Ghost of a Chance

by Bill Crider

  “Of course. Be my guest.”

  Melva stepped back and opened the door. Rhodes went inside, where he found himself in a darkened hallway. All the shades in the house were drawn, and it was as dank as a cave.

  “The light bothers my eyes,” Melva explained. “Come along. We can talk in the den.”

  Rhodes’s shoe soles squeaked on the hardwood floor as he followed her to a sparsely furnished room where a small black and white TV set was flickering. Alex Trebek was waiting for someone to give him a question for the answer 1066. Rhodes wondered if anyone could give a question for A.D. 11. Aside from the TV set, the only light in the room came from a floor lamp with a twenty-five-watt bulb and an imitation Tiffany shade. Melva turned down the sound on the TV set, and she and Rhodes sat in straight-backed wooden chairs with wooden bottoms.

  “If you’re wondering how I saw Vernell the other day,” Melva said, “it’s because I just happened to be out on the porch at the time. I like to go out for a breath of air now and then.”

  Rhodes didn’t blame her. If he lived in a place like this, he’d go out now and then, too. Probably more often than just now and then.

  “Have you caught whoever killed poor Faye?” Melva asked.

  “That’s what I’m here about,” Rhodes said. “Maybe you can help me.”

  “My word, Sheriff. I don’t see how I can do that. I’ve told you all I know about it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes said.

  Melva leaned back as far as she could in her chair, which wasn’t very far.

  “If there’s something I haven’t told you,” she said, “I don’t know what it is. Are you going to give me a hint?”

  “It’s about Faye’s husband,” Rhodes said. “And his guns. Do you remember the guns?”

  “Well, yes, but not very well. As I think I told you, I visited Faye now and then, but we weren’t exactly close friends.”

  “You knew they were there, though.”

  “Yes. I don’t know much about guns, Sheriff.”

  “You probably know enough about them to know that if you killed someone with one of them, you should get rid of it, don’t you?”

  “I watch television, if that’s what you mean.”

  Rhodes thought about Murder, She Wrote. Watching it hadn’t helped Faye Knape.

  He said, “And if you wanted someone to think another person had committed a murder, you’d probably know enough to plant the gun on that other person, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I’ve seen that on television. Do you watch a lot of television, Sheriff?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Rhodes said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Now, about those guns.”

  “What about them?”

  “When was the last time you saw them?”

  “My word, Sheriff. I don’t have any idea.”

  “Think about it,” Rhodes said.

  Melva looked at the TV set, where one of the Jeopardy contestants had just missed a Daily Double and lost everything. Then she looked back at Rhodes.

  “It must have been recently,” she said finally. “Maybe the last time I was over there.”

  “So you didn’t know she’d sold them?”

  “Why, no. She never mentioned that to me. Is it important?”

  “It might be,” Rhodes said.

  38

  WHEN RHODES WALKED INTO THE ANTIQUE STORE, Richard Rascoe was sitting in the barber chair reading a copy of the Antique Trader and looking natty in a camel-colored jacket and a tie with Disney characters on it.

  “What can I do for you, Sheriff?” he asked.

  “Show me some guns,” Rhodes said.

  “Guns?” Rascoe let the Trader fall into his lap and looked around his store. “I don’t sell guns.”

  “Not here in Thurston, maybe, but you sell them. Faye Knape sold her husband’s collection to you. I found the bill of sale at her house.”

  “There wasn’t any . . .” Rascoe paused, realizing his mistake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheriff.”

  “Murder,” Rhodes said. “You killed Ty Berry and Faye Knape. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “You must be crazy,” Rascoe said.

  “There are people who’d agree with you about that,” Rhodes said, remembering that Faye Knape had said the same thing. “But in this case they’d be wrong. I know about the angel. I know you met Berry in the cemetery and killed him. I know you killed Faye Knape and left one of her husband’s pistols in the house for me to find. You confused the issue, but it just didn’t work out for you.”

  Rascoe tried a smile, but it kept sliding off his face.

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Your first mistake,” Rhodes said, “was taking the catalog from Faye’s house. I didn’t think about it until today, when I got a catalog in the mail. After I showed Faye Knape that catalog with the angel in it, I left it at her house. But it was gone when I searched the place.”

