by Bill Crider
“You just stay put,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be right back.”
He left Ella in the kitchen and went outside, where he transferred the pistol back to the ankle holster. Then he walked to the carport. He felt the hood of the sedan. It was still warm, so maybe Ella was telling the truth when she said she’d just gotten there. He went to the county car and called Hack on the radio.
“Get Buddy and tell him to leave the convenience store investigation with Duke,” Rhodes said when Hack responded. “Send Buddy to Burt Collins’s house.”
“What’s going on?” Hack asked.
“Burt’s a little indisposed. Send an ambulance. And the justice of the peace.”
“Justice of the peace? You sure Burt’s just indisposed?”
The justice of the peace was the one who’d declare Burt dead.
“Indisposed is what I’m calling it for now,” Rhodes said. “You get Buddy over here.”
“Roger,” Hack said.
Rhodes racked the radio and went back inside. He looked in on Ella, who sat at the table, her back straight, staring at nothing. Her arms were stretched out in front of her, both hands clasping the water glass.
“Are you all right?” Rhodes asked. Ella was the one who needed someone to sit with her now. “Is there somebody I can call to come over?”
“I can do it,” Ella said. “My sister, Bonnie, lives in Thurston. Bonnie Crowley.”
Thurston was a little town about twenty miles away. It would take Bonnie a while to get there, but maybe Ella would be all right until then.
She got up and went to an old wall phone fastened to the wall near the door. It was a gold color, a relic of the seventies, Rhodes thought, with a long, tangled cord.
“There will be some people coming in,” Rhodes said. “Quite a few of them. You just stay in here.”
“I will,” Ella said. She lifted the receiver and started to dial.
Rhodes went back into the other room to look around. Nothing seemed to be disturbed or out of place, and he didn’t see anything that looked as if it might have been used to hit Burt. There was a large afghan hanging over the back of the couch. Rhodes put it over the body and went back to the kitchen. Ella sat at the table, staring at something Rhodes couldn’t see.
“Ella?” he said. “I hate to ask you to do this, but I need you to come back in the living room for a minute.”
Ella stood up and said in a flat voice, “All right.”
When they were back in the other room, she looked at the covered body. Rhodes said, “Don’t look at Burt. Look around and see if there’s anything missing.”
It took a few seconds for Ella to focus, but when she did, she began to look around the room. Rhodes looked, too. A flat-screen TV and DVD player were in a cabinet opposite the sofa where Ella had been sitting. The only things on the coffee table were a couple of remote controls. A whatnot cabinet stood against the wall beside the TV cabinet. An end table with a lamp on it sat at one end of the sofa, and a matching table and lamp sat by the overstuffed recliner not far away.
Rhodes noticed a vacant space on top of the whatnot shelf and walked over to it. He saw a thin coating of dust on the shelf except for a square about five inches on each side. He put a finger on the spot and asked Ella what had been there.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Where’s Burt’s head? It’s gone!”
Chapter 6
Rhodes didn’t quite get it. “Burt’s head is gone?”
“Not his head. Dale Earnhardt’s.”
“Dale Earnhardt?” Rhodes said.
“Junior,” Ella said. “His daddy was Dale Earnhardt, too.” She pointed to the vacant spot on the shelf. “His head was right there. Junior’s was.”
“NASCAR,” Rhodes said, figuring it out.
“Dale and his daddy were both drivers,” Ella said. “Junior still is. He’s really good, but maybe not as good as his daddy. His daddy died in a big crash ten or twelve years ago. Dale Junior’s granddaddy was a driver, too. Ralph.”
“But it’s Junior’s head that’s missing.”
“Yes. Burt loved to watch the NASCAR races on TV, and Dale Junior was his favorite driver. I got him Dale’s head for his birthday last year. Dale Junior, I mean.”
“It was a bust,” Rhodes said.
“No, he loved it. Said it was the best present he ever got.”
As she said that, Ella looked down at Burt and started to sob again.
“The head,” Rhodes said, knowing better than to call it a bust again, “was it heavy?”
