by Bill Crider
“Can’t let you do that.”
The toothpick bounced up and down as York spoke, and Rhodes wondered if York had been studying old George Raft movies. No, Raft used the coin-flipping bit. Maybe the toothpick was York’s own tough-guy interpretation.
“Why not?” Rhodes said.
“’Cause this is private property. Can’t let you in without a search warrant.”
“You let us in the front door.”
“Hey, it’s a pool hall. Everybody’s welcome. Want to shoot a game of nine-ball? This is the place.”
Rhodes said he didn’t want to shoot a game of nine-ball and added, “The room back of that door is part of the pool hall.”
“Nope. That’s different. That’s private property.”
York was already beginning to repeat his lines. He needed a better writer, and Rhodes needed a better straight man. He had to do all the work himself.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I’d need a search warrant to get inside?”
York grinned, tipping the toothpick upward at a rakish angle. “Yeah, I should’ve said that. You can’t get in without a search warrant.”
“That’s better.” Rhodes pulled the warrant from his back pocket. “I just happen to have one.”
He had paid a quick visit to the county judge on his way to the Royal Rack and explained that the place might be harboring a fugitive. It hadn’t taken long to get the warrant signed.
York uncrossed his arms. “Lemme see that.”
Rhodes handed it to him. “Buddy can read it to you if it gives you any trouble.”
York looked confused, as if he thought Rhodes might be messing with him but wasn’t quite sure. He took the search warrant, unfolded it, and tried to look as if he understood what he was reading.
“Satisfied?” Rhodes said after a couple of seconds.
“I can’t really say.”
York looked genuinely perplexed. Behind Rhodes everyone seemed to have stopped breathing, caught up in the suspense of the moment. Would York go ballistic? Would his head pop like a blister? Or would he just open the door? Rhodes couldn’t hear a sound other than York’s breathing, not even the scrape of a shoe on the rough concrete floor.
“Well?” Rhodes said.
“I’m not supposed to let anybody in there. It’s private—”
“Property. I know. I have a search warrant. You’re holding it.”
“Yeah, but … .” York’s voice trailed off when he couldn’t think of any argument that might work. Then something occurred to him. “I’m not the owner. I’d have to ask him about it.”
“See, that’s the problem,” Buddy said. “We think the owner might be in that room.”
York cheered up considerably. “Hey, if that’s the problem, then I can set your mind at ease right now. He’s not there.”
“Yeah,” Buddy said. “That would do the trick if we could just believe you.”
“You don’t believe me?” York sounded honestly hurt.
“We believe you,” Rhodes told him, “but it’s our job to make sure. Mr. Thorpe might be in there without your knowledge.”
“Mr. Thorpe?”
“The owner.”
“How did you know about him being the owner?”
“He’s the sheriff,” Buddy said. “He knows everything.”
“Well, you don’t know everything if you think he’s in that room, because he’s not.”
“We still have to check,” Rhodes said. “Open the door.”
York shrugged and handed Rhodes the warrant. “I guess I got to.”
Rhodes stuck the warrant back in his pocket, and York pulled out a ring of keys. He fumbled around with them, making what seemed to Rhodes to be an unnecessary amount of noise. Then he turned to the door and kicked against it a few times.
“It sticks,” he said by way of explanation as he inserted a key into the lock. He twisted and rattled the handle, kicking the door a couple more times for good measure.
The walls were thick, and so was the door, but Rhodes could hear something on the other side, a noisy scraping on the floor, as if chairs were being shoved around.
“Damn door’s stuck,” York said.
“Buddy, shoot off the lock,” Rhodes said.
Buddy drew his sidearm, and York swung the door open quickly.
“Better than WD-40,” Buddy said, putting the pistol back in its holster.
The inside of the room was all confusion. People milled around, some of them trying to get out the back door, others looking for places to hide.
There was nowhere to hide, and Ruth Grady stood in the back doorway smiling at the men who milled around in front of her as if daring them to try to get past.
