Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen

by Bill Crider

  “AAA Bail Bonds again?” Rhodes asked Hack.

  “Yep. Those two didn’t seem to be bothered much by their night in our accommodations. I don’t think they expected to be around long.”

  “You remember what you said yesterday about powerful friends?”

  “Yep,” Hack said.

  “You were right,” Rhodes told him.

  “You know who they are?”

  “That’s my job,” Rhodes said. “To know things like that.”

  “I don’t see how you coulda found out.”

  “I’m the sheriff,” Rhodes said. “I have lots of sources.”

  He liked to give Hack a little dose of his own medicine now and then just to let him know how it felt.

  Hack looked hurt, as if he knew what was going on. “You ain’t gonna tell me?”

  Rhodes sat down at his desk and started to go through some papers. “Maybe later.”

  “You’re gettin’ mean in your old age,” Hack said.

  “Mean? Me?”

  “I notice you didn’t say anything about old?”

  “That’s because I know you’re joking.”

  “That’s what you think,” Hack said. He might have gone on, but the door opened, and Seepy Benton came in.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he asked.

  “Not a thing,” Rhodes said. “We were just having a conversation about something or other. I’m not sure exactly what.”

  “Hmpf,” Hack said.

  “I came about the phone,” Benton said.

  He was wearing his hat, a white shirt, blue jeans, and jogging shoes. He sounded eager to get started with his work on the phone.

  “You’re a little early,” Rhodes said.

  “I thought it might be a good idea for me to come as soon as I could. For all we know, Lynn might even have named her killer. All we have to do is find it.”

  “You don’t really think that,” Rhodes said.

  “Why not? Anything’s possible.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe that, but he liked Benton’s optimism and enthusiasm.

  “You have a seat,” Rhodes said. “I’ll get the phone.”

  When Rhodes returned from retrieving the phone, Benton was sitting at Ruth’s desk, talking to Hack. Benton was explaining his new exercise program. Rhodes didn’t think Hack was interested, but Benton taught college students. Lack of interest was no deterrent.

  “I was just telling Hack about the benefits of walking,” Benton told Rhodes. “It’s easy, it’s safe, and it’s really good for you. I’ve lost five pounds since I started walking every morning.”

  “Really,” Rhodes said, handing him the phone.

  “I feel better, too,” Benton said. He turned on the phone, ignoring any sarcasm in Rhodes’s tone. “It’s great to get out there in the morning air. It smells great before the day heats up, and Bruce likes to go with me. It’s good for him, too.”

  Hack was shaking his head, but Benton had turned to Rhodes and couldn’t see him.

  “So the real reason you got here early,” Rhodes said, “is because you’d finished your morning stroll.”

  “That, and I wanted to help out.” Benton was looking at the phone while he talked. “The sooner I get started, the sooner I might find something that will help find Lynn’s killer.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find anything,” Rhodes said.

  “Do you know about the dog in the nighttime?” Benton asked, continuing to work with the phone.

  “You mean Bruce?” Rhodes asked.

  “Ha,” Hack said.

  Rhodes looked at him. “Ha? What does that mean?”

  “It means you don’t know about Sherlock Holmes, that’s what it means.”

  “I know about Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.”

  “That’s because you watch a lot of old movies,” Benton said. “Everybody knows that Jeremy Brett was much better than Rathbone.”

  “I’m the sheriff,” Rhodes said. “I could shoot you and Hack would swear it was an accident. No jury in the world would convict me after the prosecutor told them what you said.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” Benton said, not looking up from the phone. “Would you?”

  “He might,” Hack said, “but I wouldn’t back him up in court. Anybody ought to know about that dog.”

  “Which dog?” Rhodes asked.

  “In the nighttime,” Hack said. “The one that didn’t bark.”

  “Oh,” Rhodes said. “That dog.”

  “That’s right,” Benton said. “That was the curious incident. The dog didn’t bark. Holmes knew it wasn’t what happened that mattered, at least in that case. It was what didn’t happen. So maybe it’s not what I found on the phone that matters. It’s what I didn’t find.”