Ella took a deep, shuddering breath and looked away from Burt. “Oh, yes. It was made out of some kind of metal. Not brass. The other one that looks kind of like it.”
“Bronze,” Rhodes said.
“That’s it. Bronze. It was made special, too. There were only a thousand of them, and they were all numbered. This one had a real low number. It was supposed to be worth more if it had a low number. That’s what the man who sold it to me said.”
“Was it here when you left to go to Frances Bennett’s?”
“I’m sure it was. It was always right there on the shelf. Burt was real proud of it. Where could it be?”
“Let’s go back in the kitchen,” Rhodes said. “We can look for it later.”
As he got Ella seated at the table again, Rhodes heard a siren. Buddy was on the way, or maybe it was the ambulance.
“You stay here,” Rhodes said. “I’ll take care of things now.”
Ella nodded, and Rhodes went out to see who was arriving.
A county car bounced onto the dirt path and slid to a stop beside Rhodes’s. Buddy got out and said, “I got here soon as I could. Duke’s still looking around at the Pak-a-Sak. What’s the beef?”
“Burt Collins is dead. We’re going to search the house.”
Buddy undid the snap that secured his service revolver. “Let’s go.”
They went back inside, and Rhodes explained to Ella what they were going to do. She said she’d stay in the kitchen.
“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Rhodes said, “but we need to check things out to be sure.”
He took his pistol from the ankle holster, and Buddy drew his revolver. They went through the house room by room, checking closets and under the beds. They didn’t find anyone, and nothing looked as if it had been disturbed. They went back to the room where Burt’s body lay. Rhodes returned his pistol to the ankle holster, and Buddy holstered his revolver.
“I want you to go outside and search the area,” Rhodes told Buddy. “You’ll be looking for a head.”
Buddy looked down at the afghan-covered body. “Somebody cut off Burt’s head?”
“No. It’s Dale Earnhardt’s head. Junior, that is, and it’s not a real head. It’s a bronze bust. It’s missing from the house.”
“You think somebody stole it?”
“I think somebody hit Burt in his head with it and took it away.”
“Why would anybody take something like that?”
“Because,” Rhodes said, “it might have fingerprints on it.”
“Right,” Buddy said. “Fingerprints. You really think it’ll be around here somewhere?”
“No,” Rhodes said, “but we have to look for it. It’s dark, though, and if you don’t find it nearby, I’ll put somebody else on it tomorrow.”
“I’ll get started,” Buddy said. He got his flashlight out of the car. “Here comes Wade Franklin.”
Franklin was the justice of the peace. The ambulance was right behind him. It was going to be busy in the Collins house for a while.
* * *
It was after one o’clock when Rhodes left the Collins house. Burt Collins had been declared dead and taken away, and Rhodes had put crime-scene tape on the doorway to the room where Burt had been killed. Bonnie Crowley had arrived to take care of her sister. Rhodes had talked to Ella a bit about Burt. She couldn’t believe that he’d been murdered and kept repeating that he must have had a stroke or a heart attack. How could he ha
ve been killed? Everybody loved Burt. Why, the man had not an enemy in the world, not even the Patels.
Nobody who died ever had an enemy in the world, not to hear the relatives tell it. In Burt’s case, Rhodes knew better, but he’d talk more to Ella about it later.
Buddy was still searching for the bronze bust of Dale Earnhardt, Junior, not having found a trace of it so far, and Rhodes was ready to go home and get some sleep. Burt Collins’s death could be investigated tomorrow.
Rhodes didn’t get to go home, however, because as soon as he was in the county car, he got a call about donkeys on the loose.
“Out by the highway to Obert,” Hack said. “Two of ’em at least. Car hits one of ’em, it’s gonna be bad news. Too much speedin’ on that road if you ask me.”
“Donkeys are Alton Boyd’s job,” Rhodes said, Boyd being the county’s animal control officer.
“He’s on the way,” Hack said. “Gonna need some help, though, and Duke’s looking into a break-in at a house over in Milsby. You get the job. Or you can send Buddy.”
