by Bill Crider
Come to think of it, the hardware store was only a couple of blocks from the Beauty Shack. Easy walking distance. It was something to check on later.
“Maybe some people know about Jeff,” Rhodes said.
“We’ve been very discreet,” Lonnie said. “We never see each other anywhere around here. I don’t even cut his hair. Lynn did.”
“Nobody cares about that, Lonnie. You and Jeff could go have a burger at the Dairy Queen tonight, and nobody would notice.”
Lonnie didn’t seem convinced, and Rhodes gave up. “Just tell me about Lynn. Secrets don’t matter anymore, and some things aren’t as secret as we think they are. Sometimes lots of people know already.”
“Obviously,” Lonnie said. “That doesn’t make it any more palatable.”
“But there it is,” Rhodes said. “So tell me what you know.”
Lonnie was reluctant at first, but after he got started, the stories came out. There was just one problem, and it was a big one.
Lonnie didn’t know any names. Lynn had confided in him, all right, but she hadn’t used the names of any of the men she’d told him about. Or any of the women. Lonnie suspected that he knew who some of those were, however, because they had their hair done at the Beauty Shack. Still, he wasn’t sure.
“Now if you wanted me to tell you if Mrs. Weeks was a natural redhead or if Mrs. Tongate had any gray in her hair, I could do that,” Lonnie said. “I can’t tell you for certain who was jealous of Lynn or who she was having affairs with, though. I could guess, but I just refuse to do that. I don’t want to cast suspicion on somebody who’s innocent.”
“Just tell me about the ones who might want to kill her,” Rhodes said.
“Oh, nobody would want to do that.” Lonnie had forgotten his grief for the moment, and the tissues stayed unused in their box. He must have forgotten his sudden outburst, too. “The men all loved her and wanted to marry her. They didn’t want to kill her. She just toyed with them, you know? She led them on and had a good time, but she never intended to settle down.”
“Some of them must have been married already,” Rhodes said.
“Well, yes, they were, and their wives came to the shop, and a lot of them went to Lynn. She might have played the field, but she could cut hair better than anybody in town. Even me.” Lonnie looked thoughtful. “There were an awful lot of men, now that I think about it. I didn’t really think of Lynn as being … promiscuous, but she was. I didn’t think of her as being a user, either, but she was that, too.”
He got that thoughtful look again but seemed to have nothing more to say.
“Not a very nice person, then,” Rhodes said.
“I guess not,” Lonnie said, “but we all liked her anyway. She was pretty and funny. She could get away with a lot.”
“Somebody didn’t like her,” Rhodes said. He was sure there was something Lonnie wasn’t telling him. “Somebody killed her. I really need something specific, Lonnie. Anything you can remember might help.”
“Well, I hate to say it.”
“Go ahead. Nobody will know where I heard it.”
“That’s not it. I just feel bad about it. He couldn’t be guilty.”
“Maybe he could,” Rhodes said. “You need to tell me who it is we’re talking about.”
“Oh, all right,” Lonnie said. “I guess there’s only one man in town who has a red Pontiac Solstice convertible. You know who I mean. He’s a county commissioner.”
“Mikey Burns,” Rhodes said.
“He’s the one,” Lonnie said.
Chapter 7
One of Rhodes’s problems was that when he was working on a case, he often forgot to eat lunch. Even so, he never seemed to lose any weight. It didn’t seem fair, somehow.
This time, however, he was going to have to eat something. He didn’t feel like facing a county commissioner and talking about murder, not on an empty stomach. So he went by the Dairy Queen drive-through and ordered a cheeseburger and a Dr Pepper. He figured that would have all the food groups covered.
He sat in the parking lot to eat, and while he savored the cheeseburger, he tried to imagine what might have happened in the Beauty Shack the previous afternoon.
