Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

by Charlaine Harris

  “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 LowfieldGazette, 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.
r />   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 counter.

  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.

  As Catherine rocked the pictures in the developing tray, she decided that there was something romantic about photography. She watched, enthralled, as the faces began to emerge from the solution.

  There was a dramatic shot of the speaker, bent over the podium, one arm extended in a point-making gesture. And operating on the theory that faces sold papers, Tom had taken several shots of the assembled Lions listening, with greater or lesser degrees of attention, to the address.

  There was Sheriff Galton, looking bored. These past few days had made an awful difference in the man. Catherine focused on the face beside his: Martin Barnes, obviously daydreaming, perhaps about Jewel and her little house by the highway, she thought wryly. The mayor’s face materialized. He was staring at a roll on his otherwise empty plate, perhaps wondering if anyone would notice if he ate it (he had been battling his paunch for years.)

  There was Carl Perkins, smiling broadly, either at the lieutenant governor’s speech or at some private thought. Randall was beside him, pipe in hand. Then Jerry Selforth’s smooth dark head appeared, his face all eagerness and attention. Jerry would marry a Lowfield girl, she decided, and stay there until he died.

  When the pictures were ready, Catherine no longer had an excuse to linger in the darkroom. She emerged reluctantly, found Tom’s copy of the story, and attached the picture of the lieutenant governor. She wrote the cut line and attached that. Then she typed in Tom’s byline.

  Once again she cast around for something to do.

  There were the weekly columns she had lifted from Tom’s desk. Clipping those columns was definitely necessary, and easy to do.

  She got out her scissors and in a very few moments had cut out the comic strips indicated by date for the following week. The handyman column was easy, too. She imagined that the one about building rose trellises was suitable for summer, and her scissors snipped it out.

  To prolong the little task, Catherine read all the Dr. Croft columns. There were seven left in this batch. The one in the previous week’s paper had been on appendicitis. Catherine remembered that it had made Tom a little nervous, since he still possessed his appendix.

  Well, here was one on Crohn’s disease. What about that? Catherine scanned it and decided it didn’t appeal to her.

  Some of these are really exotic, she thought. Dr. Croft must be running out of ailments. My father would be glad of that.

  Then her eye caught the word Armadillo.

  She read the column through once, twice. Pity and loathing made her heart sick.

  When she was able to rise, she went to the darkroom and upclipped Tom’s Lion’s Club group picture. She unearthed photo files from ten years ago, five years, two years. She leafed through them and laid a number of pictures side by side.

  She understood now why her parents had died, why Leona and Tom had been beaten to death.

  Her father had been an innocent. Leona had been foolish, criminally and fatally foolish. Tom had just been in the way.

  The day of her parents’ funeral passed drearily through her mind again…And the day she and Leona had moved the filing cabinets into the attic of the old office. Leona hadn’t taken a file from the cabinets that day, as Catherine had vaguely suspected after hearing Betty’s story. Instead she had put something in; had hidden it there for safekeeping.

  She had to produce it at least once, Catherine thought dully. To prove she had it; so she could get her damned money. She hid it because she was scared he would break into her house to steal it…She wouldn’t have had any leverage after that. Didn’t Leona know how desperate he was? Or was she blinded by greed? Maybe she did see blackmail as a way to avenge my father’s death. She paid…He did break into her house to steal it, and he killed her in the process. He came prepared to kill her, with a baseball bat. What a convenient and appropriate weapon.

  Catherine twisted her hair in a knot and held it on top of her head. She closed her eyes and thought of all the questions she had answered in the past few days without even being aware they had been asked. Her ignorance had caused Tom’s death. That would be lodged in her conscience for the rest of her life.

  Give the devil his due, she thought savagely. He didn’t kill Leila. But then she was screaming, and he thought someone would come…Not enough time to kill Leila or search those cabinets…What a shock he must have had when she began yelling. It was bad enough that Tom was there, when he thought Tom was out on a date with Leila.

  And of course he hasn’t killed me, Catherine thought. He has tried every route in order to avoid killing me. He doesn’t want to…He’s fond of me. And he’s probably very very sorry about Mother and Father. And Tom, my friend-too bad about Tom Mascalco. He was in the way. Of course, Leona asked for it.

  Catherine shuddered.

  Yes, very very sorry about Glenn and Rachel Linton.

  It was a matter of pride and vengeance that she finish the thing herself. And a matter of habit: she had done things for herself for s
o long.

  And then there was the fact that she had caused Tom’s death. In the first place, she had given the murderer information indicating that Tom was an obstacle in his path; in the second place, she had not called the police when she had heard the rustling in the grass.

  Her rational mind told her she had had nothing to do with the car troubles that had caused Tom to remain in the old office instead of going out with Leila; or with the couple’s going to bed instead of using Leila’s car to go to a movie, for example. But her rational mind also told her that words from her own mouth had led, however indirectly, to Tom’s death.

  Perhaps she could have saved Tom; nothing could have saved her parents.

  When she thought again of the reason they had died, rage came over her. It had been gaining strength, quenching the pity and revulsion, while she sat brooding. The rage shook her as nothing had ever shaken her before. She felt as if she was being burned from the inside out.

  She looked at the clock. She had forgotten about the time. Now she saw it was 5:30. Most of the staff must have gone by while she sat deaf and dumb.

  Time to go, Catherine, she told herself.

  She covered her typewriter and picked up her purse. She put the Dr. Croft column on Randall’s desk, in silent apology. She thought of trying to find him. She was sure he was somewhere in the building, maybe in the production room working on the press with Salton. But a rising sense of urgency carried her out to her car.

  She drove the short distance home with special care. She didn’t trust herself.

  She was so fixed on her course that she was bewildered when she saw a strange car with two people in it parked in front of her house. She saw two heads turning to follow her car into the garage, and realized she couldn’t avoid finding out who they were and what they wanted.

  As she walked across the lawn to meet them, she noticed the Tennessee license plate on their car. A man and a woman, middle-aged, attractive.

  It was hard for her to understand what they were saying. Her ears weren’t at fault, she discovered slowly; their voices were choked and hoarse. The pretty dark woman, still young, with the red-edged eyes, was Tom’s mother, Catherine gradually realized; and the man with olive skin and light hair was his father.