by Bill Crider
“Want to compare notes?” she said.
“Sure. But let’s do it in the courthouse. Jennifer Loam’s here snooping around.”
“Why not go to the jail?”
“That’s the first place she’ll look for me,” Rhodes said. “I’d rather not talk to her any more for a while.”
“All right. I’ll meet you at the courthouse. Hack and Lawton won’t like it, though. They don’t want to be out of the loop.”
Rhodes grinned. “All the more reason to talk it over at the courthouse instead of the jail.”
Rhodes’s official office was in the county courthouse, but he rarely used it. Jennifer Loam had been there, but it wasn’t the first place she’d look for him. It was much more private than the jail, and it was where Rhodes went when he wanted a little time away from people. Besides, there was the additional attraction of a Dr Pepper machine, and even if the Dr Pepper was in plastic bottles and didn’t have real sugar in it, it was better than no Dr Pepper at all.
Rhodes bought himself a package of bright orange peanut butter and cheese crackers from the vending machine as well, to make up for missing lunch. He offered to buy some for Ruth, but she said she didn’t want anything.
“I’m watching my weight,” she said, and Rhodes wondered if the attentions of Seepy Benton had anything to do with that.
They went into the office. Rhodes sat behind the desk and propped up his feet; Ruth took one of the other chairs. While he drank his Dr Pepper and ate the crackers, she told him what she’d found out.
It didn’t amount to much more than he’d already learned. Kasey Yardley from the Check-In had been an eyewitness to the argument between Berry and Marsh, and she’d spread the word up and down the center. Tran Phuong at the nail salon had heard about it from Kasey, just as Tom Fulton had.
It all added up to nothing: Nobody knew anything about Berry having any enemies, nobody could imagine why he’d been killed, nobody had seen anything at all, not even Kasey, who said she might have been reading a magazine when Berry was killed but that whatever she was doing, she sure hadn’t seen anybody go in or come out of the floral shop.
“Typical,” Rhodes said.
He crumpled the cellophane paper that had held the crackers, scattering little orange crumbs all over his desk. He threw the paper into the wastebasket under the desk, then pulled the wastebasket out and brushed the crumbs into it.
“Nobody ever sees anything,” Rhodes continued. “You’d think that just once in a while, maybe one time out of a thousand, somebody would have a description and a license number.”
“Yes, it’s funny how that never happens,” Ruth said.
The thing was that it did happen now and then—and it should have happened in the case of Lloyd’s murder. Rhodes wondered how someone got into and out of the shopping center without anybody noticing. It was possible, but it didn’t seem likely.
“How is it that Kasey overheard the argument yesterday but not today?” Rhodes said.
“She told me that she’d gone outside for a cigarette. She’s not allowed to smoke inside the store. Anyway, she was out on the walk in front and heard the yelling. Naturally she listened.”
“Just our luck she was inside when the fight happened today. We need a witness.”
“We catch most of the bad guys,” Ruth said. “Even if we don’t always get much help.”
“Most of them,” Rhodes said. “Not all, though.”
“Nobody’s perfect. Anyway, maybe a witness will turn up.”
Rhodes didn’t think so. Customers came and went to the center, and the people in the other shops could see arrivals and departures. It was odd that nobody had seen whoever went into Lloyd’s, but Rhodes supposed it was possible that everyone was otherwise occupied, as unlikely as that appeared.
“I didn’t know Lloyd Berry,” Ruth said. “He seems to have been a nice enough guy, according to the people I talked to. Why would he squeal on his friend?”
“I’ll ask Cecil Marsh about that,” Rhodes said. “And about that alligator, too.”
“You think he had something to do with the alligator?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe Lloyd was on the wrong side of the fence when it came to the chicken question.”
“Nobody would kill somebody over anything as silly as chickens,” Ruth said.
“These days,” Rhodes said, “you never can tell.”
Ruth thought it over. “You could be right. Marsh must be pretty contentious. He and Royce Weeks have been going at it for a long time.”
