Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (29 page)

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“Could it have been an accident?”
“What would she be doing out here by herself at three o’clock in the morning? Why didn’t the driver stop and help her? Off the top of my head I say she was beat up, thrown out of the car, run over to be sure she was dead, and then tossed in the ditch.”
Kathleen wrote quickly. “Who found her?”
“Mr. Kilburn on his way to town.”
“What are you waiting for, Sheriff?”
“Doc Herman. I think that’s him coming now. He’s the coroner.”
“The . . . king . . . the mayor . . . the
savior
—” The sarcastic words came out before Kathleen could hold them back. The sheriff didn’t seem to notice as he watched a car come slowly toward them.
“I sure hate to have to tell Hazel,” he said. “She’s had a peck of trouble with Clara since she was twelve or thirteen years old.”
“Would you like for me to go with you to tell Hazel, Sheriff?”
“You’d do that?”
“Hazel is a friend. Shouldn’t you ask her minister to be there?”
“Good idey. I’ve not had to do this but a time or two. It ain’t something that’s easy. Here’s Doc.”
The car stopped behind Kathleen’s, and the doctor got out. As he came toward them, his shiny shoes became coated with mud. Kathleen looked down at her own shoes and wondered if they would ever be the same again.
“What are you doing here?” Dr. Herman barked at her. His eyes behind the round-rimmed glasses were not friendly.
“Why do reporters go anywhere? To get news,” she shot back sharply.
“Did you call her?” Doc asked Sheriff Carroll, jerking his head toward Kathleen.
“No. I only called you after Mr. Kilburn called me.”
“Then it was Flossie.”
“If it’s important for you to know, a man stuck his head in the office door and yelled that he’d heard a body was found out here in the ditch.” She hoped that the lie was convincing and would take the blame from Flossie.
“Bullfoot! What happened here?” He turned his back on Kathleen to shut her out of the conversation.
“See for yourself. She’s over there in the ditch.”
“Drunk?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let’s take a look.”
“I’ll be at the office, Sheriff, when you’re ready to go to Hazel’s,” Kathleen said.
Sheriff Carroll nodded, and the two men went down into the ditch. The sheriff knelt beside the body and lifted the cloth he had used to cover Clara’s face.
Kathleen went back to her car, drove down to the crossroads, turned around, and headed back to town. As she passed back by the scene, Dr. Herman had come back up onto the road. Later, she remembered that he had not asked
who
was in the ditch.
At the office she gave Paul and Adelaide the news. Adelaide was shocked and saddened that the dead girl was Clara Ramsey.
“Has Hazel been told?”
“I offered to go with the sheriff to tell her.”
“I don’t envy you.”
Paul had already made room on the front page for a headline and short story. Kathleen typed up the story, after getting some background information about Clara from Adelaide, and took it back to be set on the linotype. The headline, in big black letters, was in place.
LOCAL WOMAN FOUND DEAD.
“I wonder if we have an engraving of Clara in a group picture.”
“I looked,” Paul said. “Nothing in the file.”
“We could use one of the sheriff above his quote. I have a feeling we need to butter him up. We may want him to help us find Judy’s mother.”
“That would push Johnny’s picture down under the fold.”
“Then let’s skip it. We’ll butter the sheriff up in another way.”
Paul grinned. “You’ve got newspaper ink in your veins.”
On her way back to her desk, she stopped in the office doorway. Her heart began a crazy dance in her chest. Johnny was standing beside the counter talking to Adelaide. From the shocked look on his face, she knew that Adelaide had told him about Clara. Kathleen went on to her desk and sat down.
“You’ve been out there?” Johnny asked without a greeting.
“Just got back.”
“What does Carroll think happened?”
“She was hit by a car after she’d been beaten up.”
“It wasn’t an accident?”
“He didn’t seem to think so.” She rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter just to be doing something.
“I came in to fix your tire.” Johnny stood in front of her desk on spread legs, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.
“Don’t bother. I’ll get it fixed.” Without looking up at him she knew he was gazing down at her. For some reason, unknown even to herself, she was angry with him.
“I said I would fix it, and I will,” he said stubbornly. “First I want to go out to where they found Clara.”
“Why? The sheriff won’t welcome your help.”
“I don’t give a damn if he does or not. I know a hell of a lot more about tracks than he does.”
“You’d better get going then. People by the dozens will be swarming out there out of curiosity.”
“I’m going, but I’ll be back to fix that tire.”
Kathleen wanted to put her head down on the desk and cry. The combination of troubles set her nerves on edge: worry about Johnny and his thoughts about seeing her with Barker, worry about having to tell Hazel that her daughter was dead, and worry about the poor little waif who had come to Rawlings to find her mother.
An hour passed, and Kathleen was beginning to fear Hazel would hear the news before she and the sheriff got there. Then he drove up in front of the office. A gray-haired man was with him. Kathleen went out to the car.
“Sheriff, I’ve been thinking about Emily, Clara’s little girl. Why don’t I go to the school, get Emily, and take her home? In the meanwhile you and the Reverend can tell Hazel. I’ll . . . try to tell Emily. It will take some of the burden off Hazel.”
“I’d forgotten Clara had a girl.”
“A few of the ladies from the church are going out to be with Mrs. Ramsey,” the preacher said.
“Where did they take Clara, Sheriff?”
“To the funeral parlor. Doc said it was accident.” When he spoke he looked away from Kathleen.
“An accident? She was beaten up, Sheriff. You said so. Doc is full of hot air,” Kathleen said angrily.
