by Bill Crider
Hack and Lawton pounced almost before the door had closed behind Rhodes. They were too smart to ask him for information about Berry. Instead Hack said, “I guess you heard about the chickens.”
Rhodes shook his head. He hadn’t heard about any chickens except the ones he’d made up for Weeks’s benefit.
“You better write up your reports,” Hack said. “You don’t want to be worryin’ about chickens.”
Rhodes sat at his desk and turned on the computer. He’d learned to write reports on it, but that was about all he used it for. He got out his notebook and started typing.
“Yep,” Lawton said. “You never know about chickens. First there’s one or two of ’em on the loose, and then there’s more and more. Next thing you know, they’re runnin’ the town.”
Rhodes sighed and swiveled his chair around. He looked at Lawton, who pretended to be sweeping the floor. He looked at Hack, who appeared to be absorbed in something he saw on the computer screen.
“All right,” Rhodes said, knowing he’d be sorry, “tell me about the chickens.”
Hack turned to look at him. “You know how you had me call Royce Weeks this morning about if any of his chickens had gone missin’?”
“I remember,” Rhodes said. “He said all his chickens were safely in the pen.”
“Yeah, he did, but there’s other chickens in town.”
“Lots of ’em,” Lawton said. “And some of ’em aren’t in their pens.”
Hack didn’t like it when Lawton tried to get in on the storytelling. Rhodes was sure that Lawton knew it and interrupted just to aggravate Hack.
“Some of ’em ain’t even in town,” Hack said, taking back the floor.
“Where are they?” Rhodes said, knowing even as he said it that he wouldn’t get a straight answer. Hack and Lawton didn’t have many ways to amuse themselves, so they took advantage of every opportunity to have fun.
“If they ain’t in town,” Hack said, “then they must be—”
“Out of town,” Lawton said, earning himself a world-class glare from Hack.
“Out of town,” Rhodes said. “Somewhere out near where Seepy Benton lives, I’m guessing.”
“Right,” Hack said, signaling that the game was over. “You remember Larry Crawford, don’t you?”
“How could I forget?” Rhodes said.
The double-wide Crawford had shared with his brother had blown up not so very long ago, beginning a series of events that had led to some harrowing times for Rhodes, including an encounter with his old nemesis, a biker named Rapper. Rhodes couldn’t think of any connection with chickens, however.
“Somebody else’s put a trailer on the piece of property where Crawford lived,” Hack said.
Now Rhodes was catching on. “And they have chickens.”
“Had,” Lawton said, getting another glare.
“Something got into their chicken pen last night,” Hack said. “Prob’ly a coyote.”
There were a lot of coyotes in the county. They troubled everybody who had any kind of livestock.
“All the chickens went crazy,” Hack continued. “Flew out of the pen and ran all over the place. Some of ’em got back in, and some of ’em didn’t.”
Rhodes knew that this wasn’t the main part of the story. Hack was just telling this to lead up to the important part. To encourage him, Rhodes said, “Nobody calls the sheriff’s department to tell us that a bunch of their chickens got loose.” He had another thought. “Surely they didn’t expect Alton Boyd to go out there and round them up.”
“Nope, nothin’ like that.”
Rhodes waited. So did Hack.
“All right,” Rhodes said, giving in. “What happened?”
“One of those chickens tried to cross the road,” Lawton said.
Rhodes almost said why? Luckily he caught himself in time. He might have let himself in for an endless stream of jokes.
“What happened?” he said.
Hack and Lawton both looked disappointed, as if they’d been primed for him to say why? Rhodes grinned at them. For once he didn’t feel as if they’d gotten the better of him.
They were so deflated that Hack didn’t bother to string the story out any further. “One of ’em flew into the windshield of a car.”
“Whose car?” Rhodes said.
“That Benton character’s. He was goin’ home after school and splattered a chicken. He called us about it because he thought you’d like to know.”
“How does he know where the chicken came from?”
