A Romantic Way to Die

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes didn’t know much about the stock market, but he did know about Dell Computer, because it was a Texas firm. And he’d heard about the amazing success of Amazon.com.

  “If you have so much money, why do you write?” he asked.

  “That’s what writers do,” Belinda said. “It’s not as if we have a choice. Making money is just a sideline.”

  Rhodes thought about his conversation with Ivy. He couldn’t explain to her why he continued in his job, but if he’d thought of it, and if he’d had a way with words, he might have put it just the way Belinda had. Ivy thought he had a choice. He wasn’t so sure that was true.

  “Are we finished?” Belinda asked. “I might want to attend the next session.”

  “I guess we’re finished, for now,” Rhodes said. “Marian Willoughby’s not doing the next session, is she?”

  “No. Serena is. Why?”

  “Because Marian is the one I want to talk to.”

  “Why her?”

  “Because she’s the one who didn’t seem to remember where you were when Henrietta was killed,” Rhodes said.

  Belinda sat back in her chair and considered Rhodes. Then she got out another cigarette, lit it, exhaled, and said, “You bastard.”

  “Sneaky, maybe,” Rhodes said. “But that’s about the extent of it.”

  “I didn’t think you even noticed that little bit with Marian,” Belinda said.

  “And observant,” Rhodes said. “Sneaky and observant.”

  “And a bastard.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You think I killed Henrietta and Terry Don both, don’t you.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’m still trying to sort things out and let the pieces fall into place.”

  Rhodes wasn’t lying. He thought he knew some of what had happened, or at least he was constructing a scenario that would explain a lot of things, but he hadn’t reached any conclusions so far.

  “Well, I didn’t kill either one of them,” Belinda said. “I’m not even in Henrietta’s stupid little book.”

  “So you’ve heard about that,” Rhodes said.

  “Everybody’s heard about it. The ones who didn’t know before she was killed know now. It’s the talk of the workshop.”

  Rhodes should have known.

  “You might not be in the book, but you weren’t with Marian Willoughby when Henrietta died,” he said. “Were you?”

  “No. If you must know, I wasn’t. I’d sneaked off for a smoke, and I thought it might look bad for me if I said I was off by myself. So I asked Marian to say I was with her.”

  “Why did you think you’d need an alibi?”

  “I didn’t think that. I just didn’t want any trouble.”

  “So you really don’t have anyone to vouch for you,” Rhodes said.

  “No. But when you think about it, neither does Marian. And I can think of a few questions you could ask that woman with the funny red hair, by the way, when you get through worrying about me.”

  “Lorene?”

  “I think that’s her name. Where does she buy her hair coloring?”

  Rhodes said he didn’t have any idea.

  “What should I ask her?” he said.

  “You could ask her where she was when Henrietta died. She was Henrietta’s roomie, after all.”

  “I know, but she doesn’t have a motive. And she was with two other women when Henrietta died.”

  “That’s what she told you. I heard her. But is it the truth?”

  “Is there any reason to think they’d lie for her?”

  “Maybe not,” Belinda said, blowing out a smoky plume. “But Marian lied for me.”

  “Not very well,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “True. But it’s something to think about.”

  “I’ve already thought about it. I’m going to check on everyone’s alibis.”

  “What if they’re all fabricated, like mine was?”

  “Then I’ll have an even longer list of suspects,” Rhodes said.

  “I suppose I’m still on the list, then.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Rhodes said, “you are.”

  “What would I have to do to get off?”

  “Prove you’re not guilty.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that. But if I were the sheriff, I know I’d find out about that redhead. Lorene. What’s with the names of people around here, anyway? Lorene. Vernell. Henrietta.”

  “Don’t forget Belinda,” Rhodes said.

  Belinda laughed. “You’ve got me there. I guess not everyone can be named Jennifer or Tracy.”

  “Right.”

  “But no matter what my name is, I didn’t kill anyone. I promise.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhodes said.

  24

  THE PERSON RHODES WANTED TO TALK TO NOW WASN’T MARIAN or Lorene. It was Chatterton. Rhodes went back to the dormitory with Belinda and located Chatterton sitting in the front room, alone.

  “The session’s about over,” he told Rhodes listlessly. “Everyone’s in there except me. I wasn’t interested.”

  Rhodes asked him to come outside and have a talk.

  “It’s a nice day,” Rhodes said. “The sunshine will do you good.”

  Chatterton didn’t seem to think so, but he went along.

  “How are you going to handle lunch today?” Rhodes asked.

  “Somebody from the Round-Up will be bringing it out in a little while,” Chatterton said. “They’ll set up some tables out here, and we’ll eat under the pecan trees. I guess I should be thankful that it isn’t raining.”

  “It’s too bad about the building,” Rhodes said.

  Chatterton stood looking out over the countryside and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he looked over at the main building. The outside stones in the kitchen area were black from the smoke and fire damage.

  When Chatterton finally spoke, there was a catch in his voice.

  “It’s not just the building,” he said. “I can’t believe everything that’s happened here. Two people have been killed, and everything I worked for is ruined.”