Rhodes thought he might send Buddy, but it was likely the deputy would be needed for something else any minute.
“I’ll go myself,” Rhodes said.
“Folks oughta do somethin’ about those donkeys,” Hack said. “Get ’em spayed and neutered. Don’t cost that much, not much more’n it’d cost for a dog or a cat.”
“If people had money,” Rhodes said, wondering how Hack knew how much it would cost to neuter a donkey, “the donkeys wouldn’t be a problem.”
The county had been having donkey trouble for a few months now. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the wild hog problem, but it was bad enough. Only a small part of the problem had to do with donkey reproduction, in spite of Hack’s comment. Like a lot of other things lately, the problem was tied to the economy.
People bought donkeys because they were good at protecting livestock from coyotes and other critters, but sometimes the donkeys got too expensive to keep. The owners tried to get rid of them in conventional ways, but if one got taken to auction, it wouldn’t sell. Rhodes had heard of times at recent auctions when a donkey had been run through the auction ring three or four times in one day without attracting a bid. Not being able to get rid of the animals by selling them, the owners turned them out or hauled them off and dumped them, which was when they became the county’s problem. At the moment, Blacklin County had seven donkeys in custody, at a cost to the taxpayers of around a hundred and fifty dollars a week.
The commissioners weren’t happy about the expense, and Rhodes didn’t blame them, but it wasn’t as if the problem were confined to Blacklin County. Rhodes had talked with a few other sheriffs around the state, and some of them were having even more trouble with donkeys than he was. He knew of one county that had fourteen donkeys penned up and eating on the taxpayer’s dime.
Rhodes went looking for Buddy. He found him deep in the trees between the Collins house and the railroad tracks.
“Find any clues?” Rhodes asked.
Buddy shined his flashlight on Rhodes. “Depends on what you call clues. I’ve run across a bunch of beer cans, some plastic water bottles, and a few disposable diapers that got disposed of in the wrong place. No heads, though, metal or not.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “You can go back on patrol. I’ll have Andy look around some more tomorrow. We can’t spend all night here.”
The fact was that while the apparent homicide was the most important crime of the night, it wouldn’t be the last problem the sheriff’s office had to deal with. There would be plenty of others, like the robbery at the convenience store, car accidents on the highways, prowlers, domestic disputes, shoplifting at the Walmart, copper thieves, donkeys, and all too many other things that would come up. Rhodes didn’t have enough deputies to deal with every one of them, but he’d do what he could with the resources he had.
“You going home?” Buddy asked.
“Nope,” Rhodes said. “I’m going to see about some donkeys.”
* * *
Rhodes drove over the railroad overpass and out by the community college, whose main campus was located in another county. The Clearview campus was where Seepy Benton and Don McClaren taught. McClaren split his time between Clearview and the home campus because there wasn’t enough demand for a full-time art teacher in Clearview.
Rhodes passed by the road that led to Seepy Benton’s house. He was glad that Seepy wasn’t involved with the donkeys, though if Seepy knew about some secret pressure points on donkeys, he might be a big help. Donkeys probably didn’t have pressure points, however.
Flashing lights ahead let Rhodes know that Alton Boyd had already arrived. Rhodes pulled off the highway onto the shoulder and stopped about thirty yards behind the trailer attached to the big white pickup. He didn’t want to get too close and be in the way of loading the trailer.
That was being optimistic, he knew. Loading the trailer would come only after catching the donkeys, and sometimes donkeys didn’t want to be caught. At other times they didn’t mind, though, and often those that didn’t mind were the lucky ones. Rhodes knew of at least two donkeys that had been fairly tame and had been adopted by people whose property they’d been dumped on. The taxpayers had been lucky, too, because they were spared the expense and trouble of putting the donkeys up in county accommodations.
Alton Boyd strolled around from the front of the county pickup and said good evening to Rhodes, who could see him plainly in the headlights of the county car. Boyd wore what looked like flannel pajama bottoms, cowboy boots, and a red hoodie with the hood hanging down behind. He must have dressed in a hurry. A cheap unlit cigar jutted from the corner of Boyd’s mouth. Rhodes knew the cigar was cheap because Boyd didn’t believe in paying a lot for anything. He even put recapped tires on his personal car to save money.
