“How are you, Catherine?” he said mildly. “Haven’t seen you to talk to in a coon’s age.”
Mr. Barnes’s weathered but still handsome face expressed nothing but polite pleasure. Before Catherine could say anything, he went on. “I sure was surprised when Jimmy Gallon came out to my place yesterday. I didn’t think it was so all-fired important that I was on the same road where Leona got dumped.”
Catherine fluttered her hand in a meaningless gesture. She wished she hadn’t sent Tom off on a wild-goose chase to interview Salton Sims. She had a second to think, That’s what I get for being catty, before Barnes, slowly collecting his thoughts, began to ruminate again.
“I told him I was just out riding my land, same as I always do early in the morning,” Barnes said, looking at Catherine significantly. “Well, little Catherine Linton saw me, Jimmy says, and right afterward she found something nasty, something mighty bad. Course, by then I had heard about old Leona Gaites at church, so it wasn’t no surprise to me.”
Catherine could think of no conceivable response. Her reputation for silence was serving her well, she decided, for Barnes didn’t seem to expect a reply.
“And I said to him, ‘Sure, I saw that gal.’” Barnes went on slowly. “I wondered at it, too, her being out so early on a Saturday morning. First time in my life the police ever come by my house to ask me questions. Parked in front of my house, for everyone to see.” He sounded mildly resentful, but Catherine couldn’t decide whether or not the resentment was aimed at her. “Melba ’bout went wild,” he added glumly.
She wondered if Jewel had had time to report their conversation of yesterday to her lover.
“First time the police have ever been at my house, too,” Catherine said, with a poor imitation of brightness. “And the last time, I hope.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Tom stalk into the room and cast a look of utter disgust in her direction. He threw his pad and pencil on his desk and walked directly out again. Catherine saw him lean on the counter in Leila’s office, and heard the murmur of their voices.
No help from that quarter. Tom would happily let Martin Barnes talk her to death in retaliation for her sending him to Salton Sims to discover that Leona was “godless.”
At least Barnes was smiling at her faint joke. He reached inside his pocket and drew out a photograph.
“Here’s my picture of Chrissy for the paper,” he explained carefully. “My first grandchild, you know.” The planter beamed.
Catherine eyed the picture. It was even worse than the usual run of photos handed in to the Gazette for such celebrations. For one thing, it was in color, which reproduced poorly in the Gazette; Randall couldn’t afford expensive color ink. For another thing, the little girl was slumped sideways in her highchair at practically a right angle, and her stare was woefully blank: no cute smile, no expression at all. Little Chrissy’s goggle eyes and gape were ludicrous in combination with the gay party hat, with its crepe pompon that had unwisely been strapped to the child’s head.
“Cute kid,” said Catherine faintly.
“Looks just like her grandpa, Sally says.”
That triggered laughter in Catherine, who decided that Martin was maligning himself. He was still a good-looking man, and this baby—Catherine bit the inside of her mouth ferociously, to keep from bursting into unforgivable giggles.
“Thanks for bringing it in,” she managed, her voice only slightly choked. “I’ll take it to the back right away, so it’ll be in the paper when you get it tomorrow.”
“We’re looking forward to it,” he assured her earnestly. “See you some other time, Catherine. I hope we don’t meet out in the fields no more.”
Catherine looked up from the picture sharply, but Barnes was already walking out. He had to turn sideways to edge through the reception room, for the little area had become crowded during their conversation.
Tom was still leaning over the counter talking to Leila, Carl Perkins was standing nearby with a folder in his hands that must contain his enterprises’ ads for the coming week, and, Catherine saw with a thud, Sheriff Galton was leaning against the wall with an air of infinite patience. Mrs. Weilenmann was standing with Randall in the doorway of his office, deep in discussion.
When Tom straightened up from the counter and turned to see who was behind him, his whole body stiffened (like a bird dog, Catherine thought), as he realized that the object of his phone calls was within reach. Catherine couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw Galton shake his head, smiling, as Tom’s mouth moved nonstop.
