“That’s done.” She sighed.
“I’ll take care of things down here. Why don’t you and Miss Dolan go on upstairs? I know you’ve got things to talk about.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kathleen saw Paul’s hand sliding up and down Adelaide’s back.
They are more than friends. He’s very protective of her. If they are lovers, they must have more of a reason for hiding it other than because he’s younger than she is.
“You’ll come up after you close?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. You two need—”
“—I’ll have supper ready. Like always.” Adelaide placed her hand on his arm and kept her eyes on his face.
Kathleen felt like an intruder and busied herself clearing off her desk.
“You’re tired and you don’t need to cook. I’ll go over to the store and bring up some meat for sandwiches.” He spoke softly just to her.
“I invited Kathleen for supper. I’m going to fix salmon patties and fry some potatoes. Nothing fancy.”
“Don’t go to any trouble for me,” Kathleen protested. “I can go to Claude’s for a hamburger.”
“We usually have a sandwich or eggs on press day. Sometimes we’re almost too tired to eat.”
“I don’t see how you two got this paper out all by yourselves. There were six people working at the paper in Liberal.”
“Paul does as much work as a dozen people,” Adelaide said proudly. “There’s nothing he can’t do from writing editorials—he’ll be mad at me for telling this—to fixing those two monstrous machines we have in the back room. He tunes in to Eastern radio and takes down the news . . . like the headlines we had today: ‘Chamberlain Off by Plane to See Hitler.’”
“I wondered how you got that. Pretty clever.”
Kathleen watched color flood the big man’s face and heard Adelaide’s soothing words to him.
“She had to know, Paul, that I couldn’t write this entire paper by myself.” With her hand on the big man’s arm, she turned to Kathleen. “Most of the people here have no idea what it takes to get out a paper. They think that because a man gets greasy working on the press and isn’t constantly blowing his own horn, he doesn’t have anything up here.” She tapped her forehead with her finger. “Paul is smarter than half the town put together,” she said defensively. “For several years he’s taken care of the national and state news, and I’ve handled the local stuff and the advertising. He’s a better writer than I am, by far.”
“Addie—hush,” Paul said gently.
“I won’t hush. If Kathleen is going to buy into this paper and be working here, she has the right to know that it’s mostly due to you that we’ve kept our heads above water.”
“
If
I’m going to buy into the paper? I was under the impression that you had accepted my offer. Don’t tell me that you’ve changed your mind,” Kathleen said.
“I’ve not changed my mind. I thought it only fair that you know what’s been going on before we go into a partnership.”
“Will my being here make a difference in how you run the paper?”
“Not if you don’t object to Paul’s being your partner as well.”
“Why should I object?”
“We’re lovers,” Adelaide blurted.
“That’s your business and . . . Paul’s.” Paul had turned his back to the two women and was looking out the window. “I told you in my letters that I wanted to invest my inheritance in something that would help to keep me out of the poorhouse in my old age. You agreed that for five hundred dollars I would own half the
Gazette,
the building it’s in, and be a full partner in running it.”
“None of that has changed.”
“Well, then I don’t see that we have a problem.”
“You’ll hear talk—”
“I probably won’t be here a week until you’ll be hearing talk about me. I’m not a woman who knuckles under. I stand up for myself, which rubs some the wrong way.”
“There are other problems. Things are going on in this town that I mean to uncover if I can. It could be . . . dangerous, and you’d be involved.”
“I’d like to hear more about it, but I doubt it would change my mind about my investment here.”
“Oh, Kathleen, I knew that I was going to like you.”
Kathleen laughed. “Tell me that a couple months from now when I’ve clashed with your biggest advertiser, written a story that offends the mayor, exposed the Baptist preacher’s love affair with a high-school girl, and caused Mrs. Smothers to cancel her subscription.”
“Are you really capable of all that? I’m going to love it. Paul, you were right. When you read her letters, you said that she was a woman with guts.”
Paul turned and spoke to Kathleen. “There are people here who would want to tar and feather me if they thought I had as much as touched Addie’s hand. I am nothing here but a linotype operator and a pressman. I want it to stay that way.”
Kathleen shrugged. “Your choice.”
“Before I came here four years ago, I spent time in Huntsville, Texas, penitentiary for—”
“—Oh, Paul . . . don’t—”
“—For murder.”
“Oh, Kathleen, please don’t let that information leave this room!”
“I want all the cards on the table, Addie,” Paul said, then looked directly at Kathleen. “I came through here on a freight train on Christmas Eve, hungry and cold. She let me in into the back room after I had been turned away all over town. She treated me like a human being instead of a dog to be kicked around. She brought down blankets and let me sleep there in the back room on a cot. I was warm for the first time in weeks. The next morning she invited me to come up for dinner.” He paused, looked at Addie, his eyes soft and full of love, but there was nothing soft about his words when he spoke again. “Being with Addie is the nearest I’ll ever be to heaven. I’ll kill anyone who hurts her or tries to take her from me.”
There was a long, deep silence. Kathleen glanced at Adelaide and saw that her eyes were shiny with tears as she gazed into the big man’s homely face.
“Paul, dear. What would I do without you?”
“You don’t have to do without me, Addie.” He spoke in a low voice, a quiet, intimate tone that struck a chord of longing inside Kathleen.
She felt a yearning for someone of her own, a feeling she’d not had for a long time. What would it be like to have a man love her so much that he would be willing to kill to keep her safe. Kathleen shook her head in order to rid her mind of the thought.