  “She must have thrown it away,” Rascoe said.

  “I don’t think so. I think you took it. Or maybe not. She came to see you the day you killed her, and maybe she brought the catalog with her. She already knew what it’s taken me way too long to figure out.”

  “I don’t want to listen to any more of this,” Rascoe said. “Please leave my store. A customer might come in. I don’t want anyone to hear these false accusations.”

  “I don’t think you have a lot of customers in this store,” Rhodes said. “I think you have other ways of making your money. And the accusations aren’t false. Everything was in plain sight, but I just didn’t see it, mainly because I believed you instead of Faye. I thought she’d made a mistake, but she knew she hadn’t. The angel she saw was one that had been stolen, all right, and Ty Berry knew it, too. I don’t know why he didn’t come to me about it. Maybe you told him you’d investigate it and find out where it came from. Anything to buy you the time to order one from Benson’s Concrete Works to replace it with.”

  “You can’t prove any of this,” Rascoe said. “It’s all speculation, and it’s all wrong.”

  “I doubt it,” Rhodes said. “If it’s wrong, it’s not wrong by much. I think you set Ty up. I think you told him that you’d found out who’d stolen the angel and that you had information they were planning another theft in the Clearview Cemetery. You two would meet and put a stop to it, since my office wasn’t doing anything. He even left a note about it. ‘A.D. Eleven.’ At first I thought it was a date, but it was just initials and a time. ‘Antique Dealer at eleven o’clock’ is what it meant.”

  “You’re just guessing,” Rascoe said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I think you met him and shot him with a .22 derringer you bought from Faye Knape, then left it in her house after you killed her. You probably gave her the same line you gave Ty, told her you’d see what you could find out, then met her later and killed her. You should’ve put the pistol back in the gun cabinet instead of in that drawer, though.”

  “Sheriff, all that’s very interesting, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with me. It’s all so flimsy that a puff of wind would blow it to Canada.”

  “I have more,” Rhodes said. “I have the Packers.”

  “The Packers?”

  “Sure. Not the football team. The people who’ve been stealing for you. I should have figured that out sooner, too. The Packers will steal and poach and maybe even sell drugs, but they wouldn’t know a thing about how to sell cemetery artifacts. They’d need someone to do that for them, someone like you. That kind of thing brings big money in some places. New Orleans, for example. In fact, I expect you went to the Packers with the idea. They’ll tell me, eventually.”

  Rhodes figured that the Packers were the weak link in the whole scheme. Once he put them under arrest, which he would as soon as they came back into the county, they’d confess to anything to save their own necks. Rhodes would have to visit Marlee, tell her h
e was ready to cut a deal, and have her get in touch with the rest of the clan. Sooner or later, they’d come home. They always did.

  “Maybe your fingerprints are on the gun, too,” Rhodes said.

  Rascoe didn’t say a word. He reached out his right hand and grabbed the pole of the heavy traffic signal in the corner. With a hard pull, he smashed it into Rhodes’s side.

  Rhodes managed to dodge, but not quite in time. The light hit him, and he stumbled sideways and into the quilt rack, which collapsed under his weight. He went down in a welter of patchwork.

  Before he could get up, Rascoe threw a bunny-covered teapot at him. Rhodes got an arm in the way, and the teapot glanced off to one side, shattering into fragments when it hit the floor.

  Rhodes tried to get up again, but this time Rascoe pushed a bookcase over on him. Dusty books pelted him, and one of the shelves hit him in the head. He sprawled under the bookcase, and Rascoe ran out the front door.

  Rhodes raised up, pushed the bookcase off his back, and went out after Rascoe. He didn’t have to go far. Rascoe was practically next door.

  Hob Barrett was standing in front of his store with one hand clutching the collar of Rascoe’s natty sport coat and the other holding the Disney tie. Rascoe was struggling, waving his arms and kicking, but it wasn’t doing him any good. When Hob Barrett clamped down on something, he didn’t let go.

  “You lookin’ for this character, Sheriff?” Barrett asked. “I saw you go in his place, so I figured if he was runnin’ from anything, it must be you.”

