A Romantic Way to Die

by Bill Crider

  After a few seconds, Rhodes realized that although Grover was still barking, Quentin was no longer shooting. Rhodes thought that was a good thing. He called out, “Quentin, this is Sheriff Rhodes. I’m right here by the house, and I’m going to show myself. Have you put that gun down?”

  There was no answer. Rhodes took another breath or two and said, “Quentin? Are you still there?”

  Again there was no reply. Rhodes was beginning to wonder whether Quentin was all right. He hadn’t looked like a candidate for a heart attack, being skinny and wiry, but Rhodes knew you couldn’t always tell about a man’s cholesterol level by his appearance.

  “Quentin?” Rhodes said, stepping from behind the tree.

  As soon as he stepped out of the dark shadow of the tree, the shotgun blasted and Rhodes heard the shot ripping through the leaves of the tree and ticking off the branches. Something tugged at his shirtsleeve.

  Rhodes hit the ground and hugged it. He had a feeling he knew what had happened, but he had no idea how it had. Jeanne Arnot had somehow gotten hold of the shotgun.

  Rhodes wondered how many rounds had been fired. Had Quentin reloaded? Rhodes tried to count back. Four? Five? Six? Rhodes wasn’t sure.

  Quentin must have reloaded, he thought, but if he hadn’t, did Jeanne Arnot know how?

  And if she did, did she have access to any cartridges?

  At least one thing was explained. Rhodes knew now why Grover was having such a fit. Quentin wasn’t there to tell him to be quiet.

  Well, Rhodes thought, that probably wasn’t quite true. Quentin was there, all right. He just wasn’t in any condition to say anything to his dog. Or to anyone else.

  Rhodes started to inch forward on his stomach. There was no telling where Jeanne Arnot might be or whether she had any ammunition left, and he certainly couldn’t hear her, thanks to Grover, whose lungs must have been made of some form of highly flexible leather. He was full of energy, too. Every now and then, in the minuscule space of silence between barking fits, Rhodes could hear the jingling of a chain-link fence as Grover threw himself against it.

  When he reached another tree, Rhodes stood up and took cover behind it. He pulled out his pistol and checked it. He didn’t want to shoot Jeanne, but she didn’t know that. Maybe she’d give up when she learned that he was armed.

  “Jeanne!” he said, careful to stay behind the tree. “This is Sheriff Rhodes. I know the shotgun is out of shells. Put it down, and we can talk.”

  The part about knowing the gun was out of shells was a lie, but Rhodes was willing to take the chance that Jeanne would believe him.

  She didn’t. There was a roar, and buckshot ripped into the tree trunk, tearing away the bark and several sizable chunks of wood. Jeanne was a definite hazard to the environment, and she must not have been very far away. And she clearly didn’t plan to talk to him.

  Rhodes would have to wait her out, and he would have, except that he wasn’t very good at waiting in certain situations. This was one of them.

  He saw another tree not far away, maybe ten feet, so he ran for it, arriving safely and with no shots being fired.

  Grover didn’t like it, though. The rapid movement seemed to irritate him exceedingly and to give him a second wind. He barked and carried on even more than before, if that was possible, hurling himself at the fence with renewed enthusiasm.

  Rhodes looked out from behind the tree. He didn’t see anyone, but there were so many shadows that someone could have been standing within a couple of yards of him and he might not have known it.

  Grover knew it. He barked and rattled the fence fiercely. Rhodes was tempted to tell him to calm down, but it wouldn’t have helped, and it would have revealed his position if Jeanne Arnot hadn’t figured it out yet.

  Rhodes was still trying to decide what to do when he heard someone calling his name. It wasn’t Jeanne. It was Claude Appleby.

  “Sheriff, are you around here somewhere?”

  “Over here,” Rhodes said. “But be careful. There’s a woman out there with a shotgun.”

  “Not anymore,” Claude said. “She’s gone.”

