Really, I think she overestimated me, Catherine thought with wry amusement as she rolled more paper into her typewriter. I don’t think I ever would have thought of putting that particular “one and one” together. There’s a woman with nerve. She makes me feel like I just graduated from diapers.
Then Catherine frowned and let her fingers rest idle on the keys. Would Martin Barnes have paid blackmail to keep his affair with Jewel a secret? Jewel would have said, in effect, “Publish and be damned,” but Martin Barnes was a different kettle of fish. Based on her limited knowledge of Melba Barnes, Catherine decided that if Melba had good grounds for divorce, she would take Martin for whatever she could get. And that would be a considerable sum.
Maybe Martin had gotten sick of blackmail. The pressure of trying to have a surreptitious affair in little Lowfield, added to a bad relationship with a jealous wife, might have tipped Martin’s scales toward violence; especially with the additional squeeze of having to pay hush money.
Sheriff Galton hadn’t mentioned how much cash he had found in Leona’s house. Had it all been blackmail money? How many people in Lowfield had secrets they would pay to keep hidden?
A week ago Catherine would have said, “Not many.” But yesterday Tom had told her about Jimmy Galton Junior’s drug sales. Today Jewel Crenna had told her she was having an affair with a prominent planter.
How many more people had mud tracking up their homes? And Sheriff Galton had hinted strongly at some other illegal activity the former nurse had engaged in.
It’s a comment on how I felt about Leona, that I can accept the fact that she was a blackmailer, without being awfully surprised, Catherine reflected.
The swinging door rocked back and forth as Salton Sims, the Gazette’s press operator, came through. Salton approached everything at an angle, so until the moment he ended up at the side of her desk, Catherine had hopes she would be bypassed. Salton had appeared to be heading toward the filing cabinets.
“I missed seeing you when you was in the back,” he said cheerfully.
Catherine’s heart sank. No escape. Salton was known and dreaded throughout the county for his complete tactlessness and his equally complete determination to have his say.
“Bet that ole Leona Gaites was a sight with her head bashed in,” Salton began. “Bloody, huh?”
Catherine cast around for help, but Tom was still away at the courthouse.
“Yes, Salton, she sure was, and I’d just as soon not discuss it, if you don’t mind,” Catherine said hopefully.
Salton stuck his hands in the pockets of his grease-soaked jump suit and grinned at Catherine.
“Well, you know what I say?” he asked her.
“I’ll bet you’re going to tell me.”
“Damn right! No one can call me two-faced.”
Boy, that’s the truth, she thought.
“I say,” he continued, “that it’s a good thing.”
“Salton!” She shouldn’t have been shocked, but she was. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leila come into the room and begin filing at the bank of cabinets. Maybe Leila’s presence would inhibit Salton, who thought all females under twenty were sacred. But no such luck.
“No, Catherine, you just think about it. It was a good thing. Leona was a godless woman.”
“Godless?” repeated Catherine weakly. How long has it been since I heard anyone called that? She wondered. Only Salton would use that adjective.
“Sure, sure. I know for a fact, from a lady I won’t name, that she killed babies.”
Catherine finally understood what Leona had used some of Dr. Linton’s equipment for. She glanced at Leila desperately and saw that Leila was shaken to the bone, staring in horror at Salton’s broad face.
“I guess you mean that she performed abortions,” Catherine said slowly.
“That’s what a lady told me,” Salton said with satisfaction.
“But they’re legal,” Catherine protested. “You can get them thirty miles away in Memphis.” Were they legal in Mississippi? She couldn’t remember.
“Too many people from here go to Memphis every day,” Salton rebutted. “Any kid from here who went to Memphis for a thing like that would be caught in a minute. And what teenager could leave here for two days to go to Jackson, without their parents finding out what for and why?”
“True,” Catherine admitted.
“Well, back to that cursed old press,” Salton said happily, and wandered swiftly through the door, by some trick appearing until the last minute to be on a collision course with the wall.
