Charlaine Harris - Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

Catherine desperately wanted to reach out to them, to talk to them, to touch Randall’s broad hand, but she could not. She looked at them from the corner of her eye. When they looked at her, she turned away: for suspicion hung around her like the heavy summer air.

She saw it in the eyes of the police, she saw it in the way Leila’s parents carefully ignored her.

She heard one of the deputies ask Leila if the clothing Catherine was wearing now was the same she had worn when Leila saw her kneeling by Tom’s body. She saw the deputy look at the blood dried on her knees, and at the smears on her hand.

No one would look directly at her face.

People might accept that she had happened to find one body, but not two, Catherine saw.

Not that she had been first on the scene two times.

Not that she had reported two murders. In three days.

The bruise forming on Leila’s face, where Catherine had hit her, was examined by suspicious eyes. Leila had included the blow in her recital, and she had been quite graphic in describing how she was knocked to the wall by the force of Catherine’s open hand.

Catherine saw very clearly that her frame was being reassessed with regard to its strength.

In a sideways glance, Catherine saw Angel Gerrard’s back get stiffer and stiffer during Leila’s account. A gleam entered Angel’s alert brown eyes.

“I wonder how soon you can fire that girl?” Angel said very quietly to Randall, when the room was momentarily emptied of all but the three of them.

“I won’t wait too long,” Randall said grimly. There was a rough edge to his voice that Catherine had never heard before.

“Of course she was in bed with the boy,” Angel said briskly. She looked at Catherine for confirmation.

For the first time, Catherine met Angel’s eyes directly. She nodded.

“I thought so,” Angel said. “She’s a pretty thing, but she has the brains of a gourd. I wonder that she manages to file things correctly.”

“She doesn’t,” Randall said.

“Catherine,” Angel said sharply.

Catherine kept her face averted.

“Look at me, girl,” Angel said more sharply.

Catherine did, and felt as if she had gotten a shot of amphetamine.

“Did you hit that girl?”

“Yes,” Catherine replied.

“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.