A Romantic Way to Die

by Bill Crider

  Terry Don Coslin followed Ruth into the sitting room and looked around. He was wearing a T-shirt that hugged his iron-hard pecs and stomach, and his jeans were so tight Rhodes wondered how he could breathe.

  Terry Don yawned and looked around the room as if he had no clue that anything out of the ordinary had happened and said, “What’s all the excitement about?”

  According to Terry Don, he’d left the main building after dinner, gone back to his room in the president’s house, and read a few chapters from a book he’d brought with him, and gone to sleep.

  Rhodes could tell by the looks on the writers’ faces that each one of them hoped it had been her book he was reading, which was no doubt why Terry Don had carefully avoided mentioning a title. Ruth Grady didn’t look as if she cared whether he’d been reading or not; she was just starstruck.

  Rhodes told her to wait outside for the justice of the peace and then take him in to have a look at Henrietta.

  “Her room’s at the end of the hall,” Rhodes said. “As soon as the JP pronounces her dead, you do the crime scene.”

  “All right. Any chance that Terry Don Coslin needs a body search? I volunteer.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Rhodes said.

  There were still a few things that worried him about the stories that he’d heard, and he also had a few questions for Terry Don, but all that could wait. He wasn’t having much luck with the whole group around, so he wanted to talk to people individually. Besides, he had another stop to make. He told everyone that they could go to their rooms.

  “Except for you, Lorene,” he said. “You’ll have to find somewhere else.”

  “There’s another room in the president’s house,” Chatterton said. “She can stay there.”

  There were several envious looks in Lorene’s direction until Rhodes told her that she couldn’t get anything from the room where Henrietta was.

  “It’s a crime scene now,” he explained.

  “What if it was just an accident?” Marian Willoughby asked sarcastically.

  “Then it won’t be a crime scene anymore. But until we find out for sure, no one can go in there. You’ll just have to do the best you can, Lorene.”

  “Oh, pooh. I’ll just go home to Clearview and sleep in my own bed tonight. I couldn’t sleep in this place anyhow, not after what happened to Henrietta. I’ll get some things together before tomorrow evening, though. I don’t want to miss any of the conference.”

  “That’s fine,” Rhodes said. “That is, it’s fine if Mr. Chatterton can find you another room. We’ll have the other one sealed off for a while.”

  “I hope you don’t think I wanted to stay in there,” Lorene said.

  Rhodes said he hadn’t thought she’d want to.

  “Now then,” he said, “let’s break it up here and see if you can all get some sleep.”

  It was nearly one o’clock by that time, and Rhodes wouldn’t have minded getting some sleep himself. But he didn’t have time for sleeping.

  Thomas Chatterton followed him out of the dormitory.

  “Do you think it will be all right for us to continue the conference?” he asked when they were outside.

  “I don’t see why not,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be back out tomorrow, and I’ll have to talk to some people, but I’ll try not to disrupt things too much.”

  Chatterton didn’t appear convinced, and Rhodes didn’t blame him for being skeptical. It wasn’t easy to have a murder investigation without disrupting things. And he was certain it was murder. People didn’t yell when there was no one around, and Rhodes was sure someone had been in the room when Henrietta had died.

  “This isn’t the way I thought things would be,” Chatterton said.

  “Nobody ever thinks they’ll have trouble like this,” Rhodes told him.

  “Yes, but it’s just so horrible. Especially if that woman was murdered. It means that the killer is right here, taking part in the conference. Doesn’t it?”

  “Probably,” Rhodes said.

  “Good Lord,” Chatterton said.

  Rhodes couldn’t think of any response to that, so he got in the county car and drove away.

  6

  THE APPLEBY PLACE WAS ON A DIRT ROAD JUST DOWN THE HILL from the college. Rhodes had been there before, and he didn’t have any trouble finding it.

