(LB1) Shakespeare's Champion Read Online Free PDF Page A

couple more to decide that this was by design, his design. I missed Claude’s company, but I didn’t miss the pressure of his desire.
    And I lost clients. Tom and Jenny O’Hagen, who’d lived next door to me in the Shakespeare Garden Apartments, moved to Illinois to manage a larger Bippy’s. I wasn’t too concerned at the opening in my schedule. I had a standby list. I began calling. The first two potential clients fobbed me off with a lame excuse, and I could feel the worry start somewhere in my gut. Ever since the Burger Tycoon parking lot fight, I’d been concerned that my clientele would drop off.
    The third family had found another maid, so I crossed them off. The woman who answered at the fourth number said she and her husband had decided to get divorced, and she would be doing her own cleaning. Another X. The fifth name on the list was Mookie Preston. After puzzling over the entry, I remembered that when Ms. Preston had called me a couple of months before, she’d said she’d just moved to Shakespeare. When I called her, she sounded delighted to hear that I could work for her on Friday mornings. She was renting a house, and she wanted longer than the hour and a half I’d given the O’Hagen apartment.
    “Why don’t I work from ten to twelve on Fridays?” I was trying to imagine why a young single woman would need me for that long.
    “We’ll see,” said the rich fruity voice. “I’m a little messy.”
    I’d never laid eyes on Mookie Preston, but she sounded…eccentric. As long as her checks were good, I didn’t care if she raised catfish in the bathtub and wore a Barney the Dinosaur costume.
    When I went to Body Time Thursday morning, I found Bobo sitting behind the counter to the left of the entrance. He looked as dispirited as an eighteen-year-old can look. I pitched my gym bag into an empty plastic cubicle, one of fifteen stacked against the east wall, after extracting my weight-lifting gloves. They were looking very shabby, and I knew I’d have to have a new pair soon; another item for my already tight budget. I began to pull them on, eyeing Bobo as I circled my wrists with the straps and Velcroed them tightly. Bobo stared back. He was even sitting depressed: shoulders sagging, hands idle on the counter, head sagging on his neck.
    “What?” I asked.
    “They’ve questioned me twice now, Lily,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “I guess the detective thinks I had something to do with Del getting killed.” He took a gulp of a repulsive-looking protein mixture that was the craze among the younger workout crowd. I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole.
    “How come?”
    “Del worked for my dad.”
    Among his many financial pies, Bobo’s father, Howell Winthrop, Jr., owned the local sports/exercise equipment/ marine supplies store. Del had worked there, mostly in the exercise equipment and exercise clothing department, though he’d had to know enough about hunting and fishing to sell all the other products Winthrop Sporting Goods carried. Del himself had told me all about it at excruciating length when I’d been buying my punching bag.
    “So do a lot of people in town,” I observed.
    Bobo looked at me blankly.
    “Work for your dad.”
    Bobo grinned. It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. He was really a lovely boy.
    “Yeah, but Mr. Jinks seems to think that I decided Del knew something that would ruin Dad’s business, so either I thought of killing him or Dad told me to.”
    “Because you were the last one to see him here?” Dedford Jinks is a detective on the little Shakespeare police force.
    Bobo nodded. “Someone told the chief, who told Mr. Jinks, that when people didn’t bring their own spotters, they asked the staff to spot for them. Which, naturally, would be me.” He silently held out his plastic cup of goop. With a shudder, I shook my head.
    I struggled with my guilt. It was I who had mentioned to Claude that sometimes a member of the staff was asked to fill