Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

to stop herself from saying, “So what?”

“Was she down here?”

“She” must be Tom’s fiancee.

Leila would have to find out sooner or later.

“They broke up,” Catherine said expressionlessly.

She had given Leila the keys to heaven.

“Ooh,” Leila said, as if she had been hit on the back.

Catherine shook her head as she crossed the reporters’ room to her desk. Tom was hard at work already, typing furiously, taking swift sideways glances at the notes by his typewriter. He acknowledged her with a look and a nod that said he didn’t want to be interrupted, and hunched back over the keys. His long thin fingers flew.

“Such activity on a Monday,” Catherine muttered, whipping the plastic cover from her own typewriter. Then she realized that Tom was writing what would be the lead story, about Leona’s murder. She paused with her hands in her lap, the cover clutched half-folded between her fingers.

I have a lot to do, and this can’t get in the way, she told herself sternly. She stuffed the cover into its accustomed drawer with a resolute air, and pulled out a sheaf of papers from her Pending basket. As she flipped through them, she kept an ear cocked for Randall’s voice.

Gradually, as she became caught up in her work, she forgot to listen. When that dawned on her, she thought, All to the good.

She was studying the layout of her society page-which she briefly sketched out as it filled up-when she realized with a jolt that Randall was standing at the other side of the desk.

I’m as bad as Leila, she thought ruefully.

“Movie in Memphis Friday night?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Won’t you smile, Sphinx?”

She smiled.

As he walked through Leila’s room into his office, she typed cheerfully, “The mother of the bride wore beige silk…”

Catherine polished off two weddings with dispatch. She was glad she didn’t have to actually attend the ceremonies. She usually dropped by the bride’s house and extended her regrets, leaving a form to fill out that made writing the stories practically automatic.

Bridesmaids’ names and places of residence, descriptions of everyone’s dress, and details of the decorations at the short Southern reception. Groom’s employment, bride’s employment (this last recently instituted). Honeymoon itinerary.

Summer and Christmas were the wedding seasons. May was parties for graduates. Obituaries and children’s birthday parties, anniversary celebrations and dinner parties, trips and out-of-town guests filled up the rest of the year. All of these appeared on Catherine’s society page except the obituaries, which were scattered through the paper as fillers. Catherine wrote those as well-unless the death was unusual in some way, in which case Tom picked it up.

Leila buzzed Catherine’s extension more often than any other. At the little paper, Monday and Tuesday were the busiest days, the two days before the paper came out, when people realized they had to contact her before the weekly noon deadlines. The Gazette was printed on Wednesday morning, distributed Wednesday afternoon.

This Monday was no exception. Catherine worked steadily through the morning, taking notes from callers and typing them up as soon as possible.

By eleven, her desk was an impossible clutter. It was time to review what she had done and what she had left to do. Four weddings. One for this Wednesday’s paper, three for the next issue. She carefully dated them. She had taken two more weddings back to the typesetter the previous Friday. She checked: yes, the accompanying pictures were attached to her new copy.

She put the copy in a basket and sorted through the other sheets of flimsy yellow paper. A little social note about the Drummonds’ progress in Europe: that should please the old couple when they returned and read the back issues. A bridal shower. A baby shower. And two children’s birthday parties. Catherine wrinkled her nose in distaste.

The last society editor had started this practice, and it was a sure-fire paper seller, but Catherine had always felt it horribly cutesy to write up infants’ birthday parties. The stories were invariably accompanied by amateurish pictures taken by doting grandparents: pictures featuring babies sitting more or less upright in highchairs, often with party hats fixed tipsily to their heads. Catherine had long wanted to discontinue this feature, but in view of the papers it sold (every child having multiple relations who were sure to want a copy or two), she had never discussed it with Randall. The Gazette needed all the revenue it could get.

The Gerrard family was well enough off, but only because a wise forebear had made it legally impossible to put family money into the paper. Several generations of Gerrards had gotten ulcers achieving solvency for the Gazette.

One of the birthday stories for the upcoming issue was complete, with story written and picture attached. The other was written, but there was no picture. Catherine remembered as she read the first line of copy that this was Sally Barnes Boone’s baby’s party. It had been held at grandfather Martin Barnes’s house; and Catherine recalled that Mrs. Barnes had assured her that she would bring the picture in before Monday noon.

Catherine glanced at the clock. Damn, she should call. But she felt awkward about phoning the Barnes home. They might resent her telling the sheriff about Martin’s proximity to Leona’s dumped body. Barnes’s wife Melba had a reputation for being unpredictable.

I guess she’s one of those well-known Delta eccentrics that Sheriff Galton was so proud of, Catherine thought sourly. I’ll wait until tomorrow, she equivocated. Maybe someone’ll show up with the damn picture.

She hadn’t had time to pay attention to what Tom was doing. Now she saw him through the picture window that made the reporters’ room a sunny fish-bowl. He was striding toward the courthouse, which sat in the center of the square, his camera in hand.

That meant he had already turned in his Leona Gaites story to Jewel Crenna, the typesetter. Catherine wanted to read it, and she had to take her copy back to Production anyway. She gathered up a sheaf of yellow paper and went through the swinging door to the big production room.

It was not exactly silence that met her as the back-room staff observed her entrance, but there was a definite, abrupt halt of activity. Catherine stopped right inside the door, surprised.

They want to ask me all about it, she realized after a second. No people on earth were as curious as people working in any capacity for a newspaper, she had found after she had started work at the Gazette.

Now Catherine straightened her shoulders, set her lips, and refused to meet the glances that sought to stop her.

Garry, the foreman, and Sarah, the senior paste-up girl, wouldn’t have the face to accost her directly, Catherine figured rapidly, but she dreaded encountering Salton Sims, the pressman. He would ask anyone anything he wanted to know.

Catherine nipped quickly into the typesetter’s cubicle. Jewel Crenna was hard at work and notoriously temperamental on Mondays and Tuesdays, so Catherine leaned against the wall behind her without speaking, and scanned Jewel’s In basket. It was full to the brim with additions to ads, and last-minute amendments to stories Jewel had set the previous week. Catherine added her own sheaf to the pile and began searching the hook that held processed galleys of type. Jewel would have set Tom’s story as soon as it came in, so the staff could read it.

Jewel glanced up once to identify the intruder in her bailiwick, and then her eyes swiveled back to the typed page held by a clamp in front of her, her fingers moving surely and with a speed that Catherine envied.

Jewel was a tall woman with suspiciously black hair and clear olive skin. She was a handsome woman with strong features and a tart tongue that knew no hesitation, a tongue that was widely supposed to be the cause of her two divorces.

Catherine had always had a sneaking admiration for Jewel, well mixed with a healthy fear. Jewel was an uninhibited shouter when she was irritated, and shouting people had always cowed Catherine completely.

Catherine skimmed through the justified type, getting the gist of Tom’s well-written account. She raised her