The scissors on the floor might indicate that Lynn had tried to defend herself. Or she might even have been the aggressor. What if she’d snatched up the scissors and tried to attack someone, someone who then grabbed the hair dryer as a means of defense? It might not be murder at all.
It might have happened the other way, however. Lynn might have grabbed the scissors when someone came after her with the dryer.
It was better not to get too interested in reconstructing things, though, not at this stage of the case. Believing you knew what happened could lead to blind spots in your thinking.
Speaking of thinking, Rhodes wondered if Mikey Burns had been doing any of that when he had parked his little red car in front of Lynn Ashton’s house.
Lonnie had gone to the housing addition one spring afternoon to visit a retired history teacher named Nora Fischer, who was very much a stay-at-home. She was eighty years old and lived in the first house that had been built in the addition. While she no longer drove, she was quite able to take care of herself and her small house. She also liked to have visitors, and Lonnie, who’d been in her class when he was in junior high, went by to see her now and then because he enjoyed hearing her stories.
“We talk about the old days,” Lonnie had told Rhodes, “when Clearview was still alive. She says people used to fill the streets of downtown on Saturday nights. All the farmers came to town, and the stores stayed open late for them. It’s kind of sad that there aren’t any farmers around anymore.”
Lonnie had stayed a little later than usual talking to Nora, and it was after dark when he’d left her house. That was when he’d seen Mikey Burns’s car.
“It was right there by the curb.” Lonnie pointed as if they were taking a tour instead of sitting in his living room. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t say anything to Lynn about it the next day because I didn’t want her to think I was spying on her. Maybe I should have.”
“Did she seem upset that day?” Rhodes wanted to know. “Distracted? Anything different about her?”
Lonnie couldn’t remember anything, but it was enough to know that Burns had visited Lynn. It was a start.
Rhodes finished his cheeseburger and Dr Pepper, put the trash in a can, and drove to Mikey Burns’s precinct office.
* * *
Burns’s administrative assistant, Mrs. Wilkie, didn’t smile when Rhodes came in, but then she seldom smiled at him these days. There had been a time when she had a crush on Rhodes, but that time had passed. She’d spiffed herself up, gotten a job at the commissioner’s office, and changed her priorities. Rhodes had heard she and Burns had developed a relationship. He wondered how upset Mrs. Wilkie might be by what Lonnie had told him.
“Good morning,” he said.
Mrs. Wilkie gave a slight nod in response. Her hair didn’t move. Rhodes wondered if she had it done at the Beauty Shack. The color had certainly improved lately. It was no longer the unnatural orange that it had once been.
“Do you want to see Mr. Burns?” she asked.
“If he’s available,” Rhodes said.
“I’ll let him know you’re here.” She punched a button on a console. “Mr. Burns, Sheriff Rhodes is here. He’d like to talk to you.”
Rhodes heard a response, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“You can go in,” Mrs. Wilkie said, and Rhodes did.
Burns’s office wasn’t fancy, just an old desk, some folding chairs, and a couple of green filing cabinets that had seen some hard use. Rhodes thought that Burns didn’t want the taxpayers to think he was wasting their money.
Burns was seated behind his desk. He didn’t bother to get up and shake hands. He and Rhodes knew each other well enough to dispense with that formality, and Burns was hardly a formal person to begin with. He was known all over the county n
ot just for his little red convertible but for his colorful aloha shirts. The one he wore today had a light blue background that was covered with brown and yellow seashells.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” he asked.
His shirt might have been colorful, but Burns was clearly not his usual jovial self.
Rhodes sat in one of the folding chairs. “From the way you look, I’d say you already know.”
“Know what? We don’t need to play games.”
“All right. I’m here about Lynn Ashton.”
Burns’s face crumbled. He knew, all right. It didn’t take long for word to get around a small town when something bad happened.
“Oh, lordy,” Burns said.
“That’s one way to put it,” Rhodes said. “Anything you want to tell me?”
Burns straightened his face and sat up straight in his chair. “I don’t want to tell you anything.”