Rhodes thought they’d be wise not to try it. Ruth was already upset that Thorpe had gotten away from her, and she wasn’t going to let anybody else do the same. She held her pistol at her side, pointing toward the ground, but she looked ready to use it if she had to. Nobody tested her resolve.
Five poker tables were in the room. An attempt had been made to clear a couple of them, but without much success. Chips were scattered around the tables, and cigarettes still smoldered in the ashtrays. A thin cloud of smoke hovered near the ceiling.
“I’ll be dang,” Buddy said. “Looks like we’ve busted an illegal gambling den.”
Nobody but Buddy would have used that phrase, Rhodes thought. He said, “Do you see Leo Thorpe?”
“Nope,” Buddy said, “but I see some familiar faces.”
So did Rhodes, who recognized a city councilman, a teacher from the local community college, a bank vice president, and the owner of the Dairy Queen.
“This is going to be fun,” Rhodes said.
Buddy grinned. “You don’t really mean that.”
“No,” Rhodes said. “I don’t.”
Chapter 12
IT TOOK OVER TWO HOURS TO GET EVERYTHING SORTED OUT, INCLUDING booking and bonding out and listening to all the threats, excuses, complaints, and tortured explanations.
Adding to the confusion was a phone call from Alton Brant, who’d heard about Thorpe’s escape from the hospital.
Brant wasn’t pleased. “If you can’t hang on to him, maybe you need some help.”
Rhodes said that he didn’t need or want any help.
“Well, you might get it anyway,” Brant said in the voice of an old soldier, and hung up.
Rhodes sighed and looked out at the mob of gamblers who had to be processed. It was turning into a long day.
When the jail was finally cleared, Hack said, “Tell you the truth, I didn’t know there was so many innocent men in all of Blacklin County. You’d think just one of ’em might’ve been guilty of somethin’ or other.”
“Not a chance,” Rhodes said, just before Jennifer Loam came through the door. He wondered what had taken her so long to get there. He’d been expecting her to turn up for at least an hour.
“You must have been covering a big story somewhere,” he said.
“I was having dinner if you must know. Even a reporter gets time off for dinner.”
“You missed a good story,” Rhodes said.
“I didn’t miss a thing. I’m sure you keep very accurate records. Public records.”
“You goin’ to name names in the paper?” Hack said.
“That will be an editorial decision.”
“I hope you do,” Hack told her. “Give a lot of those old boys somethin’ to think about.”
“I’ll need to get the story from you, first,” Jennifer said to Rhodes.
“Buddy can fill you in,” Rhodes said. “He’s already on overtime, but the county can afford it as long as the press is accommodated.”
Jennifer was still protesting when Rhodes went out the door.
The dark clouds covered the sky now, and thunder rumbled through them like empty barrels rolling down a wooden stairway. Lightning zigzagged in and out. The wind whipped the legs of Rhodes’s pants.
Rhodes didn’t really want to spend
the evening looking for Leo Thorpe, but somebody had to do it, and he was the one getting the big bucks.
Come to think of it, he wasn’t getting the big bucks. But he was the sheriff, and he figured it was his job. Some sheriffs he knew would get their deputies to do it. They believed that a sheriff was nothing more than a county administrator, like the commissioners, and they never left their offices to do any kind of law work. Rhodes didn’t fault them for that. It was their choice. His was to get out in the field and do what he could. That was why he’d gotten himself elected in the first place. If he couldn’t do it, he might just as well be sitting at home watching The Last Man on Earth.
Ivy hadn’t been happy when he’d called her with the news.
“It’s going to storm,” she said. “You’ll catch a cold.”
“I’ll be fine. I never have colds.”
“You were sneezing this morning.”
“That was the cat.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re not allergic to cats. By the way, I bought some food for Sam, but I see you’ve already fed him.”
