A Mammoth Murder

by Bill Crider

  “I’ll check it out,” Rhodes said.

  “I don’t see why Bolton would want to fix up that old house,” Turley said. “It’s too dangerous to be near those woods, and bad things happen there.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Rhodes said.

  6

  WHEN RHODES GOT HOME, HIS WIFE, IVY, WAS WATCHING THE TEN o’clock news. The weatherperson was saying that the next day would be hot and humid.

  “Now that’s what I call news,” Rhodes said.

  Yancey, the inside dog, was circling Rhodes’s feet and yapping. Yancey was a Pomeranian and did a lot of yapping. Rhodes ignored him.

  “The crack Channel Eleven news team is always on top of things,” Ivy said. “Scoops are their life. How was your day?”

  Rhodes had called to tell her about Colley and to explain that he’d be late getting home. It seemed he told her that a lot.

  “About what you’d expect, not counting the Bigfoot tooth.”

  Ivy used the remote to turn off the TV set. “You didn’t mention a Bigfoot tooth on the phone. You want to tell me about it while you eat?”

  “Sure,” Rhodes said.

  He picked up Yancey to pet him. Yancey squirmed, either in pleasure or because he wanted to be put down. Rhodes set him on the floor, and he ran toward the kitchen.

  “Yancey’s excited to see me,” Rhodes said.

  Ivy laughed. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but Yancey’s excited all the time, whether he sees anybody or not.”

  “I think he likes me, though.”

  “I’m sure he does. You can count on his vote in the next election. Come on to the kitchen.”

  Rhodes himself wasn’t much of a cook. In fact, his own special version of beanie-weenie was about the only dish he could whip up. He was also good with bologna sandwiches, but he wasn’t sure that sandwiches counted as cooking.

  Ivy was much better in the kitchen than he was, but she was currently in a low-fat phase that seemed to Rhodes a bit restrictive. He’d argued for a change to the Atkins regimen. He thought he could get along just fine on a diet that allowed him to eat bacon and eggs and cheese, although he knew he’d want a piece of toast from time to time to go along with it.

  When they got to the kitchen, Rhodes set his place at the table while Ivy got out the food: grilled chicken and steamed vegetables. Broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower. She put it in the microwave to heat.

  Rhodes was glad he’d cheated at lunch and gone by the Dairy Queen. He didn’t think he’d mention the Blizzard he’d had to Ivy, however.

  While Rhodes ate, he told Ivy as much as he knew about the Bigfoot tooth and Colley’s death. It wasn’t much in either case.

  Yancey yapped until he got tired and lay down in a corner where he could watch in case anything fell from the table. Rhodes didn’t think the dog would want anything that he might let drop.

  “Do you know anything about Colley’s life insurance?” Rhodes asked Ivy, who worked in an insurance office in downtown Clearview.

  “What did you have in mind?” she said.

  “He has a couple of ex-wives. I wondered if either one of them was going to cash in big now that he’s dead.”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “If he has insurance, I don’t think it’s with us. People who don’t have a regular job don’t usually have big policies. Maybe something to cover burial, but that’s about all. And the ones with insurance usually remember to change their policies when they get divorced. I wouldn’t be looking there for a motive if I were you.”

  Rhodes hadn’t really thought it was a possibility, but ex-wives might have other motives. He’d have to find out what he could from them tomorrow.

  “Do you remember Ronnie Bolton?” Rhodes asked.

  “The boy who disappeared from that family reunion? That was a long time ago. Before we met. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. It just seems that a lot of things happen in that part of the county.” Rhodes thought about what Turley had said. “Bad things.”

  “Those woods are where the feral hogs got you. I hope you’re being careful.”

  Rhodes knew that Ivy hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea that she was married to someone who occasionally got into dangerous situations. She’d thought that the sheriff sat around the jail and delegated everything to the deputies, and it worked that way in some of the bigger counties in the state. In those places, a sheriff was a politician and an administrator first and a lawman second. Rhodes didn’t think he’d like a job situation like that.