“Longer than I like to think about.”
“But they haven’t killed each other. They’ve never even had a real fight, have they?”
Rhodes hadn’t thought about that, but he realized that Ruth had made a good point. As vocal as the two men were, and as often as they’d engaged in arguments, name-calling, and threatened lawsuits, neither had ever laid a hand on the other. They even sang together in the chorus without disrupting the practices.
“You’re right,” Rhodes said.
He knew that didn’t really mean much, however. Whoever had killed Berry seemed to have acted in a single instant of intense anger. Marsh might finally have snapped. On the other hand, Rhodes might be wrong about the way things had happened. It was too soon to know.
Rhodes thought about Berry’s attempt to get him to join the chorus. Weeks and Marsh might have been getting along, but had Berry felt threatened by Marsh? That seemed likely enough, given the incident with the quartet.
“So do you think he did it?” Ruth said. “Marsh?”
“It’s way too early to start forming opinions. You don’t want to let some preconceived notion get in the way of the facts.”
“That’s pretty good. Should I write it in my crimefighter’s notebook?”
Rhodes didn’t mind being made fun of. He said, “It’s good information, all right. I think I stole it from Sherlock Holmes.”
“When are you going to talk to Marsh?”
Rhodes swung his feet off the desk. “Right now seems like a good time. I hope I can get to him before Jennifer Loam does.”
“Good luck with that,” Ruth said.
8
FINDING CECIL MARSH WASN’T NECESSARILY GOING TO BE EASY. Marsh was a handyman, and a good one. He did painting, both inside and out, light carpentry, and Sheetrock repair. He also built fences and even did a little concrete work. A man of his abilities was always in demand, not just in Clearview but all over the county, and he was likely to be anywhere.
About the only way to locate him would be to ask his wife where he was working that day. Since Rhodes wanted to talk to her anyway, he drove to Marsh’s house, which was located in one of Clearview’s older neighborhoods but one in which the homes had been taken better care of than in some areas.
Rhodes had heard people say that a handyman’s house was often in bad repair because the owner was so busy fixing things for other people that he rarely had time to do anything around his own property. If that was generally true, the Marsh house was an exception. It was a white frame structure with fresh paint, a neatly trimmed yard, and a roof with shingles that couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old. The shrubs on the property line, the ones that had started the Marsh-Weeks feud, were still thriving. Rhodes noticed that they were carefully trimmed so as not to extend onto Weeks’s property next door.
Rhodes parked on the street and went up the walk to the front door. There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the door frame.
In a couple of seconds, Faye Lynn Marsh opened the door. She was a stout woman with dyed black hair and a pretty face that was just starting to show signs of aging at the corners of her mouth and eyes.
“What’s Royce Weeks done now?” she said.
Rhodes wasn’t surprised by the question. The only times he’d ever been to the house before had been to deal with the feuding neighbors.
“It’s not Royce,” he said. “It’s something different this time.”
“What is it, then?”
“We should probably talk about it inside.”
“You’re right.” She stuck her head out the door and looked at the house next door. “That Royce Weeks is a snoop, and you never know what he’ll say or do. Come on in, Sheriff.”
Faye Lynn took him into the small living room, where he sat on an old sofa with a coffee table in front of it. A copy of Southern Living lay on the table beside a copy of the Harmonizer and an oversized yellow candle. Some barbershop quartet was on the Harmonizer cover, but Rhodes didn’t know any of them. Faye Lynn sat across from Rhodes in a pink swivel rocker. She didn’t light the candle.
“If it’s not about that Weeks, it must be about Lindy Gomez,” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it.”
“I’m not sure,” Rhodes said. “It does have to do with the quartet.”
“It’s Lindy, then. Cecil says it was all just a joke, and I’m sure he’s telling the truth.”
“A joke?”
“That’s right, a joke, and I’ll tell you who was behind it. Royce Weeks, that’s who.”
