Half in Love with Artful Death

by Bill Crider

  “I want to know before that Jennifer Loam does,” Hack said. “It’s gettin’ to where the news is out on that Web site of hers before I even find out what’s goin’ on.”

  “She’s a good reporter,” Rhodes said.

  “She’s wormin’ things out of Andy, is what she’s doin’.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Rhodes said.

  The phone rang, and Hack answered. He talked a couple of seconds and then said, “I’ll see what he thinks. Hold on.”

  Hack muted the phone and turned to Rhodes. “This here’s Oscar Henderson. He says they’re kickin’ him out of the hospital and he needs a ride to his store. He says you’re the one put him in the ambulance, so you owe him the ride back to his car.”

  If Oscar was doing well enough to be discharged from the hospital, he’d probably be able to answer a few questions, so Rhodes said, “Tell him I’ll see him in five minutes.”

  * * *

  Oscar was sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby when Rhodes came in. He had a bandage on his forehead and a grumpy look on his face.

  “They say I have to stay in this thing until I’m out of the hospital,” Oscar said, patting the arm of the wheelchair. “I can walk just fine, but they’re scared I’ll fall on my butt and sue ’em for a million dollars.”

  “You know that’s not true,” a nurse said as she came up behind Oscar. “I’ll wheel you out, and then the sheriff can be responsible for you.”

  “He owes me money,” Oscar said, “so he better treat me right.”

  “I don’t owe you a thing,” Rhodes said. “The money’s in the evidence locker at the jail.”

  “My money,” Oscar said. “You got it. You owe me.”

  The nurse gave Rhodes a look that said Oscar was probably crazy, and Rhodes nodded. The nurse grinned and pushed the chair outside with Rhodes trailing along behind her. Oscar complained all the way about how he was perfectly able to walk out on his own two feet, but he seemed happy enough to have Rhodes and the nurse help him out of the chair when they got to the curb. The county car was parked only inches away, and while Oscar was steady enough to get inside by himself, Rhodes kept a hand on his arm anyway, just in case. He made sure that Oscar got in the car safely and fastened his seat belt.

  “I feel like a ten-year-old kid,” Oscar said.

  “Must be nice,” Rhodes said. “I feel like I’m about a hundred.”

  He shut the door and went around to the driver’s side to get in. When he was seated and belted, Oscar said, “You really feel like you’re a hundred?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. He started the car and pulled away from the hospital. “I was just kidding. I don’t feel like a ten-year-old kid, though. More like about twenty-seven. Old enough to have more sense than to go chasing somebody with a gun through a dark woods at night. Now that’s something a ten-year-old might do.”

  Oscar touched the bandage on his forehead. “I can’t argue with that one.”

  “I didn’t think you could. Next time you get the idea to hang around your store with a loaded pistol, do me a favor. Go home. Better yet, leave the pistol at home to start with and don’t try catching robbers on your own.”

  “I got a license,” Oscar said.

  “You have a license to carry, not to go around playing Dirty Harry.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Oscar said. “It was a dumb thing to do, but I had a feeling the robber might come back to get the money he dropped. I know you can’t have a deputy there all the time, so I thought I’d see what I could do.”

  “What you did was get hurt,” Rhodes said, “and it could’ve been a lot worse. You could’ve shot somebody. Even a ten-year-old would have better sense than to run through the trees and fire a pistol at somebody.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Oscar said. “You got me all wrong on that. I didn’t fire at anybody.”

  “The pistol had been fired,” Rhodes said. “I checked.”

  “I didn’t say it hadn’t been fired. I just don’t remember being the one who fired it. I think it must’ve gone off when I hit my head.”

  Rhodes could see how that could’ve happened. He decided to believe it, which would save him from having to charge Oscar with something like discharging a firearm in the city limits. It was a good thing that stupidity wasn’t a crime, since Oscar wasn’t the only one in town who was guilty of it. Plenty of people were. The jail wouldn’t hold all the guilty parties if a law was ever passed against it. Rhodes was afraid he might even get tossed in there himself.

