Sweet and Deadly

by Charlaine Harris

  “What happened?” Catherine asked carefully.

  “She was listening,” said Betty. “She was listening at the door.” Betty’s voice was flat. “I knew that was wrong, your daddy wouldn’t want that. Why else did he tell her to go home? But I couldn’t say nothing.”

  Catherine could understand that. Betty would never have said anything to Leona.

  “I put down my mop real quiet, and I went to the door of the room so I could watch her. She was just drinking it in. Her head was so close to that door you couldn’t have got a broomstraw between them.

  “Your daddy put his hand on the doorknob and opened it a little to leave, or maybe to tell the other man it was time for him to leave. Miss Leona stepped back right smart then, she sure did. She went and hid in your daddy’s office. She didn’t go by me, you see. She didn’t see me,” Betty emphasized. “I stayed where I was. I was scared, by that time. Your daddy, he wasn’t mad, he was just upset…But that other man, he was mad.

  “Your daddy took a step out of the room, but he stood with his back to me and talked some more. He says—I could hear him then—he says, ‘You’re going to have to face it. It’s the law. I’m sorry, more sorry than I can say. But I have to report it. I got to tell…’ This I didn’t understand, Miss Catherine. Something about the government. Then he says, ‘You know things have changed, it’s not like it used to be. After a while, you can come home. No one need know. And you’ll feel a lot better.’

  “I didn’t understand that part, either, Miss Catherine. The doctor said something about animals, some kind of animal. I don’t remember the name of it. It was something they got in Texas, I know. I seen it on TV the other day, and when they call it by name, it was the same name. Begin with an A.”

  Aardvark? Catherine wondered incredulously. She rummaged in her mind for another animal whose name began with an A. Nothing. She pushed that aside, for Betty was still talking.

  “—I stepped back where I was. I didn’t want your daddy thinking I was listening in like Miss Leona. He went out the back of the office, all upset. He wouldn’t have seen me if I’d jumped out in front of him and yelled. The other man, he came out after a minute. I heard him going down the hall and out the front door. So I didn’t see him. I don’t know to this day who it was. But Miss Leona knew, she saw him.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone,” Catherine said.

  “No. My Percy, my youngest, was worried about getting that job…Little Betty run off, leaving them poor kids. Your folks got killed. I forgot all about it until Miss Leona got herself killed. Then I heard you’re in trouble, some folks think you did it. When you didn’t come after I left you that note, I had Percy tell you I had to see you. All this may be nothing, Miss Catherine. But no one ever asked me. Now I think all the time. Remember, I can’t go nowhere because of the arthritis.”

  Betty plodded through her multitude of excuses again. Catherine believed her. It probably hadn’t seemed very important to her, except from the standpoint of warning her to watch out for Leona. And no one had asked Betty any questions.

  “How close did you say this was to my parents’ death?” Catherine asked.

  “Three days, I think. I can’t call to mind the day of the week. But three days, maybe two.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t know who the man was?” Catherine asked, knowing the answer.

  “That’s all I know, Miss Catherine.”

  “I have to go now,” Catherine said shakily.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said sharply. Then she collected herself. “I’m sorry, Betty. I’m glad you told me. I’ll come again when I can.”

  “You bring that beau of yours by,” said Betty, more cheerful now that her mind was at ease.

  “I will, Betty. Goodbye. Thank you.”

  Catherine walked through the sunflowers in a daze.

  The children were scattered in the street, playing an amputated form of baseball. Catherine automatically smiled at them, and drove out of the black section very slowly, to avoid chickens and children.

  She didn’t want to look in anyone’s face right then.

  She drove out of Lowfield a little way, just to the west of the highway where the last houses straggled to a stop. There was a small area full of trees, surrounded by a high metal fence. She turned into it, under the arch over the open gate, and parked her car in the usual spot. Beyond the fence, she could see a tractor in the fields. Except for that distant human, she was alone.

  Lately she had not gone there as much as she had at first.

  The headstones still looked new. The graves were neat. Catherine made donations to the church fund that paid the caretaker.

  She had always liked it there, even as a child. She had read all the older headstones, and knew the more striking epitaphs by heart. It was always peaceful, always quiet.

  She sat beside her family. Her parents were beside her grandparents. And her great-grandparents.

  She sat beside them and cried.

  When the big gush died down to occasional tears, and she was still shaky, but quieted, she walked through the cemetery. It was a good place to think without interruption.

  She tried to picture Betty on the witness stand.

  She couldn’t.

  She thought, Antelope? Angus?

  Then she wiped off her face and returned to her car.

  13

  C ATHERINE WAS IMMEDIATELY aware of the eyes. They peered from the door of the production room, and from the reception area. Two people were waiting there when she came in. They were obviously at a loss for what to do, without Leila at the desk to direct them. The door to Randall’s office was shut, and the sound of typing came from behind it.

  She felt a glaze harden on her face. She moved stiffly. One of the two visitors was an advertiser, delivering his ad for the next issue. He was startled by the sight of Catherine. Perhaps he had hoped to go back to the production room and have a good chat with the staff. Catherine took the ad and calmly assured him that she would deliver it herself.