  “Thanks, Hob,” Rhodes said. “Hold him still while I get these handcuffs on him.”

  After Rascoe was safely stowed in the county car, Barrett said, “Anything else I can do for you, Sheriff?”

  “How about a can of Vienna sausage?” Rhodes said.

  39

  “WELL,” HACK SAID, “YOU GOT THE GHOSTS BUSTED, YOU got the cemetery robberies stopped, and you solved the murders. Not a bad job.”

  Rhodes was looking through the papers on his desk, trying to find his reading glasses. He didn’t even bother to look around. He knew what was coming.

  “Don’t know what you’d have done, though, if those Packers hadn’t come through for you,” Hack went on, not at all bothered by the fact that Rhodes was ignoring him.

  “He knew they’d come through,” Lawton said. He was leaning against the doorframe, one leg bent, his foot against the wall. “He knew they’d rather rat out their buddy than go to jail on drug charges.”

  “Couldn’t have made those stick anyway,” Hack said. “But we got ’em tied down tight on the cemetery jobs.”

  “Should’ve known better’n to try sinking that stuff in the creek along with their truck,” Lawton said. “Should’ve known we’d go in and get it out.”

  Rhodes was tempted to say he hadn’t seen either Hack or Lawton wading out in the creek, knee-deep in slimy mud, to get anything out of the Packers’ truck. But he kept quiet. He found his reading glasses and put them on.

  “Got some good TV coverage out of it, too,” Hack said. “By the time those fellas in Dallas got organized and came down here, everything was tied up in a neat bow. You like the way you looked on the TV, Sheriff?”

  Rhodes finally turned around, looking at them over the tops of his glasses because he knew that irritated them.

  “The camera adds ten pounds,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Hack agreed. “I noticed that double chin.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to talk about his double chin, which he thought was merely a figment of the camera’s imagination in the first place. He turned back to his desk.

  “Bad thing is, you didn’t get Rapper and Nellie,” Lawton said.

  “ ‘Dey’ll be beck,’ ” Hack said, sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger might have sounded if he’d lived in Texas all his life. “One of these days, Rapper’ll want to find the rest of his ear.”

  “What worries me is those poor little kitty-cats,” Lawton said, pushing himself away from the doorframe. “Likely they’ll starve to death before long.”

  “Starve for affection, too,” Hack added.

  Rhodes turned around again, looked over the top of his glasses.

  “The cats will be just fine,” he said. “I’ve made arrangements for them.”

  “What arrangements?” Hack asked. “You didn’t say anything to us about any arrangements.”

  “I’m going by this afternoon to pick them up,” Rhodes said. “Someone’s adopting them.”

  Hack and Lawton looked at each other, then looked at Rhodes.

  “Nobody told us,” Hack said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I’m askin’ now. Who’s gonna adopt those cats? You?”

  “No,” Rhodes said, enjoying himself. “But I could if I wanted to.”

  “I thought you were allergic,” Lawton said.

  “I might be, but Ivy thinks I might have been more allergic to Faye Knape’s perfume than to her cats. She could be right. But now I don’t have to find out.”

  “Well, if you aren’t adoptin’ ’em, who is?” Hack asked.

  “Melva Keeler,” Rhodes said. “She needs some company in that old house of hers. Those cats will be perfect. They won’t have to move far, and Faye’s son approves.”

  The telephone rang, and Hack answered. He listened, then said, “Someone’ll be right there.”

  He hung up and turned to Rhodes.

  “Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy are on the loose again, or at least two of ‘em are. Somebody’s gonna have to round ’em up.”

  “Call Ruth,” Rhodes said. “She’s got her lasso.”

  “This is her day off,” Hack said. He opened his desk drawer. “But she left this here, just in case.”

  He pulled a coiled rope out of the drawer.

  Rhodes sighed.

  “Don’t take it so hard,” Hack said. “Maybe Vernell can write a book about you.”

  “Or use your picture on the cover,” Lawton said. “You could be just like Terry Don Coslin.”

  Rhodes got up and took the rope from Hack, thinking about the way the TV camera had given him a double chin.

  “That’ll be the day,” he said.