A Secret Rage & Sweet and Deadly, page 29
‘Catherine Linton! Come on in,’ he said, with no trace of surprise, only welcome.
He ushered her through the two-story entrance hall and into the living room. Miss Molly, dwarfed in the corner of an enormous beige couch, rose as Catherine entered. The little woman had some knitting in her hand, and she carefully set it down before she advanced to greet Catherine.
‘I enjoyed the gumbo so much,’ Catherine said, smiling her most correct smile and extending the casserole dish to Miss Molly, who looked mildly flustered.
‘So glad you enjoyed it, just some leftovers really,’ Molly Perkins deprecated properly. She took the proferred dish and went full tilt toward the back of the house, where, Catherine remembered, the enormous kitchen lay.
‘Bring our neighbor some coffee,’ Mr Perkins called after the dumpy retreating figure.
Catherine raised a hand in protest, but it was too late.
‘Come on, have a seat. Been a while since we got to visit with you,’ Mr Perkins urged.
She thought he was lonely. She managed another smile and sat reluctantly in a deep armchair facing the couch. As she sank farther and farther into it, she wondered how she was going to get up with any grace, with her short legs thrust out at such an angle.
Miss Molly came back in, burdened with a tray. Mr Perkins was on his feet in an instant.
‘You shouldn’t carry things like that,’ he chided. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I can carry this perfectly well, I’m not made of glass,’ she scolded him.
Mr Perkins peered over Miss Molly’s curly gray hair to give Catherine a wry shake of the head.
‘How do you take yours, Catherine?’ Miss Molly asked as she settled back on the couch.
‘Black, please,’ Catherine answered. ‘I hope this wasn’t any trouble for you.’
‘No, no,’ disclaimed Carl Perkins. ‘We always have a pot on at night until we go to bed.
‘I saw you through the window at the Gazette today,’ he resumed, as Miss Molly poured, ‘and I started to come in and speak, but you looked so busy I thought the better of it.’
‘Mondays are mighty busy at the paper,’ Catherine responded. She disliked being reminded of how ‘on view’ she was, with her desk right by the big window. It had bothered her when she first began working at the Gazette, but now she wasn’t conscious of it most of the time.
Miss Molly handed Catherine her cup. A lot of wriggling was required before Catherine could work herself forward in her chair to reach it. Miss Molly’s hand had a definite tremor, which didn’t make the little transaction any easier.
Oh dear oh damn, Catherine thought. She wished she had just handed over the dish and gone right back out the door. Her intention of impressing Miss Molly with her sterling character and imperviousness to gossip seemed childish now.
Carl Perkins had just started to comment on the effect the rainless summer was having on the cotton when Molly Perkins’s shaky hands caused an incident. His attention on Catherine, Mr Perkins held out a hand for his coffee cup. When Molly extended the cup to him, some of the steaming liquid spilled on his hand. For a long moment, as Catherine held her breath in sympathy for his pain, he kept his eyes on her face as if he felt nothing. Then Mrs Perkins’s eyes teared as if she were going to cry over her mistake.
‘Oh, Carl!’ she said in a trembling, guilty voice. He looked at her, then down at the coffee that had run off his hand and stained the beautiful beige material of the couch.
Mrs Perkins somehow kept hold of the cup, rescuing it before it spilled completely. Then there was the fuss of Mr Perkins’s retreat to the bathroom to put cold water and ointment on his burned hand, Mrs Perkins’s agonized exclamations, and Catherine’s attempt to leave, which was firmly crushed by Mr Perkins as he marched off to the bathroom.
As all this was being settled, Catherine passed from being uncomfortable to being miserable. She obviously disturbed Miss Molly for some reason; and she had no business sitting around frightening an old lady into burning her husband and staining expensive upholstery. But to extricate herself from this little visit without being out-and-out rude would have required more dexterity than Catherine could muster at the moment.
The scene jelled again as Mr Perkins entered and sat down as though nothing had happened, quieting his wife’s attempt at yet another apology with a soothing, ‘Now don’t fuss any more, honey.’ Mr Perkins was stoically controlling the pain he must have felt from the burn.
