Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

“Good. Now wipe that guilt off your face. None of us thinks you had anything to do with this.”

Randall’s arm tightened around her shoulders, and he gave her a little shake, as if to jog her circulation back into action.

She began to feel warm. The sluggishness of strain and fear were slowly draining away.

Sheriff Galton came in the back door. He looked haggard, years older. He seemed so ill that Catherine was on the verge of urging him to see a doctor, when she realized how ludicrous that would sound.

The sheriff dropped into a chair and looked at her wearily.

“Did Tom tell you that he knew anything about Leona Gaites’s murder?”

“You know how he was,” she answered. “He made big noises about digging into it and finding out something that you-all didn’t know. But I don’t think it came to anything?”

“You sure? He said nothing to you about finding something?”

“Not to me.”

“Well,” Galton muttered, passing a huge hand over his face, “there’s that marijuana in his house. Maybe something to do with that.”

Why didn’t I remember to take that with me? Catherine thought. Then she remembered that Tom had bought the dope from James Galton Junior. She exchanged a quick look with Randall and hunched deeper in the sofa. Angel caught the exchanged glance, and rose to go to the kitchen to replenish the coffeepot.

“You know anything about that marijuana?” Galton asked her.

Now she was in a corner.

“I don’t think Tom’s death has anything to do with that,” she said.

“Am I going to have to search your house, too?”

“I saw it in his house when I went there Sunday,” she said. “He told me he had bought it locally. That’s all I know.”

The sheriff might not be admitting to himself what his son was doing, but Catherine could see that he knew. When he heard the word locally, he ran his hand over his face again.

“Where’s Tom’s car?” he asked abruptly.

“In the shop; Don’s,” she said.

“It would look like Tom wasn’t home,” Randall observed.

Catherine turned and looked at him. Sheriff Galton nodded slowly.

“Especially with the lights off, just the one light on in the living room,” Galton thought out loud. “Maybe this was just breaking and entering that turned into something else when Tom came out of the bedroom unexpectedly.”

But his voice held no conviction.

“I overheard that the wounds are similar to Leona’s,” Randall said expressionlessly. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said the sheriff. “Very similar. But then, in any homicide by beating with a blunt instrument, they would be.”

A little idea began to trickle through Catherine’s tired mind. But when she tried to focus on the tenuous thought, it dissolved. I should have let it alone, she thought. If I had let it alone, it would have formed.

“Drink,” said Angel firmly, putting a full cup on the coffee table in front of Catherine.

She looked up at the older woman, amazed that Angel could be immaculate at such an hour. Then her eyes filled with tears of gratitude that Angel had come to support her. Catherine shook her head angrily. I’m getting maudlin, she thought. She bent forward to pick up her coffee and to hide her face.

“Whoever did this would have been covered with blood,” Galton said, out of nowhere.

He looked at Catherine. Her eyes met his over the rim of her cup.

“I would not describe Catherine as exactly covered with blood,” Randall said with a dangerous gentleness. She felt his body tensing.

“No,” said the sheriff quietly. “I see that.”

“Randall, do you have the Mascalco boy’s home phone number? His parents’ number, I mean?” Angel asked in the silence that had fallen.

“Oh. Oh God.” He thought. “Yes, it’s sure to be in the file at the office. He was living with them when he applied for the job. I’ll have to go down and get it.”

“You can give it to me,” rumbled Galton.

“I’ll call them,” Randall said tightly.

“Then I don’t envy you,” said the sheriff. “I ought to do that myself.”

“He was my employee,” Randall replied.

“Okay, if you’re sure. Tell them to call my office. I guess there’s nothing more we can do here tonight. We’ve asked people for blocks around all the questions we can think of. No one saw a suspicious car, or any car except Leila’s. No one heard anything, saw anyone. Well, come to the station tomorrow morning and make your statement, Catherine.”

“Oh yes, I know the routine,” she said flatly.

Maybe by then I’ll have another dead body to report, she told herself. Gosh, maybe someone will be dead on my lawn when I go out to the car tomorrow morning. That way, I could knock off two statements at once. People should hire me as a divining rod, to find bodies.

She realized she had to get some grip on herself, or she wouldn’t be able to do anything the next day. Or for weeks. The black hole into which she had fallen when her parents died was waiting for her. An indescribable abyss of depression confronted her. She had only to take one more step and she would fall in.

The fear began to grip her. But fear would hurry her toward the hole faster than anything, if she let it overwhelm her. She wanted to lean against Randall with more than her body, but she knew from her experience during the weeks after her parents’ death that this was something she had to fight through alone.

But Randall was there. When she came through, she would have a tenuous something at the other end. She hadn’t had that before, and she had made it then. She would make it again. This time, if she won decisively, it might never happen again, she thought.

The police were gone. Angel was gone, after telling Randall without a twitch of an eyebrow that he would be staying with Catherine that night.

Only Randall and Catherine were left in the house, and it seemed empty with just two inhabitants, after the coming and going it had seen that evening.

In the house out back, there was fingerprinting dust, bloodstains, and silence. The blood, Tom’s blood, would be dry now, and brown. Catherine could feel the presence of that house at her back. She wondered what she would do with it, the old house that had seen so many uses in its long life. Who would want it now?

Randall had gone to get the Mascalcos’ telephone number after a long, quiet, tense discussion with Catherine. He had not wanted to wake the Mascalcos with the news that their son was dead. He had wanted to wait until morning. Catherine had only thought they had a right to know as soon as possible. It couldn’t be withheld from them, she had argued. They would bitterly resent being called in the morning and learning their son had been dead for twelve hours.

Catherine had not learned of the death of her parents until she had gone back to her new apartment from her new job. She remembered the guilt she had felt at having been happily engaged in something else while their corpses were in a little funeral home in Arkansas. She remembered her anger that others had known the news, more important to her than to anyone in the world, hours before she was told.

Randall had yielded to her argument. She could hear his voice in the kitchen now.

But she realized, as she huddled in her corner of the couch, that she should have said nothing to Randall, nothing at all. He, not Catherine, was the one who had volunteered to break the news. She should have left it up to him, since he had taken on the sickening responsibility.

She listened to the murmur of his voice and felt furious at her own interference. Her capacity for anger with herself was far greater than her capacity for anger with anyone else.

When Randall returned to the den, his face was gray with strain. He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he finally spoke, it was not about the conversation that had just taken place.

“Catherine, take off those goddamned clothes,” he said.

She gaped at him.

Then she understood. She rose without a word. In the bathroom she yanked off the bloodstained jeans and