Rhodes not only didn’t get the joke, he didn’t know what was going on.
“You should probably explain the whole thing to me,” he said. “Just to be sure I know what really happened.”
“All right, I will. Cecil never told the quartet to go sing to that Gomez woman, and he never paid them their money. Somebody else did, and used Cecil’s name. It was that Royce Weeks who was behind it, you can count on it.”
At least now Rhodes knew the recipient of the singing valentine. That was progress of a sort.
“Why would Royce do a thing like that?” Rhodes asked.
“To get back at Cecil, that’s why. Cecil always gets the best of him, and he can’t stand it. So he saw this was a way to get back at him.”
Rhodes saw a lot of things wrong with that theory. For one, how could Weeks have known that Berry would tell anybody that Cecil had paid the quartet to sing to Lindy Gomez? Of course, he was in the quartet, so if no one in the group had let the information slip, Weeks could have put the word out himself. Even at that, however, there had to be some connection between Marsh and Gomez.
“Cecil did know Lindy Gomez, didn’t he?” Rhodes said.
Faye Lynn made a face. “Everybody knows her. Her picture’s in the paper just about every week.”
That was true, along with an article touting the accomplishments of the students at Clearview Elementary School. Gomez, the new principal, was unmarried and one of the town’s most eligible young women.
“I didn’t mean he’d read about her in the paper,” Rhodes said. He thought over what he was going to say. “I mean he must have known her well enough to make the joke work.”
“You might say that. They weren’t friends or anything. When she moved to town last fall, Cecil did some work at her house. That’s all there was to that.”
She crossed her arms for emphasis, but Rhodes wasn’t convinced she knew the whole story. He decided it was time to change the subject before he got Cecil in any more trouble with his wife.
“Have you been here all day?” he said.
“Me? Yes. Why?”
“Somebody visited Lloyd Berry today. Somebody who must have been pretty angry with him.”
“Well, it wasn’t me. Cecil blessed him out yesterday, though. He told me all about it. He said that Lloyd apologized for having said anything, and he admitted that Cecil might not have been the one who paid the quartet to sing for that Gomez woman.”
“Did he say who paid them?”
“It was Royce Weeks.”
“Did Lloyd say that?”
“Not in so many words, but he did say he got the money in a letter with the instructions about singing to her.”
At last a detail Rhodes hadn’t known about. It could even mean that Faye Lynn was right about Weeks.
“Where’s Cecil working today?” Rhodes said.
“Over in Obert. He’s helping somebody put in a new driveway.”
“Who?”
“Chap Morris, I think he said.”
Rhodes knew Morris, and he could check on the new driveway if it became necessary. Of course, Cecil could easily have stopped off at Lloyd’s shop before he went to Obert. It would have been only a half mile or so out of his way.
“Why are you so interested in Lloyd Berry, anyway?” Faye Lynn said.
“Somebody killed him,” Rhodes said.
Faye Lynn stared at him. “He’s dead?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” She sounded stunned, and Rhodes thought she might cry. “You mean you’re asking me these questions because you think I killed him? Or Cecil did?”
“It’s just my job,” Rhodes said. “Something I have to do whether I like it or not.”
Faye Lynn brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I think you like it,” she said.
Rhodes didn’t see any point in arguing, so he changed the subject. “Did Cecil ever say anything to you about an alligator?”
“An alligator?” Faye Lynn was incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“We got a call about an alligator today. It was in a ditch right across from that property you own out on the county road.”
“Who called you? It must have been that Royce Weeks. He’s always got something to complain about.”
“Royce doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Rhodes said, hoping he was telling the truth. They still hadn’t established the identity of the random chicken.
“It’s those chickens of his,” Faye Lynn said. “The rooster starts up before daylight, and the hens cluck around all day. They’re noisy and nasty, and they stink. Royce could buy his eggs at the Wal-Mart like the rest of us. Chickens don’t have any place inside the city limits.”
