Judas Cat (5 page)

“He’s called a couple of times,” Joan said. “Alex, did you pick up the Three Corners’ news this morning?”

“I’m sorry, honey. I’ve had it in my pocket all day.” He took several hand written pages from his pocket and gave them to her.

“If Jennie Williams wore another lovely brocade dress, I’ll scream,” she said.

“Are you coming out to the ball game tonight?” he asked.

“I imagine.”

“Good.”

“Alex, did you get over to the library?” Maude asked. “Some people like those ‘library jottings,’ and I know Stella well enough to know she won’t come around till you do.”

He had run a letter in the last
Sentinel
from the English teacher calling the librarian on a dangling participle in one of her reviews. “I’ll make it in time,” he said. “I’ll bet she has them all ready for me.”

Maude squashed out her cigarette. “Maybe you don’t work us to death, Alex Whiting,” she said, “but you sure worry us enough.”

“He’s changing, isn’t he, Maude?” Joan said after Alex had left the office.

“Mmm, I don’t know. He’s a lot like his father.” Maude could remember the day he was born. It was in 1919, days similar to the present: peace conferences without the certainty of peace, Balkan troubles, reparations. It was not the sort of news the
Sentinel
carried, but things Alex’s father felt called for comment and thought in every community, even Hillside. He had had his say, and for a time the
Sentinel
had been delivered free and without advertising. He couldn’t afford it then, and the only bright spot in those days was the birth of Alex. The Whitings had lost two children before that, and they had all but given up hope of having one. “I’d say he was having growing pains. It’s not easy to be Charlie Whiting’s son. When he does something good, people say he’s a chip off the old block. When he makes a mistake, they say he’ll never be the man his father was. He’s finding his own way now. I know all his symptoms. He’ll break out in a crusade one of these days, just like his father used to.” Maude sighed. “I don’t know if I’m up to them any more. It’s all very well to go out swinging for some cause or other. But when you’re sitting back here trying to balance the books, the flavor’s more like ashes.” She looked up at Joan. “I suppose you think he’s wonderful?”

“No. Very nice, but not wonderful.”

Joan was not a pretty girl, but there was a quiet depth about her. It was in her eyes, her slow smile. Only when you talked with her for a long time did you discover the scope of her awareness and imagination. Or you could see it in the hundred different ways she found to spice the drab news of Hillside.

“In some ways he’s a danged fool,” Maude said, taking her hat from the letter basket.

Joan’s color heightened, and at that moment, Maude thought, she was the most beautiful girl in town.

A
LEX STOPPED AT THE
station on his way home. Mayor Altman was sitting beside the chief’s desk when he walked in. His legs were spread apart, the better to support his ample stomach. One of the things Alex didn’t like about him was the way he parted his hair in the middle so that it looked like a toupee, which, he thought to himself, was a fine basis for prejudice.

“Hello, Mr. Altman,” he said. “Still hot, isn’t it?”

“Terrible. I’d like to scratch August off the calendar. How’s your father these days, Alex?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Still taking it easy? It must be wonderful.”

“Not to hear him tell it!”

“A wonderful man, Alex. Wonderful man.”

Yes, he thought. Altman would say that as long as Charlie Whiting wasn’t tearing into one of his pet schemes. For years the mayor had been trying to lure one industry after another to Hillside. At one time he had induced the town board to buy a two-acre plot on which he intended a tractor outfit to build a factory: The tractor company decided in favor of the county seat at Riverdale, and the town treasurer had to unload the property. Altman was not happy with Mr. Whiting’s
Sentinel
comments on the town as a real estate brokerage.

“Find anything up there, Alex?” Waterman asked.

“Not much. A hundred eighty-three dollars, two books on hydraulics and one by Tom Paine. Also an old army campaign ribbon.” He laid the money on the chief’s desk, and a page from his notebook, listing the items.

“I wouldn’t go any further on this, Waterman, if I were you,” the mayor said.

Alex looked at him.

“I only mean that there’s no use antagonizing the county. After all they have the equipment. What I mean is, they’re more qualified than … Well, Hillside isn’t exactly prepared to investigate a thing like this.”

“I think we might muddle through with a little cooperation,” Alex said.