  “What about Billy Quentin?”

  “He’s here,” Claude said. “He looks like he might be dead, though.”

  Rhodes sighed, holstered his pistol, and stepped out from behind the tree.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said, walking over to where Claude was looking down at something on the ground.

  The something was Billy Quentin, who was lying on his back, his eyes closed. He looked dead, all right, but there was a thick tree branch lying nearby, and Rhodes thought that maybe it had been used on Quentin the way the bucket had been used on Rhodes. Jeanne Arnot had a way of sneaking up on you.

  Rhodes knelt down and checked for a pulse in Quentin’s neck. It was beating strongly.

  “He’ll be okay,” Rhodes told Claude, speaking loudly so as to be heard over the sound of Grover’s constant barking. “Unless he has a skull fracture or a concussion. What are you doing here?”

  Claude looked down at his shoes as if they were very interesting, although they were only cheap running shoes that he’d most likely bought in the Wal-Mart shoe department.

  “I was out walking around,” he said. “And I heard the shooting. I started not to come over here, but then I figured I’d like to know what was going on.”

  “And you saw the woman,” Rhodes said. “Did she happen to see you?”

  “I’m not sure.” Claude looked up. “She ran off, though, and she was carrying a shotgun.”

  “I have to find her,” Rhodes said.

  “What about that dog?” Claude said. “If we let him out, maybe he’d track her down. He seems pretty upset about everything.”

  “He might track her,” Rhodes said. “Or he might just bite us.”

  “Naw, not old Grover. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He just likes to make noise.”

  “You seem to know him pretty well.”

  “You know how it is,” Claude said. “You make friends with a dog, and he won’t bark at you.”

  “If you happen to be going for a walk after dark, you mean.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well, never mind that. Let him out. We’ll see what happens.”

  Claude went over to the pen, which got Grover even more excited than before, if that was possible. When Claude opened the gate, Grover flew out of it like a furry ballistic missile, nearly knocking Rhodes down. He was shaggy and of indeterminate ancestry. It looked to Rhodes as if he had somehow inherited the least attractive aspects of all their appearances. But he didn’t bite anyone.

  And he didn’t go after Jeanne Arnot. He went straight to Quentin and started licking his face.

  “I guess he likes him,” Rhodes said.

  “Looks that way,” Claude said. “He’s not going to be much help in tracking that woman after all. But maybe you won’t need him.”

  Quentin was beginning to stir around under Grover’s lapping tongue. He hadn’t opened his eyes, however, so Rhodes couldn’t hold up two fingers to test him for a concussion.

  “Which way did the woman go?” Rhodes asked Claude.

  Claude pointed west and said, “Down toward Obert’s Creek. That’s why you might not need the dog.”

  “I know what you mean,” Rhodes said.

  Benjamin Franklin Obert, an obscure pioneer, might or might not have had a considerable ego, but he had been the first person to settle down on a particular Texas hill, and for that reason his name was attached to any number of things: to the hill itself, to the little town that grew up near where he built his home, to the college that had later been built in the town, and to the sluggish little creek that flowed around the bottom of the hill.

  Or it flowed most of the time. When the summers were very dry, it occasionally disappeared altogether, leaving behind only a muddy bottom that eventually dried out, became hard, and cracked crazily.

  It was now flowing about as much as it ever did, thanks to the earlier ra
instorm and to several others that had passed through the area earlier in the month. The area around it was boggy and full of frogs, bugs, and the occasional snake. Rhodes wasn’t fond of snakes. For that matter, he didn’t much like bugs, either. Frogs didn’t bother him.

  He wondered how Jeanne Arnot felt about them. That was another thing he could ask her when he caught up with her.

  If he ever did.

  “You stay here with Mr. Quentin,” he told Claude.

  “If Ma and Clyde heard the shootin’, they’ll be over here before long,” Claude said. “They could take care of Mr. Quentin, and I could go with you to help out.”