  “You must’ve had insurance,” Rhodes said.

  Chatterton walked over to one of the plastic chairs and sat down. His shoulders slumped, and he looked utterly defeated.

  “Not enough, if you’re thinking I’m the one who tried to burn it,” he said. “I would never have done that, not for any amount of money. I worked for two years to make this place what it is, and now it’s all wasted.”

  “The building can be repaired,” Rhodes said.

  “Not easily. Those old buildings are a lot more fragile than they look. It would take a lot of time and money, and I’m not sure I’m up to going through all that again. Do you know why I did it in the first place?”

  “To make money?” Rhodes guessed.

  “Absolutely not. I hoped to get back my investment eventually, sure, but that’s not why I did it. I told you about my name, didn’t I?”

  “You said something about not being related to an English poet, but that’s all.”

  “Thomas Chatterton. My parents were university English professors, and with the family name being what it was, they couldn’t resist naming me Thomas.”

  “I don’t remember him from school,” Rhodes said.

  “There’s no reason why you should. He was a very minor poet, and he died before he was eighteen. But he produced some remarkable work in his short life. I never produced anything, which was a big disappointment to my parents.”

  “You were a poet?”

  “No. I tried. And I tried fiction and nonfiction, too. But nothing I wrote was ever published. Luckily I had a real job, like most of those people in there. When my parents died, they left me a little money, and I thought about using it to help writers. I’d heard about this place and what Simon Graham tried to do with it. I knew it was vacant and for sale, so I decided it would be my contribution to literature. Now it doesn’t look that way at all.”

&n
bsp; “But you have the money to rebuild, don’t you?”

  “No. And the insurance won’t help. I was underinsured, if anything. Who would ever have thought something like that would happen?”

  No one, Rhodes thought. It took a unique combination of people and events to bring it all about. But there was a chance that Chatterton had been a part of it.

  “You told me the other night that you were in the dormitory when Henrietta was killed,” Rhodes said. “You were checking to make sure everything was in order and the people had everything they needed. I didn’t hear anybody back you up on that.”

  Chatterton opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “I thought you were interested in my insurance,” he said after a few seconds.

  “I was,” Rhodes said. “For a while. Now I’m interested in something else.”

  “Why can’t we just stick to one subject?”

  Rhodes didn’t have an answer for that one. His interview technique wasn’t anything he’d learned in a class or from a book. It was just something that had developed over the years. He wasn’t sure that jumping from one topic to another gave any better results than anything else, but it was something he did from time to time. It certainly seemed to have disconcerted Chatterton.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Chatterton said.

  “But you weren’t in the dormitory.”

  “No,” Chatterton said. “I wish I had been, but I wasn’t.”

  “You were watching television,” Rhodes said.

  “How in the world did you know that?”

  “I guessed. I saw the TV set in your room, and I remembered what you said about there not being any television here because you believed in reading and writing, not watching TV.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “But you didn’t mean it, at least not for yourself.”

  Chatterton sighed. “I suppose not. I wish I did, but ever since I gave up writing, I find that I don’t like reading very much. It makes me feel inferior somehow to read a book by someone who really can’t write any better than I can, or at least it seems to me they can’t, and to know that they’ve sold not only that book but others besides. And that they’re widely read and popular.”

  “In other words,” Rhodes said, “you’re jealous.”

  “I don’t like the word, but I suppose it fits.”

  Rhodes made a leap of faith, or maybe it was just another guess.

  “You weren’t jealous of Henrietta, though. You were jealous of Vernell.”

  Chatterton looked beyond surprise.

  “How on earth did you know that?”

  Rhodes could have said it was just a hunch, but he didn’t want to reveal trade secrets. Besides, there was more to it than that.

  “Because she wasn’t anybody. Just some woman from a small town in the middle of Texas. She keeps goats in her yard. And yet she’d sold a book, and you hadn’t.”

  Chatterton grimaced and said, “You’re right, sort of. I’m not so much jealous as I am envious. And it gets worse.”

  “How?”

  “She’s got the best agent in the business for her next book.”

  “She has?”

  “It’s the latest hot gossip. Even better than Terry Don Coslin’s death and Henrietta’s manuscript. Jeanne Arnot is going to take Vernell as a client. She thinks she can get six figures for her next book.”

  Rhodes had liked Wild Texas Wind, but he hadn’t thought it was that good. Well, he was no judge of literature. Maybe he was just envious, like Chatterton.

  “Good for Vernell,” he said, to prove he wasn’t.

  “If you think I’m envious,” Chatterton said, “you should talk to some of those other prepublished writers.”

  “Prepublished?”

  “Okay, unpublished, then.”

  “I’d think they’d be happy for Vernell.”

  “Oh, they are. In a way. But they all wish it could have been them.”

  Rhodes couldn’t blame them. Six figures. It had a nice sound. But Chatterton was as good as Hack and Lawton at getting off the subject. Rhodes got back to it.

  “About that TV set,” he said. “What were you watching?”

  “That millionaire show,” Chatterton said.

