Letter From Home (8 page)

“Faye didn't get killed yesterday afternoon.” Mr. Dennis's voice was mild. “Hey, Gretchen, check the morgue for mug shots of Chief Fraser, Sheriff Moore, and Donny Durwood, the county attorney. I'll run a sidebar: Lawmen Seeking Killer.”

Gretchen walked to the big wooden filing cabinets in the corner near the Teletype. She pulled out the drawer marked D-E-F.

Cooley yanked the last sheet from his typewriter. “She sure as hell croaked last night—and that happened after she and Tatum had their dustup at the Blue Light.” Cooley scribbled a slug on the sheets, pushed back from his desk, and rolled his chair the two feet to the editor's desk.

Gretchen picked two photographs out of the files in D-E-F, found the sheriff's file in M-N-O. Chief Fraser looked like an old bulldog, but not as tired as he had last night. Sheriff Paul Moore's long face reminded her of a sheriff in the westerns, maybe because his eyes had a flat, cold stare and he wore a string tie, real old-fashioned. Donald Durwood, the county attorney, gazed straight at the camera, stalwart as an Eagle Scout, short blond hair, regular features, firm chin.

Mr. Dennis reached out for Cooley's copy. “Did Faye leave the Blue Light by herself?”

Gretchen placed the photos on his desk.

“She went out the door alone. Who knows?” Cooley rubbed his nose, gave a big yawn. “Anyway, she went home and got herself strangled. If you ask me, she was asking for it.”

“Nobody asked you.” Gretchen's voice was wobbly, but she glared at him, her gaze furious, and his eyes dropped first. “She was nice.”

Cooley laughed. “She was an easy—”

The editor rattled the sheets. “That's enough, Ralph. Gretchen knew the woman. Let it go.”

Cooley rolled his chair back to his desk, his glance at Gretchen sardonic. “The facts speak for themselves, kid.”

“She loved to dance. But the way you say it . . .” Gretchen felt sick inside for Barb. Barb would read the paper. Of course she would. She would read in the
Gazette
that her mother was strangled after dancing the evening away in a local nightclub. . . . It sounded bad. Gretchen took a step toward Cooley. “Did you put anything in the story about Mrs. Tatum? About what kind of person she was?”

Cooley raised an eyebrow. His hands were poised above the keys. “What did her kid say? That she loved to dance?”

She loved to dance.
That's what Barb had said. But that wasn't everything. If that was all he wrote . . . “She was an artist.” There was a painting right now on the screened-in porch that Gretchen couldn't describe, not really, not the way it made her feel to look at it. As much as she loved words, sometimes there were things words couldn't capture. But the painting made her feel like she was looking at a heartbeat or a song, things you couldn't see but you felt inside.

Cooley picked up his suit coat, slipped into it. He yawned. “I'm going to get some lunch, then I'll nose around the courthouse, see what else they've found out. Maybe they've got a line on her boyfriend.” He shook out a cigarette. “Though I don't suppose that matters now.”

The Teletype began to rattle. Gretchen ignored the paper coming out. She spoke loud and fast so she could get it all out. “Mr. Cooley, you could talk to some people who knew her. Some of the people who took art from her. Or somebody at the five-and-dime. They'd tell you what she was really like.” About the way her laughter sounded light and free as a silver spoon striking a crystal glass. Or the way she would rush out into the yard on a summer night and catch hands with Barb and the other girls playing in the yard and swing in a happy dance, singing that silly song, “Mairzy Doats.”

Cooley poked his hat to the back of his head. He gave her a hard stare. “Who, me? I'm no sob sister, kid. That kind of story belongs to Jewell. Or maybe you'd like to do it. Make everybody get their hankies out.”

When the front door slammed behind him, Gretchen slowly turned toward Mr. Dennis. “He's going to make her sound cheap. Like she should have died.” The pictures were back in her mind: Mrs. Tatum sprawled on the floor, Barb with her face puffy, her eyes stricken.

Mr. Dennis leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands behind his head, frowned at her. “There's nothing in his story but the facts.”

“The facts . . .” Gretchen stopped. She didn't know how to make him understand. Then she looked into bleak green eyes and knew that he understood everything.

Dennis nodded slowly. “That's right, kid. You're getting there faster than most. Depends upon which facts, doesn't it?” He poked at Cooley's copy. “Every fact in here is true. Ralph may have a smart mouth, but he gets it right. But you don't think the Blue Light and alcohol and people mad at each other tell the whole story about Faye Tatum. I'll tell you what, you go get a story about Faye. Only one thing you have to promise me.”

“Yes, sir?” She stared into his mournful, skeptical, somber eyes.