“But you’re going to.”
“Yes, I’m going to, but it’s all confidential.”
“There’s no such thing as confidential in a murder case,” Rhodes said. “Besides, I’m a sheriff, not a lawyer.”
“Maybe I should call a lawyer.”
“We’re just talking here,” Rhodes said. “You’re not under arrest. You haven’t even been accused of anything.”
“I’m under suspicion, though,” Burns said. “I’m … what do you sheriffs call it? A person of interest? Right. I’m a person of interest.”
Rhodes looked out the single office window. There wasn’t much to see other than a backhoe that was parked under a tree. Rhodes wondered what it was doing there. He looked back at Burns.
“I don’t think I’ve ever called anybody a person of interest as long as I’ve been the sheriff.”
“Well, that’s what I am. You think I know something or you wouldn’t be here.”
Burns was doing a pretty good job of acting like a man who was guilty of something. That gave Rhodes an advantage.
“You might as well tell me where you were yesterday afternoon,” Rhodes said. “You don’t want to get in any deeper in this mess than you already are.”
“I’m not deep in anything,” Burns said. He crossed his arms in front of his aloha shirt. “I’m completely innocent of all charges.”
Rhodes didn’t bother to point out that there weren’t any charges. Yet. He said, “Why don’t we call Mrs. Wilkie in and see what she thinks you’re guilty of.”
“Oh, lordy,” Burns said.
Rhodes applied the Hack Jensen method. He sat there and waited.
Burns took a couple of deep breaths. He uncrossed his arms and put his hands on the desk in front of him, one on top of the other.
“All right,” he said. “I’ve been an old fool.”
“A fool, maybe,” Rhodes said. “You’re not that old.”
“Whatever. I’m a good bit older than Lynn Ashton.”
Rhodes had to agree to that.
“I should never have had anything to do with her. She should’ve been just somebody who cut my hair. She was so flirty, though, and so cute. So…”
“Young,” Rhodes said.
“Yes. Young.” Burns looked at the closed office door. “Maybe you know that Mrs. Wilkie and I have been going out now and then.”
“So I’d heard.”
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with her,” Burns said. “She’s quite attractive in her own way.”
He seemed to want some kind of affirmation, so Rhodes nodded.
“We get along just fine,” Burns said. “She even likes my dogs. But she’s not…”
“Young,” Rhodes said.
“That’s right.” Burns took a deep breath and leaned back. “She’s not old, not by any means, but she’s not young. Did you ever know her husband?”
“Slightly,” Rhodes said.
“Fine man. Terrible that he died so young. Heart attack, wasn’t it?”
“It was. We’re drifting a little here, aren’t we?”
“I know. It’s hard to talk about Lynn. What happened was this. One day I asked her if she’d like to go out for dinner.” Burns paused. “Not here in town. We drove over to Colby.”
Colby was a good twenty miles from Clearview, well into a neighboring county.
“Long way to go for dinner,” Rhodes said.
“Well, that restaurant on the interstate’s really good,” Burns said.
“I’ve heard that,” Rhodes said. “Never been there, though. What happened after that first date?”
Burns flinched a little at the word “date,” but he recovered quickly. “We saw each other a few more times. Then she told me she was getting serious with someone, and she couldn’t see me again.”
Rhodes hadn’t known that Lynn was getting serious. Lonnie hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe she didn’t share as many secrets with him as he thought.
“That’s likely to make a man jealous,” Rhodes said.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill her. I swear to that.”
“You were at her house, though.”
Burns stared at him. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a trained professional. What were you doing there?”
“Talking to her. I wasn’t jealous, though. I just thought maybe I could convince her to go out again. I couldn’t. I should never have gone in the first place.”
Rhodes didn’t know if Burns regretted going because of what had happened or because he’d been seen. He said, “Who was she getting serious with?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. That’s another reason I went to her house. I wanted to know.” He must have realized how that sounded, so he added, “I wasn’t jealous. Just curious, and she’d quit answering my phone calls.”
