drawn and most compelling characters in contemporary mystery fiction—complex, smart, streetwise, tough.”

  —Booklist

  “Lily Bard brings new meaning to the term ‘strong woman.’”

  —Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR

  SHAKESPEARE’S CHAMPION

  “Full of surprises, this second fast-paced and gripping Lily Bard adventure showcases the amateur sleuth’s strength, determination, and martial arts prowess…An engaging puzzler that’s propelled along by Lily’s easy, no-frill narration.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Wheels within wheels in a suspense story packed with nasty characters…Lily’s stubborn, moody, gutsy persona holds it all together, and most readers will be with her to the finish.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A first-rate mystery.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Lily Bard gives as good as she gets. The reading is fast and the action’s faster, proving that women really are the better half.”

  —Mostly Murder

  “Precise storytelling and original characterizations…A skilled author who knows just how far to take her story…Harris again shows her thoughtful way of weaving a complex plot into a seamless, compact story.”

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “Harris delivers murder with a distinct edge and an amateur sleuth training to move mountains while she cleans up the town.”

  —Mystery News

  “Terrific…Lily Bard is Kinsey [Millhone] and V. I. [Warshawski] multiplied by ten.”

  —Tulsa World continued…

  PRAISE FOR

  SHAKESPEARE’S LANDLORD

  “Gripping. Harris, known for her series featuring Aurora Tea-garden, takes a dark turn here, and it pays off…All in all, a fine effort from Harris.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  “Harris has done an incredible job launching her new character. The author wisely makes Lily’s past as much a part of the mystery as the murder investigation. A well-constructed psychological study that moves at a steady pace.”

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “A satisfying introduction to a fascinating, complex set of characters. Just keep ’em coming.”

  —Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  PRAISE FOR

  SHAKESPEARE’S TROLLOP

  “Lily is a terrific character with dark shadings and stark fears…A supporting cast of quirky characters fully rendered in quick strokes will hold readers as surely as the complex resolution in this cozy on the bleeding edge of noir.”

  —Booklist

  “An ending that will take everyone by surprise…an extremely compelling read.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Solid entertainment.”

  —Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR

  SHAKESPEARE’S COUNSELOR

  “Solid, clever, and quick.”

  —Library Journal

  “The best work in this fine series…The mystery is loaded with red herrings that hide the villain in plain sight so that the audience is stunned when the culprit is revealed.”

  —BookBrowser

  PRAISE FOR THE SOUTHERN VAMPIRE SERIES BY CHARLAINE HARRIS…

  “The goofy charm of Harris’s world, with its humor and occasional terror, is what makes Dead Until Dark so delightful.”

  —Denver Post

  “Harris brings off this blend of mystery and vampires better than most.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Fans will appreciate this endearing protagonist who combines vulnerability with a steely spine (kind of a supernatural Steel Magnolia)…[and] will enjoy this offbeat read that combines elements of several genres to ensure that the world of Charlaine Harris seems real, one bite at a time.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A fun, fast, funny, and wonderfully intriguing blend of vampire and mystery that’s hard to put down, and should not be missed.”

  —Susan Sizemore, author of the Laws of the Blood series

  “A genre mix refreshingly free of the expected tropes.”

  —Locus

  “Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake looking for a lighter version of the vampire huntress should cotton to Sookie Stackhouse…Consistent, well-built characters and a strong, action-packed plot that will keep readers guessing to the end distinguish this frothy fusion of romance, mystery, and fantasy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Gripping and spicy.”

  —Booklist

  “Delivered in well-written, fast-paced Southern twang that will keep you turning the pages.”

  —Cemetery Dance

  “Highly original, extraordinarily riveting, erotic, and exotic…Charlaine Harris weaves storytelling magic in a tale of vampires and small town Louisiana.”

  —Lynn Hightower, author of When Secrets Die

  Ace books by Charlaine Harris

  DEAD UNTIL DARK

  LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS

  CLUB DEAD

  DEAD TO THE WORLD

  DEAD AS A DOORNAIL

  DEFINITELY DEAD

  Berkley Prime Crime books by Charlaine Harris

  SHAKESPEARE’S LANDLORD

  SHAKESPEARE’S CHAMPION

  SHAKESPEARE’S TROLLOP

  SHAKESPEARE’S COUNSELOR

  GRAVE SIGHT

  GRAVE SURPRISE

  Shakespeare’s Champion

  Charlaine Harris

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resembl
ance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SHAKESPEARE’S CHAMPION

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 1997 by Charlaine Harris Schulz.

  Cover art by Lisa Desimini.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York.

  ISBN: 1-4295-2960-1

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  This book is dedicated to my newsletter group,

  the Femmes Fatale

  (http://members.aol.com/femmesweb),

  who make me laugh

  more than I have since I left college.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  My thanks to Larry Price and Pat Downs, who described being blown up; and to members of my karate class, who kindly enacted fight sequences and offered various lethal suggestions. Dr. John Alexander has also been polite about answering some very peculiar questions.

  Prologue

  THE MAN LYING ON THE PADDED BENCH HAD BEEN working out for two hours and he was drenched with sweat. His short blond hair was matted at his forehead, and his sharply etched body glistened. His hacked-off sweatshirt and shorts, originally blue but now faded, showed dark rings under the arms. It was October, but he had a glowing tan. He was exactly five feet ten inches and he weighed one hundred seventy-four pounds, both facts being of crucial importance to his regimen.

  The other members of the Body Time gym had gone home an hour ago when the gym officially closed, leaving this dedicated and privileged being, Del Packard, to his solitary calling. After the others had gone, Del’s spotter arrived, wearing ancient black sweatpants and an old gray sweatshirt with the sleeves scooted up.