  “There are a lot of those these days,” Rhodes said.

  “The original one. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I like to watch it because it makes me feel superior to the people on it, at least for a little while.”

  “You feel superior? How?”

  “The questions are so easy and silly that anyone could answer them.”

  “I can’t,” Rhodes said, not feeling superior. “Not always.”

  “It’s not a matter of knowledge, at least of important things. The questions don’t test that. They’re nothing but trivia.”

  “I see what you mean,” Rhodes said.

  “I thought you would. But I don’t want the writers I invite here to know that I’m sneaking off to watch a show like that. Or any other show. So I kept it quiet.”

  “And you don’t let them have TV sets in their rooms.”

  “No. It’s a gimmick, okay? I admit it. But I didn’t kill anyone because they found out I was watching television.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Rhodes said. “But Terry Don knew, didn’t he.”

  “He knew, but he didn’t care. After all, he was reading a mystery novel. I don’t think he wanted anybody here to know that, either. He wanted them all to think he was reading their historical romance novels. It was like a joke between us.”

  “That show was over a long time before Henrietta was killed, though,” Rhodes said. “You might’ve watched it after dinner, but it didn’t last until nearly eleven-thirty.”

  Chatterton looked sheepish. He said, “There are a few other shows I watch now and then. One of them is the ten o’clock news.”

  “And after that?”

  “Letterman,” Chatterton said. “I know he’s juvenile, but I can’t help it. I sort of enjoy it.”

  “So do the Applebys,” Rhodes said.

  “Who are they?”

  “They live near here,” Rhodes said.

  “I haven’t met them. Anyway, that’s what I was watching. When the musical guest came on, I left. I hardly ever care for the musical guest.”

  “And that’s when the screaming started?”

  “It started before I got there,” Chatterton said. “I may have implied something else.”

  “You may have, all right.”

  “I’m sorry. But now you know the whole story.” Chatterton glanced back toward the dormitory. “Can I go now? I have to get things ready for lunch.”

  “Go ahead,” Rhodes said, and Chatterton got up and walked away.

  Rhodes felt sorry for Chatterton, in a way. For most of his life the man had apparently been trying to live up to the name of some doomed British poet, and he’d never succeeded. Then he’d finally accomplished something to be proud of, and it had been virtually destroyed, all in one weekend.

  But somehow Rhodes couldn’t rid himself of the nagging notion that Chatterton might have had a hand in his own destruction.

  25

  RHODES WAS STILL SITTING UNDER THE PECAN TREE WHEN A van drove up. The words The Round-Up were painted on the side in letters that appeared to be made of rope. There was a picture of a very large steer under the name, and the restaurant’s motto was printed under the steer in black letters: ABSOLUTELY NO CHICKEN, FISH, OR VEGETARIAN DISHES CAN BE FOUND ON OUR MENU! Rhodes figured it must be quite an aggravation for the owner, Sam Blevins, to provide vegetarian dishes for Serena Thayer, but he supposed there were times a man had to go against his beliefs in order to satisfy his customers. If anyone mentioned it, Blevins could always say the dishes were “off the menu.”

  Blevins pulled his gray Suburban to a stop behind the van and got out. He was around six feet tall and wire thin, and Rhodes thought he looked like a walking advertisement for a high-protein diet. He was dressed in his usu
al outfit: a white western shirt, starched and ironed Wranglers, and low-heeled black boots.

  Rhodes sat and watched as Blevins directed the unloading of the van. Before long, several long tables had been set up under the trees near the dormitory and folding chairs had been placed around them.

  Rhodes wondered what the main course of the lunch would be. And he wondered if there might be an extra plate for a hungry law officer who was willing to pay his way. He strolled over to where Blevins was directing the placement of folding chairs and said hello.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Blevins said. “What happened to you? You look like you wrestled a bear and lost. Or maybe tied.”

  “It wasn’t a bear,” Rhodes said. “It was a building.”

  Blevins looked over at the smoke- and water-stained exterior of the main building and said, “I take it back. Looks like you won.”

  “I don’t think anybody won. What’s for lunch?”

  Blevins said that the menu for the day was barbecued brisket, pinto beans, coleslaw, and potato salad.

  “With jalapeño peppers, onions, and pickles if you want ’em. Iced tea to drink. And then there’s cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream for dessert.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe to serve potato salad?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s been kept cold all the way here, and we’ll be serving it right out of the containers. You won’t have anybody dying of ptomaine.”

  “That’s good to know. But I didn’t think you served vegetable dishes.”

  Blevins made a face. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. But they go with the meat, and they’ll help with the special vegetable plate, which, God help me, is steamed carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli. Can you believe it? Who’d eat that kind of stuff?”

  “Vegetarians,” Rhodes said.

  Blevins rolled his eyes. “What planet do those people come from?”

  “This one, I think,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t understand ’em, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

  “Any chance that you could set an extra plate?” Rhodes said.

  Blevins stared at him in mock horror.

  “Of the brisket, I mean. Not the vegetables. I’ll pay.”