  “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt any worse than you did,” Rhodes said.

  “So am I, and I’m glad I didn’t hurt anybody. I wouldn’t want to have that on my conscience. I hope he doesn’t come back again, though. I’m tired of being robbed, and I think Chris likes it even less than I do.”

  “It’s not going to happen again,” Rhodes said. “We have somebody in custody.”

  Oscar looked surprised. “You do?”

  “We do. It wasn’t a man who robbed you, by the way. It was a woman.”

  “You mean I might’ve killed a woman?”

  Rhodes didn’t think it was likely that Oscar would kill anybody except by accident. The problem was that accidents happened, which is why he’d given Oscar the little lecture.

  “Would killing a woman be any worse than killing a man?” Rhodes asked.

  Oscar thought about it. “I guess not. Seems worse, somehow, but it’s all the same. Somebody dies.”

  “That’s right,” Rhodes said. “Somebody dies.”

  “Sure looked like a man to me,” Oscar said after a while.

  “It was the disguise. It fooled Chris, too.”

  “It was a pretty good disguise. Who was it?”

  “Ella Collins. You know her?”

  “I know Burt. Knew Burt, I mean. I hope she wasn’t robbing me to pay for his funeral.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Rhodes said. “That wasn’t it. Not even close.”

  “What did she rob me for, then?”

  “To pay for a haircut,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Rhodes let Oscar out at the convenience store and stayed there while Oscar went inside to see if his day manager was taking care of things. Oscar seemed to be getting around just fine. Just leaving the hospital had been good for him.

  While Oscar was checking on his business, Rhodes thought things over. He still wished he had the phone records, but he could always just ask the person he suspected of getting the call, whether he had the records or not. In fact, just talking to him might be the best approach, and if he got the answer he expected, he wouldn’t really need the records.

  Oscar wasn’t in the store for long, and when he came out, he asked Rhodes what he was still hanging around for. “You told me there wasn’t any danger of me getting robbed again, at least not by the same person. Nobody robs me in the daylight anyway. You don’t have to stand guard over the place.”

  “I was waiting for you,” Rhodes said. “You didn’t think I was going to let you drive home and be a menace to the citizens of Clearview, did you?”

  Oscar stiffened. “I can drive just fine.”

  “Maybe. I’m not offering to chauffeur you anymore. I’m just going to follow you home, so if you run over a fireplug, I’ll be there to help you out of the car before you drown.”

  Oscar didn’t smile. “You aren’t half as funny as you think you are, you know that?”

  “I’ve had that feeling for a while, but I keep trying.”

  This time Oscar grinned. “You might as well give it up.”

  “Can’t do it,” Rhodes said.

  “Too bad,” Oscar said.

  He got in his car, started it, and drove out of the parking lot, with Rhodes close behind.

  * * *

  Oscar didn’t run over a fire hydrant or anything on the way to his house, so Rhodes figured he could get inside and lie down or watch TV or do whatever it was that he did without any help. Rh
odes left him there and drove around for a few minutes. He went by a few of the churches, where the parking lots were starting to fill up. Sunday school would be over in a little while, and the main services would be starting. The Methodists always started a half hour earlier than everybody else so they could get out and get to the restaurants before the Baptists did.

  Rhodes drove downtown, where it was as quiet as a cemetery. The only cars he saw were parked in front of the art gallery. Seepy Benton and Eric Stewart were inside, so he parked the car and got out.

  “What’s up, Sheriff?” Seepy said when Rhodes came into the building.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Rhodes said.

  Neither man was dressed for church. Benton had on jeans and a rumpled white shirt, along with a black fedora that looked as if a horse had sat on it. Stewart wore a pair of khaki pants and a blue work shirt with a button-down collar.

  “We’re working on art, of course,” Benton said. “You tell him, Eric.”

