by Bill Crider
“At a community college in Houston,” he said. “I teach American history and world history, not that anyone enrolls for world history anymore. They all think it’s too tough for them, and it is. The only kind of serf they’ve ever heard of is spelled s-u-r-f, and they know they can find it at Galveston. Half the class drops out before the middle of the semester. Not that the students in American history are much better.
“But you didn’t call me up here to listen to me talk about my job or my classes. The deputy said it was something about the burglary. I don’t mind telling you that I hope you’ve recovered some of my things. I didn’t have nearly enough insurance. I moved a lot of stuff in after my last renewal, and I never thought to notify anybody. Hell, my VCR alone was worth—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Washburn,” Rhodes said, interrupting the flow of the man’s talk. “You were called about the burglary, that’s true, but it’s something related to the burglary, not the burglary itself.”
“Related? You mean you called me all the way up here, a three-hour drive, just to talk about something related. This had better be good, Sheriff.”
“It’s about a Mrs. Clayton,” Rhodes said. “Sula Clayton.”
“Ah,” Washburn said.
“You know her, I think,” Rhodes said.
“I might.”
“Her husband seemed to think you knew her pretty well.”
“Ha. Her husband. A salesman. You know what e.e. cummings called a salesman, Sheriff Rhodes?”
Rhodes had to admit that he didn’t know.
“He said, ‘A salesman is an it that stinks.’ ”
“He seemed all right to me,” Rhodes said. “He didn’t try to sell me anything.”
“You just weren’t with him long enough. He’d have gotten around to it sooner or later.”
“He doesn’t sell life insurance. And from what you were just telling me, you could have used a little better homeowner’s policy.”
“Not from him I couldn’t. What a twerp.”
It had been a long time since Rhodes had heard anyone called a twerp.
“What about his wife?” he said.
“His wife was different,” Washburn said.
“Different in what way?”
“She was a sensitive, understanding woman . . . . Listen, Sheriff, I know Clayton must’ve told you about me and his wife. So what? Maybe we met here a time or two when he was off selling some kind of piddling group policy to a bunch of yuppies who make a living peddling General Motors stocks. I don’t see what that has to do with the burglary of my lake house.”
“It doesn’t have a thing to do with it,” Rhodes said. “It might have something to do with Mrs. Clayton’s murder, though.”
Washburn sucked in his breath, and Rhodes thought for a minute he wasn’t ever going to let it out again. When he finally did, it came out in brief puffs. Rhodes decided that if ever a man was surprised, Washburn was surprised.
When he could talk again, Washburn said, “Mrs. Clayton’s been murdered?”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. They still hadn’t received the dental records, but Rhodes was certain he wasn’t telling a lie.
“Who did it?” Washburn said. “Was it that son of a bitch Clayton? If it was him, I’ll—”
“We don’t know yet who did it,” Rhodes said. “Clayton seemed to think it was you.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“His theory was that she drove down here to meet you but then came to her senses. And when she told you that she had to go back to her husband, you killed her.”
“That son of a bitch.”
Washburn was getting repetitive and not providing any useful information.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Rhodes asked.
“Right after Christmas. I had some time off from school and I came down for a weekend. She was able to get away for a day or two.”
“Did her husband know about that?”
“He might have known. Sula thought he suspected.”
Rhodes thought that the Christmas episode, assuming that it actually took place, might have been what Clayton and his wife had words about at the New Year’s Eve party before she disappeared.
“You didn’t start back to school until after New Year’s, did you?” he said.
“No. We didn’t register until a couple of weeks ago. But I had to do some things in the office, attend a workshop, stuff like that. I couldn’t get back up here.”
Rhodes could check on those things, or some of them. There would be a security office at the school. “You haven’t heard from Mrs. Clayton since Christmas then?”
“That’s right. I wondered if something had gone wrong at home. She usually would have given me a call by now. But I didn’t think it would be anything like this.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. He didn’t know what else to say. Washburn had been honest enough about his relationship with the dead woman, hadn’t tried to hide anything. And his surprise on hearing about her death had not been faked. Rhodes was sure of that. “You think you could stay around a couple of days in case I have some more questions for you?”
“I have a class tomorrow at nine-thirty. I could call someone and ask him to take it. I don’t know about Wednesday though.”
“Maybe by then this will be settled,” Rhodes said. He had already let Clayton go home, but he wasn’t going to let Washburn off so easily. He wished he had Clayton back, too. At least he had Burl and Lonnie safely locked away. He would have to talk to them a bit more, too, but he’d give them a day or so in the cell to soften them up, assuming two such hardcases could ever be softened.
“I brought a folding cot,” Washburn said. “I suppose I could sleep out at the lake tonight. I didn’t want to drive back anyway.”
“That sounds fine,” Rhodes said. “I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow.”
Washburn shook hands and left.
“Well, how about that one?” Rhodes said.
Hack, who had as usual been bent over the radio pretending to be invisible, turned around. “Sounds all right to me. He was really surprised.”
“Sounded that way, all right.”
“What do you mean, sounded?”