“Where are the donkeys?” Rhodes asked.
“Just up the road a ways,” Boyd said, without removing the cigar. “I got ’em run off the road and down in the ditch. I pitched out a little horse-and-mule feed for ’em, so I think they’ll stay there till we’re ready to get them.”
A car went by them, its tires whispering on the highway. It wasn’t going fast, not with all the flashing lights along the roadside. The driver probably thought there’d been an accident. Even though the driver wasn’t speeding, Rhodes hoped the donkeys were where Boyd claimed they were. A low-speed collision could be almost as bad as any other kind. There wouldn’t be much traffic on the highway at that time of night, which was a good thing.
“Let’s go take a look at the donkeys,” Rhodes said.
“Okay,” Boyd said. “They’re not much to look at, though.”
They walked beside the trailer. Boyd had already opened the two side doors, each one leading to a separate stall in the trailer. He’d lowered the ramps as well.
Boyd was right about the donkeys. Rhodes had a good look at them as they stood in the ditch in the beams of the pickup’s headlights. Both of them were scrawny and underfed. Rhodes could see their ribs.
“You gonna adopt ’em?” Boyd asked.
Like everyone else connected with the sheriff’s department, Boyd knew about Rhodes’s habit of adopting animals that he ran into on his cases. Just two dogs and two cats, so far, but there had been a couple of other narrow escapes, including the dog he’d managed to get Seepy Benton to take. Donkeys, however, were far too large for Rhodes even to consider. His wife, Ivy, wouldn’t approve at all.
“Looks like they needed that feed you gave them,” Rhodes said, ignoring Boyd’s question.
“I’ll get some more,” Boyd said. “They’ll be easier to handle if they’re not so hungry.”
He turned back to the truck, and Rhodes contemplated the donkeys, both of whom were contemplating him right back. One was black with a white stomach, and the other was solid gray. They were both males, or jacks, as they were called, and they didn’t look friendly in spite of having been fed.
“I don’t think tha
t’s going to help,” Rhodes told Boyd when he returned with a scoop of feed in each hand.
“I’ll give it to ’em anyway,” Boyd said, talking around the cigar. “Better to try it than not to.”
He put the feed on the ground some distance from the donkeys, who stopped looking at Rhodes and looked at the food. After a few seconds, they walked to it and began to eat. Boyd took the scoops back to the truck and returned with a couple of lariats. He had on a pair of leather gloves, and he handed a pair to Rhodes.
“You any good at ropin’?” Boyd asked, as Rhodes pulled on the gloves. “As I recall, me and Ruth had to rope the alligator that time. You remember that?”
Rhodes remembered the alligator. Seepy Benton had wanted to wrestle it, but Ruth and Boyd had roped its snout and tail and held it as best they could while Rhodes duct-taped its snout shut.
“I can handle a rope,” Rhodes said.
“Good,” Boyd said, and handed him a lariat.
Rhodes shook out a loop and held it at his side.
Boyd shook out a loop, too. “Okay. Once we get ’em roped, we can lead ’em to the trailer. If they cooperate, that is. Donkey’s ain’t always big on cooperation. Just the opposite, most of the time.”
“What happens when we get them to the trailer?”
“Well, assuming we get ’em there, we’ll try to get a halter on ’em and then get ’em into the trailer. I’ll get ’em secured, and after that, no problems.”
He made it sound easy, but Rhodes had a feeling it wasn’t going to be quite that simple.
“You ready?” Boyd asked.
Rhodes nodded.
“Then let’s move up a little closer,” Boyd said. “We don’t want to be too far away when we try to rope ’em.”
Rhodes noted the word “try.” He wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him or just a general comment.
“Which one you want?” Boyd asked, taking a step forward. “Right or left?”
Since he was already on Boyd’s left, Rhodes said, “Left.”
“Okay. Move up again.”