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Eric said. “Part of the idea of the art conference was that we’d keep some of the work here in the gallery and try to sell it for the artists. Lonnie and I would get a commission, of course, but only a very small one, and it would go to help pay for the next conference.”

  “So we’re choosing which pieces to keep,” Seepy said. “Naturally mine will be one of them, but it probably won’t be here long. Somebody will snap it up the first day. Maybe the first hour. You could get ahead of them, though. We haven’t put prices on the pictures yet, so I can make you a really good deal.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said. He did, and an excuse came to him. “Too bad it has that streak of paint across it.”

  “We might be able to clean it off,” Eric said. “I’m going to see what I can do.”

  “What about the others?” Rhodes asked to change the subject.

  “I’ll have to start with just one. I’ll try cleaning a small spot and move on from there. Or not, if it can’t be done. I’m not a professional restorer, and to be honest about it, these paintings might not be worth the trouble.”

  “Except for mine,” Seepy said.

  “Naturally,” Eric said, rolling his eyes. “That’s probably not why the sheriff stopped by, though. Is it, Sheriff?”

  “No, but it’s interesting. When I saw you in here, I thought it might be a good time to ask a couple of questions about yesterday.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “The morning event, where you were giving out the awards. Did everybody come at once, or was it a come-and-go affair?”

  “There were a few people waiting outside when I opened the doors,” Eric said, “but it was come-and-go.”

  “You happen to remember who they were?”

  “No. I just came out of my apartment and opened the door from inside. The ones who were waiting came in. I wasn’t taking names or anything like that.”

  “And after that people were drifting in and out all morning,” Rhodes said.

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “I’m still thinking about how that bust might have gotten into the other part of the building. You didn’t see anybody go back there, did you?”

  “No, but it would’ve been easy for someone to put it there, if that’s what you mean. There were quite a few people milling around in here, and it wouldn’t have taken long for somebody to walk into the other room, stash the bust, and come back out here. We’ve talked about that, and I still think that thing could’ve been back there for a while. Maybe it came in with some other things and got shelved. It’s obviously mass-produced, though why anybody would want to produce it is beyond me.”

  Rhodes saw that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of talk, so he asked Seepy if he’d been waiting outside when the doors opened.

  Seepy laughed. “I don’t get up that early. I came in about half an hour after things got started.”

  “Was it crowded?”

  “Sort of. Not wall to wall, but there must have been fifteen or twenty people.”

  “Look,” Eric said, breaking in. “You have to realize that everybody was interested in the paintings and who got ribbons. They were especially interested in how their own paintings had done. Nobody was watching anybody else to see if they left the room.”

  That was about what Rhodes had expected. It would’ve been too much to hope that either Seepy or Eric had noticed someone going into the other part of the building. Of course, there was one person who definitely could’ve put the bust on the shelf without anyone knowing, and that was Eric. He lived there, after all. Rhodes, however, had decided that Eric wasn’t the guilty party. He just wanted to be sure that everyone else had access.

  “Did anybody besides the artists come to see the exhibit?” Rhodes asked.

  “Sure,” Seepy said. “People around here aren’t as uncultured as you think. We had a good many visitors who didn’t have any connection to the conference or the show. Did you have anybody in mind?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I was just wondering. Where’s Don McClaren, by the way? I thought he was one of the judges.”

  “He was,” Eric said, “but he’s in church this morning. Me, I’m pretty much home-churched, so I had time to do this.”

  “You might have noticed that there aren’t any synagogues in Clearview,” Seepy said. “I study the Torah on my own. I’ve even written articles on it. Right now, though, I’m writing a little textbook on group theory, symmetry, permutations, and Rubik’s Cube.”

  Rhodes could tell that he’d lost control of the conversation, if he’d ever had it. He said, “Hack told me the other day that he saw something about a man who could solve three Rubik’s Cubes while he was juggling them.”