  The second visitor was the librarian, Mrs. Weilenmann.

  “I couldn’t reach you at home,” she told Catherine. “I just wanted you to know how much I’m—thinking of you.”

  “Thank you,” Catherine said stiffly. “I can’t talk about it, please.”

  Mrs. Weilenmann patted her on the shoulder, then left.

  Randall’s door opened.

  “I thought it was you,” he said. “Come in here.”

  She gestured toward the empty desk. “I ought to be out here.”

  “Mother’s been handling it. She had to go out for a minute, but she’ll be back.”

  When he had closed the door, he held her to him. Catherine looked past his ear blindly.

  He released her and looked into her face. She slowly reached up to touch his cheek.

  “You should have stayed at home,” he said gently.

  “No, no point in that.”

  “Things here are pretty unpleasant,” he said.

  He looked so depressed and so much older that Catherine was jolted into remembering something she had, incredibly, forgotten: that Randall feared Leona Gaites had been blackmailing his mother.

  “Randall,” she said tentatively, “surely you’re not worried about Miss Angel?”

  He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  “What? Oh, no. I did what you suggested. I just asked her. You were right. She said, ‘No, if Leona Gaites had approached me with any such proposition, I would have told her to publish and be damned, and that she was welcome to use my paper to publish in!’ I can’t understand now why I even worried about it. I guess just knowing we had a skeleton in our closet, knowing Leona had been taking advantage of skeletons to make money…”

  “Is there something else you’re worried about?”

  “Aside from hiring Tom’s replacement, and wondering when I can expect that bitch Leila to come back, so I can get her to train a new receptionist?” he
asked sharply. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m just tired. I want all this to be over. I want this town to return to normal. I want to have time to see you in a regular relationship, without the stress and blood all around us.”

  She wondered whether they would have become as close, if it hadn’t been for those very conditions of stress and blood. She thought not.

  “We can’t worry about that now,” Catherine said. “We have to wait for this to end. Then there’ll be time to lie in the sun and go back to the levee. There’s something I want to tell you, something I just found out.”

  Randall’s extension buzzed at that second, and he bent over his desk to pick it up. He gave Catherine an exasperated look of apology.

  While he spoke into the receiver, Catherine’s gaze wandered over the collection of framed pictures and certificates covering the walls of his office. Four generations of Gerrard editors had occupied the room, so a great many of these mementos were yellowed. One piece of paper still white with freshness caught her eye.

  “In appreciation of the services of Randall Gerrard and Dr. Jerry Selforth,” Catherine read with difficulty, “from the Junior Baseball Club of Lowfield County.”

  I didn’t know Randall and Jerry were coaches, Catherine thought idly.

  She pictured Randall in uniform at the plate, hitting a ball over the bleachers, throwing down the bat and heading for first base.

  Throwing down the bat…She stiffened. Before she could stop herself, another image arose: Randall’s powerful arms swinging the bat at a blackmailing nurse, and at Tom. Maybe Leona hadn’t approached Angel Gerrard. Maybe she had approached Randall instead.

  You fool, she lashed at herself savagely. Don’t you dare think for one minute…After all baseball bats are hardly rare or hard to buy.

  But how accessible the weapon was to Randall. How easily he could obtain that heavy length of wood, if he needed a weapon.

  She knew her judgment was clouded by physical exhaustion and grief. She stared at Randall while he wrangled with the advertiser on the other end of the line.

  If I’m wrong (and of course I’m wrong), he will never know I thought for one minute that he was connected with murder, she told herself.

  Catherine lowered her eyes so they wouldn’t meet Randall’s inadvertently.

  Maybe, just for now, I shouldn’t tell him what Betty said, she reflected hesitantly. After all, her story is only confirmation of a half-baked theory of his, about Leona overhearing something at Daddy’s office. It may not mean anything, right? And everyone who might have known something about this case is dead. Everybody but me…and Betty. Betty is the only possible living eyewitness to any portion of this whole chain of deaths.

  Catherine realized she had just talked herself out of telling Randall about Betty’s little story. She had reached a test of faith she couldn’t pass.

  Randall was still involved with his caller. Catherine tried to assume a natural expression and rose from her chair. When Randall glanced up inquiringly, she made typing gestures with her fingers. He nodded that he understood, and she eased out of his office. She moved toward her desk like an automaton and, once settled in her chair, folded her hands stiffly in her lap and stared at the wall. She was as miserable as she ever had been in her life.

  When Randall’s mother passed through the room, Catherine had to force herself to speak.

  “Miss Angel,” she said in a lifeless voice, “if you’d get me Tom’s personnel file I’d appreciate it. I have to write a story.”

  Angel eyed Catherine sharply and then nodded briskly. She brought Tom’s file to Catherine’s desk, along with Randall’s notes from his conversation with Jerry Selforth and the sheriff. Randall had been prepared to write the story if she had not come in, Catherine realized dully.

  She rolled paper into the platen, flexed her tense fingers, took a deep breath, and began to type.

  “Tom Mascalco, 21, a reporter for the Lowfield Gazette, died Tuesday night as the result of wounds sustained in a struggle in his home.”

