Letter From Home (6 page)

Gretchen's nose wrinkled as smoke roiled toward the couch.

Barb sat straight up, the sheet falling to the floor. “He didn't come home. He never came home. He didn't come home for supper. And he wasn't home when I got back from Amelia's tonight.”

Chief Fraser leaned forward in the imitation leather chair. “How would you know?” He tapped the cigarette on the ashtray. “You went to bed.”

Barb's eyes were stricken. “I wasn't asleep. I heard Mama come in. She slammed doors and paced back and forth. I heard her go in her room and run out again. There wasn't any other sound. If Daddy was there, he would have said something.” Her voice was definite. “There was a knock at the front door. I heard Mama go answer and she cried out something like, ‘You've got a nerve.' Somebody came in.” Barb pressed her hands against her cheeks. “There was a voice, but I couldn't hear the words. It was like somebody wanted Mama to be quiet. You know how people make a shushing noise? Then Mama yelled.” Barb's face flattened in sick memory. “She was calling for help and I ran away.”

“Right thing to do, Miss Barb.” He cleared his throat. “You got scared and came here for help, asked Miss Gretchen to come with you. You say you didn't hear your daddy's voice?”

“Oh, I would have known if Daddy had been there.” She sounded almost buoyant. “Did you ever know my daddy to whisper?”

“That's true what the child says.” Grandmother clapped her plump hands together, nodded eagerly.

“No, Clyde's not much to whisper. Well . . .” The chief stubbed out the cigarette, pushed to his feet. “I guess that pretty much covers everything.” He reached down a long arm to grab his hat.

Barb stood. “Chief, will you find Daddy? It's going to be awful when he finds out what's happened to Mama.”

Gretchen got up, too. She realized she was more tired than she'd ever been. Her head ached, her body felt heavy. Through the screen, the night was turning gray. The sun would be up pretty soon and she and Grandmother would go to the café. They had to go whether or not they'd slept. Then she'd go to the
Gazette
. Mr. Dennis would want to know all about her and Barb finding Mrs. Tatum. But Mr. Cooley would write the story. And she'd bet he'd tell all about seeing Barb's mom at the Blue Light tonight. Gretchen thought he better not fool around with the chief. Mr. Cooley better tell him everything he knew. She wished she could hear them talk, but she'd hear all about it at the
Gazette
.

Chief Fraser moved slowly, lumbering like a bear across the floor, his boot heels thumping. He stopped at the front door, looked back, his big slab of a face drawn in a frown. “One more thing, Miss Barb.” He spoke quietly enough, but there was an edge to his deep voice.

Gretchen blinked. Her eyes felt scratchy and bleary, but she saw Barb stiffen.

“How come”—Chief Fraser's thick gray-black brows bunched over his eyes—“the door to your room is locked?”

Barb's eyes widened and her mouth hung slack.

The silence in the room pulsed with the chief's suspicion and Grandmother's puzzled consideration and Barb's shock.

Gretchen frowned. Most people never even locked up their houses at night. Why would Barb lock the door to her bedroom? Why didn't Barb answer?

It was Grandmother who spoke. “Why, Chief Fraser,” she said, her voice holding almost a tsk-tsk tone, “a girl all alone in her house late at night. That was it, wasn't it, Barb? You locked your door because your mama and papa weren't home.”

“Yes.” Barb bent, picked up the sheet, draped it around her shoulders though it wasn't cold and pulled it across her front. “I didn't like being by myself. I just turned the lock and went to bed.”

The chief frowned. “When you got up, was it because you heard your mama come home?”

“No. I heard Mama come in and I knew she was still upset and so I lay there real still.” Tears brimmed from her eyes. “She knocked on my door, but I didn't answer. I pretended I was asleep. When Mama was upset, she was hard to talk to. She rattled the knob and that's when somebody knocked on the front door. Everything happened real fast, somebody trying to shush her and Mama's cry. I knew something bad was happening and all I could think of was getting away. I got up and ran to my window and pushed open the screen and went out. I ran up the road fast as I could.”

“And that's all you know, Miss Barb?” His voice was weary.

“That's all.” Her voice wavered.

The chief clapped his hat on his head. “All right, girl. If you think of anything else, you call and I'll come.”

Grandmother moved past him, pulled the door open.

The big man nodded. “Thank you, Lotte,” he said, but his eyes still watched Barb and his heavy face was dour.