“You got to promise that your facts will be true, too.” The chair squeaked as he turned back to his desk.

 
“WON ' T YOU HAVE another glass of lemonade, Gretchen?” Mrs. Forrester's brown hair puffed in thick rolls, framing a gentle face. She had milk white skin and light blue eyes. Her pink shirtwaist dress was crisp with starch. It might have been any summer day on a screened-in porch, bright with white wicker and navy cushions, except for the misery in her eyes and the young man in a wheelchair, a pale green spread draped to hide his missing legs.

Gretchen's stomach ached. She didn't know whether the ache came from the tart lemonade or from the pain and heartbreak and courage at the Forrester house. Or from the nagging worry that she'd promised to find out the truth about Faye Tatum and she didn't know where to start. “No, ma'am. Thank you. Do you know when you will be able to go to school, Billy?”

His hair, cut short, was a golden brown too and his freckled face thin. Too thin. His short-sleeve cotton shirt was too big for him. “They haven't told me when they're going to operate again.” He frowned. “There's this place that doesn't heal. Once I get past that, I know exactly what I want to do. I've got it all planned.” His voice lifted with eagerness. “They say it's a sure thing that the president's going to sign that bill for veterans to go to college. I'm going to go to A&M and be a vet.”

Gretchen's uncle Sylvester was a veterinarian and he was always being called out in the middle of the night when a cow was having trouble delivering a calf or a quarter horse came down with colic. Gretchen thought about the rough uneven ground out on farms and ranches, the ruts that criss-crossed a barnyard.

Mrs. Forrester pressed a crumpled handkerchief to her eyes. Her shoulders shook.

Billy gripped the arms of his wheelchair. “I'm going to get artificial legs. I'm going to walk.” He didn't look at his mother.

Gretchen glanced down at her notes. She mustn't cry. She wrote quickly:
artificial legs.
“Why do you want to be a vet?”

Billy's hands relaxed. “Animals don't . . .” His voice trailed off.

Gretchen waited.

He took a deep breath. “I want to help things live.”

“Animals don't . . .” she repeated.

His mouth twisted. He stared at the throw which lay in a revealing drape, no bulges for legs, nothing to mar the smooth cotton. “Animals don't toss grenades. Animals fight.” He nodded, his face wrinkling. “Sometimes they kill. But they don't set out to destroy everything in their path. I like animals. All kinds. So, that's what I'm going to do . . .”

Gretchen wrote fast. She scarcely heard his final words, he spoke so softly: “. . . or die.” She looked up quickly. She didn't write those words down. He hadn't spoken them to her. Or to his mother. He'd spoken to himself.

He clapped his hands together, grinned at her. “How do you like working for the
Gazette
, Gretchen?”

“I want to be a reporter”—she met his gaze directly—“as much as you want to be a vet.”

He reached out and they shook hands.

Mrs. Forrester exclaimed, “A reporter? Oh, Gretchen, I hope not. I thought you were just working there for the summer and writing some nice stories about people like Rose Drew. You don't want to be a real reporter, do you? There are so many terrible things in the papers. Why, we heard on the radio this morning about Faye Tatum.” Her face tightened in disapproval, sharp lines cutting from her nose to her mouth. “You shouldn't have to know about things like that. Or women like her.”

“Oh, Ma.” Billy's voice was sharp. “Mrs. Tatum was nice. Whenever I used to go see Barb, she was as nice as could be.”

“Nice women don't go to taverns by themselves.” Mrs. Forrester's mouth folded into a thin, tight line.

Gretchen gripped her pencil so hard her hand hurt. “She loved to dance. That's all. Barb said she just loved to dance.” She stood, folded her sheets of yellow copy paper.

Mrs. Forrester stood, too, her face as cold as a frozen pond in January. “She was a married woman. She shouldn't have run around like she was single.”

Billy slammed his hand on the arm of his chair. “Ma, there's nothing wrong with dancing.”

“Dancing's just an excuse, Billy.” Her pale eyes glittered.

He fingered the hem of the throw. “I used to dance. I went to the USO all the time.” He ignored his mother's muffled cry. They didn't dance or drink in the Forrester family. “Maybe Mrs. Tatum was scared. Or lonely. Or feeling blue. When they play the music loud and fast, everything else goes away, at least for a while. If all she did was dance, there's nothing wrong with that.”

“She wouldn't be dead if that's all she did.” Mrs. Forrester tossed her head like a horse scenting a snake.

Gretchen paused at the door. “Nobody knows for sure what happened. The police don't know. They're trying to find out. I'm going to write a story about Mrs. Tatum. I'm going to talk to the people who knew her best.”