  “I’m being careful,” he said.

  And he was. So far there was no way to be anything else.

  He finished his meal and went outside to see Speedo, the outside dog. Speedo was a border collie, and he was much bigger than Yancey, though Yancey had never acknowledged the fact. In spite of his size, Yancey was louder than Speedo ever was. He went along into the yard with Rhodes, and the two dogs sniffed each other and ran around the yard for a while.

  It was hot and muggy, and when Rhodes looked up at the sky there was so much moisture in the air that the stars appeared almost fuzzy. Rhodes thought about going back inside to the air-conditioning, but Speedo found his ball and brought it over to Rhodes, who threw it for him to fetch.

  Yancey got to it first, by virtue of being much closer to where it landed, and tried to grab it, but Speedo skidded into him and snatched it away. He took it to Rhodes and dropped it, but when Rhodes reached for it, Speedo grabbed it again.

  Rhodes tried to take it away, which was exactly what Speedo wanted. He shook his head and growled and wouldn’t let go until Rhodes pretended to lose interest. Then Speedo dropped the ball again.

  That went on for a while, and then Rhodes went back inside, with Yancey yapping at his heels.

  The next morning Rhodes was at the jail early. Hack and Lawton were there, waiting to hear if he had any more to tell them about Larry Colley than they’d already learned from Ruth Grady. Rhodes knew they’d have pumped her for all the information she had, so he couldn’t give them much satisfaction.

  When he was finished, Hack said, “I was just sayin’ yesterday that it was a wonder nobody’d killed them two. You remember me sayin’ that?”

  Rhodes admitted that he remembered.

  “Nostradamus,” Hack said. “Me and him have a lot in common.”

  “Is that anything like the Cosa Nostra?” Lawton said.

  Rhodes interrupted them before they could get an argument started. If he let them go on, they’d jaw back and forth all morning.

  “Do either of you remember Ronnie Bolton?” he said.

  Hack, who had been about to light into Lawton, turned to Rhodes. He said, “You think this has anything to do with Ronnie Bolton?”

  Rhodes said that he didn’t know but that it didn’t seem likely. Larry Colley hadn’t been at the Bolton family reunion. “That was a long time ago,” he said.

  “Still bothers you, I bet.”

  “You’d win.”

  Rhodes didn’t like leaving things undone, and he’d never found out what happened to Ronnie Bolton. As far as he knew, no one else had, either. At the time, there had been no suspicions of foul play. Everyone at the reunion alibied everyone else. Rhodes had still never been satisfied with the idea that Ronnie had simply wandered off and disappeared.

  Some people thought that the most likely explanation was that he’d been picked up by someone driving along the county road. Or that he’d been killed by feral hogs. Rhodes supposed that was possible. A lot of things were possible. Bigfoot? Even that had been suggested.

  Gerald and Edith Bolton, the boy’s parents, had been distraught, and Rhodes could understand why. They’d called him daily for weeks, and regularly after that for a year or more before they’d finally stopped. Rhodes doubted that even now they’d given up hope. As long as no trace of the boy had been found, they’d think there was a chance he’d come home. Rhodes thought it was unlikely, and he’d told them so, but he knew that wouldn’t
change their thinking.

  “You gonna talk to the Boltons?” Hack said.

  “I might,” Rhodes told him. “I have some other people to see first.”

  “Don’t forget that professor from the college is coming to see that tooth.”

  Rhodes said he wouldn’t forget, and Hack and Lawton got back to work, or pretended to. Rhodes looked through the things on his desk and found the inventory of Larry Colley’s personal property that Ruth Grady had written out. Colley’s billfold still held his driver’s license and credit cards, as well as forty-six dollars. He’d had thirty-seven cents in change, a Timex Ironman wristwatch. No rings or other jewelry.

  No cell phone, either. That was interesting. Either Chester Johnson wasn’t the only man in Blacklin County besides the sheriff without a cell phone, or Colley’s was missing.

