“Even as tired as we are,” he said, “I think I’d better take the other bed.”
12
WHEN SHE GOT up the next morning he was gone.
He had pulled the bed together, she found, when she peeped shyly into her old room. She was disappointed but a little relieved. She would have liked to see his head on the pillow, but her soul craved the solitude of her coffemaking and reading at the table.
That might be a problem later, she thought hopefully.
He had left a note in the kitchen, propped against a full coffeepot. Bless him, she thought, peering at his spiky scrawl.
“Don’t come in to work,” Catherine read. “I looked in at you this morning and had to overcome a mighty temptation, but you need sleep more than anything else at this point.” She smiled.
She saw through the steam of her first cup of coffee that it was nine o’clock. She had to go to the sheriff ’s office to make her statement, but she was going to take her time. She needed to collect herself before facing Sheriff Galton.
Of course she would go in to work after that. She knew Randall would be run ragged if she didn’t show up. No reporters, no one to answer the phone, since Leila undoubtedly would not come in. And that telephone would be ringing off the wall.
Yes, she would go to work.
After she had had some coffee and a few cigarettes, she realized there was no use trying to make anything normal of the morning. How deeply I’m embedded in my little rut, she thought. A friend of mine died last night, while I was watching, and I try to drink my X number of cups of coffee, smoke X number of cigarettes, and stick to my piddling little routine.
She got dressed and drove over to the little brick building in front of the jail.
It was like her arrival there Saturday morning. To her horror, she began shaking as she pulled onto the concrete apron in front of the swinging door. She knew what she would see, and she saw it. There was Mary Jane Cory, typing, her unrealistic hair sprayed into an elaborate structure of swirls.
But the pattern was broken, after all, when the black deputy, Eakins, came out of the sheriff ’s office and approached her.
“Miss Linton,” he said reluctantly, his voice hardly more than a mumble. Catherine turned to face him and waited cautiously.
“My mother wants to see you.” Before Catherine could say anything, before she could tell him she didn’t have any time that day, he went on. “She wants to see you awful bad. She’s been on at me about it for two days now.”
“What is it about?” She guiltily remembered the note in the can of brownies.
“She won’t tell me. You know how stubborn and…old-fashioned she is.”
“Old-fashioned” must mean “Uncle Tom,” Catherine decided. Yes, Betty was. It made Catherine as uncomfortable as it made her son.
I just can’t cope with Betty’s “Miss Catherine’s” this morning, she thought desperately. She was about to say no, when Percy Eakins gave her a pleading look it obviously hurt him to give. His pride was aching like arthritis on a rainy day, Catherine realized.
“I’ll go after I make my statement,” she said.
Then Mary Jane looked up from her typing, and Catherine became caught up in the mills of the law.
Catherine’s statement was longer and a little tricky this time (since she was concealing something, though it seemed a harmless thing to conceal), and she had time to notice that Mary Jane was no longer sympathetic. She was, if possible, even more briskly professional than usual. Her eyes on Catherine’s face were cold and speculative.
Catherine realized for the first time that this might be the pattern for the rest of her life, unless the murderer was caught. There was not enough evidence to arrest her: there was only the coincidence of two dead people turning up in Catherine Linton’s immediate vicinity. The sheriff knew she couldn’t have physically accomplished the murders, she thought. But that would make little difference in Lowfield talk.
She was so depressed when she left the sheriff ’s office that she figured going to see Betty Eakins couldn’t make her feel worse.
The black part of Lowfield was as close to a ghetto as a tiny town could get. Some of the streets were unpaved, and the children ran and played in them, only reluctantly moving aside for cars to pass. Some of the houses were clean, neatly kept, and sound; but most of them leaned and staggered, barely able to contain the life that spilled out of them.
Betty’s house was at a stage in between. It was still upright, but it was beginning to slide. The paint was peeling, and the yard was growing wild.
There were no sidewalks, of course, and the street, paved perhaps twenty years ago, was narrow. Catherine pulled as close to the house as she dared, and hoped no other car would want to pass while she was inside.
Children gathered on the other side of the street to watch her get out of the car. They ranged in age from three to ten, Catherine estimated, and their clothing was in various stages of disrepair, ranging from neat-but-dusty to out-and-out rags. They were barefoot, smiling, and shy. She gave them a tentative smile. The shyest covered their mouths with their hands, but let their returning grins shine through.
She pushed through the burgeoning sunflowers in the yard and knocked on the doorsill. The wooden door was open. The screen door was almost off its hinges.
“Who that?” came a creaky query from the darkness of the house’s back rooms. The shades had been drawn against the heat.
“Catherine,” she called.
“Miss Catherine!”
Betty’s halting steps approached. Catherine could see her emerging from the kitchen. Betty must have been close to seventy-five. She was thin, bent, and gnarled. She was putting in her teeth as she walked, and was dressed in a formidably clean green and white housedress and white apron.