  Even in the dark, the place looked better than it had when Cy Appleby had been around. Then the yard had been mostly churned-up mud that got hard as rock when it hadn’t rained for a while, but now there were patches of grass growing on it. The drooping roof had been reshingled, and the windows all had fairly new screens. The two hackberry trees in the yard didn’t look any healthier than they ever had, but then you couldn’t expect too much from hackberry trees.

  There was a light on in the front room, so Rhodes went up on the porch and knocked. One of the twins, either Claude or Clyde, opened the door.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” he said.

  He was a big, moon-faced young man with blue eyes and cottony hair, and he looked exactly like his twin brother, so exactly, in fact, that Rhodes couldn’t tell them apart.

  “I guess you’re here about the naked woman,” Clyde said. Or Claude.

  “Your mother made the call,” Rhodes said.

  “That’s right. She’s here. Come on in.”

  Rhodes went inside and saw that the interior of the house had also been improved. There was a new RCA TV set, a new couch, and a new rug on the old wood floor. The rocking chair in which Mrs. Appleby sat was the oldest thing in the room. The other twin, Claude, or possibly Clyde, was lounging on the couch, with one leg drooping over the arm. He and his mother were watching an ancient episode of Mama’s Family, which he muted with the remote.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Clyde said.

  Or maybe it was Claude. Rhodes decided to ask and was surprised to discover that he’d been right with his first guess.

  “I’m the good-looking one, if that helps you any,” Clyde said.

  Rhodes said he appreciated the tip.

  “And how have you been doing, Mrs. Appleby?” he asked.

  “Tolerable,” she said.

  Rhodes thought she looked better than that, without Cy there to beat her up.

  “Where’s Twyla Faye keeping herself?” he asked.

  “She’s in Waco, going to beauty school,” Clyde said. “Says she’s gonna make thirty thousand dollars a year, just cuttin’ hair. You believe that, Sheriff?”

  Rhodes said he wasn’t sure how much money a person could make by cutting hair.

  “Says the tips are real good if you got a good clientele,” Clyde went on. “That’s the word she used. Clientele. I don’t think she’s planning on coming back to Obert to work. There’s not a whole lot of clientele here.”

  “What about you boys?” Rhodes asked. “Still working at Wal-Mart?”

  “Yes, sir,” Clyde said.

  “And doin’ real well, too,” his mother said. “The both of them. Clyde’s going to be the manager of the automotive center, and Claude’s been put in charge of sporting goods.”

  Rhodes said that he was glad to hear it. He’d gotten them the jobs they’d started out in, and he was pleased that they’d made the most of their chance. He’d been afraid they might turn out like their father.

  “I guess you didn’t come here to talk about my family, though,” Mrs. Appleby said.

  “No,” Rhodes admitted. “I came about your phone call.”

  “The naked woman,” Claude said, grinning broadly.

  “That’s right. Who saw her?”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Claude said.

  “Me, neither,” Clyde said. “I wish it had been, though.”

  “You hush your mouth, Clyde Appleby,” his mother said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  Clyde grinned at Claude, who grinned back. As far as Rhodes could tell, neither one of them was the least bit ashamed.

  “What time did you see this woman?” Rhodes asked Mrs. Appleb
ly.

  “It wasn’t long after David Letterman was over,” she said, turning her attention back to him. “Claude and Clyde like to watch that Top Ten list of his, and he’s got to where sometimes he doesn’t give it out until the show’s practically over. That’s the way it was tonight, which is why I was up so late.”

  Rhodes knew that Mrs. Appleby hadn’t seen the naked woman on Letterman’s show, though he supposed it was possible that she had. Rhodes seemed to remember something about an incident with Drew Barrymore.

  “Ma went outside to get some air,” Claude said. “She does that every night before she goes to bed unless the weather’s bad. That’s when she saw that woman.”

  “Makes me wish I’d gone for some air, myself,” Clyde said.

  “You hush,” Mrs. Appleby said. “You know better than to talk like that.”