  Around nine thirty, Rhodes decided that he’d done all he could at the jail, so he told Hack he was going to have a talk with Larry Colley’s ex-wives.

  “You think you have time?” Hack said. “Before the professor gets here, I mean.”

  “I have time to see at least one of them, if not both. I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m just lookin’ out for you.”

  Rhodes told him that he appreciated it and left.

  The first thing Karen Sandstrom told Rhodes was that she didn’t care one way or the other about Larry Colley.

  “He was a lifetime ago, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything from him in ten years, and that’s just the way I wanted it.”

  Sandstrom was a slim blonde who worked at the circulation desk of the Clearview Public Library. She and Rhodes were at a round table in one of the meeting rooms so as not to disturb the library’s patrons, who were looking through the new books, working at the computers, reading the magazines, or just browsing the used paperbacks that were being sold off a cart for a quarter a pop.

  “You haven’t had any contact with him lately?” Rhodes said.

  “No, I haven’t. I made a big mistake when I married him, Sheriff. The day my divorce was final was the happiest day of my life. I’ve remarried now, and I’m very happy. I never even think about Larry Colley.”

  While she spoke, she toyed with the wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand.

  “No calls, no cards, no nothing,” Rhodes said.

  Sandstrom laughed. “Cards? You don’t think Larry was a sentimentalist, do you, Sheriff? The kind who remembers birthdays and anniversaries? He didn’t even do that when we were married, much less afterward. When he walked out the door, it was as if our marriage had never taken place.” Her face clouded. “It was that way for most of the time we were married, in fact. Larry spent more time with that friend of his than he ever did with me.”

  “You mean Bud Turley?”

  “That’s the one. Those two were closer than Larry and I ever were.”

  “What about that UFO?” Rhodes asked.

  “That happened before we were married, if you want to believe it happened at all. I always thought he just made it up to make Bud Turley jealous. The story changed every time he told it. It was something to tell in a bar, for a drink.”

  “What about enemies, people who might have wanted Larry dead? You know anybody like that?”

  “Not a one. I’ve been telling you, Sheriff, I haven’t talked to him in ten years. I wish I could help you, but I just can’t.”

  She sounded convincing, and Rhodes supposed that he believed her. He hadn’t expected anything, really, but he’d had to try. He thanked her and left the library, being careful not to make any noise. He didn’t want anybody to have to shush him.

  He looked at his watch when he got outside. He still had forty-five minutes until Tom Vance was supposed to show up at the jail to have a look at the tooth, so he could either talk to Colley’s other ex-wife or visit Dr. White and see if he’d completed the autopsy on Larry Colley.

  He decided on Dr. White. One ex-wife was enough for one morning.

  7

  CLYDE BALLINGER WAS IN HIS OFFICE IN BACK OF THE FUNERAL home when Rhodes arrived. He was reading an old paperback, which was not unusual. His desk was covered with them, and he read them at every opportunity. The one he held up for Rhodes to see was called The Green Wound.

  “They don’t write ‘em like this anymore,” Ballinger said. “And nobody would buy ’em if they did.”

  “Why not?” Rhodes asked.

  “Because people don’t have any taste. They want four hundred pages of serial killers, car chases, and explosions.”

  “You must be thinking about the movies,” Rhodes said. “They’re all long and loud. Sometimes when I see one of the new ones, I feel like I’ve been on a carnival ride.”

  Ballinger put a piece of paper between the pages to mark his place and laid the book on his desk with all the others. “Did you ever consider the fact that it might be you and me who’re out of step?” he said.

  “You mean that books and movies are actually a lot better now and we’re wrong to think the old ones are better?”

  Ballinger nodded. “Hard to believe, isn’t it. What it means is that we’ve become old farts.”

  “It’s barely possible that we could be right. There’s always a chance of that.”

  “Two chances,” Ballinger said. “Slim and none.”

  “And we’re not that old,” Rhodes said. “Middle-aged at most.”

  “Yeah, if you’re planning to live to be a hundred. In my business I see a whole lot of dead people, but I don’t see many that age. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen one that age in years.”