“I just don’t think Waterman should undertake it,” the mayor said.

“Why not? He’s a qualified police officer.”

“The qualifications to meet the needs of Hillside are scarcely … What I mean is, as long as the county stepped in, why not let them follow through on it?”

“That would suit me fine,” said Alex. “But I just don’t think they look at it that way. So far they don’t think there’s anything to investigate.”

“Alex,” the mayor said, pointing at him with a pencil, “it seems to me the townspeople have elected the men they intended to conduct the town business.”

“I can see what you mean,” Alex said, “but you can’t blame me for being curious.”

“Of course not, my boy. That’s a newspaperman’s job.”

“I’m not a newspaperman,” Alex said. “I’m a printer.”

“Of course, of course,” Altman said. He turned to the chief who had been trying to get his pipe to draw. “What do you think, Fred? Can we go ahead with the funeral arrangements? I might call the Addisons, since there aren’t any relatives we know of.”

“I suppose we might as well,” Waterman said. “I ain’t exactly satisfied about how he died myself, but I don’t see how we can hold up the funeral.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Altman said. “The coroner’s report will cover you.”

It was amazing how sure everyone was of the coroner’s verdict.

“It ain’t me I’m worried about,” the chief said.

The telephone rang. It was the coroner’s office.

“No, Mark,” Waterman said. “We didn’t find much. Nothing to show any relatives alive. He had a hundred eighty-three dollars cash in the house. That’s about all …”

Yes, Alex thought. That was about all. He could see Altman relaxing under Waterman’s monotone.

“… I guess you’re right, Mark. He could have shut the cat in the other room and then collapsed. If you say so …”

Alex shook his head. “What about fingerprints?” he prompted.

“Anything show up in the fingerprints?” Waterman asked. He turned to Alex. “He’s checking. … No, none of us touched anything I know of. Wait a minute. Mabel Turnsby pussyfooted in after us. She might’ve leaned on the chair. I’ll check and be sure. A scar, index finger, left hand …”

“There’s an example of what I mean,” the mayor said. “What competent investigator would let a thing like that happen?”

Alex shrugged. “Did you ever try to keep Mabel Turnsby out of some place she was set on getting into?”

Waterman hung up the phone. “They won’t have the results on the tests for a while, but Tobin’s pretty sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“They can make short work of something up there if they want to, can’t they?” Alex said angrily.

“Alex, you got to go deeper in thinking this thing out. It just don’t make sense that anyone’d try to kill the old man. He was bound to go out pretty soon. What’d be the use risking your neck when he was going to kick off any day?”

“Chief Waterman’s right,” the mayor said. “It makes no sense at all.”

“Suppose you’d waited years for him to go, and he just wouldn’t die?”

“You’d still wait for a man in his nineties to go the regular way,” the chief said.

There were a lot of things Alex wanted to say, but there was no use saying them now. “You’d better not forget Gilbert, Chief. He’ll be getting hungry. He’s a big boy now.”

“I’ll stop by. I’d better put some sort of “no trespassing” sign on the house.”

“Do you mind if I poke around a bit? For my own satisfaction?”

“Nope. Go ahead, Alex. If you’d feel any better, I’ll give you an auxiliary badge.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Waterman,” the mayor said. Both Alex and the chief looked at him. His face showed that he regretted the words immediately.

“I guess it’ll be all right,” Waterman said. “I got the authority to do this if I see fit. And it looks fit to me. Here, Alex. This sort of makes it legal.”

He took the badge. It required so little in Hillside to make a thing legal.

T
HE WHITINGS LIVED IN
the oldest part of town, on Deerpath Avenue. The street was supposed to have been a hunting trail the Indians followed on their way to the north woods. Where it crossed Appleseed Avenue, there was an iron fence around a knotted apple tree said to have been planted by the legended Johnny Appleseed more than a hundred years before. Horticulturists scoffed at the idea, but no one in Hillside paid any attention to them. They much preferred the legend.