“I don’t have anything to do with that,” Rhodes said. “It’s up to the city council to decide if chickens can be kept in town.”
“Ha,” Faye Lynn said. “You can’t ever get those people to take a stand on anything.”
“About the alligator,” Rhodes said.
“No, Cecil never said anything to me about any alligator. He wouldn’t know an alligator if it came up and bit him. That’s the silliest thing I ever heard. Well, not as silly as you thinking he killed Lloyd Berry, but it’s still mighty silly all the same. If anybody killed Lloyd, it was that Royce Weeks.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because that’s the kind of person he is.”
“Would he have a reason?”
“He wouldn’t need one.”
Faye Lynn stood up, and it was plain that she expected Rhodes to do so as well. He didn’t disappoint her.
“Thanks for the tip,” Rhodes said. “I’ll talk to Royce for sure. I still want to talk to Cecil, too. You can tell him that for me if he gets home before I have a chance.”
“You can bet I’ll tell him. He won’t be any too happy with Royce Weeks when he hears it, either.”
Everything led back to Royce Weeks as far as she was concerned. Rhodes wondered if the feud was really between Royce and Cecil after all. Maybe Faye Lynn was behind the whole thing and had been all the time.
After he left the Marsh house, Rhodes went right next door. He thought Royce Weeks would be at home. He usually was. He’d worked in retail for years, selling shoes and men’s clothing at a downtown department store until the Wal-Mart had put the store out of business. Then he’d gone into business for himself, selling things on eBay. Rhodes wasn’t sure just where Royce got the things he sold, or even what the things were, but he seemed to be making money from them.
Royce’s house wasn’t as well kept as Marsh’s was, and the chickens didn’t help the appearance of the property any. They were in a big pen in the backyard, and, sure enough, some White Leghorn hens were walking around, clucking and pecking at the ground. Rhodes didn’t see a rooster.
Weeks had a doorbell, so Rhodes rang it. Weeks took longer to get to th
e door than Faye Lynn had, but he didn’t look any happier to see Rhodes than she had been.
“What’s that damn Marsh woman complaining about this time?” Weeks said.
Weeks had a deep voice, almost as deep as Darrel Sizemore’s. Rhodes had heard that some of the best barbershop tenors were basses. That was because the tenor part was often sung in falsetto, and a lot of basses had just the right falsetto touch for the parts.
Weeks was tall and skinny with a complexion that rivaled Guy Wilks’s for pallor. His thin gray hair straggled across the top of his head, and his mouth turned down at the corners.
“She’s not complaining,” Rhodes said, which wasn’t strictly true but accurate enough for the situation. “This is about Lloyd Berry.”
“Lloyd’s been complaining? He doesn’t even live around here.”
“Lloyd’s not complaining,” Rhodes said. “He’s not doing anything right now. If you’ll invite me in, I’ll tell you about it.”
Weeks backed away from the door, which Rhodes took as an invitation. He went inside.
It didn’t take Rhodes long to figure out what Weeks was selling on eBay. After all, he was a trained lawman.
The room was full of books, books on shelves, books on tables, books on the floor. Books on the computer desk and even in the chairs.
Some of the books were paperbacks that looked like the ones that Clyde Ballinger, a local funeral director, liked to read. They had garish covers and titles like Bad Ronald, Naked Fury, and Hell Is a City. Rhodes recalled that Ballinger had mentioned something about the old books having disappeared from garage sales and flea markets, where Ballinger had once been able to buy them for nickels and dimes.
“Those are worth plenty,” Weeks said when Rhodes picked up the copy of Bad Ronald. “Be careful with them. They’re old and fragile.”
“Where do you find them?” Rhodes asked.
“Everywhere,” Weeks said, not giving anything away.
Rhodes set the book back on the table where he’d found it and picked up a hardback by someone named Richard Sale. Lazarus #7.
“You really shouldn’t handle those,” Weeks said. “You might damage one and cost me some money.”