Catherine had never seen Betty without an apron on.
“Come on in! Come on in!” A chicken ran across the yard, and Betty made an automatic flapping gesture in its direction.
Catherine stepped into the room and looked around her for a place to sit. There was a sack of snap beans and a bowl half-full of prepared ones by a chair, so Catherine chose the sofa, which was covered by an old chenille bedspread, and lowered herself gingerly.
“You seen my boy this morning? He done told you I wanted to talk with you?”
“Yes, he did,” Catherine said. “Thanks for the brownies. They were great. How are you feeling?”
“Getting old, getting old. My bones is hurting. But I reckon I’ll live a while longer, make a few more batches of brownies.”
Betty took up the sack of beans, then put it down when she remembered she had company.
“No, go on,” Catherine said hastily.
Slowly Betty’s hands returned to their work. Her head bent over the bowl. All Catherine could see was white hair braided and pinned in circles.
“Reckon I got to tell you something,” Betty murmured. “You in trouble now…Reckon I got to speak up. I ain’t told nobody, didn’t want any trouble. But you my little girl. You in some kind of mess. I hear people talking.”
The two women sat quietly. Catherine couldn’t think of anything to say, and Betty was thinking about what to say next.
“That boy that got killed last night, was he your beau?”
“No,” she said.
Betty looked up at her, relieved. “You got a beau?”
“Yes. Randall Gerrard,” Catherine said firmly.
“Gerrard. I know Sadie who works for them. His daddy run the paper?”
“He’s dead now. Randall runs it.”
“The Gerrards got money? Is he good to you?”
“Yes.”
“You know his mamma? She like you?”
“I think so.”
“I went to your mamma and daddy’s wedding. Your daddy,” Betty said slowly. “He asked me to come. He said, ‘You got to be there, Betty. It wouldn’t be right without you.’”
Betty was building up to something, rambling around the cor
ners of what she really wanted to say. Suddenly Catherine was curious.
“They’ve been dead about six months now,” Betty said thoughtfully. “Nobody asked me any questions then. I was glad. Percy, he was trying to get on working for the sheriff. Little Betty ran off to Detroit about then. Left me her kids to look after. I had the woes of Job, seemed like. So when your folks died, I just didn’t think about something I should’ve spoken up about. But then, no sheriff come asking me questions. That would’ve brought it to my mind. I would’ve spoken up. But-I just had too many other things worrying me.”
Betty’s fingers were moving steadily, breaking off the ends of the beans, then snapping them into pieces. Catherine watched the bowl fill up.
“But you in trouble now,” Betty muttered. Her fingers stilled as she reached a decision. She looked up into Catherine’s white face.
“You got a little sun on you for once, didn’t you?” Betty observed. She cleared her throat. “Well, it was this way. I never did like Miss Leona. I know”-Betty lifted a dark hand to forestall an admonition Catherine would never dream of giving-“it ain’t up to me to like or not like. God made us all, we all got a place. But I didn’t like her. I saw she didn’t care for you or your mamma. So I watched her close, when she was in you-all’s house. And even after I quit working for your mother, you know, I went and cleaned your daddy’s office when the woman who worked for him got sick-or drunk, most often,” Betty said severely. She frowned over the erring maid for a moment.
“Here I am wandering,” she resumed. “Well. About three days before your folks got taken, I was over to your daddy’s office late in the afternoon. That Callie, she had been on a long one, but you don’t care about that: it ain’t the point of all this.”
Catherine reached up to wipe the sweat from her forehead, and found that her hand was shaking.
“Your daddy and some man was in the examination room.” Betty’s eyes met Catherine’s.
Catherine nodded jerkily.
“They was talking. They was raising their voices. I knew something was wrong. I never heard raised voices in your daddy’s office before. It was late. Wasn’t no one there but me and Miss Leona.” Betty’s face went wry with dislike. She heaved a heavy breath and went on.
“I was mopping the second examination room. My door was open, but the door to the other room, where your daddy and the man was, ’course it was closed. I could hear voices, but not what they were saying.
“I seen Miss Leona come along the hall, you know how quiet she moved in them white shoes. She passed by the door of my room. I wasn’t making no noise; I don’t think she knew I was there. She was ’spose to be gone. I heard your daddy tell her to go on home, he had seen everybody. But then I heard her messing ’round in the medicine room, and I guess she heard the other man come in and was so nosy she had to find out who it was. She didn’t like nothing going on at that office that she didn’t know all about. For that matter, she didn’t like your daddy doing nothing if she didn’t know what it was and why.” And Betty shot Catherine a significant look with her yellowed eyes.
“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 wer
e 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
CATHERINE 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.”
Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog Page 14