  “Speaking of your business,” Rhodes said.

  “Dr. White finished the autopsy, if that’s what you mean. He wrote it all up, and he’s probably delivered it to your office by now. It won’t tell you anything you didn’t already know, though.”

  Rhodes had been afraid of that. The language would be a little fancier, but what it would add up to was the fact that someone had hit Larry Colley in the back of the head with the traditional blunt instrument and killed him. Well, it wasn’t as bleak as that. White would know whether Colley had died in the clearing or been brought there.

  “What about the clothes?” Rhodes said.

  “We can go get them.” Ballinger stood up. “You think they’ll be full of clues?”

  “Two chances they will be,” Rhodes said. “Slim and none.”

  Ballinger’s funeral home had once been one of the grander mansions in Clearview, with a big front lawn and oak trees for shade, tennis courts in the back, and even a little building that was used for servants’ quarters. That building was where Ballinger now had his office. He and Rhodes had to walk across a small parking area to the main structure. Rhodes supposed it was ironic that this place that had been home to a large and prominent family was now used for a mortuary, but it wasn’t something that bothered him.

  They went in through a back door, and Ballinger led Rhodes to a small storeroom. He opened the door and took out a plastic bag.

  “Shoes, shirt, pants, underwear,” he said. “Your deputy took the other things.”

  Rhodes took the bag. He didn’t open it. He’d have a look later, after he’d talked to the professor about the Bigfoot tooth.

  “When’s the funeral?” he asked.

  Ballinger didn’t know. “Nobody wants to make the arrangements.”

  “You’ve talked to his ex-wives?”

  “Both of them. Maybe the county will have to bury him.”

  “Try Bud Turley,” Rhodes said.

  “I should have thought of him first,” Ballinger said.

  Tom Vance looked like Rhodes’s idea of a college professor. He had gray hair, parted neatly on the left, and he wore a light blue dress shirt with a dark blue tie.

  “I just had my last class of the summer session,” he told Rhodes, “not counting the final exam. I’m ready for a break.”

  “How long do you get?” Rhod
es asked.

  They were in the jail. Vance sat in a wooden chair by Rhodes’s desk, while Hack and Lawton pretended to be busy. Rhodes knew, however, that they were listening to every word.

  “Less than a week,” Vance said. “When I started teaching, I thought I’d have great summer vacations, but every summer I wind up teaching classes.”

  “You must enjoy your work.”

  “That.” Vance paused. “And I need the money.”

  “Don’t we all. Bud Turley tells me you’re a paleontologist.”

  “That’s right. I like to dig up prehistoric animals.”

  “What about Bigfoot?”

  Vance laughed. “I’ve never seen one, and I’ve never seen the bones of one. But when Turley called, he sounded pretty excited about this tooth he found.”

  “It’s a big tooth,” Rhodes said. “That’s all I know about it. I’ll get it and let you have a look.”

  Just as Rhodes got to his feet, Bud Turley came through the front door. Right behind him was Jennifer Loam, a young, intense-looking woman who was a reporter for the Clearview Herald. Or, Rhodes thought, the reporter for the Herald. The local newspaper didn’t have a lot of employees.

  “I hope you weren’t going to start without me,” Turley said. “I had to stop by the newspaper office first.”

  “Had to alert the media, huh?” Hack said.

  Rhodes gave him a look. So did Turley.

  “Sorry,” Hack said, but Rhodes could tell he didn’t mean it.

  Jennifer Loam had something new, a tiny digital recorder. Rhodes knew it would already be turned on.

  “Sheriff,” she said, “would you like to comment on the Bigfoot tooth that Mr. Turley has found?”

  “We don’t know what kind of tooth it is,” Rhodes said. “We’re just about to get an expert opinion.”

  He introduced Vance to both Loam and Turley and went to the evidence locker. He got out the tooth and took it back to his desk.

  “Well,” Vance said after giving it a cursory glance, “it’s a tooth, all right, and it came from an animal with big feet.”