“I brought a little food from Mrs. Harris’s. I brought a litterbox and a scratching post, too.”
“That was very thoughtful of you. You must like Sam better than you’re admitting.”
“No, I was just being practical. How’s Yancey?”
“He’s doing fine. I think he and Sam are going to be great friends.”
Rhodes didn’t like the sound of that. “Lieutenant Brant said that he might want the cat.”
That wasn’t strictly true, but it could have been true. Or maybe Rhodes just hoped it was true.
Ivy asked about Brant, and Rhodes explained his relationship with Mrs. Harris.
“I knew they were courting, but I didn’t know how serious it was,” Ivy said. “So it was serious enough for him to want her cat?”
“I hope—think so,” Rhodes said.
“You are so transparent.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the sheriffs.”
“Only the handsome, crime-busting ones.”
Uh-oh, Rhodes thought. “Have you been talking to Claudia and Jan?”
“I certainly have. They called the office. When were you planning to tell me the good news?”
“Who says it’s good news?”
“I think it’s very exciting, and you should, too. They want you to do a signing with them at the Wal-Mart here when the book comes out.”
Great, Rhodes thought. “I’ll talk to them about it. Right now I have to go out and try to bust some crime.”
“I’ll wait up for you.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be in.”
“That’s all right. We need to talk about Sam.”
Rhodes knew what he wanted to say about Sam, but he didn’t think Ivy wanted to hear it.
“Fine,” he said.
“If you’re not too tired and if you don’t get in too late, maybe we can do more than just talk.”
“It’s never too late.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
Rhodes’s first stop was Ballinger’s Funeral Home. It was located in an old mansion, left over from Clearview’s long-gone oil-boom days. Rhodes hadn’t been around for those, but some people said that with the current price of oil, some of the old wells might be able to produce enough to make a bit of money for somebody. That somebody wouldn’t be Rhodes, however. He steered the county car into the drive behind the building and parked beside a black Lincoln.
Clyde Ballinger, the owner of the funeral home, lived in a small house that might once have been the servants’ quarters. Being a bachelor, Clyde didn’t need a big place, and he liked being close to his business. He was waiting at the door when Rhodes got there.
“Fixing to rain,” he said as Rhodes came inside.
“Looks that way,” Rhodes said. “Is that Dr. White’s Lincoln out there?”
Ballinger nodded. “He’s been here for a while. He should be able to tell you something before long. Terrible thing about Mrs. Harris.”
“It was probably just an accident,” Rhodes said, though the way the day’s events had unfolded was making that seem ever more unlikely to him.
Ballinger led Rhodes into the little room that served as his office, which looked more like a living room. There was an old couch, a couple of chairs, and even an old color TV set. The newest addition was a computer desk.
As usual, Ballinger’s other desk held a couple of old paperback books with gaudy covers, the kind of thing Ballinger preferred over any more modern form of reading material. There was also another book, however, a brand-new hardback. Rhodes didn’t remember having ever seen one of those in Ballinger’s office. As far as Rhodes knew, Ballinger bought only paperbacks, and he preferred to find them at the local garage sales.
“It’s the last one in the Eighty-seventh Precinct series,” Ballinger said, putting a finger on the hardback. “Ed McBain. He died last year, so there won’t be any more. He’d been writing that series for nearly fifty years, and I’ll bet I read them all.”
Rhodes recalled that McBain had been one of Ballinger’s favorites. The funeral director had often told Rhodes that he should adopt some of the methods of the men of the eight-seven, who, according to Ballinger, always seemed to be doing things better than Rhodes.
“I never met the man,” Ballinger said, picking up the book, “but I sort of felt like I knew him. Not knew him, but you get the idea.”
Rhodes nodded, even though he wasn’t really sure he understood.
“He had a lot of different names,” Ballinger went on. “Evan Hunter, that was his real one.”
They’d had a discussion about that at one time, Rhodes thought, but the details escaped him.