How kind he is to act as if it doesn’t even hurt, Catherine thought. They must have a good marriage. They’ve come a long way together.
After Carl Perkins had come to Lowfield from Louisiana, he had climbed in the town and bought a business; then climbed more and bought more, with Miss Molly joining clubs right and left, working in the church, entertaining. The Perkins’s only child was their son Josh. There were mementos of Josh everywhere: football trophies, baseball trophies, 4-H medals, and framed certificates. Catherine hadn’t seen Josh in years. She recalled him as arrogant and insensitive, but intelligent in a graceless way. He had been one of Lowfield High School’s golden boys.
Now he was married, about to become a father, and far, far away from Lowfield, Mississippi. Los Angeles, hadn’t Miss Molly said?
Catherine was craftily preparing a lead-in to the subject of Josh, aware that little would be required of her if she could get Mr Perkins launched, when Mr Perkins himself jumped the conversational gun.
‘I went to the Lion’s Club meeting today,’ he observed. ‘Sure am glad I’m not running that outfit anymore. It’s nice to take a back seat and let somebody else do the work.’
But you have to mention that you were the president, Catherine commented silently. She remembered that after the inaugural party for the Perkins mansion, her mother had said with despair, ‘Self-made men are the proudest men on earth!’
‘How was the lieutenant governor’s speech?’ asked Catherine brightly.
‘He’s campaigning now, so it was pretty agreeable,’ Mr Perkins replied, smiling.
‘What did he have to say?’ Catherine murmured, relieved to have found such an innocuous topic.
‘If he had had a lot to say, he wouldn’t be lieutenant governor!’ answered Mr Perkins cheerfully.
Catherine laughed without much effort. Mrs Perkins gave the tolerant smile of someone who had heard the same remark before.
The older woman had finally relaxed. She picked up her knitting and began to work on it expertly. Catherine saw that it was something tiny.
‘For your grandchild?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Miss Molly admitted with a proud smile.
‘Josh and his wife say it’ll be here in December,’ said Mr Perkins eagerly, and Catherine had only to smile and nod for the next ten minutes.
‘Of course, I had counted on Josh living here with us,’ he wound down. ‘Now Molly and me are just rattling around in this big house like peas in a hollow pod. I got all these businesses here, and no one to run ’em after I’m gone.’
Catherine felt sorry for the aging man, who had come to Lowfield practically penniless, her father had told her. Now there was no one to share the comfort of the easy years. The dynasty he had wanted to found had taken off for the golden coast.
Catherine rose awkwardly and evaded the obligatory urgings to stay, have more coffee, talk longer.
On her way out she passed a bank of photographs on a wall. She stopped to comment on a wedding portrait of Josh’s wife, whom she had never met.
‘Very fine family,’ Carl Perkins said with satisfaction. ‘Been in Natchez forever.’
After Catherine agreed that ‘Josh’s wife’ was lovely (what is the girl’s name, Catherine wondered, or do they just call her ‘J.W.’?), she was obliged to look at the rest of the pictures. Josh at all ages, in all varieties of sports uniform; Mrs Perkins with a prize-winning flower arrangement; Mr Perkins being sworn in to several offices.
One of the pictures had a duplicate in the files at the Gazette. Whatever past reporter had snapped it must have presented Mr Perkins with an enlargement. In the framed copy before her, Catherine saw him breaking ground for a new store. Heavy dark brows gave his rough face distinction, and upright shoulders lent an impression of vigor.
She looked at the man beside her now, and for a moment the hand of time lay heavy on her shoulder. Carl Perkins’s skin had a curious patched look, his hair was thinning, and his eyebrows were almost nonexistent. His sleeve, rolled up for the bandage over the burn, revealed an arm marked by irregular dark spots. This pleasant hearty, proud man was going, bit by bit.
Miss Molly, in her own yellowed wedding portrait before Catherine on the wall, was small and smiling in her old-fashioned veil. Now her face was tracked with fine wrinkles. Instead of a wedding bouquet, she was clutching a bundle of knitting intended for a grandchild.