Abortions. Wonderful. Abortion and blackmail payments: what a legacy I’ve inherited! That’s where those medical instruments went: Leona was supplementing her Social Security.
Catherine caught herself bundling all her hair together and holding it on top of her head, a nervous habit she thought she had discarded with college exams. But she remained like that, both elbows out in the air, until she caught sight of Leila, whom she had completely forgotten.
Leila seemed equally oblivious of Catherine. She was still looking at the swinging door through which Salton had passed, her face so miserable that Catherine felt obliged to ask her if she was feeling sick.
“Listen,” said Leila urgently, then stopped to look back through the archway that led into the reception area. There was no one there, but Leila came and sat close to Catherine’s desk. The girl was still clutching a handful of bills she had been filing.
“Listen,” she said again, and hunched over until her face was five inches from Catherine’s. Catherine had to resist an urge to lean back.
“I’m listening,” Catherine said sharply. She had an ominous feeling she was about to hear yet another secret.
“She did,” Leila hissed dramatically.
“Perform abortions?”
“Yeah, sure,” Leila whispered. “Listen, I know you won’t tell on me…”
Everyone certainly seems to be sure of that, Catherine thought fleetingly.
“…but she ‘did’ me. It’s like Mr. Sims says, how could I just tell my parents I was going to be out of town for two days?”
“When was this?”
“Five months ago.”
After Father died, Catherine realized with relief. Leona just kept some of the equipment when Jerry bought the rest. At least it wasn’t while her Father was alive.
“I went up to Memphis and asked, but it was awful expensive.”
“Leona was cheap?”
“Oh, yeah, compared to Memphis. But I think she charged more later. I was one of her first.”
Catherine felt sick.
“I’m sorry, Leila.” It was all she knew to say.
“Oh, well.” Leila waved a polished hand to dismiss her former predicament. “What I’m scared of,” she went on urgently, “is the sheriff will tell, if he finds out. My parents, you know. I mean, what if Miss Gaites kept records?”
“Come on, Leila,” Catherine said tartly. “She would hardly have a receipt file!”
Leila pondered that.
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “I mean, she was breaking the law. So she probably wouldn’t have written anything down. And you had to pay her cash.”
Catherine imagined Leila trying to write a check for Leona’s services and winced.
Leila, now that her immediate fear was banished, looked brighter by the second. She straightened her shoulders, leaned back in her chair, and gave her pink fingernails a once-over. Catherine was glancing at her notes surreptitiously, longing to return to something normal and humdrum, when the girl began to frown.
“How did you know about Tom’s fiancée?” Leila asked abruptly.
“What?” Catherine made herself pay attention.
“Tom,” Leila prompted. “When did he tell you?”
“That they broke up?” Catherine made an effort to remember. “I guess it was yesterday.”
“He over at your place?” asked Leila, with badly feigned indifference.
�
��Oh,” Catherine said, enlightened. “No, I went over to his house” (that just made it worse, she saw instantly) “and he happened to mention it in the course of the conversation.”
And I was trying to do her a good turn, Catherine reflected gloomily, as Leila shot her a look and rose from her chair. Leila returned to her filing, back pointedly stiff, slamming home the drawers of the cabinets with all her strength.
It seemed a good time to go to lunch.
9
CATHERINE SPENT THE afternoon dodging conversations. She didn’t want to hear any more secrets or opinions.
The entire staff was aware of her penchant for long silences, and when she gave minimal answers to direct questions she couldn’t avoid, they got the point.
Finally Catherine caught up with her work. She had deposited with Jewel everything urgent she had pending, with the nagging exception of the Barnes’s grandchild’s birthday-party piece.
She had seen a couple of stories by Randall on the “set” spike when she carried her own things back. In addition to turning out editorials, Randall had to report the occasional event, when Catherine and Tom were too busy to cover it. The Gazette simply couldn’t afford another reporter, even though another pair of hands at a typewriter would often have been welcome, particularly in the fall when high school sports started up.