“He did some investigatin’. He kinda thinks of himself as one of your deputies now. That academy you had was a good idea for gettin’ folks involved. We’re gonna cut down on chicken crimes, for sure.”
“Whose chicken was it?”
“Hard to say for sure. All those chickens look alike.”
“You said it came from the property where Crawford had his double-wide.”
“That’s what Benton says. The owners don’t necessarily agree with him, but they admitted they had a problem with their chickens.”
“Who’s this they you keep talking about?”
“Couple of truck drivers,” Hack said. “Hugh and Lance Eccles. You know ’em?”
Rhodes slumped a little lower in his chair.
“I know them,” he said.
When Rhodes got to his house, Ivy was already there, and she had some news for him.
“The movie deal’s off,” she said.
“What movie deal?”
“The one for Blood Fever.”
“Oh,” Rhodes said. “That movie deal.”
Several years ago, two women, Claudia and Jan, had come to Blacklin County for a writers’ workshop. They’d planned to write an article about crime in rural Texas, but they decided to write a novel instead, and they claimed they’d based their main character on Rhodes. The truth was that Rhodes and Sage Barton, the handsome, crime-busting sheriff in the book, had nothing at all in common, except that Barton had a black cat.
To say that Barton’s life was a tad more exciting than Rhodes’s own was a considerable understatement. Barton exercised regularly, chased serial killers, had romances with FBI agents, and fired ten times more shots on one page than Rhodes had done in his entire career.
“Seemed perfect for a movie to me,” he said. “I was thinking they could get Brad Pitt to play Sage Barton. Because of the resemblance.”
“Resemblance?” Ivy said. “To Sage Barton?”
“No. To me.”
“You’re about a foot taller than Brad Pitt.”
“Better-looking, too.”
Ivy smiled. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that. Anyway, you might become even more famous because the next book’s been accepted by the publisher. Claudia and Jan are excited about it.”
“I thought they’d about used up all the bad things that could happen in the first one.”
“Not terrorists,” Ivy said. “This one has terrorists.”
“I was afraid of that,” Rhodes said. “We get a lot of those around here. Blacklin County’s a prime target for them in the War on Terror. I’m sure it’ll have a lot of explosions in it. That’ll make it a cinch movie sale.”
Ivy laughed, then sobered. “We don’t get many terrorists here, but we do get murders. I heard about Lloyd Berry.” Ivy worked at a downtown insurance office and had access to local gossip. “Got any clues yet?” she asked.
Rhodes sat at the kitchen table while Yancey, the Pomeranian, yipped around the base of the chair. Sam, the black cat, lay in his favorite place in front of the refrigerator where warm air came out of the vent. He watched from across the room with his yellow eyes. Yancey was thoroughly intimidated by Sam and wouldn’t go on that side of the room unless Rhodes or Ivy did, probably in the belief that if Sam attacked, the humans would protect him.
“No clues,” Rhodes said. “I’ve just been talking to people.”
“You always talk to people.”
“It’s the best way I’ve
found to get to the bottom of things. Sooner or later everything I hear will make sense.”
“You mean it doesn’t make sense to begin with?”
“Sure it does,” Rhodes said, “but not everything fits together. That’s the hard part, getting things to fit.”
“You’ll do it eventually.”
Ivy looked at Sam, who was slinking across the floor in Yancey’s direction. Sam, as if he hadn’t noticed her glance, went back and lay down in his place.
“Maybe,” Rhodes said, grinning at the antics of the cat. “Did you hear about the alligator?”
Ivy hadn’t heard that story, so Rhodes told her.
“Where would an alligator have come from?” she said when he’d finished.
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Is it illegal to own an alligator?”
Rhodes didn’t know, but he didn’t think it was, not out in the country, at least. In town it might be a different story. Or maybe owning alligators was just fine, for the time being, like owning chickens.