Only Gretchen could see Barb's hands clasped under the sheet, her grip so tight the knuckles blanched.

 
THE HOUSE WAS hot and still. The shades were drawn but the summer sun peeked around the edges. Gretchen struggled awake. The whirr of the electric fan stirred the air, but Gretchen felt sweaty from sleep, her head aching. She looked around the room. Her clothes lay in a jumbled heap where she'd dropped them. She stared at the alarm clock and felt a shock as she realized the time. She scrambled out of bed and hurried into the living room.

“Barb?” Even as she called, Gretchen knew the house was empty. They'd put Barb in Jimmy's room, but Barb was gone and so was Grandmother. They'd left her to sleep, a dreadful hot sweaty sleep with ugly visions of Mrs. Tatum, her body sprawled on the braid rug, her face distorted, her throat marked.

The cuckoo clock chirped. Ten o'clock. She was late. Mr. Dennis despised people who weren't on time. That was part of the reason he was usually mad at Mr. Cooley, who was almost always late. Except with his stories. He still got his stories in on time—if he was in the office.

Gretchen dressed fast, in a cool summer dress with a white piqué top and red-and-white checkered gingham skirt. She slipped barefoot into her white sandals. The phone rang as she was pouring a glass of orange juice.

“Hello.” She was breathless.

“Grandmother”—Gretchen's voice was sharp—“you shouldn't have let me sleep. I'm late.”

“That is why I have called. Do not worry, Gretchen. I spoke with Mr. Dennis and he understood that you had no sleep. I told him you would be there at eleven and he was pleased. He said”—she repeated the words uncertainly—“that there is big news on the wire and you can be of great help. Now, you must eat a good breakfast. There is a muffin and fresh strawberries. Oh, the pot is bubbling—I must go now.”

Gretchen drank the juice, quickly ate the apple muffin. She gave her hair three quick swipes. It was a quarter after ten when she left the house. She could be at the
Gazette
office in less than five minutes. But first . . .

 
THE DRAPES WERE drawn at the Tatum house. Gretchen opened the screen, knocked on the front door. The house lay quiet as death. Gretchen would have liked to whirl and run away. But Barb should be here. She wouldn't have gone to work. Maybe she'd gone to Amelia's.

Gretchen waited a moment, twisted the knob. The door was locked. Nobody ever locked their front door. Or hardly ever. The rigid knob was an unyielding reminder of the unimaginable. Gretchen clung to the handle. Yesterday she'd looked through the screen at Barb's mother, her face tight with anger, but vivid and alive. Mrs. Tatum could have had no thought that she was going to die so soon, that someone would walk through this door, this very door, and hands would clutch her throat and press until there was no more breath.

Gretchen yanked her hand away from the knob. A murderer had touched this handle, turned it. For the first time since Barb had rattled her bedroom screen, Gretchen confronted the word:
murderer.

Who?

The chief wanted to know about the quarrel between Barb's mother and father. Barb was scared. She'd locked her door. Was she afraid of her father?

Gretchen stepped back. The screen door sighed shut. She hurried down the steps, then hesitated. What if Barb was inside, all alone in the house where her mother had died? Gretchen glanced at the front windows. The shades were down. She started toward the sidewalk, stopped, shook her head, hurried around the side of the house. A recently painted white picket fence marked the boundary of the Crane yard. She glanced past a clothesline. Sheets flapped in the midmorning breeze. A Venetian blind jiggled in the first window, providing a slit just big enough to look through. Gretchen wondered what Mrs. Crane had told Chief Fraser. Gretchen passed a tipped-over hay wagon, a pile of weathered lumber, a rusted butter churn, a washtub sprouting ivy. She reached the backyard, skirted an overgrown garden.

The door to the screened-in porch wasn't latched. Gretchen listened hard then slipped inside. “Barb?” Her loud voice startled a cardinal in a wisteria bush. The sweet scent of the wisteria mingled with the sharper smells of paint and turpentine. Slowly, Gretchen walked toward an easel and looked at the half-done painting. A woman in a white dress rested languidly on a white wicker sofa. The only color was the red rose in one trailing hand and the red cushion bunched behind her head. The woman's face was only partially glimpsed behind an open book held in the other hand. There was a sense of white and peace, red and vigor.

The kitchen door squeaked open. Barb stood in the doorway. “Mama was a good painter.” Barb brushed back her tousled reddish brown hair, stared at the unfinished painting with red-rimmed eyes. “She was happy when she painted.”