“That can upset a fella,” Rhodes said.
“I never touched her, and anyway, that was weeks ago. I’d gotten over her.”
Rhodes decided he’d reserve judgment on that. “Mrs. Wilkie know about any of this?”
“You saw her when you came in, didn’t you?”
“I saw her.”
“Then you know she knows.”
“She’ll get over it,” Rhodes said. He didn’t add unless she thinks you killed Lynn.
“There’s one thing I know that might help you,” Burns said, “and it’s a little warning, too.”
“A warning?”
“Not from me. It’s about one other person I know who was seeing Lynn. Maybe even the one she was getting serious with.”
That might be helpful, all right.
“Who might that be?”
“Clifford Clement.”
“Mayor Clifford Clement?”
“The very same,” Burns said. “He took her to Colby. I saw them there.”
Rhodes thought about that. Then he said, “You never did tell me where you were yesterday afternoon. Say around six o’clock. Maybe seven.”
“I was right here. Working late.”
“Anybody else here?”
“No. Mrs. Wilkie had gone home. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I don’t have an alibi.”
“Well,” Rhodes said, “you don’t.”
Burns held up his hands, palms out. “I’m innocent of all charges.”
“We’ll see,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 8
As with just about every other serious crime Rhodes had worked on, the information came in in little bits and pieces. He never found out anything all at once, but if he kept on asking people questions, he managed to find out things that, while they might not mean much in themselves, sometimes fit together in a way that told him all he needed to know.
As Rhodes had told Ruth, however, sometimes people lied. Even to the sheriff. You’d think they’d have more respect than that for their hardworking local sheriff, but they didn’t.
So now Rhodes had to decide about what Burns had told him about Mayor Clifford Clement. Was it the truth? Or was Burns just trying to divert suspicion from himself? It sounded
true enough, but that was the way it was with lies. They almost always sounded true enough, or at least true enough to help the teller avoid the real truth for a while. That’s why people told them.
Burns’s story was that he’d taken Mrs. Wilkie to the restaurant on the interstate in an attempt to make things up to her.
“It’s kind of a fancy place,” Burns had said. “Fancier than anything here in Clearview, for sure.”
Rhodes liked the restaurants in Clearview. He liked the Mexican food at the Jolly Tamale and the barbecue at Max’s Place. He even liked the artery-clogging menu at the Round-Up (“Absolutely no chicken, fish, or vegetarian dishes can be found on our menu!”). Then again, he wasn’t trying to avoid being seen by anyone.
“Anyway,” Burns said, “we saw Lynn and Clement there. I was kind of glad. I thought maybe that would help smooth things over.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work.”
Rhodes should have asked Mrs. Wilkie about Clement, but he didn’t have the heart to do that to Burns, so when he left he smiled and told her to have a nice day. She didn’t return the smile. Rhodes figured that Burns was in for another week or two of punishment before she relented.
After leaving Burns’s office, Rhodes drove to the Clearview city hall. It was about the same age as the jail but in worse repair because there was no state agency that inspected city halls. It was a two-story building with a small auditorium on one side and the city offices on the other. It had been a fine place once, but now the roof leaked during heavy rains, the foundation was cracked, and the air-conditioning barely worked at all. The mayor’s office was on the first floor, just down the hall from the water department offices. The door was open.
Being mayor of a town like Clearview wasn’t a full-time job, and it paid only a token salary. Clifford Clement sold mutual funds and managed portfolios for a living. Although there weren’t a great many to manage in Clearview, he seemed to do fairly well at it. He’d been voted into the office of mayor in the last election, after the former holder of the office had decided he’d had enough of not being paid for listening to people squabble and complain all the time, not that he’d put it that way. He’d used the old “spend more time with my family” line and gone into happy retirement from politics.