  Rhodes was glad they’d finally gotten around to the point of the discussion.

  “What was it that you didn’t find?” he asked.

  “I still haven’t found it,” Benton said. “If Lynn had so many men friends, she’d have their numbers in her phone. They’re not here.”

  “She might have had another phone for that,” Rhodes said. “If it was a big secret.”

  “You really think she was that complicated?”

  “She was smart,” Rhodes said. “She was able to keep things pretty well hidden. Nobody knew how many men she was dating.” He wasn’t going to mention her blackmailing. “There were a lot of things people didn’t know.”

  “If she was smart, all she had to do was hide the numbers somewhere. I can’t find them, so she didn’t hide them.”

  “You think you’re that good?”

  “Sure,” Benton said. He held up the phone. “She has her appointment book here. She has a list of contacts, too, but it’s just people you’d expect. People at the shop, other people who are all on the client list. No boyfriends, no nothing.”

  “What you need is some time with her home computer,” Rhodes said.

  Benton couldn’t believe it. “You haven’t looked at the home computer?”

  “I’d planned to have Ruth do that, but she’s been busy. I don’t have enough deputies to do everything that’s needed around here.”

  “You haven’t looked at her Facebook page or checked to see if she had a blog?”

  Rhodes knew about those things, and it occurred to him that the first place he should have checked was Facebook. It seemed as if that site was helping law enforcement more and more often because of the kinds of things people posted there.

  “What about Twitter?” Benton asked. “Did you check to see if she’d been tweeting?”

  Rhodes admitted that he hadn’t done those things. “But Ruth would have as soon as I got her started on it.”

  “I know that it’s her job,” Benton said. “I don’t want to interfere.”

  Rhodes kept a straight face, but it wasn’t easy. Things must be getting serious between Benton and Ruth if he was that thoughtful of her. If it had been Buddy’s job to look at the computer, Benton wouldn’t have hesitated.

  “You won’t be interfering,” Rhodes told him. “She needs to be out on patrol anyway.”

  “If you say so.” Benton stood up and took Rhodes the phone. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Rhodes returned the phone to the evidence room. This time when he came back, Jennifer Loam was talking to Benton. She was telling him about her Web site.

  “It’s called A Clear View of Blacklin County,” she said.

  “That’s a great name,” Benton said. “What about your job with the paper?”

  “I’m no longer an employee of the Clearview Herald,” Jennifer said. “I’m on my own. I already have some advertisers lined up, so I’ll be okay.”

  Rhodes hoped she was right. She didn’t sound overly confident.

  She turned to Rhodes. “I’m here to see if you have any more scoops for me. Have you found Lynn Ashton’s killer?”

  “Not yet,” Rhodes said. “Have you found out any more about the owners of the reclam
ation center?”

  “Yes, but before I tell you, let me say that those pictures I took yesterday are great.”

  “What pictures?” Benton asked.

  “You’ll see,” Jennifer said. “Just log on to the Web site. I haven’t officially opened it, but it’s already live. Sheriff Rhodes is doing his best Sage Barton impersonation.”

  Rhodes sighed.

  “I’m sold,” Benton said. “I love Sage Barton.”

  “You, too?” Jennifer asked. “I’ve just finished the latest book. Claudia and Jan sent me a copy. It’s great.”

  “They sent me one, too,” Benton said. “I’ve read about half of it. I don’t see much resemblance between Sage Barton and Sheriff Rhodes, though.”

  “It’s about time somebody admitted that,” Rhodes said, though oddly enough his feelings were a little hurt. “I’m nothing at all like him.”

  “I might feel differently when I see the pictures,” Benton said. “What’s that URL?”

  Jennifer told him, and then she told Rhodes what she’d found out, which was that the reclamation center was indeed owned by people from outside the county and maybe even from Houston but that it would be next to impossible to find out who the real owners were.