Gretchen took two quick steps to stand just in front of Barb. “Why did you go off without telling me? Why didn't you answer the door?” She knew she sounded angry. She was. She hated the thought of Barb alone in the house.

Barb slumped against the wall. “I came home. I had to.” Her voice was dull. “I want to be here for Daddy.” She took a deep breath. “But he hasn't come. I don't know what to do.” She wore a blue shirtwaist dress and white sandals, the bandage bulky on her right foot. Yesterday she would have been beautiful. Today her face was puffy and pale, her hair haphazardly brushed. She didn't even have on any lipstick.

Gretchen picked her way carefully because this might be the wrong thing to do, all wrong, but it might be the best thing to do. “Maybe you ought to go on to the courthouse. When there's any word, they'll know in the county attorney's office.”

Any word . . . Gretchen knew the police were looking for Mr. Tatum to tell him about Mrs. Tatum's murder. And, she thought coldly, feeling an icy heaviness in her chest, to ask him where he was last night and how mad he had been at his wife and whether he'd come in the front door and quarreled with her. Gretchen frowned. “You said somebody knocked on the door. Your dad wouldn't have knocked.”

“No, it wasn't Daddy.” Her voice was dull, but determined. “Daddy wouldn't knock. He'd just come in.”

“You're sure you heard a knock?” They stood so close together, Gretchen heard the soft, quick breath Barb drew.

Barb's eyes brightened, widened. “Somebody knocked. That proves it wasn't Daddy.” Barb gave a sigh of relief. “I told the chief, but I'm going to tell Mr. Durwood. He can make the chief understand. Of course he will. I'll go now.” She turned away, limping on her bandaged foot.

Gretchen was almost all the way to the
Gazette
office before she wondered: What if no one believed Barb?

. . . when I saw your picture on the page with the editorials. I remember you won a prize for an editorial in the Wolf Cry. You were always winning prizes. Anyway, there you were in the
Times.
The headline said: Around the World . . . by G. G. Gilman. You were in Rome and it was something about happy Italian memories. That's nice, to have happy Italian memories. I wish I did. I had some good times—when I didn't remember home. That was always the trouble . . .

CHAPTER 3

“GRETCHEN,
MEIN SCHATZ
.” I heard Grandmother's voice in my memory. It was as if she were here and speaking to me. No one had ever said my name in quite the same way. Was it her German accent or was it the love that made the intonation so utterly unmistakable? In my heart, I felt like a girl again. Gretchen. That's how Grandmother knew me. I'd been G. G. Gilman in newsrooms around the world for most of my life. The nickname, derived from my initials, sounded like Gigi, appropriate for a fluffy white Angora cat or a fan dancer. I like to believe I carried it off with flair. No one patronized me. Or, to be honest, no one ever tried it twice. I hadn't been so tough in the beginning. The toughening started that sultry summer when Barb Tatum ran through the night to bang on my window screen. . . .

 
“PRETTY UGLY, HUH kid?” Mr. Dennis's rounded face sagged into creases like an old bloodhound. He leaned back in his swivel chair, arms folded, pipe clenched in one side of his jaw. “You feel like telling me?” His tone was quiet.

Gretchen stood by his desk. She didn't answer. She couldn't answer.

Jewell Taylor, her bluish white hair in a French twist, stopped typing. She made a soft, sad noise. The feather on her wispy hat trembled. “Walt, don't make the child talk about it. Let Ralph handle it.”

“Gretchen was there.” The editor's tone was sharp.

Gretchen stood still and stiff, reliving the night, how Barb's fingers on the screen sounded like June bugs, the smell of newly mown grass at the Crane yard, the light spilling down from the pink ceiling fixture onto Mrs. Tatum's sprawled body. . . .

“But maybe not.” The editor puffed on his pipe and the sweet woodsy scent was comforting, like the crackle of a fire in winter. “Okay, Gretchen, I've got a couple of stories for you. Billy Forrester's family brought him home from the army hospital in Kansas City. He lost both legs. They say he wants to go to college. And the First Baptist Church has a new pastor. And there'll be a Red Cross bus to take volunteers to Tulsa Saturday to donate blood for the wounded overseas. We'll do a box on page 1 for that. But first, clear the wire.” He jerked his head toward the clacking Teletype, paper oozing from the top, sloping down, and mounding on the floor.