  “Shoot,” Clyde said. “You should hear how they talk down at the Wal-Mart. And I mean the customers, not just the people who work there.”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said. This was getting as bad as trying to get information from Hack and Lawton. “Can you show me where you saw her, Mrs. Appleby?”

  “Come on outside and I can,” she said, getting out of the rocker.

  Rhodes followed her out through the kitchen. She pushed open a door, and went down some concrete steps into the back yard. Rhodes stood beside her, and she pointed toward the back of the yard where several tall trees grew. Over the tops of the trees, Rhodes could see the main building of the college on top of the hill, looking even more like a castle from a Universal horror movie than ever.

  “I was standing right here,” Mrs. Appleby said. “And she was right back there.”

  The moon was going down, and it was quite dark back in the trees, which were about fifty yards away. Rhodes wondered how well Mrs. Appleby could have seen anyone.

  “Are you sure it was a woman?” Rhodes asked.

  Mrs. Appleby half turned her head to look at him.

  “There’s ways to tell, Sheriff,” she said.

  “Right,” Rhodes said. “But the light’s not good, and—”

  “It was better then. The moon was up more, and I could see all right. It’s against the law to run naked right out in the open, isn’t it?”

  Rhodes said that public nudity was a misdemeanor in the state of Texas.

  “That is, it’s a misdemeanor if anyone was offended by it.”

  “Well, I was sure enough offended,” Mrs. Appleby said. “And I’m just glad that Claude and Clyde didn’t see it. They may joke about it, but it’s not right for boys their age to see things like that.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to speculate on what it was right for Claude and Clyde to see. Thanks to a previous investigation, he knew for a fact that the twins’ choice in magazines had exposed them to a certain amount of female nudity long before now.

  “Did you see where she came from?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” Mrs. Appleby said. “I think she saw me before I saw her. She was headed into the trees when I saw her, so I guess that’s where she came from. She saw me, and she turned and ran.”

  Rhodes thought about it. It wasn’t far from the college to where they were standing, not if someone had come straight down the hill. There wasn’t really anything in between except the trees. A naked woman could have come from just about anywhere, he supposed, but considering that there was a big concentration of women on the college campus, and considering that they were unfamiliar with the area and might easily get lost, it seemed pretty likely that the woman was someone from the writers’ conference.

  That possibility raised more questions than it answered, however. What was she doing naked in the first place? And why was she running around in the woods? And did any of that have something to do with Henrietta Bayam’s death?

  Because of the time element, Rhodes was sure the two events were connected. He didn’t much believe in coincidence, even though Ivy liked to tell him that life was full of outrageous coincidences, and he’d seen some himself.

  “She didn’t say anything?” Rhodes asked.

  “Just ran.”

  “And you didn’t see her face?”

  “No. She was going the wrong way for that.”

  Rhodes hated to ask the next question, but he did it anyway.

  “And you’re sure she was naked?”

  “She was wearing a pair of those bikini underpants,” Mrs. Appleby said. “But that doesn’t count. Does it?”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure whether someone wearing bikini underpants could be accused of public nudity or not. It was clearly a case for a brilliant lawyer, assuming the woman ever turned up and assuming that Mrs. Appleby still wanted to press charges.

  “What color?” he asked.

  “Red, I think.”

  Rhodes thought Mrs. Appleby must have much better eyesight than he did. On the other hand, if a naked woman were running through his back yard, his eyesight might improve.

  “Did you notice anything else about her? Height? Hair color?”

  Mrs. Appleby shook her head. “No. She was gone real quick.”

  “Why don’t you go back inside,” Rhodes said. “I want to look around back there.”

  “You got a flashlight?”

  Rhodes started to say that he had one in the county car, but Mrs. Appleby didn’t give him the chance.

  “Because I could send Claude out with one if that’d help you,” she told him.

  “Why don’t you do that,” Rhodes said.