“Adelaide is very very lucky,” she said, her voice shaky and barely about a whisper.
“Paul, doggone it, you’re going to make me . . . cry.”
“No, sweet girl, I don’t want to do that. I just wanted Miss Dolan to know where I stand and that I don’t have a life away from you . . . outside this building.”
“But . . . it isn’t enough for you. You’re such a wonderful man. You should have a family . . . children—”
“Shhh—We’ve been over that before, and it isn’t something we should discuss in front of Miss Dolan. Here’s the bus. I’ll take out the papers.”
As soon as he was out the door, Adelaide spoke with a sad shake of her head.
“I didn’t intend for all of this to come out before you even got to know us. Paul is an astute judge of character. He made a decision about you, or he’d never have said what he did about his past.”
“I’ll not betray his trust. I suspected yesterday, when he found you on the floor, that he was in love with you. He was beside himself with worry.”
“His affection for me is largely due to the fact that he hasn’t had much kindness in his life.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case. He adores you.”
“He’s a dear man, kind and gentle.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I love him. But . . . I’m ten years older than he is.”
“So what? Martha was older than George Washington. I’ve not heard anyone complaining about that.”
D
uring the week that followed, Kathleen learned very little more about Paul Leahy’s background and a lot more about the merchants in Rawlings, the most important of which was that they were very tightfisted with their advertising dollar. The two grocery stores were competitive as the stores in Liberal had been. If one ran an ad, the other one did too. Each tried to worm out of Kathleen the specials the other store would be featuring the following week.
Legal notices were a sure source of revenue for the paper. Rawlings, being the seat of Tillison County, had a column of “Legals” each week. Adelaide explained that at times the county was a couple months behind in payment, but it was a sure source of income for the paper. Kathleen made a mental note to discuss the delay with the county treasurer.
The sheriff’s office and county jail were in a low, flat building attached to the back of the courthouse. With a round-brimmed straw hat on her head to protect her sensitive skin from the hot Oklahoma sun, Kathleen opened the screen door and went into the sheriff’s office.
She removed her hat and stood for a moment under the cooling breeze of the ceiling fan as she waited for the man sitting at a desk to turn and acknowledge her. She waited a full minute or two, then rapped sharply on the counter with her knuckles. The man turned with a scowl that slowly disappeared from his face as he stood.
“Well . . . hello.” He was a blocky man in his late thirties or early forties, with watery blue eyes and very noticeable false teeth. The uppers dropped slightly when he smiled.
“I’m Kathleen Dolan from the
Gazette.
”
“Now this’s a real treat. I heard that a pretty redhead was takin’ over the
Gazette.
”
“Correction. I’m
not
taking over the
Gazette.
Miss Vernon and I are partners.”
“Partners? Now don’t that jist frost ya? Adelaide finally got someone to come in and bail her out. Partners.” He repeated the word in a tone of disbelief. “Is she goin’ to share that mud-ugly bum she took in off the street? ’Pears to me three in a bed’ll be a mite crowded. Huh?” He raised his brows several times causing wrinkles to form on his forehead.
Does he mean what his words implied?
In the silence that followed, she realized that he meant exactly what he had said after he raised his brows again in a gesture that irritated her. Her mouth drew down in a thin angry line and her eyes gleamed with temper.
“Are you the sheriff?” she snapped impatiently.
“Noooo—I’m Deputy Mitchell P. Thatcher, but my friends call me Ell.” He lowered his voice and murmured the last in a confidential tone. He appeared to be totally oblivious to her sudden testiness.
Kathleen pulled in a hard, deep breath and tried to hang on to her temper. There was a nastiness and an arrogance about the man that rubbed her the wrong way. She had taken an instant dislike to the deputy and chided herself for letting it show.
“Is the sheriff in, Mr. Thatcher?”
“Name’s Ell, honey. Ell to my friends.” He leaned toward her with his elbow on the counter. The heavy smell of brilliantine came from his slicked-down bushy hair.
“I’m not your friend, Mr. Thatcher. I’m not even an acquaintance. I’m here to see the sheriff.”
“He’s not in. I take care of thin’s ’round here when he’s out. What can I do for you?” He wiggled his brows again in that irritating gesture.
Kathleen bit back a hundred answers to his question and looked at the coat of dust on the counter, the wads of paper on the floor, the overflowing ashtrays. Then her eyes met his head-on.
“From the looks of this place you haven’t been overworking while the boss was away. Or does this place always look like a hog pen?”
The grin left the deputy’s face. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Honey,” he drawled, “you may’ve got by with that smart mouth up in Kansas, but it won’t work down here in Oklahoma. We won’t put up with it.”
“Now that’s just too damn bad,
Deputy do-nothing.
” A pointed finger stabbed at him. “What are you going to do about it? Lynch me or just tar and feather me and run me out of town?” Her voice was razor-sharp, her face a rigid mask of indignation. She turned to leave, knowing she had made an enemy of the deputy, but too angry to care.
“Naw. Down here we got better uses for . . . a pretty woman.” The deputy’s words followed her out the door. “On . . . her backside.”
Out on the sidewalk, Kathleen slapped her straw hat down on her head and walked swiftly to the corner, turned and headed for the heart of town, too angry to remember she had planned to stop at the office of the county treasurer. She fumed over the words of the stupid redneck deputy.
How did such a man keep his job? Except for the hijackers, only two of the people she had met during the past week had been less than friendly. Kathleen prided herself on breaking through people’s reserve and making them like her. But the nurse and the deputy weren’t worth the effort.