“Least said, soonest mended, I should think.” Mrs. Forrester's tone was snippy.

Billy rolled his chair forward. “Gretchen's got a job to do. I think it's swell. Barb can help. She'll know who her mom's friends were. Gretchen, please say hi to Barb for me. Tell her I'm sorry about her mom. Real sorry.” His eyes held memories of death.

“I'll tell her.” Gretchen hoped she could make Barb know that Billy understood. But Gretchen wouldn't say a word about Mrs. Forrester, who stood like a stone in her pretty pink dress as Gretchen pushed through the screen door. Mrs. Forrester had made up her mind. She believed that Faye Tatum was a bad woman and that was why she came to a bad end. Gretchen could imagine Mrs. Forrester talking to her friends, their voices low and secretive, and the knowing looks they would exchange.

Gretchen walked fast despite the heat. She was in a hurry. Maybe nothing would change Mrs. Forrester's attitude. Everybody in town would be talking about Faye Tatum and the Blue Light and Faye's quarrel with Clyde. But Gretchen was determined that there would be something more to remember about Barb's mother. Thanks to Billy Forrester, Gretchen knew where to begin. Barb knew her mother's friends. That was the place to start. With Barb.

When she passed Victory Café, she frowned at the streaks of dust on the plate glass. Tonight she'd scrub the front window. The café was crowded, all the seats at the counter taken, most of the booths full. It had been that way ever since the war started, even though many days they didn't have any meat. But Grandmother's spaghetti and homemade tomato sauce and her macaroni and cheese were big favorites. Funny, she didn't even know what the special was today. This must be the first morning in forever that she'd not opened up with Grandmother. Right now her achy stomach felt hollow, but she kept right on walking. She'd eat later.

At the courthouse, Gretchen went straight to the third floor, which housed the offices for the court clerk and the county attorney and the judge. Past the courtroom at the far end of the broad marble hallway, a clump of young men clustered near the closed door to the draft board. Three big ceiling fans stirred the hot air. The windows at either end of the hall were pushed high.

On the wall opposite the frosted glass door of the county attorney's office, there were big photographs of the county judge and the county attorney. Judge Alonzo Miller was old with a wrinkled face, thick glasses, and a weedy mustache. Donald Durwood looked young and handsome and kind of noble, like Alan Ladd in that movie where he'd been a soldier for money and then he knew he had to do the right thing. There'd been a lot of pictures in the county attorney's file at the
Gazette
from the days when he played high school football and later at A&M. He looked more stern in this picture, steely gaze, jaw set. She opened the door, stepped into a small anteroom. The door to the county attorney's office was to the left. It was closed. Wooden filing cabinets ranged against the opposite wall. The anteroom held three desks, the largest a brown walnut. On the big desk were a typewriter, a telephone, in and out boxes, a brown leather desk pad, and neat stacks of correspondence. A Coke bottle sat next to a blue pottery plate with a sandwich, potato chips, and a dill pickle. A long golden oak table stacked with brown manila folders was pushed next to the wall beneath the three big windows, open to catch any breeze. Mrs. Holcomb, a buxom woman with shiny brown hair bunched in sausage-thick curls, held a fly swatter high above her head, poised to strike.

As the door clicked shut, she whispered, “Wait, Gretchen. Hush. Oh”—a sigh of frustration—“it's moved. If you hadn't come in just now . . . I hate wasps. What a morning.” Abruptly, she lurched forward, swung. The wasp tumbled to the shiny wooden floor. She bustled to the walnut desk, plucked a tissue from a drawer, gingerly picked up the insect, flung it into a green metal wastebasket. “There.” She paused, pushed back a tendril of loose hair. “Come in, my dear. I'd close the windows, but then it's worse than a sweat-shop in here. There must be a nest of them right under the eaves. I was just having my lunch. Do you suppose wasps smell food? What can I do for you? Mr. Durwood isn't here. If you're here about Mrs. Tatum's murder—oh”—her voice dropped—“it's so awful. Poor little Barb. But Mr. Durwood did the right thing, hard as it was.” She dropped into her chair, but made no move to pick up her sandwich. “The look on her face when she came out of his office just broke my heart. I wanted to grab her up in my arms, but she just walked past me like I wasn't even here. She went over to her desk and grabbed her purse from the drawer. I understand she's staying at your house. Will you tell her I wish I could help?” She picked up the Coke bottle, took a deep swallow. “I don't know if anything can help with the police looking for her father. It seems pretty clear he was the one that did it. I'll tell you, Gretchen, drinking leads a man straight to hell.”