Ballinger put the book back down on the desk, and Rhodes looked at the title. Fiddlers. It didn’t sound like a cop novel, but what did Rhodes know about that sort of thing? Nothing at all.
“You could learn a lot from a book like this,” Ballinger said, putting his hand on it. It seemed to Rhodes that Ballinger felt that in touching the book, he was making some kind of connection with it, or perhaps with its author. “Steve Carella. He works out of the eight-seven. Now that’s my idea of a lawman.”
“Handsome?” Rhodes said. “Out there on the streets busting crime?”
Ballinger grinned. “Exactly.”
“You might be surprised about me, then.”
Ballinger gave him a blank look.
“We can talk about it some other time,” Rhodes said. “Right now I’d better go over and see what Dr. White’s found out.”
“He’s not ready yet or he’d give me a call. Have a seat.”
Rhodes and Ballinger sat down, Ballinger behind the desk and Rhodes in an uncomfortable upholstered chair.
“What do you think happened to Helen Harris,” Ballinger said, and Rhodes gave him the accident story.
“I hope that’s it,” Ballinger said when Rhodes concluded. “But when you get involved, it’s not always what it seems to be at first.”
Rhodes didn’t think he needed to respond to that.
“I have coffee now and then with a couple of men in the metal-detecting club. The Rusty Nuggets. Did you know Helen was a member?”
Rhodes said that he knew.
“I figured. Anyway, they were telling me that there was a … I guess you could call it an incident with her a few weeks ago.”
Rhodes got interested. “What kind of incident?”
“Well, you know how those metal-detecting types are. Very picky about certain things. You can’t disturb the ground, you can’t—”
“Hold on. How can you dig something up if you can’t disturb the ground?”
“Well, I didn’t mean it that way. You can disturb the ground, but you have to put it back the way it was. I’m told most of the old-timers can dig something up and replace the divot so you’d never know it had been lifted.”
“So Mrs. Harris disturbed the ground?”
�
��No, no, that’s not it. She found something. Everybody knew she did because she got excited about it. Then when it came time for show-and-tell or whatever they call it, she wouldn’t let anybody see it. She even went so far as to deny that she’d found anything in the first place. But they all knew better than that.”
“Don’t they have rules about that kind of thing?”
“Not for the kind of hunt they were on. Now if they were on some kind of county-owned site, or a historical site, something along those lines, everybody’d have to turn in the finds. But this was on private property. I forget who owned it. Might even have been her place, come to think of it. So if she found something, there wasn’t much anybody could do about her not showing it.”
“These friends of yours,” Rhodes said. “Who are they?”
“The Gadney boys. Burl and Truck.”
Rhodes knew them, though they were hardly boys. Burl was about forty-five, and Truck was a little older. Truck, of course, was a nickname. Truck hadn’t done anything to earn it. It had been given to him because of his size, which was considerable. He was remembered fondly by fans of the Clearview High football team, the Catamounts, as the biggest fullback in school history. He wasn’t fast, and he wasn’t shifty, but it took nearly every player on the other team to bring him down if he got up a head of steam.
“Where do you have coffee with them?”
“At Franklin’s.”
Franklin’s was the drugstore across the street from the courthouse. It hadn’t been remodeled since the 1950s, and it still had an old-fashioned soda fountain. Unfortunately, the fountain was out of commission, which took away from the charm of the place, but Homer Franklin didn’t care. He had about as much interest in charm as he did in attracting new business, which was no interest at all.
Just as there was no longer a functioning fountain, there was no pharmacy. Franklin catered to the old-time citizens of Clearview, the ones who’d been around for years and weren’t looking for any drug more serious than the caffeine they’d get in a bad cup of coffee.
“They’re there every morning,” Ballinger said. “If you want to ask them about it.”
Rhodes remembered the shelf in Mrs. Harris’s house and the item that Ruth assured him was missing. Maybe she’d been right about it.