Sweet and Deadly

by Charlaine Harris

  “I thought I saw a police car here this morning. I hope you haven’t had any trouble?” asked Molly Perkins with a forced air of casualness.

  So that was the “company”; that was the purpose of this visit. The food, Catherine thought quickly, was an excuse to unearth interesting facts to relate at the beauty parlor.

  “No,” said Catherine calmly. “No trouble.”

  Against the stone wall of Catherine’s face, the little woman was visibly stymied.

  “I guess Jimmy Galton has been mighty busy,” she said nervously.

  “I imagine,” said Catherine.

  The ensuing silence lasted a moment too long to be comfortable. Damned if I’ll break it, Catherine thought.

  “Well, I’ve got to be getting back; I hope you enjoy that gumbo.”

  And Mrs. Perkins trotted top-heavily to the front door, with Catherine again trailing behind.

  “I got a post card from the Drummonds,” Mrs. Perkins said abruptly.

  “Oh?”

  “They’re in Florence, Italy. They’ll be back in another week,” Mrs. Perkins offered. “They’re having a wonderful time, they say.”

  Catherine nodded.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy the gumbo,” Mrs. Perkins repeated desperately.

  “I’m sure I will.” She noticed that Molly Perkins did not offer the quick hug and kiss that was customary on food-bringing visits.

  “Can’t let all your air conditioning run out the door!” Mrs. Perkins concluded with artificial gaiety.

  And off she trotted with an anxious backward glance at Catherine, who remained in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest until the woman had gotten down the walkway and turned right to cross the street to her own house.

  When Miss Molly had entered the mansion’s front door, Catherine slammed her own violently. “Talk talk talk,” she muttered. Miss Molly had come to spy and pry, to report on Catherine’s mental state and demeanor. And yet Catherine knew the pigeon-breasted little lady had also been genuinely worried about her well-being.

  The phone rang as Catherine stood in the middle of the living room brooding over this duality in small-town life. She was bitterly sure the caller was not Randall: How could it be? That was who she wanted to talk to. She decided it was another sympathy call from some high school classmate she hadn’t seen in years.

  The irritating sound served to trigger the anger Galton and Molly Perkins had generated. Catherine said something that undoubtedly shocked the very curtains in her mother’s living room. She had never in her life been able to take a telephone off the hook. The alternative was to leave the telephone. Catherine marched out her back door and across the lawn to Tom’s house.

  She pounded, rather than knocked, on the back door.

  She was holding her heavy hair up off her neck, to take advantage of a slight breeze—maybe it would cool her down—when Tom answered. He was almost as surprised to receive a visit from Catherine as she was to be making one.

  She had not entered the old office since Tom had moved in.

  “Well, the landlady comes to call,” he said easily, opening the screen door for her to enter. “Just come this way through the foyer, and don’t scuff the marble.”

  Catherine looked around as she went through the hall. Dr. Linton’s office had been a house before he bought it; now it was a house again. Her father had used the rooms at the back of the old house for examinations and storage. They were now Tom’s kitchen and bedrooms. The living room had been Dr. Linton’s waiting room; now it had cycled back. Catherine took stock of the reversion.

  “You recognize, of course, my furniture period—Modern American Battered.”

  Tom’s description was accurate. His couch and chairs were covered with mismatched throws, to hide the worst holes from sight—but not from sensation, as Catherine found when she sat down.

  But the place was neater than she had expected. The couch, where Tom obviously had been lying, had a sad old trunk exactly centered before it to serve as a coffee table. On the trunk was a neat pile of magazines, a telephone aligned with the pile, and what Catherine supposed was a cigarette box beside a large cheap ashtray.

  “You keep it nice,” Catherine offered.

  “Oh, Mother Mascalco brought her boy up right,” Tom said with a grin. She noticed that Tom wasn’t sloppy in dress even on the weekend. He was wearing a sports shirt obviously straight from the laundry; and, amazingly, his jeans had creases. “The bed, I have to admit, is not made. You wouldn’t be interested in seeing the bedroom?”