“Remember what you said about being too surprised?”
“Yeah, but this wasn’t the same kind of thing as being too surprised.”
“How could you tell?”
“I could just tell,” Hack said. “Trust me.”
“The check is in the mail,” Rhodes said.
“We’re from the government. We’re here to help you,” Hack said.
“I am not a bimbo,” Rhodes said.
“I never said you was,” Hack told him. “That Miz Clayton, now . . .”
“Yes, she might be a different story,” Rhodes said. “I think I’ll talk to Mrs. McGee about her one more time.”
“You think she knows any more than she’s already told?”
“You never can tell. It won’t hurt to pay her another little visit tomorrow.”
“You find out anything from that list of folks who bought those trucks?”
Rhodes admitted that he hadn’t. “Some were sold in Texas, some in California. Some were sold in lots, some were sold to individuals. It would take forever to trace them all down. But you were right about one thing. There’s no one from around here on the list.”
“Didn’t think there would be. What about that other list? It was a whole lot shorter.”
“I think there’s something we can do about it, too. It may be nothing, or it may be just a coincidence, but it’ll give us something to work on.”
“Who’s us?”
“Ivy and me.”
“You gonna make her a deputy?”
“The deputies have plenty to do, and this should be an easy job. She’s been a help to me before, and she might even enjoy it.”
“But o’ course it’s a highly secret undercover job and you ain’t about to tell us lower-level employees what it’s all about.”
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br /> “That’s right,” Rhodes said.
“Bull corn,” Hack said, and turned back to face his radio.
“Do you think you can get the morning off tomorrow?” Rhodes asked Ivy that night. They were having supper at the Jolly Tamale, located just outside Clearview on the road to the lake. Having driven past it several times in the last few days, Rhodes had developed a craving for Mexican food.
“Why?” Ivy said. She was having the Number One, which consisted of a tamale, an enchilada, a taco, rice, and beans.
“To do a little secret undercover work,” Rhodes said. He was having the Number Two, which was just like the Number One, with the addition of guacamole salad. He liked guacamole, though he suspected that it was fattening.
“Sounds interesting,” Ivy said, taking a bite from the enchilada. She chewed thoughtfully. “What kind of undercover work?”
Rhodes told her.
Ivy put down her fork and took a drink of the ice water the Jolly Tamale thoughtfully provided for all its customers. The hot sauce often required several refills of the water glass with each meal.
“Let me get this straight,” Ivy said, putting down the water glass. “You want me to spend the morning lying in a coffin?”
“Well,” Rhodes said. “Maybe not the entire morning.”
“I’m not sure I want to spend even a few minutes doing it.” She looked in Rhodes’s eyes. “You’re not much of a practical joker, I know that much.”
“I’m not joking.”
Ivy smiled. “I didn’t think you were. Did you talk to Judge Parry today?”
Rhodes said that he had.
“And February twenty-seventh’s all clear?”
Rhodes said that it was.
“You’re not planning to bump me off in some bizarre premature burial plot, are you?”
Rhodes laughed. “It’s nothing like that.” He explained what he had in mind.
Ivy was dubious. “It’s too late to get anything in the newspaper about it,” she said.
“I called the radio station,” Rhodes said. “Right after I cleared it with Clyde Ballinger.”
“You called the radio station?”
Rhodes nodded.
“And you’ve already cleared it with Clyde Ballinger?” Rhodes nodded again.
“Pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you?”
“It’s not that,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that I thought this was a good idea. Or at least an idea. I feel like I need to solve one of these crimes, at least, and this is my best shot. If you don’t want to do it, I can—”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I’m just not too keen on the idea of lying in a coffin while I’m still alive. I’m not even sure I’m going to like it very much after I’m dead.”
“I understand,” Rhodes said. “I’ll just ask Ruth Grady if she can do it. She might not like it any better than you do, but—”
“Hush,” Ivy said. “I’ll do it.”
“I thought you would,” Rhodes said.
She kicked his shin under the table. “Who do I get to be?”
“Miss Olivia Swain, one of Clearview’s richest citizens,” Rhodes told her. “A credit to her community.”
“At least there’s that,” Ivy said.
Rhodes could hear the radio squawking while he paid the check. He asked Ivy to go out and respond to the call. She had learned to operate the radio the first time she rode in the patrol car, and Hack was used to hearing her answer calls.
“What’s up?” Rhodes asked when he joined her a minute or two later.
“He wouldn’t exactly say. He just told me to have you get out to the lake to Mrs. McGee’s place as soon as you could. He said Ruth Grady was already on the way.”
Rhodes climbed in the car, slammed the door, and put on his seat belt.
“Does this mean we get to use the siren?” Ivy said.
“I suppose it does,” Rhodes said. He turned on the bubble lights and the siren.
“I think this must be the best part of your job,” Ivy said. “Getting to turn on the siren and make everyone get out of the way.”
“You’ll notice that not everyone does,” Rhodes said, swinging out to pass a slow-moving Chevrolet driven by a man who sat bolt upright with both hands holding the steering wheel in a death grip.
