13
CATHERINE WAS IMMEDIATELY aware of the eyes. They peered from the door of the production room, and from the reception area. Two people were waiting there when she came in. They were obviously at a loss for what to do, without Leila at the desk to direct them. The door to Randall’s office was shut, and the sound of typing came from behind it.
She felt a glaze harden on her face. She moved stiffly. One of the two visitors was an advertiser, delivering his ad for the next issue. He was startled by the sight of Catherine. Perhaps he had hoped to go back to the production room and have a good chat with the staff. Catherine took the ad and calmly assured him that she would deliver it herself.
The second visitor was the librarian, Mrs. Weilenmann.
“I couldn’t reach you at home,” she told Catherine. “I just wanted you to know how much I’m-thinking of you.”
“Thank you,” Catherine said stiffly. “I can’t talk about it, please.”
Mrs. Weilenmann patted her on the shoulder, then left.
Randall’s door opened.
“I thought it was you,” he said. “Come in here.”
She gestured toward the empty desk. “I ought to be out here.”
“Mother’s been handling it. She had to go out for a minute, but she’ll be back.”
When he had closed the door, he held her to him. Catherine looked past his ear blindly.
He released her and looked into her face. She slowly reached up to touch his cheek.
“You should have stayed at home,” he said gently.
“No, no point in that.”
“Things here are pretty unpleasant,” he said.
He looked so depressed and so much older that Catherine was jolted into remembering something she had, incredibly, forgotten: that Randall feared Leona Gaites had been blackmailing his mother.
“Randall,” she said tentatively, “surely you’re not worried about Miss Angel?”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“What? Oh, no. I did what you suggested. I just asked her. You were right. She said, ‘No, if Leona Gaites had approached me with any such proposition, I would have told her to publish and be damned, and that she was welcome to use my paper to publish in!’ I can’t understand now why I even worried about it. I guess just knowing we had a skeleton in our closet, knowing Leona had been taking advantage of skeletons to make money…”
“Is there something else you’re worried about?”
“Aside from hiring Tom’s replacement, and wondering when I can expect that bitch Leila to come back, so I can get her to train a new receptionist?” he asked sharply. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m just tired. I want all this to be over. I want this town to return to normal. I want to have time to see you in a regular relationship, without the stress and blood all around us.”
She wondered whether they would have become as close, if it hadn’t been for those very conditions of stress and blood. She thought not.
“We can’t worry about that now,” Catherine said. “We have to wait for this to end. Then there’ll be time to lie in the sun and go back to the levee. There’s something I want to tell you, something I just found out.”
Randall’s extension buzzed at that second, and he bent over his desk to pick it up. He gave Catherine an exasperated look of apology.
While he spoke into the receiver, Catherine’s gaze wandered over the collection of framed pictures and certificates covering the walls of his office. Four generations of Gerrard editors had occupied the room, so a great many of these mementos were yellowed. One piece of paper still white with freshness caught her eye.
“In appreciation of the services of Randall Gerrard and Dr. Jerry Selforth,” Catherine read with difficulty, “from the Junior Baseball Club of Lowfield County.”
I didn’t know Randall and Jerry were coaches, Catherine thought idly.
She pictured Randall in uniform at the plate, hitting a ball over the bleachers, throwing down the bat and heading for first base.
Throwing down the bat…She stiffened. Before she could stop herself, another image arose: Randall’s powerful arms swinging the bat at a blackmailing nurse, and at Tom. Maybe Leona hadn’t approached Angel Gerrard. Maybe she had approached Randall instead.
You fool, she lashed at herself savagely. Don’t you dare think for one minute…After all baseball bats are hardly rare or hard to buy.
But how accessible the weapon was to Randall. How easily he could obtain that heavy length of wood, if he needed a weapon.
She knew her judgment was clouded by physical exhaustion and grief. She stared at Randall while he wrangled with the advertiser on the other end of the line.
If I’m wrong (and of course I’m wrong), he will never know I thought for one minute that he was connected with murder, she told herself.
Catherine lowered her eyes so they wouldn’t meet Randall’s inadvertently.
Maybe, just for now, I shouldn’t tell him what Betty said, she reflected hesitantly. After all, her story is only confirmation of a half-baked theory of his, about Leona overhearing something at Daddy’s office. It may not mean anything, right? And everyone who might have known something about this case is dead. Everybody but me…and Betty. Betty is the only possible living eyewitness to any portion of this whole chain of deaths.
Catherine realized she had just talked herself out of telling Randall about Betty’s little story. She had reached a test of faith she couldn’t pass.
Randall was still involved with his caller. Catherine tried to assume a natural expression and rose from her chair. When Randall glanced up inquiringly, she made typing gestures with her fingers. He nodded that he understood, and she eased out of his office. She moved toward her desk like an automaton and, once settled in her chair, folded her hands stiffly in her lap and stared at the wall. She was as miserable as she ever had been in her life.
When Randall’s mother passed through the room, Catherine had to force herself to speak.
“Miss Angel,” she said in a lifeless voice, “if you’d get me Tom’s personnel file I’d appreciate it. I have to write a story.”
Angel eyed Catherine sharply and then nodded briskly. She brought Tom’s file to Catherine’s desk, along with Randall’s notes from his conversation with Jerry Selforth and the sheriff. Randall had been prepared to write the story if she had not come in, Catherine realized dully.
She rolled paper into the platen, flexed her tense fingers, took a deep breath, and began to type.
“Tom Mascalco, 21, a reporter for the
When the story was almost finished, she had to buzz Randall to ask when Tom’s funeral services would be held.
“Friday,” he said wearily. “Holy Mary of the Assumption, in Memphis. Ten o’clock. We’ll have to go.”
It was the only time she spoke to him for the rest of the day.
During the afternoon, Sheriff Galton sent Deputy Ralph Carson to go through Tom’s desk, to see if it contained any notes that might be regarded as clues. Ralph was courteous but remote. They might have barely known each other, instead of having dated off and on through high school, sharing hayrides, dances, and drinks. He was married now, with two children, Catherine remembered. But the gulf between them was far wider than the gap in time and circumstances.
He’s definitely keeping his distance until he sees which way the cat jumps, she thought. But he has to be polite. After all, what if I didn’t do it?
And provoking that courtesy, making him speak when he wanted to finish his job and leave, gave her an awful enjoyment.