Tom went on talking, and Galton shook his head again, with less of a smile. Tom was being persistent. As usual, Mr. Perkins turned away, trying to appear uninvolved in their exchange. Randall and Mrs. Weilenmann finished their talk, and, as the librarian worked her way out of the knot of people, Randall ushered Galton into his office.
It was the first time she had seen Randall that day. He caught a glimpse of her face and gave her a quick wave.
Catherine smiled back. Mrs. Weilenmann, noticing her at the same time, assumed the smile was for her. She raised a hand in greeting.
As Catherine looked at the knot of familiar faces, her smile suddenly stiffened. One of these, she thought. Maybe one of these people…She saw an anonymous arm rising and falling, saw blood pouring through gray hair.
Why? she wondered frantically. Why? The nightmare was before her eyes again, all the more horrible in this hot, sun-drenched, normal room. I’ll face it, she decided. I have to face it squarely.
She looked at the worst.
Randall, who had the strength of an athlete. His reason: Leona’s threats to expose his father’s acceptance of a bribe. But, Catherine rebutted swiftly, he told me about that himself, when he certainly didn’t need to. She then considered Randall’s mother, Angel, for the same reason, but she knew Miss Angel was not physically strong enough to kill someone in the way Leona had been killed.
Sheriff Galton. His son was selling drugs. The shame of it would break James Galton, privately and publicly, if it became generally known. And Leona had had a habit of finding things out.
Mrs. Weilenmann, that sad and misplaced woman. Her rumored white husband was supposed to have been a lawyer. Why would such a woman return to the South, where she was neither fish nor fowl? Catherine had always imagined that a long sad story was buried behind those dignified toffee-colored features.
Tom had resumed his conversation with Leila. If Leona had seen Tom buying dope Friday night…A drug conviction would bar him from ever holding another reporting job. Reporters were too thick on the ground now for any editor to have to consider hiring a risk.
Leila? Catherine almost dismissed Leila offhand. But to be fair, she paused to consider her. After all, Leila had admittedly had criminal contact with Leona Gaites. But, like Randall, she seemed to be cleared by that very admission. Of course, Leila’s father was a pillar of a fundamentalist church. I just don’t know what Mr. Masham might do, if he knew his baby had gotten pregnant and had an abortion, Catherine thought.
And, of course, there were Martin Barnes and Jewel Crenna, the illicit couple.
This has gone far enough, Catherine told herself savagely, trying to arrange her face so it would have some semblance of normality for Mr. Perkins, who had dropped off his folder at Leila’s desk and was coming toward her. I could add Carl and Molly Perkins, Salton Sims…Maybe I have blackouts and did it myself…Maybe the Drummonds aren’t in Europe at all, but hiding out secretly in their house!
“Are you all right?”
Or none of the above, Catherine concluded before she looked up.
“Yes sir,” she said. “I just had some bad thoughts.”
“I guess we’ve all had them lately,” Mr. Perkins said sadly. “Molly and I just wanted to know if you’d come over to supper at our house tonight. You can bring your boyfriend if you want to. Molly and I would sure like to get to know him better.”
“Know him better?” Catherine was sure her jaw
had gone slack with astonishment. What was this new kite of rumor sailing through the Lowfield sky?
“Your tenant,” said Mr. Perkins with a trace of uncertainty in his voice. He bobbed his head backward in Tom’s direction.
“He’s just my tenant,” Catherine said definitely. She smiled one of the killer smiles Southern women are taught. “I’m so sorry I won’t be able to come over tonight. I’m way behind on everything I have to do at home.”
“We’re sure sorry you can’t come,” Mr. Perkins said, flinching almost visibly, unable to apologize for fear of getting in deeper. “But if you get nervous about being on your lonesome, you just come right on over.”
“Sure will,” Catherine responded with absolute insincerity.
She watched her neighbor walk away. I guess I nipped that in the bud, she thought with some satisfaction.