  Catherine shook her head with a smile. “We wouldn’t suit,” she said. “Besides, what happened to your fiancée in Memphis? I thought one reason you took the job here was because you could drive up to see her on weekends.”

  “She dumped me,” Tom said, with an attempt at lightness. “Haven’t you noticed that I’ve been lurking around here the past two weekends?”

  Well, yes, she had noticed, kind of. But she had vaguely assumed he had fetched the girl from Memphis for some weekend housekeeping. Tom’s visits to her house had been during the past two weeks, now that she came to think of it.

  “Stuck here for nothing,” Catherine said, making a tactful effort to match Tom’s light tone. “Well, this job will look good on your résumé.”

  “Yeah,” he said morosely. “Want something to drink? Beer, orange juice? I have some milk, too,” he added apologetically, “but I think it’s past its prime. Or dope?” He opened the cigarette box, and Catherine saw that it held at least fifteen rolled joints.

  “Yes to the beer,” she said.

  “Turning into an alcoholic,” Tom said with a mocking shake of the head, as he unfolded his lanky frame from the low couch and went into the kitchen.

  “You better watch out with this stuff,” Catherine called after him, putting the lid back on the cigarette box. She wandered around the room, then followed him to the kitchen. It too was neat, without being exactly clean. “This little house sits in the county, you know,” she said “and you’d have Galton to contend with rather than the town police.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he said incredulously. “Why isn’t the road in front of this house the city limit? There’s only cotton fields on the other side of it! I feel like a planter every time I go out the front door!”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said. She was looking around the kitchen, which her father had used for the shelving of medicines and supplies of plastic gloves and tongue depressors. The little stool Leona had used to get supplies from the top shelf was still sitting by the door. “The line runs right through my backyard.”

  Tom shook his head darkly at this piece of town planning, and Catherine wandered back out into the living room. The office—the house, she corrected herself—was as familiar to her as her own home, and it felt strange being a guest in it.

  She sat down in the caved-in chair and leaned forward to see what magazines Tom bought. A photography glossy, Playboy, Time. The phone placed so neatly by the stack was a princess type. On the smooth back of the receiver Tom had pasted a list of phone numbers. It was not an extensive list. Tom was not integrated into the town’s life yet, since he had been gone on weekends for the past months. Catherine noted that her own number topped the list. He really doesn’t know any girls, she thought wryly.

  But Tom was attractive in a long dark way, and Leila, the Gazette secretary-receptionist, had been giving him the eye ever since he started work. With the fiancée out of the picture, maybe Tom would wake up to Leila’s adoring brown eyes.

  “How did your dad stand having his office and house so close?” he asked as he handed Catherine her can of beer.

  “The house I live in now was my grandparents’,” she explained. “When my dad finished medical school and moved back in with them, they were already getting old. They had him late, and he was an only child. So he wanted to be close to them in case of an emergency, and my mother didn’t mind living with them. This house was up for sale. So it was co
nvenient to him.” She sighed. “Things were different then. People would come at night—” and Catherine stopped dead.

  She rose abruptly and walked straight to the door leading to the hall. She examined the door frame.

  “Termites?” Tom asked silkily.

  “Smartass,” Catherine said with irritation. “No, look at this.”

  He joined her.

  “It’s a buzzer, like a doorbell, and it rings in the master bedroom in my house. Dad had it put in so that if emergencies came at night, people could come into this waiting room and buzz him. I told you things were different then. He left the front door unlocked, only locked this door opening into the hall. I had completely forgotten about it.”

  “My God, you mean I could ring for you?” Tom leered theatrically.

  “Yes, but you’d better not!”

  “It still works?”

  “I guess so,” said Catherine, dismayed. “Now don’t go playing jokes on me, you hear?”

  For a moment Tom looked as mischievous as an eight-year-old with a frog in his pocket. Then his thin lips settled into an unusual line of sobriety.