  “That’s nothing,” Benton said. “I can swallow a Rubik’s Cube, and when it comes out the other end, it’s solved.”

  “Too much information,” Rhodes said.

  “Performance art,” Eric said. “I wonder if we could figure out some way to have you do it here at the gallery.”

  “YouTube,” Benton said. “It would be viral within minutes.”

  Rhodes held up a hand before things could go any further. “Somebody told me this morning that I wasn’t nearly as funny as I thought I was, but you two make me seem like a professional comedian.”

  “That wasn’t my best stuff,” Seepy said. “I’m saving that for my singing act.”

  Rhodes thought it wouldn’t be kind to mention that Seepy no longer had a regular gig, so he just thanked both men for their help and started to leave.

  Seepy stopped him. “Have you given any thought to making me an honorary deputy? On a permanent basis?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I forgot all about it.”

  “Now that you remember, what do you think about the idea?”

  “What do you think about raising money for the department?”

  “I think I can do it,” Seepy said. “I told you that I don’t like doing it, but now that I’ve thought about it, I have something that will work.”

  Rhodes was curious. “What would that be? And don’t tell me it’s a video of your Rubik’s Cube act.”

  “That would do it, but I’m too modest for that. I was thinking that instead of that, I could donate the profits from the sale of my artwork and my textbook to the department.”

  “And how much do you think that might come to?”

  “It could be thousands.”

  “Or not,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah,” Seepy said, “there’s that.”

  * * *

  The drive to the Patel hotel didn’t take long. Rhodes spent the brief time wondering about the color of so many of the new hotels that had sprung up. It wasn’t exactly yellow, but it wasn’t gold, either. Rhodes couldn’t think of anything to call it. Whatever it was, it went well with the red tile roofs, and it was distinctive enough so that a traveler could spot the hotel easily from the highway. Not that spotting a three-story building in Clearvie
w would’ve been difficult in any event, since there weren’t any others.

  This time when Rhodes entered the lobby he saw Manish’s wife, Sunny, at the reception desk. He’d known one of the family would be there. The Patels didn’t know about taking a day off from work. He had no idea what their religious affiliations were, if any, but he knew that any day of the week he could find some or all of the family members keeping busy around the hotel. It took a lot of keeping busy to take care of a hotel, and the Patels were willing to do whatever it took.

  Sunny had black hair, brown skin, and very white teeth. She wore a dark blue blouse with her name tag pinned on it. She gave Rhodes a smile and asked if he wanted a bagel.

  “We have not quite cleaned up our continental breakfast yet,” she said, “and I’m sure there are some bagels and cream cheese left.”

  A bagel spread with cream cheese was quite a temptation, but Rhodes didn’t think it would be a good idea. He said, “Thanks. That’s the best offer I’ve had all day, but I’d better not. I’d like to speak to your husband if he’s around.”

  Sunny gave Rhodes another bright smile. “Oh, yes. He is around. He is always around. There is a small problem with the air conditioner in two-thirty-three. I will show you where it is.”

  “That’s all right,” Rhodes said. “I can find it.”

  “It will be to the left when you get off the elevator,” Sunny said.

  Rhodes thanked her and rode the elevator to the second floor. He knew it would’ve been better for him to take the stairs. He probably needed the exercise, but the elevator was right there, too handy to pass up.

  The second-floor hallway was well lit, and Rhodes had no trouble finding the room. The door was open, so Rhodes looked inside. Patel wore a leather tool belt, and he had the cover off the air conditioner. He had a screwdriver in one hand and was leaning over to look at something that Rhodes couldn’t see.

  Rhodes tapped on the door with his knuckles. Patel straightened and turned around.

  “Good morning,” Rhodes said. “Need any help fixing that thing?”

  It was just something to say. Rhodes had no more idea of how to repair an air conditioner than he did about how to solve Rubik’s Cube the conventional way, much less while juggling it or by some even more bizarre Seepy Benton method that didn’t bear thinking about.