“It’s what he said, and that’s final. He’s the coroner.”
“For Christ’s sake! Doesn’t anyone in this town have enough backbone to stand up to that little dictator.”
“Watch your mouth, girl!”
“I’ll pick up Emily.”
Back in the office, Kathleen faced Adelaide and gave vent to her frustration.
“Doc Herman had pronounced Clara’s death an accident. She had been beaten around the head, has black eyes, and a cut mouth. I know enough to know that if she had been killed instantly when she was hit by a car, she’d not be bruised like that, especially when the ground is soft. What’s going on here? Sheriff Carroll didn’t want me to question Doc’s decision.
“Another thing was strange, Adelaide. He wanted to know how I knew to go out to the scene. He blamed Flossie. I tried to cover for her by telling him a man came to the door and told us.”
“We’ll stick to that. He could have Flossie fired.”
“I’m disliking that man more and more.”
• • •
Kathleen’s heart was beating with dread when she stopped at the schoolhouse and went to Emily’s classroom. She motioned to the teacher to come to the hall and then waited for Emily to come out.
“Hello, Sugarpuss.”
“Miss Ryan said I could go home.”
“How would you like to go for a little ride first?”
“Did Mama come home?”
The question caused Kathleen to pause. “No, sweetheart, she didn’t.”
“Then I better go home and see about Granny.”
“All right.” Kathleen took the child’s hand, and they went out to the car.
She told the child about her mother as they sat in the car beneath the pecan tree at the edge of the playground. Emily cried, Kathleen cried. It was one of the hardest things Kathleen had ever had to do. Although Emily was not attached to Clara as a child is normally attached to her mother, she had feelings for her.
“Granny’s goin’ to feel awful bad,” Emily said after she had stopped crying.
“Yes. Your mother was her little girl.”
“I’d better go home and see about her.”
Kathleen wiped her eyes and started the car.
• • •
Kathleen’s eyes were red when she returned to the office and heard the sound of the press printing the paper.
“You didn’t have to come right back,” Adelaide said, “Judy has been helping stuff the papers.”
“Three of Hazel’s friends are with her and Emily. That child is old for her years. Her concern was for her grandmother.”
“The only good thing Clara ever did for Hazel was to give her Emily. She adores the child. Was anything said about services?”
“Not to me. I think Hazel feared that something like this would happen to Clara but didn’t expect it here in Rawlings.”
Adelaide tilted her head to look out the window. “Johnny’s back. I wonder what he found out.”
Johnny’s dark eyes swept the office when he entered, then moved over to the desks where Kathleen and Adelaide sat and came right to the point.
“I’d bet my life it was no accident.”
“At first Sheriff Carroll said it was not an accident. He’s changed his mind now that Doc Herman says it was,” Kathleen replied.
“Yeah. That’s what I was told down at the funeral parlor.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Eldon is sort of a friend of mine.”
“He’s the undertaker,” Adelaide explained to Kathleen.
“Would you be squeamish about taking pictures of the body?” Johnny addressed his words to Kathleen.
“I’ve never done anything like it, but I can if it’s necessary.”
“Then get your Kodak. Eldon agrees with me that it wasn’t an accident. Pictures may be the only way that we can prove it. I owe it to Hazel to find out the truth if I can.”
“You mean there’s one man in this town that isn’t in Doc Herman’s pocket?”
“I know several . . . Paul, Claude, Eldon, and probably more if it came right down to it.”
Kathleen checked the Kodak. “There are eight pictures left on this roll. Is that enough?”
“I’d think so. Let’s go out the back and walk down the alley. No need to advertise where we’re going.”
“Johnny, be careful,” Adelaide cautioned. “Be careful about going against Doc Herman.”
“I’ll be careful; but if Clara was murdered, it’s only right that her murderer be found.”
Kathleen and Johnny walked behind the stores to the funeral parlor in back of the furniture store.
“You must have good cause to do this.” Kathleen had to walk fast to keep up with Johnny’s long steps.
“After looking at the body and talking to Eldon, I came to the conclusion she was beaten up; and while she lay in the road, the car ran over her, backed up and ran over her again. Then, not sure that she was dead, the murderer put his foot on her throat.”
“How do you know he ran over her while she was lying in the road?”
“Tire tracks. When I was a boy in Red Rock, Tom taught me to read tire marks because we were trying to catch rustlers coming into the fields and killing beef. He showed me the marks made by different tires. I used what he taught me once before when I worked with Hod.”
“Oh, gosh! I just remembered Hazel said that Clara had gone somewhere yesterday afternoon and when she came home, she was very angry. She told Hazel that someone owed her money and that she would get it or get even.”
“Maybe we can find out where she went.” At the door of the funeral parlor, he stopped. “Are you sure you’re up to this? It’s not a pretty sight. I’d not ask you to do it, but I’m a lousy picture taker, and these need to be as good as we can make them.”
“I’ll be all right. We’ll need plenty of light.”
“I’ll ask Eldon about that. The body is on a cart that can be moved to the window, and if that isn’t light enough, we may be able to open the double doors on the back. The danger would be that someone would see us.”
“We’ll need as much light as we can get in order to get good close-up pictures.”
“Come on. We’ll give it our best shot.”
To Kathleen’s surprise, Johnny put an arm protectively around her as they approached the building.
The instant Johnny rapped on the door it was opened. Eldon Radner was a small, thin man with wiry faded brown hair. He never just walked anywhere but scurried or sprinted. Owner of the furniture store and the funeral parlor, he took the business of laying out the dead very seriously.

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