Catherine remembered the time she had had to cover a basketball game, during the hiatus between Tom’s predecessor’s departure and Tom’s arrival. It had been a fiasco, and she shuddered to recall it, even months later.
Mrs. Weilenmann, the head librarian, came in to give Catherine the schedule for the next month’s special library programs. Catherine thanked her wholeheartedly for the neatly typed listing. (All too often, people brought in scrawls that Catherine had to type up to decipher.) In a gush of gratitude, she promised to place it prominently in the next issue, with a border around it.
“Catherine,” the tall middle-aged woman said slowly, after she had gathered up her paraphernalia to leave, “I’m worried about you and your situation.”
Catherine stared blankly at Mrs. Weilenmann’s toffee-colored face. Mrs. Weilenmann was intelligent, ugly, and charming; and Catherine had grown fond of her. But they had never had a really personal conversation.
“It occurred to me this morning,” Mrs. Weilenmann said hesitantly, “when I was getting the books out of the bookdrop (and someone’s hit it again; why can’t people control their cars?)-well, it occurred to me that you are a little isolated now.”
Catherine couldn’t think of anything to say, so she waited.
“Not-socially; I don’t know about that. But geographically.”
“Oh?” murmured Catherine, mystified.
“Well, dear, I don’t mean to make you nervous,” Mrs. Weilenmann said in her peculiarly formal diction, “but the Drummonds are gone, aren’t they? Having a great time, I hear, but they won’t be back for a couple of weeks. And the library is closed at night, in the summer, after six on weekdays; and for most of the weekend. So to one side of you and across from you, there’s no one. And on the other side of you, the street. But no one can see your yard from the street, because of the hedge. And behind you, there’s the hedge again, so the other reporter (he still rents from you, doesn’t he?) can’t see your back yard. And being single, I imagine Mr. Mascalco isn’t there often. At night.”
Catherine gathered her hair up in a bundle and held it on top of her head.
“I don’t mean to frighten you. I guess this sounds like I’m trying to. Really, I think I shouldn’t have said anything. But I hate to think of you alone in your house at night. Now I’m sorry I started this,” she finished in a distressed rush.
“What all this was leading up to (now that I’ve made a fool of myself by scaring you out of your wits) is that if you would like to stay with me, until this incident gets cleared up, I would love to have you.”
And in Lowfield that was, though Catherine could never compliment her for it, a remarkably brave offer from a black woman to a white woman. Not only was Mrs. Weilenmann risking a shocked refusal, but, if Catherine accepted, Mrs. Weilenmann would be extremely cramped in her rented crackerbox of a house-which was situated, like Bethesda Weilenmann, in a gray area between the black and white parts of town.
“It sure is kind of you to offer,” Catherine said slowly. “I really appreciate it. But I think I won’t take you up on that, unless I get scared.” That seemed inadequate, and Catherine groped around for another way to explain.
“You like being on your own,” Mrs. Weilenmann said unexpectedly and accurately. “I can understand; I do too. It isn’t easy for me to be ‘company’ even overnight. I like to leave and go back to my own place, such as it is.” Her face turned up in a smile. “So I do understand. But if you reconsider, I have a cot I can set up, and it would be no trouble at all. You’re a brave young woman, Catherine. And you’re not stupid, not stupid at all.”
Catherine thought sadly that Mrs. Weilenmann must have been very disappointed in many people, to be so firm in praising these paltry recommendations.
“Thanks for your good opinion,” Catherine said, and gave Mrs. Weilenmann one of her own rare smiles.
“I’ll see you, then,” Mrs. Weilenmann said briskly, and headed back to her library.
Mrs. Weilenmann’s article would have an extra-thick border, Catherine resolved.
It had been a long day, even for a Monday. Catherine was covering her typewriter with a definite sense of relief as Tom walked in.