  “No, I promise, Catherine,” he said. “You’ve had enough shocks.”

  “Thank you,” Catherine said with feeling. She sat back down.

  Tom lit a joint. “Sure you don’t want some? Make you feel better,” he advised her.

  She shook her head. “Did you buy that here?” she asked curiously.

  “Yes,” he answered, after he expelled the smoke he had been holding deep in his lungs. “The other night. My first Lowfield dope run.”

  “Not from Leona, surely?” Catherine asked impulsively.

  “Christ, no!” Tom stared at her. “What the hell made you think that?”

  But Catherine didn’t want to tell him that the sheriff had hinted that Leona had had something from her father’s office—presumably medical equipment. She felt foolish for even thinking of Leona as a marijuana processor. Did you need medical things to prepare it to smoke? She could see Tom worrying over her rash question like a dog with an especially meaty bone.

  “Come on, honey, you know something,” Tom coaxed.

  He’s sure not short on charm when he wants something, Catherine told herself. Tom had a convincing way of fixing his heavily lashed brown eyes on a potential source of information with melting effect; but Catherine had seen the trick too many times to be swayed.

  “Save that for Leila,” she said callously.

  “Leila?” Tom asked. “What is this about Leila?”

  His vanity, so badly bruised by his fiancée, was fully aroused. Catherine could tell she wasn’t going to get out of answering his question.

  “Oh, she likes you,” she said reluctantly, regretting she had introduced the subject. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed it.” But he hadn’t, that was plain. He stroked his villainous mustache in a pleased way.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” he said thoughtfully.

  “And just out of high school, and never been out of Lowfield,” Catherine said warningly. Now shut up, she told herself. You’ve already made one mistake.

  She didn’t want to compound it by being fosterer and confidant to a relationship she thought would surely end in trouble. Tom was vain and immature; and Leila was too far gone on him before any relationship had even begun, and so very young.

  Who am I, God? Catherine asked herself harshly. Quit predicting. You’re not exactly the world’s authority on men and women. How many dates have you had lately?

  “Didn’t you go out on Friday?” she asked Tom, changing the subject so she could stop feeling guilty. “Have a date?”

  “No,” he said sharply.

  “I wasn’t spying,” she said indignantly. “I heard your car, and you know how hard it is to mistake any other car for yours.” (A defensive jab; Tom’s Volkswagen was notably noisy.) “I noticed it because I was trying to go to sleep.”

  Tom relaxed in a cloud of pungent smoke. “Sure you won’t have some of this?”

  “No,” she said impatiently.

  “It’s pretty good stuff for homegrown,” he said. “No, I didn’t have a date. I went out to buy this. It’s not easy to set up when you don’t know anybody. Took me forever.”

  “Did you see—anything?” Leona had been killed Friday night, the doctors said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. Anything?”

  “You know what Lowfield is like on Friday night. I saw the high school kids riding around and around over the same streets. I saw the blacks who live out in the country coming into town to drink. I barely saw Cracker Thompson” (who was something in the position of the village idiot) “riding around on his bicycle without any reflectors, wearing dark clothes. If that’s what you mean by ‘anything.’ I presume,” said Tom, drawing out the words lovingly, “you mean, did I see Leona Gaites dragged out of her house screaming, by a huge man with a two-by-four.”

  Catherine shuddered. Though Sheriff Galton had told her that Leona was beaten to death, the reminder conjured up the same horrible pictures: Leona’s outstretched hand; the flies.

  Tom observed her shudder with bright eyes. “Jerry told me that something heavy and wooden was probably the weapon, a baseball bat or something like that—the traditional blunt instrument. Anyway”—and Tom hunted around for his point—“no, I didn’t see ‘anything.’”

  Foolish, Catherine said to herself. I was foolish to ask. That must be good dope. Maybe I should have taken it. I could have had hours of entertainment just sitting and laughing to myself.