  He had a few questions for Claude, anyway. When the boy came outside with the flashlight, Rhodes said, “Now tell me about the naked woman, Claude.”

  Claude gave Rhodes the flashlight and tried to look innocent. It didn’t work.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Sheriff,” he said.

  That didn’t work, either.

  “Yes you do,” Rhodes said. “I saw you grinning at Clyde in there. You saw something. Maybe both of you did.”

  Claude shook his head. “Dang it, Sheriff, I never can put anything over on you, can I?”

  “Sure you can. You’ve done it before, and you might even do it again. But not this time. Now tell me what you saw.”

  “Well, I guess I will. But you have to promise you won’t tell Ma.”

  Rhodes said he wouldn’t tell.

  “Okay. When she went out back, I decided to go out with her. I don’t usually, but it was a nice night, and I thought, why not. I could sort of keep her company. I think she gets lonesome sometimes with Twyla Faye gone and Daddy in the pen.”

  Rhodes believed him, though he had a hard time figuring out why anyone would miss a man like Cy Appleby. Ivy had tried to explain it to him, and he knew it was possible. He just had trouble with it.

  “Anyway,” Claude said, “I was about to go out the back door when I saw that woman. I didn’t see much, though. She was already heading back into the trees.”

  “But she was naked, right?”

  “If you can call it that. I think she had on a little pair of panties. Tell you the truth, I couldn’t see that much. I was looking through the screen door, after all.”

  “So you wouldn’t recognize the woman if you saw her again.”

  “Not a chance. Not even if you just showed me her back.”

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “You can go on back in. I’ll bring the flashlight to the door when I’m finished with it.”

  Claude nodded and turned back toward the house.

  Rhodes headed for the trees. He could hear a dog barking persistently off to the left. Must be a stray cat, Rhodes thought, shining the light on the ground in front of him and swinging it from side to side, looking for anything that resembled a clue.

  He didn’t see a single thing, but he kept on going, thinking that he might have been better off to wait until morning and come back in the daylight. In the dark, he was about as likely to mess things up as he was to find anything of significance, assuming that there was anything to find.

  But he
kept going. He was almost to the trees when the shooting started.

  7

  RHODES STOPPED AND LISTENED. THE SHOTS SOUNDED AS IF they’d come from somewhere nearby, probably from a shotgun. Rhodes started running in what he hoped was the right direction.

  When he got into the trees, he had to be careful. Running through a woods in the dark could be hazardous to a person’s physical well-being, even if the person was carrying a flashlight, mainly because it was impossible to shine the light on the ground to see what was in front of you and to shine it on the tree limbs that reached out to grab you from all sides at the same time.

  Rhodes elected to shine the light on the ground, which turned out to be a mistake. A limb that he didn’t see caught him just under the eye, popped his head backward, and brought him to a sudden stop.

  “Hold it right there, you sorry window-peeping son of a bitch,” a man yelled, though not at Rhodes, who was standing in the dark woods rubbing his eye and wondering what had happened to the flashlight.

  “If you even look like you’re gonna move, I’ll fill you full of number twelve buckshot,” the man yelled.

  Rhodes looked down at his feet. The flashlight was there, sending a strong yellow beam through the wet leaves. Rhodes picked it up and shined it off to his left. He didn’t see any more treacherous-looking limbs, so he started walking toward where he’d heard the voice. The barking that Rhodes had heard earlier was louder.

  A shotgun blasted. Rhodes ducked instinctively, though the shot passed well over him. Leaves and sticks pattered down on his head.

  “Who’s that comin’ through there?” the voice yelled. “You better stop right where you are. That shot was just a warnin’. Don’t think I’m scared of two of you! I got three more shells in this here gun, and I’m loaded for bear!”

  “Just hold your fire,” Rhodes said. “I’m the sheriff.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s right. You’re the sheriff, and I’m the Lone Ranger. You just stay right where you are. I’ve got your friend here in my sights, and if you show up yourself, I’ll let him have it.”