“He probably thought you were going to arrest him,” Ivy said.
“I probably should,” Rhodes said. “Someone’s going to run right up his tailpipe some night. But I don’t have time for him right now.”
“What’s the rush?”
“When Hack won’t tell me what’s going on over the radio, that means there’s something happening that he doesn’t think I’d want the whole county to know. He could use the code numbers, but everybody who owns a scanner has a code book.”
“If he won’t tell you what’s happening, how can you know how to respond?”
“I always respond the same way. Very carefully. When you don’t know exactly what’s happening, you have a tendency to be extra careful.”
“I hope you always are,” Ivy said.
“Don’t worry. I am.” They turned off the main road and onto the winding way to Mrs. McGee’s house. “We may beat Ruth there, since we were already so close. I want you to stay in the car. Don’t even think about getting out.”
“I won’t.”
“Unless I need you, of course. I’ll let you know. Mrs. McGee could be hurt or something.”
“I’ll do whatever you say.”
Rhodes hoped she was telling the truth. There was no need for her to get involved in whatever was coming up. He hadn’t told her the complete truth about the radio call. About the only reason Hack would not have told him what was going on—knowing that Ivy was in the car—was that it was something quite serious, probably involving violence.
Rhodes turned off the siren and slowed to make the turn to Mrs. McGee’s. The headlights illuminated the dark figure of a man standing in the middle of the road. Rhodes hadn’t been going fast, and his sudden application of the break brought the car to an instant stop.
Rhodes cursed the seat-belt law under his breath. There were plenty of lawmen who simply ignored it, and he didn’t blame them. Trying to stop a car, open the door, get out, and draw a weapon was hard enough. Add in the difficulty of getting out of the seat belt, and you had a real problem.
Somehow he managed it and came out of the car with a .38 in his hand.
“Don’t shoot me, for God’s sake,” Washburn said. He was standing in front of the car with his hands raised. “I’ve already been shot at once.”
Rhodes relaxed, but only a little. “Who shot at you?” he said. He kept the pistol pointed at Washburn.
“Somebody in that house there.” Washburn pointed toward Mrs. McGee’s house. “I was going to try to borrow a couple of blankets. I forgot to bring any for my cot, and it’s pretty cold tonight.”
Rhodes was still wearing his down jacket. He became suddenly conscious of the cold night air creeping in under it. The sky was absolutely clear, and the stars sparkled white high above them.
“Somebody shot at you because you tried to borrow some blankets?” Rhodes said.
“I didn’t even get to ask. I just got about halfway across the yard when they opened up on me. Blam! Blam! Blam!”
“How’d you get in touch with my office?”
“Would you believe I brought a phone? Forgot the blankets and brought a phone. I was bringing in a few things to replace what was stolen, so I brought a phone and a few cooking pots. I thought . . . say, could I put my hands down now?”
Rhodes heard a siren in the distance. He knew that Ruth Grady was nearly there. “Sure,” he said. He holstered his pistol. “Let’s wait here for my deputy, and then we’ll see what we can figure out.”
Ruth stopped her car right behind the one Rhodes was driving. She had turned off her siren, but like Rhodes left the bubble lights on. They sent red and blue gleams bouncing off the black trunks of the bare trees. Sh
e got out of the car with her sidearm drawn, but Rhodes told her she wouldn’t need it.
“There’s been a little shooting,” he said. “But it’s all over, I think.”
“What happened?” she said.
Rhodes told her.
“You think it was Mrs. McGee?”
“Maybe,” Rhodes said. “We’ll see.”
He turned to Washburn. “You have a heater in your house?”
“Central heat. Those thieves didn’t take the heating unit. I guess it was too big.”
“Well, then, you better just turn it up high and sleep without the blankets tonight. My deputy will drive you over.”
“My car’s right over there,” Washburn said. “I can get home all right.” He shook his head. “I just stopped here because I saw the lights on. I didn’t think there would be many people at home this time of year. Heck, I thought I was lucky to see a light.”
Rhodes told Ruth to follow Washburn. “No sense in taking chances,” he said.
Washburn saw the logic of it and went to get his car. While Ruth was escorting Washburn home, Rhodes explained the situation to Ivy.
“Does this have anything to do with the murder out here?” she asked.
“That’s what we’ll try to find out,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 12
They drove up to Mrs. McGee’s. There were still lights on in the house, and no sign of anyone prowling around the place. Rhodes had already decided to take Ivy in with them. She had proved to be an adept questioner, and she knew when to keep quiet. Besides, he certainly wasn’t going to leave her out in the car. He and Ruth parked the county cars side by side and they all trooped up to the porch.
Rhodes knocked on the door.
“Who’s there?” Mrs. McGee’s voice asked.
“Sheriff Rhodes.”
“I thought I saw those funny-colored lights. Just a minute.”
The door opened. “Come on in. Quick, now. Heat’s getting out.”
The three of them crowded inside. Rhodes introduced Ivy.
“Pleased to meet you,” Mrs. McGee said.