Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

The notes Tom had made on Leona’s murder contained nothing that was not commonly known.

While Catherine identified items and notes to help the deputy, she also transferred Gazette material-sheets of columns and comic strips-to her own desk. She would have to handle that now.

As she gathered up the columns, she saw Tom leaning back in his chair, reading them with lazy interest, trying to decide which ones should be in next week’s paper…pulling on his mustache, smiling, as he no doubt thought about persuading Leila to bed that evening.

For a moment her grasp weakened, and the sheets almost cascaded to the floor; but the next second she had hold of them again, and put them on her desk.

Then there was Tom’s camera, in a bottom desk drawer. He had preferred to use his own, instead of the Gazette’s. It had film in it, she saw, and she realized she had to remove and develop the film before the camera could be returned to Tom’s parents.

She thought of a question to ask Ralph Carson.

“About the house,” she said abruptly.

He looked surprised.

“The one Tom rented from me,” she explained. “What can I do about getting it cleaned? His parents will have to get in there to get his things out. They can’t see that.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, you could see if you could hire some prisoners from the jail to do it. Some trustees, maybe. They might be glad to do it for the money. Why don’t you ask the sheriff?”

“I’ll do that,” she said, and they continued their fruitless sifting. All they found were a couple of magazines that made Carson turn red and caused Catherine to lift her eyebrows. She pitched them into Tom’s wastebasket.

It was just as well, she decided, that she had gone through the desk instead of someone else.

When Carson left, his hands empty and his face glum, Catherine sat down at her desk and looked around aimlessly. She had to do something.

Her eyes lit on Tom’s camera. She would develop the film in it. No one would bother her in the darkroom.

The reporters’ tiny darkroom was to the left of the door that led to the production department. Catherine grabbed up the camera, buzzed Angel to tell her she was still incommunicado, and dived into the little room, turning on the red light that shone outside when film was being processed. Now no one could talk to her for a good length of time.

The smock she wore to protect her clothes from chemicals was hanging in its usual place on a hook on the door. Tom’s heavy denim work apron was beside it. On an impulse, she ran her hands through the pockets of the apron. There was nothing in them, and her mouth twisted in self-derision as she let it fall back against the door.

She pulled on her smock, snapping it down the front, and looked around the darkroom to make sure where everything was before she turned off the lights.

While the film developed there was nothing to do but wait. Catherine lit a cigarette and propped herself against the high counter.

This was the nicest moment of a jarring day. She lounged in the eerie red glow, safe from intrusion because of the light shining outside the door. The Gazette’s little darkroom satisfied her catlike fondness for small places.

The “bing!” of the timer roused her from her reverie. She finished developing the film, her mind at ease and refreshed by the isolation and darkness.

Other places had big beautiful dryers, Catherine thought enviously. The Gazette had a clothesline and some clamps and a fan.

While the film was hanging from the clothesline, drying, Catherine switched on the light and examined the half-used roll of film. The pictures were, as she had supposed, Tom’s shots of the Lion’s Club meeting, featuring its guest speaker, the lieutenant governor. In reversed black and white, Catherine saw shots of a speaker at a podium, and men seated in rows at a U-shaped collection of tables, the plates in front of them showing up as black circles.

Somehow, Tom’s last pictures should have been of something more memorable, Catherine thought.

He had been by far a better photographer than she, but he had been too impatient to enjoy darkroom work. She had often developed his film while she did her own.

He made me feel like a regular Martha, Catherine thought: and despite her weariness and confusion, the peace of the little room relaxed her so that she could smile at the recollection. She was beginning to assimilate the fact that Tom was gone.

She decided to enlarge all the shots. It would take up time, while keeping her busy with something she enjoyed. And besides, she was not a good interpreter of negatives. Tom had been able to run a look down the film and choose this one or that one, as the best shots. Catherine had to put much more time and thought into picking out pictures.

She let out a sigh and set about enlarging the five shots Tom had taken. The Gazette’s enlarger was old and cranky, had been secondhand when purchased. But she had always felt she had a kind of silent understanding with the enlarger. And sure enough, today it cooperated.

As Catherine rocked the pictures in the developing tray, she decided that there was something romantic about photography. She watched, enthralled, as the faces began to emerge from the solution.

There was a dramatic shot of the speaker, bent over the podium, one arm extended in a point-making gesture. And operating on the theory that faces sold papers, Tom had taken several shots of the assembled Lions listening, with greater or lesser degrees of attention, to the address.

There was Sheriff Galton, looking bored. These past few days had made an awful difference in the man. Catherine focused on the face beside his: Martin Barnes, obviously daydreaming, perhaps about Jewel and her little house by the highway, she thought wryly. The mayor’s face materialized. He was staring at a roll on his otherwise empty plate, perhaps wondering if anyone would notice if he ate it (he had been battling his paunch for years.)

There was Carl Perkins, smiling broadly, either at the lieutenant governor’s speech or at some private thought. Randall was beside him, pipe in hand. Then Jerry Selforth’s smooth dark head appeared, his face all eagerness and attention. Jerry would marry a Lowfield girl, she decided, and stay there until he died.

When the pictures were ready, Catherine no longer had an excuse to linger in the darkroom. She emerged reluctantly, found Tom’s copy of the story, and attached the picture of the lieutenant governor. She wrote the cut line and attached that. Then she typed in Tom’s byline.

Once again she cast around for something to do.

There were the weekly columns she had lifted from Tom’s desk. Clipping those columns was definitely necessary, and easy to do.

She got out her scissors and in a very few moments had cut out the comic strips indicated by date for the following week. The handyman column was easy, too. She imagined that the one about building rose trellises was suitable for summer, and her scissors snipped it out.

To prolong the little task, Catherine read all the Dr. Croft columns. There were seven left in this batch. The one in the previous week’s paper had been on appendicitis. Catherine remembered that it had made Tom a little nervous, since he still possessed his appendix.

Well, here was one on Crohn’s disease. What about that? Catherine scanned it and decided it didn’t appeal to her.

Some of these are really exotic, she thought. Dr. Croft must be running out of ailments. My father would be glad of that.

Then her eye caught the word Armadillo.

She read the column through once, twice. Pity and loathing made her heart sick.

When she was able to rise, she went to the darkroom and upclipped Tom’s Lion’s Club group picture. She unearthed photo files from ten years ago, five years, two years. She leafed through them and laid a number of pictures side by side.

She understood now why her parents had died, why Leona and Tom had been beaten to death.

Her father had been an innocent. Leona had been foolish, criminally and fatally foolish. Tom had just been in the way.