“Well, I think it should be illegal,” Ivy said. “Not that I’m worried about alligators. What are we going to do about dinner?”
That meant she didn’t have anything planned, so Rhodes suggested that they give Max’s Place a try.
“First, though, we’ll have some entertainment,” he said.
“What kind of entertainment?”
“Musical.”
“That sounds good. I’ll get ready while you feed Speedo.”
Speedo was their outside dog, a border collie. Rhodes had met him in the course of an investigation and then adopted him. He’d picked up Sam and Yancey pretty much the same way, but at different times.
Rhodes stood up, and Yancey ran to the screen door, jumping and yipping, alive with excitement. He wanted to play with Speedo, so Rhodes opened the door and let him out. Sam watched everything with cool disdain. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere, especially not if dogs were involved.
Once outside, Yancey ran straight to the silenced squeaky toy, a green frog, that Speedo regarded as his own. Yancey snatched it up in his mouth and took off. Speedo, who was ten times his size, charged after him. Rhodes knew that Speedo would never hurt the smaller dog, who apparently believed himself to be at least as big as Speedo. They had never let the size difference bother them.
Rhodes made sure that Speedo had food and clean water, then sat on the top step of the little porch to watch the dogs play. While they romped around the yard, Rhodes thought about Lloyd Berry. He didn’t seem to have any close friends, but he’d had at least one bad enemy. Whoever that had been was walking around Clearview right now, thinking he’d gotten away with killing Berry, and he was right. At least for the moment. Rhodes had no doubt that he’d find out who the killer was. It would just take a while.
Rhodes sorted through all the conversations he’d had that day, trying to figure out exactly what he’d learned that might be helpful to him.
Someone had killed Lloyd Berry with a pipe-cutting wrench. Whoever had done the killing hadn’t been seen by anyone in the strip center where Berry had his shop. Or at least not by anyone who’d admit it, even though everybody had heard about Berry’s argument the previous day with Cecil Marsh.
Cecil had it in for Berry because of a singing valentine that Cecil may or may not have paid for.
Darrel Sizemore and Berry had quarreled about the amount of money Berry was paying for music to be used by the Clearview barbershop chorus.
Berry and Wilks seemed to have been better acquainted than Wilks had admitted to Rhodes. They’d had lunch together and sat at the same table. Rhodes wondered what they’d talked about. Rhodes knew that Berry had never complained about the gambling that was going on at the other end of the center, and as far as Rhodes could tell, Wilks was staying within the law. It could be that the two men were just friends and that Wilks hadn’t wanted to admit it because he didn’t want to be suspected of the murder. Or maybe there was something Rhodes was missing.
He thought he was missing something in the Marsh and Weeks feud, too. It had been obvious during his conversations with Faye Lynn and Royce that the problems went deeper than just shrubs and chickens and all the other things that had come up over the years.
Ivy opened the door and interrupted Rhodes’s thoughts.
“Are you ready to go?” she said.
“Sure.”
Rhodes stood up and called Yancey, who came running with the frog in his mouth. Rhodes grabbed the frog, and Yancey ran right on in through the door.
“Here you go,” Rhodes said, and tossed the frog to Speedo, who snatched it out of the air and ran off to his foam igloo, where he sat down to chew on the toy. It no longer squeaked because Rhodes had removed the metal whistle, but Speedo didn’t seem to care.
“It takes so little to make him happy,” Ivy said.
Rhodes smiled.
“He reminds me of you,” Ivy said.
Rhodes wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, so he decided not to ask.
The barbershop chorus met in the Clearview Senior Center, which had once been the Clearview Public Library. There was a new library now, and the old one had been remodeled for a different use. It was a few blocks outside what remained of the downtown area, near a couple of churches.
Not everyone in the chorus was a senior citizen, but the city allowed the group to meet and practice in the building because the members were always happy to sing at city functions or for any group that asked them, and they never charged an admission fee.