For a rotten moment, Catherine thought of the single gray hair she had pulled from her own dark head that morning, and remembered the tiny lines she had spotted at the corners of her eyes. She thought of Leona Gaites, grimly independent and dignified, performing cheap abortions in her little house and listening carefully for other peoples’ cheap secrets, in order to finance an old age that would never come.
Then the room, gracious and overdone, came into focus again, and Carl and Molly Perkins were a kind couple with many years left to them – years that promised the pleasure of seeing in babies’ faces traces of their own genes.
‘Now you take care of yourself,’ said Mr Perkins with a smile. ‘Don’t you go getting into any more trouble. Remember, we’re always here when you need us.’
In the face of his kindness and concern, Catherine felt a sharp pang because of the fun she had poked at his ostentatious house. Her goodbyes were guiltily warm. Mr Perkins offered to walk her home.
Catherine said, ‘It’s just a few feet. No need to go to all that trouble.’
‘Honey,’ said Mr Perkins with sudden gravity, ‘you, of all people, should know that things aren’t safe around here.’
Without waiting for an answer, he stepped out onto the verandah.
It was fully dark now. No strawberry-juice stains in the sky, but blue darkness. The moon was full. The locusts were still chorusing throughout the quiet town. The streetlight at the corner of Catherine’s lot seemed brighter against the full night.
And suddenly she was glad for the firm feet of Carl Perkins walking beside her, for the easy commonplace observation he was making about the need to repave Linton Street.
Then he said abruptly, ‘You’ll have to excuse Molly, Catherine. I know you noticed how shaky she is.’
‘Is she ill?’ Catherine asked gently. He doesn’t need to explain, she thought Miss Molly believes I killed Leona, somehow. And she’s scared of me.
‘No, she’s just plain scared.’
That fit in so neatly with her thoughts that Catherine stopped to stare at Mr Perkins. Was he going to tell her to her face that Miss Molly feared her?
Mr Perkins was waiting for Catherine to say, ‘Of what?’ When she didn’t he stopped too, and looked back at her.
‘Why,’ he said, just as if she had supplied the expected words, ‘she’s scared for you.’
‘For me?’ Catherine asked cautiously. That preposition made a world of difference.
‘Well, sure, honey. After all . . .’ and here self-assured Carl Perkins floundered. ‘I mean . . . several people close to you have . . .’
‘Been murdered,’ Catherine said impassively. I don’t know but what I’d rather be a suspected killer than a potential victim, she reflected.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Perkins, as if the sad truth had to be admitted at last. ‘If you knew why they died, it might be mighty dangerous for you.’
‘I wish I knew,’ she said slowly. ‘Sheriff Galton said he thought the motives were separate.’ She had no desire to talk about what the sheriff had found in Leona’s house. Leona had been a blackmailer, an abortionist, and Catherine knew her father had been none of those things. She didn’t think anyone who had known him would suspect for one minute that he had been involved in Leona’s evil. No, Leona’s brief life of crime had started after Dr Linton’s death; and it was for one of those crimes, surely, that Leona had been killed. So the murders must not be related. That was James Galton’s line of reasoning.
And I was halfway convinced of it too, Catherine thought. But the sheriff is wrong. I know he’s wrong.
‘I wish I knew,’ she repeated, looking up at Mr Perkins under the streetlight.
He looked unutterably sad. ‘I know you miss your folks,’ he murmured, and touched her shoulder.
They began moving slowly through Catherine’s yard.
‘I hate like hell,’ he continued, ‘that Molly and I weren’t able to be at the funeral.’
Stop, Catherine begged him silently. Even now, she couldn’t endure her memory of that gray day.
‘We tried to change our reservations, but it was so close to Christmas that it was just impossible,’ he said.
‘You went to see Josh out in California?’ Catherine asked, trying to move him off the subject.
‘Yes. Our plans had been made for so long; the airlines couldn’t find other flights . . . it was just hopeless. I wish I had been here to help you settle your daddy’s affairs,’ he said with regret in his voice. ‘But by the time we got back, Jerry Selforth had gotten himself all set up. Goddamn, Catherine, I’m sorry about your folks!’
The loss wasn’t just mine, Catherine reflected for the hundredth time. It was everyone’s.
They mounted Catherine’s front steps.
‘Thanks for walking me home.’
‘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.