The houses on Deerpath Avenue were old, and most of them had been handed down from one generation to another from the earliest settlers in the town. The lawns and gardens were spacious, for once each family had kept its cow and chickens, but they now had a zoning law against it. Charlie Whiting had had a word to say on that … when it came to zoning a town with twelve hundred people, but it was one of his lost causes. The frame houses were built on stone foundations, two stories high, every one of them with a screen porch the width of the house. Huge elm trees arched across the street, allowing only a dapple of sunlight through.

Alex’s father was sitting on the porch when he drove up. He came to the door to meet him. “I’d rather wait for Christmas than for you, son. Laura, Alex is home. Come on out and let supper be for a while.”

Alex watched his mother come through the hall, his hand outstretched to take hers. She was the light of his life, as he always said. Nearly seventy now, she still walked quickly, leaning forward a little as though she couldn’t wait to get where she was going. Alex had her eyes, and the habit of arching one eyebrow when he doubted the truth of what someone said.

“The poor old man,” Mrs. Whiting said. “It’s a terrible thing to have to die alone. Did you see him, Alex?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Did he die a peaceful death?”

Alex looked away from her. He loosened his tie and sat down on the swing next to his father. “I don’t think so, Mom. I’m afraid he had a rough time of it.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” she said.

“Something happened to his cat. It scratched him up pretty bad. Coroner thinks the shock of it was what killed him.”

“That’d be Mark Tobin,” his father said. “Was Jake up to take a look at him?”

“He was there first. That’s what he thought, too.”

“How do you feel about it, son?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I was up there with Waterman when he found him. Both of us felt as though there was something more to it than we could see. The county men came down and looked around. They didn’t have much to say, and as far as Tobin was concerned it was all cut and dried. Nothing to it.”

“How about Waterman?”

“Like I said, he felt the way I did until Altman went to work on him.”

“Altman’s an inferior sort of person,” Mrs. Whiting said.

“There’s a lot of things I want to know,” Alex said. “More about Andy, mostly. You’ve got no idea how desolate that house is. It was like seeing bones on a desert. I just can’t believe a man could live in one place for thirty years and not accumulate a lot of junk.”

“It’s not likely,” Mr. Whiting said. “On the other hand, Andy knew he was going to die soon. He might not have wanted people prying around. He certainly didn’t want it when he was alive. I’ve been trying to remember all I know about him. It’s funny, we don’t pay much attention to people when they’re alive.”

“Andy was around Hillside for a long time, wasn’t he, Dad?”

“About thirty years or so. I think the first time I saw him was when he came into the office to put an ad in the
Sentinel
for some used plumbing equipment. I took the ad myself. The way I remember it, I suggested he get Matt Sanders to put it in for him. He said he’d do it himself, and I wondered if Matt was going to have competition. He didn’t. Whatever Andy did for a living, it wasn’t plumbing.”

“He did a good job,” Alex said. “It’s still working.”

“He was a big man then. Six-foot-two at least. Sharp black eyes that darted at you. And he had a sense of humor with a knife in it. He kept it to himself unless you pried into his business. Then God help you.”

“Weren’t people curious about where he came from, Dad?”

“Sure they were, but I don’t think they ever found out. He was as close-mouthed a man as I ever knew. There was a big increase in population about then—during the first war. By the time it was over people were used to Andy being around.”

“Who sold him the property? He didn’t build that house.”

“I think it was up for sale. That whole strip belonged to the Turnsbys once. Mike Turnsby lived there, and he moved to Chicago along about then. A lot of talk at the time. His wife couldn’t get along with his sister. That’s Mabel. Mike’s wife was sort of a flapper, and Mabel … well, she wasn’t much different then from what she is now. Norah Barnard, the vet’s wife is Mike’s daughter. She came back to Three Corners after her and Doc were married. I guess Mike left her that land out there. Turnsbys owned a lot of land around here once. She won’t speak to Mabel, though. Some tiff there.”

“Mrs. Barnard doesn’t speak to anybody very much,” Mrs. Whiting said. “Gives herself airs like a duchess. You wouldn’t think she was a veterinary’s wife. Last year she came to the Hillside Anniversary dressed like a fashion model.”

“I remember,” Alex said.

“Doc’s a pretty well-known man in his field,” Mr. Whiting said. “He’s written a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t care,” said Mrs. Whiting. “If you’d written
Pilgrim’s Progress
I wouldn’t go around that way.”