  “But I might have,” Tom said suddenly. “Maybe I can use that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  But Tom waved a hand extravagantly and laughed. Catherine eyed him as he slid lower in his seat. His spider legs were sprawled out in front of him. If he relaxes any more he’ll pour off that couch, she thought.

  “Tom,” she said uneasily.

  “My lady speaks?”

  “Don’t…” she hesitated. She was not exactly sure of how to put it. “Don’t let anyone think you know more than you do.”

  “Little Catherine!” He grinned at her impishly.

  “I’m not kidding, Tom. Look at what happened to my parents. Look what happened to Leona…though the sheriff doesn’t seem to think it’s related.” She frowned, still not satisfied that the sheriff was right; though from his mysterious hints she knew there was something about Leona’s activities that Galton felt had led directly to her death.

  “I know more than James Galton, that’s for sure,” Tom said, with a whisker-licking effect. “Guess who’s selling dope in Lowfield?”

  Catherine raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

  “Jimmy Galton, Junior!” Tom laughed.

  “Oh no,” Catherine murmured in real distress. If Tom knew that, who else did? All the kids in Lowfield, of course. Poor Sheriff Galton. Did he know? In his job, how could he avoid knowing? She wondered if Leona had known James Junior’s occupation, too. And whether the wads of cash found in Leona’s house were hush money paid by one of the Galtons to ensure she kept quiet. Money that was now coming to her, Catherine remembered, sickened.

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that, Tom,” she said bitterly.

  “I’ll comfort you, little Catherine.”

  “The hell you will. I’m going home.”

  “Oh, stay and have another beer.” And he gave her his charming grin. “We can pool our resources.” His eyebrows waggled suggestively.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “Right now I don’t feel like I have any resources to pool. Thanks for the beer.”

  Tom made a gentlemanly attempt to rise.

  “No, don’t get up, you look like you’ll fall down if you do. I know where the door is. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Tom said cheerfully. “I’ve got to write Leona’s obit.”

  On that happy note, Catherine shut the screen door behind her.

&
nbsp; She had to lengthen her stride to hit the stepping-stones that linked their back doors. The hedges between the houses joined the hedges running down the sides of the yard, making an H of greenery. Her parents had planted it for privacy from the street on one side and from neighbors on the other; and to separate the office and home backyards. It had gotten out of hand, and Catherine reminded herself, as she went through the gap planned for her father’s passage, that she needed to take care of it.

  I ought to do it myself, she thought. Then she looked down at her arms, too pink and tender from exposure to the sun the day before, and decided to hire someone.

  What are these bushes, anyway? she wondered. She rubbed some leaves between her fingers, which of course told her nothing. She was trying to avoid thinking about the Galtons, Senior and Junior. Catherine stared at the growth blankly. I hate this damn hedge, she thought. I’ll cut the whole thing down. Both yards are open anyway, and what do I do in the backyard that anyone shouldn’t see?

  The hedge was added to her mental list of things to change, which already numbered curtains, bedspread, clothes, and shoes.

  It made her feel a little better, planning for the future.

  When all this is over, she thought vaguely.

  As she entered her back door, she heard the front doorbell ringing. No rest for the wicked, she told herself grumpily. What’ll I get this time? An interrogation? A chicken casserole?

  In this disagreeable frame of mind, she swung open the front door. Finally, her caller was Randall.

  7

  “WANT TO GO out to the levee with me?”

  “Okay,” Catherine said smoothly, dancing a little jig inside. “Come in while I straighten myself up.”

  She had only seen him in the conservative suits he wore at the Gazette. He was wearing khakis and a T-shirt. He looked incredibly muscular for a newspaper editor. He looked wonderful.

  I am smitten, Catherine said silently as she gave her hair a hasty brushing in the bedroom. How long has it been since I was smitten?

  She remembered as she touched up her makeup.

  She had overheard the young man through her dorm window. He had been talking to a fraternity brother after he had deposited Catherine at the door.