  Del had let the spotter in with his own key, on loan from gym owner Marshall Sedaka. Del had talked Marshall into issuing him a key so Del could work out every free minute he could beg from his job. The competition was only a month away.

  “I think I’m going to make it this time,” Del said. He was resting between sets. The weighted bar lay in its rack above his head. “I was second last year, but I hadn’t put in the hours I have this year. And I’ve practiced my posing every day. I’ve gotten rid of every hair on my body, and if you think Lindy has stood that without complaining, you can think again.”

  His spotter laughed. “Want another dime?”

  “Yeah,” said Del. “I want to do ten reps, okay? Only help me if I’m hurting.”

  The spotter added a ten-pound disc to each end of the bar. It already held a total of two hundred and seventy pounds.

  Del tightened the wrist straps of his lifting gloves, flexed his fingers. But he delayed for a moment longer, saying, “You been to that Marvel’s Gym? It’s the biggest place I ever seen.”

  “No.” Del’s companion also adjusted his black leather gloves. Lifting gloves stop at the first knuckle and have padded palms. Del’s spotter had forgotten to bring his, he’d explained, and had pulled a pair of regular gloves out of the lost-and-found box. Now, the spotter casually pulled down the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

  “I don’t mind telling you, last year I was pretty nervous. There was guys in that middleweight division pumped up like tanks, been in training since they could walk. And their outfits! And here was me, ole country boy. But I did all right.” Del smiled proudly. “This year I’ll do better. No one from Shakespeare but me is entered this year. Marshall tried to get Lily Bard—you know her? blond? don’t talk much?—to enter in the women’s novice division, or the open, but she said she wasn’t about to spend eight months pumping up to stand in front of a bunch of people she didn’t know, all greased up like a pig. Well, that’s one point of view. I look on it as an honor to represent Shakespeare at the Marvel Gym competition. Lily’s got great chest and arm development, but she’s pretty weird.”

  Del lay back on the bench and looked up at the face of his spotter, who was bent over him, gloved hands resting casually on the bar. His spotter lifted his eyebrows in query.

  “You remember, I was kind of worried after we had that conversation last week?” Del asked.

  “Yep,” the spotter said with a dash of impatience in his voice.

  “Well, Mr. Winthrop says everything is okay. Just not to talk about it to anyone.”

  “That’s a relief. You gonna lift this, or just look at it?”

  Del nodded his blond head sharply. “Okay, I’m ready. After this set, I’m quitting for the night. I’m dead beat.”

  The spotter smiled down at him. With a grunt, the spotter lifted the bar, now weighted with two hundred ninety pounds. He moved the bar into position above Del’s open hands and began lowering it.

  Just as Del’s fingers were about to close around the bar, the spotter pulled it toward himself a little, till it was right over Del’s neck. With great control, the spotter positioned it exactly over Del’s Adam’s apple.

  Just as Del opened his mouth to ask what the hell was going on, the spotter dropped the bar.

  Del’s hands scrabbled convulsively at the weight crushing his neck for a few seconds, hard enough to make his fingers bleed, but his companion squatted down and held either side of the bar, the gloves and sweatshirt protecting him from Del’s fingers.

  Very shortly, Del lay still.

  The spotter carefully examined his gloves. In the overhead light, they looked fine. He threw them back in the lost-and-found bin. Del had left his gym key on the counter, and the spotter used it to unlock the front door. Halfway out the door, he paused. His knees were shaking. He hadn’t any idea of what to do with the key, and no one had thought to tell him. If he put it back in Del’s pocket, he’d have to leave the door unlocked. Would that look suspicious? But if he took it with him to relock the door from the outside, wouldn’t that tell the police that Del had had someone with him? This whole assignment was more terrible and perplexing than he’d imagined. But he could handle it, he reassured himself. The boss had said so. He was loyal and he was strong.

  Hesitantly, the spotter rethreaded his steps between the pieces of equipment. With his face compressed into an expression of disgust, he tucked the key in Del’s shorts pocket and rubbed the enclosing material around the key. He backed away from the still figure on the bench, then walked out hastily, almost running. He automatically flicked the light switch down on his way out. Glancing from side to side, the spotter finally broke and ran to the dark corner of the parking lot where his pickup was waiting, fairly well concealed by a few wax myrtles.

  On his way home, he suddenly wondered if he could now get a date with Lindy Roland.

  Chapter 1

  I GRUMBLED TO MYSELF AS I SLID OUT OF MY SKYLARK, Marshall’s keys clinking in my hand. Since I made my living doing favors for people, it hardly seemed fair to be doing a favor for free this early in the morning.

  But this fall a flu epidemic was scything its way through Shakespeare. It had crept into the Body Time gym enclosed in the body of my friend Raphael Roundtree. Raphael had coughed and sneezed in karate class afte
r working out in the weights room, neatly distributing the virus among almost all the Body Time clientele, with the exception of the aerobics class.

  And me. Viruses don’t seem to be able to abide in my body.

  When I’d dropped by Marshall Sedaka’s rented house even earlier that morning, Marshall had been at that stage of the flu where his greatest desire was to be left alone to his misery. So fit and healthy that he took sickness as an insult, Marshall was a terrible patient; and he was vain enough to hate my seeing him throw up. So he’d thrust the keys to Body Time into my hand, slammed the door, and yelled from behind it, “Go open! Tanya’s coming after her first class if I can’t get anyone else!”

  I’d been left with my mouth hanging open and a handful of keys.

  It was my day to work at the Drinkwaters’ house. I had to be there between 8:00 and 8:15, when the Drinkwaters left for work. It was now 7:00. Tanya, a student at the nearby Montrose branch of the University of Arkansas, might get out of her first class at 9:00. That would put her arrival time at somewhere around 9:40.

  But Marshall was sometimes my lover and also sometimes my workout partner; and he was always my sensei, my karate instructor.