The reception area had emptied while Catherine was talking with Mr. Perkins. She was glad. She wanted no more talk, no more suspicion. She wanted to work and be ignored. She quickly delivered baby Chrissy’s picture to the darkroom, earning a glower from the camera operator because of its late arrival.
Leila was at her desk humming as she stapled statements to checks when Catherine passed through on her way to lunch. The girl looked almost elevated, as if she had received a call to a higher duty. Tom was evidently living up to his image in Leila’s eyes. Catherine paused, wondering what Tom was going to do about lunch, since his car was in the shop; but she saw him through the plate-glass window crossing the courthouse lawn, headed toward the sandwich shop on the other side of the square. She supposed he was getting lunch for himself and Leila.
Catherine decided to go home rather than buy a sandwich. She would definitely be a third wheel.
As she drove, she tried to remember what the refrigerator contained that she could fix quickly.
The only raw ingredient around was lettuce. After eating a limp and unsatisfactory salad, Catherine was assembling a grocery list at the kitchen table when the telephone rang. As she reached up to answer it, she wondered who would be calling her at noon.
The voice that came over the line was so choked as to be almost unrecognizable.
“What are you doing with Martin, you little bitch? What do you mean, getting him into trouble?”
“Mrs. Barnes?” asked Catherine unbelievingly.
Her only answer was a few hiccuping sounds that could have been sobs.
My God, Catherine thought blankly.
“What are you talking about?” she ventured, into a silence so taut she imagined she could feel it vibrating. Melba Barnes, my fellow colorful Southern eccentric, Catherine thought wearily.
“I wanted to catch you at home, you little sneak, not down at the paper office where your little friend Tom Mascalco could listen in and laugh at me, too.”
By now Catherine was recovering from her initial shock. Anger made her blood pump faster.
She had had enough.
Enough of Sheriff Galton’s admonitions; enough of Jewel’s hints about keeping her mouth shut, and Leila’s nasty little confidences; enough mysterious half-threats from Martin Barnes; enough of the dark dealings of Leona Gaites.
In a careful low voice, she said, “I don’t know what the hell you are implying, Mrs. Barnes. But I can tell you that I resent your tone and this entire conversation. Now if you have something to tell me, tell me and then shut up. Because if you ever repeat your suspicions to anyone else in this town, I will slap a lawsuit on you so fast your head will swim.”
Another awful hiccup-sob.
“What were you and Martin doing in that shack, anyway? You told the police you saw him out there. I saw him in your office today, through that big window. I saw him talking to you. I knew then he had been lying about riding around the place. I’ve known for a long time he’s been carrying on, but I never thought it would be with a girl his daughter’s age!”
Catherine closed her eyes and leaned against the wall by the telephone. Yesterday, according to Jewel, Melba Barnes had suspected Leona; today, it was Catherine.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, unaware that she had spoken out loud, until Mrs. Barnes gave a snort on the other end.
“Mrs. Barnes,” Catherine said, in a voice so controlled and furious that she almost frightened herself, “I have no interest in your husband at all. I have never met him anywhere by prearrangement. I passed him by chance on a dirt road Saturday morning.” Catherine had to resist a powerful temptation to tell her where her husband had been (Jewel should be the recipient of this blast, not me!). “When Sheriff Galton asked me if I had seen anyone, I told him I had seen Mr. Barnes. He was in his pickup and I was in my car. We were going in opposite directions. This morning he came by the office to give me your grandchild’s picture to put in the newspaper. I think,” Catherine ended heavily, “that you are crazy, and this whole conversation, if you can call it that, is disgusting.” Then she hung the phone firmly on the wall.
The whole thing struck Catherine as being so sordid that she shook her fingers, as if to shake off the dirt transmitted by the telephone.
Catherine Linton, femme fatale, she thought wryly, when she had become a little calmer. Leila thought Tom and I were lovers; Carl Perkins, too. Now Mrs. Barnes thinks I’ve been screwing her dumb husband on the floor of a shack, with a dead woman beside us.
As she locked up the house, Catherine decided that today she didn’t like anyone very much. She included herself in the group.