“I haven’t seen you since this morning,” she said idly. “Have you been working on the story about Leona?”
“Yeah,” Tom replied, one hand on the door. “I took my basic story back to Jewel this morning, but I told her to expect additions. I’ve interviewed everyone who knows anything, and I haven’t come up with a damn thing more than I knew this morning.”
“You’ve been doing that all day?”
“No. I went to the Lion’s Club meeting, too, for their usual ham and potato salad fest and speeches. The lieutenant governor spoke today. And then I had trouble with my car. I’ll have to take it into the shop again now.”
“Too bad,” Catherine said politely. “See you tomorrow.”
She began walking to her car, which was parked across the street by the courthouse.
“Catherine!”
She turned and saw Randall hurrying across the street after her.
As she watched him come toward her, she realized she had been too busy all day to think about the date he had made with her that morning.
“How was today?” he asked.
“If you really want to know-” she said, and laughed.
“Salton been asking too many graphic questions?”
“Salton,” said Catherine, shaking her head. “Salton says, and I have it from another source, that Leona was an abortionist. That explains something Sheriff Galton said to me yesterday.”
“Good God,” Randall said mildly. “I had no idea we had a village abortionist.” He brooded for a moment. “What did Galton say yesterday?” he asked finally, frowning.
“He asked if I sold to Leona, or knew she had, some things from Father’s office. A sterilizer and instruments, I suppose, from what she seems to have been doing to support herself in her retirement.” Catherine’s voice was arid.
“He thinks you knew? Aided and abetted?”
“Yes. Or alternatively, that I was a customer.”
Randall touched her hand.
“Oh well. I can’t convince him different,” she said. “And that’s not all.”
“More? You have had a busy day.”
“I’ll tell you now. We didn’t talk about this yesterday,” Catherine said, putting her purse on the car hood and leaning against the driver’s door. He settled companionably beside her.
“Leona left her money, her house, the whole kit and kaboodle, to my father. Naturally, she had made this will before he died, and just never changed it. I wish to God she had
.”
“You’re the legatee now?”
“So it seems. Sheriff Gallon apparently thinks that constitutes a motive for me…and I guess it would, at that, if I didn’t have some money of my own. I like money,” she said simply, “but I’m not avid for more.” She paused to return the wave of Mrs. Brighton, the mayor’s secretary.
“But to keep to the track-Sheriff Galton didn’t give me a figure, but it seems there was quite a lot of money stashed in that little house. Now, I can’t imagine that many girls in Lowfield needed abortions. I think the bulk of it has to be blackmail payments.”
Randall nodded thoughtfully. She wanted to touch his hair.
“I have evidently been living in a dream,” Catherine went on quietly, “because I am really-flabbergasted-that so many people in Lowfield were blackmailable, if that’s a word.”
“Who? Did Galton name names?” asked Randall, looking at the ground.
Catherine was sharply reminded that Randall was a newspaper editor, in the business of spreading information. She became acutely uneasy at the way he was carefully avoiding her eyes. It was a moment of testing; she saw that painfully. Maybe I am brave, like Mrs. Weilenmann said, she thought bleakly. She had opened her mouth to speak, when a new line of thought occurred to her. She asked, “Randall? Not you? Blackmail?”
He looked sad behind his glasses. He knew as well as she that this was a test of faith that had come too early; she could see that in his face.
He took a deep breath. “Not me,” he said. “Maybe my mother.”
Catherine had tensed, afraid that they were going to shatter their fragile beginning. Now she relaxed.
“Miss Angel?” she said, incredulously. “I thought she was made of iron.”
“She is,” he answered with a half-smile. “But she has her chink. My father. He was a famous man, Catherine, at least in this state, and the newspaper is such a family tradition. Even a little weekly newspaper can become a name, when people like my grandfather and father run it. They were crusaders in their way. Brilliant men. Men who always had enemies.
“And my father, I’ve found out, once took a bribe.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said swiftly, dismayed.
Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog Page 8