  When the story was almost finished, she had to buzz Randall to ask when Tom’s funeral services would be held.

  “Friday,” he said wearily. “Holy Mary of the Assumption, in Memphis. Ten o’clock. We’ll have to go.”

  It was the only time she spoke to him for the rest of the day.

  During the afternoon, Sheriff Galton sent Deputy Ralph Carson to go through Tom’s desk, to see if it contained any notes that might be regarded as clues. Ralph was courteous but remote. They might have barely known each other, instead of having dated off and on through high school, sharing hayrides, dances, and drinks. He was married now, with two children, Catherine remembered. But the gulf between them was far wider than the gap in time and circumstances.

  He’s definitely keeping his distance until he sees which way the cat jumps, she thought. But he has to be polite. After all, what if I didn’t do it?

  And provoking that courtesy, making him speak when he wanted to finish his job and leave, gave her an awful enjoyment.

  The notes Tom had made on Leona’s murder contained nothing that was not commonly known.

  While Catherine identified items and notes to help the deputy, she also transferred Gazette material—sheets of columns and comic strips—to her own desk. She would have to handle that now.

  As she gathered up the columns, she saw Tom leaning back in his chair, reading them with lazy interest, trying to decide which ones should be in next week’s paper…pulling on his mustache, smiling, as he no doubt thought about persuading Leila to bed that evening.

  For a moment her grasp weakened, and the sheets almost cascaded to the floor; but the next second she had hold of them again, and put them on her desk.

  Then there was Tom’s camera, in a bottom desk drawer. He had preferred to use his own, instead of the Gazette’s. It had film in it, she saw, and she realized she had to remove and develop the film before the camera could be returned to Tom’s parents.

  She thought of a question to ask Ralph Carson.

  “About the house,” she said abruptly.

  He looked surprised.

  “The one Tom rented from me,” she explained. “What can I do about getting it cleaned? His parents will have to get in there to get his things out. They can’t see that.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, you could see if you could hire some prisoners from the jail to do it. Some trustees, maybe. They might be glad to do it for the money. Why don’t you ask the sheriff?”

  “I’ll do that,” she said, and they continued their fruitless sifting. All they found were a couple of magazines that made Carson turn red and caused Catherine to lift her eyebrows. She pitched them into Tom’s wastebasket.

  It was just as well, she decided, that she had gone through the desk instead of someone else.

  When Carson left, his hands empty and his face glum, Catherine sat down at her desk and looked around aimlessly. She had to do something.

  Her eyes lit on Tom’s camera. She would develop the film in it. No one would bother her in the darkroom.

  The reporters’ tiny darkroom was to the left of the door that led to the production department. Catherine grabbed up the camera, buzzed Angel to tell her she was still incommunicado, and dived into the little room, turning on the red light that shone outside when film was being processed. Now no one could talk to her for a good length of time.

  The smock she wore to protect her clothes from chemicals was hanging in its usual place on a hook on the door. Tom’s heavy denim work apron was beside it. On an impulse, she ran her hands through the pockets of the apron. There was nothing in them, and her mouth twisted in self-derision as she let it fall back against the door.

  She pulled on her smock, snapping it down the front, and looked around the darkroom to make sure where everything was before she turned off the lights.

  While the film developed there was nothing to do but wait. Catherine lit a cigarette and propped herself against the high c
ounter.

  This was the nicest moment of a jarring day. She lounged in the eerie red glow, safe from intrusion because of the light shining outside the door. The Gazette’s little darkroom satisfied her catlike fondness for small places.

  The “bing!” of the timer roused her from her reverie. She finished developing the film, her mind at ease and refreshed by the isolation and darkness.

  Other places had big beautiful dryers, Catherine thought enviously. The Gazette had a clothesline and some clamps and a fan.

  While the film was hanging from the clothesline, drying, Catherine switched on the light and examined the half-used roll of film. The pictures were, as she had supposed, Tom’s shots of the Lion’s Club meeting, featuring its guest speaker, the lieutenant governor. In reversed black and white, Catherine saw shots of a speaker at a podium, and men seated in rows at a U-shaped collection of tables, the plates in front of them showing up as black circles.

  Somehow, Tom’s last pictures should have been of something more memorable, Catherine thought.

  He had been by far a better photographer than she, but he had been too impatient to enjoy darkroom work. She had often developed his film while she did her own.

  He made me feel like a regular Martha, Catherine thought: and despite her weariness and confusion, the peace of the little room relaxed her so that she could smile at the recollection. She was beginning to assimilate the fact that Tom was gone.

  She decided to enlarge all the shots. It would take up time, while keeping her busy with something she enjoyed. And besides, she was not a good interpreter of negatives. Tom had been able to run a look down the film and choose this one or that one, as the best shots. Catherine had to put much more time and thought into picking out pictures.

  She let out a sigh and set about enlarging the five shots Tom had taken. The Gazette’s enlarger was old and cranky, had been secondhand when purchased. But she had always felt she had a kind of silent understanding with the enlarger. And sure enough, today it cooperated.