  “You’re not a deputy,” Rhodes said. “So you stay here. Anyway, I have another job for you. When your mother gets here, you go back to your house and call for an ambulance. Then call the jail and tell Mr. Jensen to send Ruth Grady out here as fast as he can. You got all that?”

  “Yessir,” Claude said. “What about that dog? You want me to put him back in the pen?”

  Rhodes looked at Grover, who was still washing Quentin’s face.

  “Don’t bother him,” Rhodes said. “No need to start him barking again.”

  “Right,” Claude said.

  When he was still a good fifty yards from the creek, Rhodes was slogging through mud that came up to the tops of his socks. Every time he took a step, there was a loud sucking sound before the gooey muck flowed back together. He’d heard several frogs and been bitten by more than several bugs, but he hadn’t encountered any snakes.

  And he hadn’t encountered Jeanne Arnot, either. It occurred to him in mid-slog that she’d outsmarted him all the way around.

  Jeanne had gone down the hill, but that didn’t mean she had to stay there. If she hadn’t run across Quentin, she would probably have started back up a whole lot sooner, but Quentin had distracted her for a while.

  She might have been expecting Rhodes. She might even have had the tree branch ready for him instead of Quentin, who’d fouled up her plans temporarily. But then Claude had shown up, and she’d been quick to take advantage. She let him see her running off in one direction, while planning all the time to go make a quick turn back to where she’d come from.

  Either that, or she was hiding somewhere up to her nose in mud and sludge. Somehow Rhodes didn’t think that was the case. He looked back up the hill to where the lights in the dormitory showed up brightly in the darkness. He pulled a foot out of the ooze and started in that direction.

  Once he was onto more solid ground, he broke into a heavy trot, but he didn’t make very good time. Not only were his feet weighed down with mud, but his pants legs were soaked and slimy. He hoped Jeanne was as big a mess as he was, though he didn’t think she would be. She was smarter than he was, and she wouldn’t have gotten as close to the creek as he did.

  He was about halfway up the hill when he heard a commotion from the dormitory. He sped up his trot as much as he could, which wasn’t much.

  He didn’t think he was going to get there in time, and he was right. By the time he reached the dorm, Jeanne was already there, and she still had the shotgun.

  There was one other little problem, as well.

  She also had Vernell.

  33

  VERNELL WASN’T HAPPY. IN FACT, SHE LOOKED SO UPSET THAT Rhodes thought she might have exploded if it had been possible for a person to do that. Her face was as red as if she had been holding her breath for four or five minutes. Maybe she had, though it didn’t seem likely. Rhodes wondered if she was still as pleased with her agent as she had been when they’d worked out whatever deal they had.

  Probably not, since Rhodes doubted that at the time Jeanne had been gripping Vernell’s hair with one hand and holding a shotgun barrel under her chin with the other.

  Jeanne herself looked harried but in control, while everyone else just looked surprised. Now that the fuss had died down, no one was saying a word. They were all staring at Jeanne and Vernell.

  Rhodes looked at Jeanne’s legs. She was wearing denim pants, and they didn’t appear wet at all. He’d been right about her. She hadn’t gone anywhere near the creek.

  “Hello, Sheriff,” Jeanne said when Rhodes walked up. “I was hoping it might take you a little longer to get here.”

  “I rushed,” Rhodes said. “You aren’t planning to shoot Vernell, are you?”

  “I’d hate to have to do that,” Jeanne said. “But I suppose it’s all up to you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It depends on what kind of deal we can work out,” Jeanne said.

  Vernell chose that moment to try to wriggle loose. She jerked her head to the left and twisted her body in the other direction. It might have worked if Jeanne hadn’t been expecting something. As it was, Vernell just got her head jerked back into place and got her chin jabbed by the shotgun.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Jeanne said. “My finger might slip, and that would make a mess all over everything.”

  “I’m afraid there wouldn’t be any deal if that happened,” Rhodes said, though he didn’t think there would be one in any event.