  “It’s all hidden in various corporate names,” she said. “It would take a long time to untangle.”

  “I met one of the principals last night,” Rhodes said, “or at least he claimed to be. I have a feeling we might be having more trouble with that place, but our mayor won’t be involved. He’ll be selling his share as soon as he can.”

  Rhodes went on to tell Jennifer and Benton about his visitor of the previous evening. Hack listened in, too, though he pretended not to.

  “You can’t use any of that on your Web site,” Rhodes told Jennifer when he’d finished. “It’s off the record.”

  She looked disappointed but agreed.

  “Now Dr. Benton and I have a little investigating to do,” Rhodes said.

  “About the murders?”

  “Yes, but you can’t come along. This is coply business.”

  Benton puffed up a little at that. He liked being a part of the coply business, which was why Rhodes had used the phrase in the first place.

  “You’ll let me know when you crack the case, won’t you?” Jennifer asked.

  “When we crack the case,” Benton said.

  “Right,” Jennifer said.

  “You’ll be the first one to hear,” Rhodes told her.

  Jennifer left, but Benton wasn’t ready to go anywhere. He was leaning forward, looking at the computer.

  “This is great, all right,” he said. “You’re more like Sage Barton than I thought.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rhodes asked.

  “These pictures that Jennifer took. They’re right here in high res and full color. You’re going to be famous when these go viral.”

  “Viral?”

  “That means they’ll be all over the Internet. Come look.”

  Rhodes looked at the computer, where Benton had called up Jennifer’s Web site.

  “See?” Benton asked. “Look at you, punching that guy right in the gut.”

  “Yeah,” Hack said. Rhodes hadn’t even heard him leave his chair and join them. “That’s a Sage Barton move if I ever saw one. Look at that one where Buddy’s holding his gun on the fella. Buddy’s gonna love that. What’s that writin’ under ’em say?”

  Benton read it aloud. “Blacklin County Sheriff Dan Rhodes battles miscreant with bare hands.”

  “Miscreant?” Rhodes asked.

  “Means somebody who breaks the law,” Hack said.

  “Thanks,” Rhodes said. “I just wondered why she’d use a word like that.”

  “Kinda gussies things up,” Hack said. “Makes it more interestin’. I gotta bookmark that site.”

  “Everybody in the county will bookmark it,” Benton said, “as soon as they find out about it.”

  “Great,” Rhodes said. “Just great.”

  * * *

  “We could’ve just used the computer at the jail,” Benton said when he and Rhodes arrived at Lynn Ashton’s house.

  “For the Facebook stuff, sure,” Rhodes said, “but not for anything else. The personal things, remember? The things you were talking about last night. Besides, we spent too much time looking at nonwork-related stuff. We needed to get busy.”

  Benton grinned. “I see what you mean.”

  Rhodes didn’t grin back.

  “I’ll look at the social networking things first,” Benton said, suddenly all business. “That will be easy to find.”

  “If she used her real name and not a screen name,” Rhodes said.

  “Nobody uses screen names for Facebook and Twitter,” Benton said. “Well, hardly anybody. Even if she did, I could find them on the computer.”

  They went inside the house, and Rhodes showed Benton the computer.

  “It’s not a Mac,” Benton said.

  “Does that make a difference?” Rhodes asked.

  “Macs don’t get viruses, Macs can run for weeks without rebooting, Macs have great customer support, Macs—”

  Rhodes was sorry he’d asked. He held up a hand. “The computer in your office isn’t a Mac.”

  “That’s the college’s fault. I don’t understand why so many educational institutions bought into the PC market. They’d have been so much better off with Macs that it’s hard to explain. If I were in charge—”

  “Well, you’re not,” Rhodes said, “and this is a PC. Will that make a difference in what you can do with it?”

  “No. I can work with any platform.”

  “Then it’s not a problem, so I’ll let you get started. I’m going to poke around some while you do the technical stuff.”