“I thought barbershop singing was for quartets,” Ivy said as they parked outside the Senior Center, a low, flat-roofed building of redbrick. They were in Rhodes’s Edsel, which, like Sam, Yancey, and Speedo, he had come across during an investigation and more or less adopted. Rhodes always seemed to find himself sticking up for the underdog. Or undercar. He was glad the old Edsel was still running.
“You can have barbershop harmony in a chorus, too,” Rhodes said. They started up the walk to the front entrance. “Some of the members form quartets, though, and that’s part of the problem I’m working on. Berry was in a quartet with Royce Weeks, Darrel Sizemore, and someone else. A baritone, I guess.”
“I’ve heard about baritones,” Ivy said. “They’re all crazy.”
“That’s stereotyping,” Rhodes told her.
“I was just kidding. They have the junk parts, though, so it takes a special kind of person to sing them. That’s what I heard, anyway. Maybe you could sing baritone.”
“I can’t sing anything.”
“They asked you to join.”
“Just to break up the fights,” Rhodes said, but he wondered if Berry had sensed that something was about to happen to him. Could it be that he’d asked Rhodes to join the chorus because he wanted protection from a killer?
“You’re joking about the fights, aren’t you?” Ivy said.
Rhodes was about to say that he was, when he pulled open the front door of the Senior Center and they heard the yelling from inside.
“That doesn’t sound like barbershop harmony,” Ivy said.
“No,” Rhodes said. “It sounds like a fight.”
As they headed for the practice room, a metal folding chair came flying out the door.
“I think I’ll wait here,” Ivy said and stopped where she was.
Rhodes stopped as well. “Me, too.”
“You can’t wait here,” Ivy said. “You’re the sheriff. It’s your job to go in that room.”
“Dang,” Rhodes said.
11
THE PRACTICE ROOM WAS FULL OF ANGRY, SHOUTING MEN. FIFteen or sixteen of them. They were moving around and Rhodes couldn’t get an accurate count.
“All right,” he said, “who threw the chair?”
No one paid any attention to him. Royce Weeks and Cecil Marsh stood toe to toe, shouting, their faces red, their fists clenched. Rhodes saw Darrel Sizemore, Seepy Benton, Max Schwartz, and ten or twelve others. Everyone was mov
ing around. Some were pushing and shoving. Some were jockeying for a good position to see if Weeks and Marsh were going to hit each other. Rhodes doubted if any of them even knew he was there. That was what came of having a voice that didn’t project. No wonder he wasn’t a singer.
A podium stood up against the front wall of the room. Rhodes went over to it and looked around. He saw a coffee cup on a counter and went and picked it up. Nobody noticed him until he started to bang on the podium with the cup.
When they finally realized that the sheriff was in the room, things began to quiet down. Rhodes stood there watching them until the room was silent. He felt like a grade-school teacher in front of a rowdy class.
“Let’s everybody sit down,” Rhodes said.
Feet shuffled, chairs scraped. Marsh and Berry went to opposite sides of the room and took seats, and others dropped into the nearest chairs. After everyone was seated, Rhodes looked at Seepy Benton, who hadn’t been taking part in the argument so much as standing aside and watching as if amused. Maybe he was like Speedo, Rhodes thought.
“Dr. Benton, why don’t you tell me what’s going on here, aside from destruction of public property, assault, battery, and terroristic threats.”
“I don’t know,” Benton said. “The argument started before I got here.”
“Did you see who threw the chair out the door?”
Benton looked around the room, as if he thought someone might raise his hand.
Nobody did.
“I didn’t throw it,” Benton said.
Once again Rhodes felt like a schoolteacher. “That’s not what I asked you.”
“Hell,” Cecil Marsh said, standing up, “I threw it. I was trying to hit somebody with it, and I wish I had.”
Rhodes didn’t have to ask who he was trying to hit. “I’m calling off the practice.”
“You can’t do that,” Royce Weeks said. “You’re not the director.”