Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

“Sure, my pleasure,” he said heartily. “Want me to come in and check the house for you?”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to do that.” She had locked the front door behind her when she left, for the first time in her life worried about leaving it open for a brief period. She unlocked it now, and glanced in at the living room. “See, all clear!” She attempted lightness.

“Okay,” said Mr. Perkins, satisfied after scanning the undisturbed room.

“Goodbye now,” Catherine said. She stepped inside the house.

“Oh, heck.”

Catherine turned back.

“I been meaning to ask you ever since Christmas. Josh wants his medical records. Does Jerry Selforth have everything of your daddy’s?”

Damn Josh, she thought vehemently. He’s got them wrapped around his finger for life.

This was a confirmation of the train of thought Randall had started in her head Sunday afternoon. In almost the same breath, even Carl Perkins could regret her parents’ eternal absence and then move on to his son’s record of vaccinations and measles.

“No,” she replied, suddenly exhausted and sick. “It’s probably up in the attic at the old office, since there’s been no call for it since Father died. I’ll get it for you.”

“No, no, don’t worry about it now, Catherine.” Perkins seemed to realize the wound he had given. “There’s no hurry in the world.”

“Okay. I’ll get it in a couple of days, maybe.”

He started down the walkway after clumsily patting her shoulder again with his bandaged hand.

She called goodbye after him. Her voice hung heavy in the living humid warmth of the night air.

Mrs. Weilenmann had pointed out Catherine’s isolation. Carl Perkins had pointed out that three people connected with her were dead. Despite her refusal of Mr. Perkins’s offer, she went through every room in the house before she went to bed.

“Thanks a lot, folks,” she muttered, as she locked herself inside her bedroom.

10

THE MULTITUDE OF Monday’s revelations had worn Catherine down. She slept heavily, despite the Perkins’s coffee, and woke groggy.

Tuesday, like Monday, began off-center. She overslept by ten minutes, an irritating breach of her workday morning routine. To make up the time, she had to scramble into her clothes while the coffee was perking, and skip a cup of that coffee. She promised herself to make up for it at the office, from the big urn kept continuously filled in the production room.

The telephone rang while she was making her bed. She was back on schedule and in a better humor, so instead of assuming that the call would be dire news, she predicted some mild disturbance, which was what it proved to be.

“My damn car’s in the shop,” Tom said without preamble. “Can you give me a ride to work?”

“Sure, come on over,” Catherine replied promptly.

This had happened before. Tom’s ancient Volkswagen, noisy and battle-scarred, was subject to drastic breakdowns and expensive repairs.

Catherine was at the back door to let him in when he knocked.

“I was just about ready to leave, I’m glad you caught me,” she said, checking her purse to make sure she had her keys.

“No telling how much it’s going to cost this time,” Tom said gloomily. “I took it over to Don’s Garage after work yesterday, and he said he’d bring it by this morning. Said it was nothing hard to fix, he could do it in a couple of hours.”

“That’s what Don always says,” Catherine told him.

“Why?” asked Tom, outraged. “If he had just told me he’d have to keep it, I could have called you last night.”

“He just likes people to leave happy,” Catherine said. “That’s the way Don is. I’m surprised you hadn’t caught on to that by now, as much trouble as you’ve had with that car.

“At least,” she added as they walked to her garage, “it’ll be fixed when you do get it back.”

“I have plans for tonight, so he better get his ass in gear,” Tom said, folding himself into Catherine’s front seat. She wondered, not for the first time, how he managed in the Volkswagen.

“I doubt he will,” Catherine warned.

Tom sulked all the way to the office. That was fine with Catherine, who didn’t feel like idle chatter before nine o’clock at the earliest.

Leila was looking out the front window when Catherine pulled into a parking space miraculously open in front of the Gazette office. Usually the courthouse people took all the good spots, arriving early to stake their claims. Her little triumph dissolved into a flat feeling when she saw Leila’s face become woebe-gone at the sight of the two of them arriving together.

By the time Catherine and Tom came in through the glass door that had “Lowfield Gazette” stenciled across it in gothic lettering, Leila was sitting rigidly erect at her typewriter behind the counter, pounding the keys furiously.

What a temper she’s got, Catherine thought, passing through the little reception room without a word. She wanted to go up to Leila and shake her by the shoulders.

She realized belatedly that Tom had not followed her into the reporters’ room. She heard the whisper of voices behind her. It looked as if Tom and Leila were getting together. Maybe Leila was Tom’s “plans for the evening.”

Catherine made a wry face at her typewriter and then shrugged. The paper would go to press that afternoon, and would be delivered the next morning. There was a lot to do before the noon deadline.

She began checking over what she had written the day before. Jewel had left the proofs on her desk. Catherine had to proofread all her own stories, then pass them back to Production to be reread by Sarah, the paste-up girl, before she placed them on the page. Catherine got out her felt-tipped pen and settled down to work. Tom came in after a moment with a smug look on his thin face.

The feathers are sticking out of your mouth, she told him silently, and then was distracted by a cathedral- length bridal “vail.”

Almost to Catherine’s surprise, and certainly to her relief, the morning passed as quietly as Tuesday mornings ever did at the Gazette. The usual last-minute crises came up, but Catherine was braced for them. A bride’s picture was flipped, so her ring appeared on her right hand. Catherine caught that and set it to rights. The weekly Dr. Croft column was missing, and because of its great popularity with Lowfield subscribers, the search for it was a tense one. It was always pasted up days before the paper was due to come out, since it arrived set at the correct column width and had only to be cut off a sheet containing seven other Dr. Croft columns, each one headed with a line drawing of the handsome and fatherly doctor.

“Dr. Croft’s Corner” had been unpopular with Catherine’s father. Every time she read it, she recalled his indignation and impatience when two or three people came to his office after the appearance of each column, sure they had the disease Dr. Croft had expounded on that week.

Catherine wondered for a moment whether Jerry Selforth had the same problem.

At last sharp-eyed Jewel found the missing column. The wax holding it to the page had weakened, and the fan had blown it under the paste-up table. Catherine, with dirty hands and knees after taking an active part in the search, rose from the floor and repaired immediately to the Gazette’s rather dreadful ladies’ room to clean up.

Leila, she noted sourly, had kept her own golden limbs pristine by promptly recalling some bills that had to be sent out, at the moment the column was discovered missing.

Tom was slumped at his desk when Catherine emerged from the ladies’ room.