  “True,” Jeanne said, “but there might be some satisfaction in it. I really get tired of people who try to take advantage of me.”

  Rhodes wondered who she might mean, aside from Vernell, that is. Maybe she felt that way about all her clients.

  “What is it that you want?” he asked. “Exactly.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d just let me go.”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I’m pretty sure we couldn’t work that out.”

  “So it’s really hard for me to decide what to do,” Jeanne said. “Things don’t look too good for me right now.”

  Rhodes didn’t have anything to say to that. She had summed up the situation pretty well.

  “So I guess I’ll have to tell you the truth,” she said. “The problem is that I didn’t do what you think I did. That’s why I think you could let me go and not worry about it.”

  “How do you know what I think you did?”

  “Carrie hinted at it. I figured out the rest. I know I should have told you, but I didn’t think you’d believe me. By the time I figured everything out, it was too late to try to convince you. Now I have to try.”

  “Go ahead, then,” Rhodes said. “If you didn’t kill Henrietta, who did?”

  “I should think that would be obvious,” Jeanne said.

  “Not to me.”

  “Why do you think I took this woman prisoner?” Jeanne asked. “Because I wanted a hostage?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “Well, you can forget it. She’s a killer. And I’m holding her for you.”

  Vernell gave Rhodes a wild look, and Rhodes pretended to think things over for a few seconds. Then he said, “You know, I can see how it could’ve been that way. Vernell has been covering up. I’m going to ask everybody to go inside except for you and me and Vernell. Then we can talk things over. Does that sound fair?”

  Jeanne said that it did, and Rhodes told everyone to go inside. He had to tell them twice before anyone would move. Rhodes thought they were all a little disappointed that Jeanne hadn’t pulled the trigger, and they were hoping that if they stayed, she might do it.

  But finally Claudia took over. She said, “Come on, now, everybody. Let’s do what the sheriff says and let him work things out. It’s not any of our business.”

  Rhodes could tell that at least half of them did think it was their business, especially Serena, Belinda, and Marian, who must have been hoping for some good specific details for the mystery novels they were planning to write in order to escape being pegged as romance writers. And Chatterton, who looked stricken by the whole thing. But after a few seconds of grumbling, everyone went back into the dorm, where most of them stood peering out the door and windows.

  “Now what?” Jeanne asked.

  “Now you tell me how Vernell killed Henrietta,” Rhodes said.

  The way Jeanne explained it, things ha
d happened just about as Rhodes had suspected, except that it had been Vernell who got into Henrietta’s room, scared off Terry Don, and got into some kind of argument with Henrietta.

  “It had something to do with a radio contest,” Jeanne said. “I’m not sure of the details.”

  All through the recounting of the story, Vernell got redder and redder. By the time Jeanne had finished, Vernell’s face was roughly the color of a wild-cherry cough drop. But she couldn’t do or say anything because the shotgun was pressed so firmly against her chin that she couldn’t open her mouth. Rhodes had a feeling that Jeanne was going to pull the trigger accidentally any second now if he didn’t do something to prevent it.

  “What you say all fits,” Rhodes told Jeanne. “Now that you’ve explained it, I can see that I was wrong about just about everything. But that still leaves one question. Who killed Terry Don Coslin?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Jeanne said. “But then I’m not the sheriff here. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. Maybe it was Vernell.”

  At that, Vernell tensed. Rhodes hoped she wouldn’t struggle because Jeanne’s finger was even more tense than Vernell. Rhodes was sure that Vernell was within a millimeter of getting her head blown off while trying to escape.

  Then he saw headlights approaching. There was no siren, no lightbar flashing, so it wasn’t the ambulance, though that would be coming along any minute. It was Ruth Grady, who stopped her county car and got out.

  She looked the situation over and said, “Need any help here, Sheriff?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes told her. “We’re going to have to arrest Vernell for murder. That’s about it.”