  Benton sighed, nodded, and sat down at the computer. Rhodes went on into the bedroom to take another look around. He didn’t know what he thought he might find. A secret compartment in the closet? A wall safe hidden behind a mirror? If it were that simple, life would be sweet.

  He wandered around, not seeing anything of interest, berating himself for not having thought of the social networking things earlier. That was a rookie mistake, or the mistake of someone who’d grown up in a different era. It was also a mistake he wouldn’t make again. Benton would never let him live it down if he found something on a Facebook page or in a tweet.

  If there was something in her e-mail, Rhodes would feel bad about that, too. He should have had Ruth check it immediately. It might have saved Jeff Tyler’s life.

  Rhodes was still trying to figure out Tyler’s place in the whole thing when he thought about something that should have occurred to him much earlier. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all, but it was something that would bear looking into. He filed it away for the moment and got down on his knees to look under Lynn’s bed, the only place in the room he hadn’t looked on his previous visit. He didn’t see anything other than a few dust bunnies.

  There was a chair over by the dresser, and when Rhodes was through looking under the bed, he got up and went to sit in it. Looking around the room, he thought about Lynn Ashton. All that was left of her was here in this house, in the closet, under the bed, on the computer. Well, there was her little red car, but there hadn’t been much of her left there, either. Someone had killed her, and before long all traces of her would be gone.

  Jeff Tyler had owned his store, but soon enough the people who had put things there on consignment would come and get them and take them away. Tyler’s own things would remain until either his heirs took them or someone broke in and stole them or they just mouldered away inside the old building.

  Lonnie was likely to be Jeff’s heir, and Rhodes wondered what Lonnie would do with the store. Sell it if he could, maybe, or go into business for himself. That thought reminded Rhodes of something else he needed to consider. Things were starting to come together in his head, the way they sometimes did. He didn’t necessarily like everything he was thinking, but a
t least he had the illusion that he was making progress. That was something, he supposed.

  Chapter 25

  Rhodes went back to the room where Benton was working at the computer. Benton turned around in the chair and said, “She didn’t have a Twitter account. She must not have had time for that since she worked all day. I didn’t really expect to find one since it wasn’t on her phone.”

  “What about Facebook?” Rhodes asked. “Wouldn’t that have been on her phone, too?”

  “Not if she couldn’t get to it at work. She’d have had it here, where she could update it in the evening.”

  “So did she have it here?”

  “Yes,” Benton said, but he didn’t look happy about it.

  “What’s the matter?” Rhodes asked.

  “She didn’t ever update it. She just had the account. Now and then someone would post on her wall, but she never responded. She must not have had much interest in social media.”

  Rhodes thought about it. “No wonder. She worked all day most days, and she had a pretty active social life. What about e-mails?”

  “She didn’t do much e-mailing, either,” Benton said. “She had an account that’s not even password protected. She got a lot of spam, like everybody does, but she doesn’t have much personal e-mail, just an occasional joke from Lonnie Wallace. She didn’t even bother to respond to most of them.”

  “Who else e-mailed her besides Lonnie?”

  “Nobody. She must not have given out her address to any of her clients or boyfriends.”

  “What about an address book?” Rhodes asked.

  “Nothing,” Benton said. “No diary. No YouTube channel. No blog that I can locate.”

  “You have a YouTube channel?” Rhodes asked.

  “I showed you in my office. Seepybenton. All one word. I have a few videos of my singing on it. You should check it out.”

  “I’ll do that the next time I’m on YouTube,” Rhodes said, which wasn’t a lie since he didn’t expect he’d ever be on YouTube.

  “I don’t think Lynn ever even looked at YouTube,” Benton said.

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand how anybody could live a life that was so unplugged. Rhodes could understand, though. He wasn’t any more plugged-in than Lynn had been. It was easy enough to live like that if you didn’t ever get into computers in the first place. For his part, Rhodes couldn’t imagine what it must be like to tweet or to have a Facebook page.