Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

“I went to the Lion’s Club meeting today,” he observed. “Sure am glad I’m not running that outfit anymore. It’s nice to take a back seat and let somebody else do the work.”

But you have to mention that you were the president, Catherine commented silently. She remembered that after the inaugural party for the Perkins mansion, her mother had said with despair, “Self- made men are the proudest men on earth!”

“How was the lieutenant governor’s speech?” asked Catherine brightly.

“He’s campaigning now, so it was pretty agreeable,” Mr. Perkins replied, smiling.

“What did he have to say?” Catherine murmured, relieved to have found such an innocuous topic.

“If he had had a lot to say, he wouldn’t be lieutenant governor!” answered Mr. Perkins cheerfully.

Catherine laughed without much effort. Mrs. Perkins gave the tolerant smile of someone who had heard the same remark before.

The older woman had finally relaxed. She picked up her knitting and began to work on it expertly. Catherine saw that it was something tiny.

“For your grandchild?” she asked.

“Yes,” Miss Molly admitted with a proud smile.

“Josh and his wife say it’ll be here in December,” said Mr. Perkins eagerly, and Catherine had only to smile and nod for the next ten minutes.

“Of course, I had counted on Josh living here with us,” he wound down. “Now Molly and me are just rattling around in this big house like peas in a hollow pod. I got all these businesses here, and no one to run ’em after I’m gone.”

Catherine felt sorry for the aging man, who had come to Lowfield practically penniless, her father had told her. Now there was no one to share the comfort of the easy years. The dynasty he had wanted to found had taken off for the golden coast.

Catherine rose awkwardly and evaded the obligatory urgings to stay, have more coffee, talk longer.

On her way out, she passed a bank of photographs on a wall. She stopped to comment on a wedding portrait of Josh’s wife, whom she had never met.

“Very fine family,” Carl Perkins said with satisfaction. “Been in Natchez forever.”

After Catherine agreed that “Josh’s wife” was lovely (what is the girl’s name, Catherine wondered, or do they just call her “J.W.”?), she was obliged to look at the rest of the pictures. Josh at all ages, in all varieties of sports uniform; Mrs. Perkins with a prize-winning flower arrangement; Mr. Perkins being sworn in to several offices.

One of the pictures had a duplicate in the files at the Gazette. Whatever past reporter had snapped it must have presented Mr. Perkins with an enlargement. In the framed copy before her, Catherine saw him breaking ground for a new store. Heavy dark brows gave his rough face distinction, and upright shoulders lent an impression of vigor.

She looked at the man beside her now, and for a moment the hand of time lay heavy on her shoulder. Carl Perkins’s skin had a curious patched look, his hair was thinning, and his eyebrows were almost nonexistent. His sleeve, rolled up for the bandage over the burn, revealed an arm marked by irregular dark spots. This pleasant, hearty, proud man was going, bit by bit.

Miss Molly, in her own yellowed wedding portrait before Catherine on the wall, was small and smiling in her old-fashioned veil. Now her face was tracked with fine wrinkles. Instead of a wedding bouquet, she was clutching a bundle of knitting intended for a grandchild.

For a rotten moment, Catherine thought of the single gray hair she had pulled from her own dark head that morning, and remembered the tiny lines she had spotted at the corners of her eyes. She thought of Leona Gaites, grimly independent and dignified, performing cheap abortions in her little house and listening carefully for other peoples’ cheap secrets, in order to finance an old age that would never come.

Then the room, gracious and overdone, came into focus again, and Carl and Molly Perkins were a kind couple with many years left to them-years that promised the pleasure of seeing in babies’ faces traces of their own genes.

“Now you take care of yourself,” said Mr. Perkins with a smile. “Don’t you go getting into any more trouble. Remember, we’re always here when you need us.”

In the face of his kindness and concern, Catherine felt a sharp pang because of the fun she had poked at his ostentatious house. Her goodbyes were guiltily warm. Mr. Perkins offered to walk her home.

Catherine said, “It’s just a few feet. No need to go to all that trouble.”

“Honey,” said Mr. Perkins with sudden gravity, “you, of all people, should know that things aren’t safe around here.”

Without waiting for an answer, he stepped out onto the verandah.

It was fully dark now. No strawberry-juice stains in the sky, but blue darkness. The moon was full. The locusts were still chorusing throughout the quiet town. The streetlight at the corner of Catherine’s lot seemed brighter against the full night.

And suddenly she was glad for the firm feet of Carl Perkins walking beside her, for the easy commonplace observation he was making about the need to repave Linton Street.

Then he said abruptly, “You’ll have to excuse Molly, Catherine. I know you noticed how shaky she is.”

“Is she ill?” Catherine asked gently. He doesn’t need to explain, she thought. Miss Molly believes I killed Leona, somehow. And she’s scared of me.

“No, she’s just plain scared.”

That fit in so neatly with her thoughts that Catherine stopped to stare at Mr. Perkins. Was he going to tell her to her face that Miss Molly feared her?

Mr. Perkins was waiting for Catherine to say, “Of what?” When she didn’t, he stopped too, and looked back at her.

“Why,” he said, just as if she had supplied the expected words, “she’s scared for you.”

“For me?” Catherine asked cautiously. That preposition made a world of difference.

“Well, sure, honey. After all…” and here self-assured Carl Perkins floundered. “I mean…several people close to you have…”

“Been murdered,” Catherine said impassively. I don’t know but what I’d rather be a suspected killer than a potential victim, she reflected.

“Yes,” said Mr. Perkins, as if the sad truth had to be admitted at last. “If you knew why they died, it might be mighty dangerous for you.”

“I wish I knew,” she said slowly. “Sheriff Galton said he thought the motives were separate.” She had no desire to talk about what the sheriff had found in Leona’s house. Leona had been a blackmailer, an abortionist, and Catherine knew her father had been none of those things. She didn’t think anyone who had known him would suspect for one minute that he had been involved in Leona’s evil. No, Leona’s brief life of crime had started after Dr. Linton’s death; and it was for one of those crimes, surely, that Leona had been killed. So the murders must not be related. That was James Galton’s line of reasoning.

And I was halfway convinced of it too, Catherine thought. But the sheriff is wrong. I know he’s wrong.

“I wish I knew,” she repeated, looking up at Mr. Perkins under the streetlight.

He looked unutterably sad. “I know you miss your folks,” he murmured, and touched her shoulder.

They began moving slowly through Catherine’s yard.

“I hate like hell,” he continued, “that Molly and I weren’t able to be at the funeral.”

Stop, Catherine begged him silently. Even now, she couldn’t endure her memory of that gray day.

“We tried to change our reservations, but it was so close to Christmas that it was just impossible,” he said.

“You went to see Josh out in California?” Catherine asked, trying to move him off the subject.

“Yes. Our plans had been made for so long; the airlines couldn’t find other flights…it was just hopeless. I wish I had been here to help you settle your daddy’s affairs,” he said with regret in his voice. “But by the time we got back, Jerry Selforth had gotten himself all set up. Goddamn, Catherine, I’m sorry about your folks!”

The loss wasn’t just mine, Catherine reflected for the hundredth time. It was everyone’s.

They mounted Catherine’s front steps.

“Thanks for walking me home.”