Leona’s murder is like kicking over an anthill, she thought. Everyone is scurrying to get under new cover, treading over each other in their haste to escape exposure.
11
T HE AFTERNOON WENT along quietly. The production staff was frantically busy getting the paper from the press and bundling up the issues to be mailed. The press broke down (it always did), and Randall had to change into a jump suit he kept handy, to help Salton Sims get it back into operation.
Few of the production troubles disturbed the reporters’ room. Catherine was profoundly thankful. She felt she had had as much emotion, other peoples’ and her own, as she could deal with for a while. She lay low deliberatly, not looking up from her desk at all, if she could help it.
The telephone didn’t ring. People in Lowfield knew that Tuesday afternoon was frantic in the production department at the paper, and they generally supposed the reporters were busy too. In fact, the reporters regarded Tuesday afternoon as semilegitimate goof-off time.
When Catherine wasn’t poking around figuring out column inches for the next issue, she was staring out the window by her desk, watching people come and go from the courthouse and the shops around the square. She was daydreaming, half-awake, lulled back into a sense of the continuity of the town by the normal sights of ladies coming and going from the grocery, storeowners and their customers chatting in front of the shops, and a town policeman working his way around the square with painstaking slowness, giving out parking tickets. The policeman was preceded by the usual flurry out of the stores and the courthouse as people saw him coming and hastily moved their cars to safety, or added more coins to the meters.
Catherine’s thoughts inevitably drifted to Melba Barnes. She wondered what Sally would say if she knew her mother had accused Catherine, her high school buddy, of having an affair with Sally’s father. Then she wondered what Jewel would say, and had an inward tremor of amusement as she imagined Jewel’s pungent comments.
Catherine couldn’t help feeling pity for crazy Melba Barnes. She tried to picture herself married and suspecting her husband of having a woman on the side. She couldn’t quite think herself into it, but she felt a strong distaste at the idea.
It was the stealthy aspect of adultery, the sneaking and concealment in the face of someone close to you, that made it seem so…slimy. Though I suppose, Catherine reflected, the sneaking is more fun than the actual bedding down, for some people.
The extension on her desk buzzed. Catherine tucked the receiver between ear a
nd shoulder; she was gathering loose paper clips to shove them into their original box.
“I’m sorry,” whispered a voice, and the line went dead.
Melba Barnes was apologizing as abruptly as she had accused. Catherine returned the receiver to its cradle. She wondered whether Mrs. Barnes had ever called Leona and made the same accusations. Catherine wished she hadn’t had that particular idea. Perhaps Melba hadn’t stopped at words, with Leona.
No, quit it, Catherine admonished herself. When will I be able to stop assessing murderous potential in everyone I speak to? When will people stop wondering about my own potential for violence?
My life was so simple, she thought wearily. Now I’m operating upside down.
She was glad when Tom strode into the room, clutching a copy of the newly printed paper, half-wrathful and half-amused over a typo he hadn’t caught in one of his stories.
A local girl had been elected Miss Soybean Products of Lowfield County—amusing enough in itself, at least to Tom. Miss Soybean Products was in law school, which had been misprinted “lay” school. Catherine laughed over this bad joke until Tom threatened to throw water in her face.
“Extended hilarity,” Tom said sarcastically, when Catherine’s giggles had finally trailed off, “is just not your style, Miss Linton.”
That pomposity was enough to set Catherine off again. Leila, attracted by the unaccustomed laughter from Catherine’s corner, appeared in the doorway and looked questioningly until Tom smiled at her.
Leila swept back to her desk, mollified, her bare legs looking revoltingly long and elegant to Catherine’s envious eyes. Tom was transparently gloating as he watched Leila’s retreat from a rear view. He hummed and whistled the rest of the afternoon, and wasn’t as angry as Catherine had supposed he would be when he phoned the garage and found that his car wasn’t ready. In a resigned voice, he asked her for a ride home.
“Of course,” she said. “Is it time to go?”
Sweet and Deadly Page 11