by Bill Crider
“You’re playing bingo on the Internet?”
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. “Just eat.”
She did, but every now and then she looked at him as if he might be losing his mind.
Seepy finished his first set about the time Rhodes and Ivy finished eating. Rhodes would have liked to get some cobbler and ice cream, but talking to Seepy was more important.
“The tip jar’s right there,” Seepy said when Rhodes approached him, and sure enough, it was, sitting on a little stool near the stand where Seepy had put his guitar when he finished playing.
“Who put the money in it?” Rhodes said. “I didn’t see anybody come over here.”
“I’ve primed the pump,” Seepy said. “Now it’s your turn.”
Rhodes dug his wallet out of his back pocket, located a dollar bill, and dropped it in the jar.
“Thanks,” Seepy said. “I’m sure other dollars will accumulate now.”
Rhodes didn’t see anyone getting up to contribute, but he liked Seepy’s optimism.
“People might be too shy to come up while you’re here,” he said. “Why don’t you and Ivy and I go back to Max’s office and talk for a minute.”
“What about?”
“Bingo,” Ivy said.
“Bingo?”
“Don’t listen to her,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go ask Max if we can use his office computer.”
Max was still worrying about his sign, but he said it would be all right if they used the computer.
“Just take your pick,” he added. “I have three.”
“Three?” Rhodes said. “Why?”
“I like computers. I have four in my office at the music store. I pick them up cheap on eBay. Some of them are a little outdated, but they work fine.”
“Do you have the Internet?” Rhodes said.
Max looked insulted. “Please. I have DSL here, and cable at the music store. Do I have Internet? I hope I’ll never be without it. Not that I’m addicted. I can take it or leave it alone.”
Max had so much going on that Rhodes didn’t know when he could find time for the Internet, but it didn’t matter. All Rhodes wanted was a computer and a connection.
“Come on,” he told Seepy. “I have a job for you.”
Max showed them into the office, which was more cluttered than Rhodes would have thought possible, since Max had moved in only recently. Rhodes counted six large speakers and three computers with monitors. Books were scattered on shelves, on desks, and even on the floor. It was like being in Royce Weeks’s living room except that the books were different. They all seemed to relate to computers and electronics.
Benton looked around and declared that he felt right at home.
“Which is the fastest computer?” he asked, and Schwartz showed him an old Gateway.
“I’ve added some extra memory and perked it up a little,” he said.
Benton logged on to the Internet and asked Rhodes what to look for.
“That site we checked at Lloyd’s house. Youcachein, I think. Well, not the site itself. I want to know whose site it is.”
“I found that out already.”
“I know, but I made a rookie mistake when you told me that it was owned by some corporation.”
“What was the mistake?”
“I didn’t ask the name of the corporation. I need to know what it is.”
It didn’t take Benton long to find the answer. “It’s something called Whipsnake, Inc.”
“Bingo,” Rhodes said.
“There you go again,” Ivy said. “I wish you’d stop that.”
“Whipsnake’s the name of the corporation that owns Rollin’ Sevens,” Rhodes said. “Since they also own that Web site, there’s a connection.”
“So?” Ivy said.
“There aren’t very many caches listed on the Web site,” Rhodes said. “Tom Fulton told me there were thousands of them in this general area.”
“So?” Ivy said.
“So something’s wrong. Why so few caches on the site? I think it has something to do with Lloyd Berry’s murder.”
“I get it,” Benton said. Then he paused. “No, I don’t.”
“Let’s say you wanted to get around the law if you owned Rollin’ Sevens,” Rhodes said. “Say you wanted to give bigger prizes than the law allowed. People get tired of stuffed animals, after all.”
“Not me,” Benton said. “I like stuffed animals.”
“Normal people,” Rhodes said. “Normal people get tired of stuffed animals, and gambling for them gets old. Sooner or later, you want to win something bigger and better, but you can’t because it’s against the law. So what the corporation does is come up with a scheme. You identify the real gamblers, the ones who can be trusted and who keep coming back, and you give them a door prize. It would be easy to rig the drawing, and the winner would get something that wasn’t too valuable, like a one-day rental of a GPS.”
Benton looked at Rhodes, who corrected himself. “A GPS receiver, I mean. And you program in a location where you’ve hidden something. Money, maybe, or something worth a good bit more than a stuffed animal. A watch, a ring, whatever. A pretty good prize.”
Rhodes liked his theory a lot. It explained why Faye Lynn never won a door prize. She wasn’t one of the select gamblers. But maybe Lloyd Berry was. Wilks would be the one who handled the drawings, and he wouldn’t have taken anyone into his confidence, certainly not the Eccles cousins, who were just muscle. He wouldn’t need muscle to plant the prizes. He could take care of everything on his own.
“What does that have to do with Lloyd Berry’s murder?” Max said.
Rhodes had a couple of ideas about that, and they explained why there were no witnesses to Lloyd’s death. Not so long ago, Jerry Kergan had been run down behind his restaurant, now Max’s Place, where Kergan had been crushed against the Dumpster. Thinking of that had reminded Rhodes of the setup at the strip center.
All Wilks had to do was go out the back door, walk down behind the shops, pass by the Dumpster, and go in Berry’s back door. No one would have seen him back there. Only the cows in the pasture would have seen him, and they weren’t talking. Or maybe someone else had seen him. Rhodes had an idea about that, too.
“Lloyd and Guy Wilks had a big argument,” Rhodes said.
“So did Lloyd and Cecil,” Max said.
“I don’t think Cecil killed him. Wilks is a different story. Let’s say Lloyd knew about the caches. He had a GPS device in his car. He might have won some door prizes and collected the stuff from the caches.”
“I get it now,” Benton said. “That’s why there was nothing when we looked at those places from the Web site. Whatever had been there didn’t need to be replaced.”
“Right. Lloyd had gotten into Rollin’ Sevens pretty deep. He may have been stealing from the chorus to support his gambling. When Darrel called him on that, he needed more credit from Wilks. They argued, and when Wilks threatened to cut him off, Lloyd said he’d come to me with what he knew.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know it. I’m speculating.”
“And you think Wilks killed Lloyd?”
“It could have happened that way,” Rhodes said. “I can think of another possibility, too. Lloyd might have started to collect prizes that other people were supposed to get by checking the Web site and going to all the locations. Wilks wouldn’t have liked that if he’d found out. That would have been reason enough for killing Lloyd.”
“Neither one of those reasons seems enough for murder,” Ivy said.
“It wasn’t premeditated,” Rhodes said. “I think Wilks stewed about it for a while, then went to talk it over with Lloyd. They got into another argument, and Wilks got carried away. The wrench was there, and he used it. He probably didn’t even think about it.”
“That sounds like something Randy Lawless might say in his closing argument, anyway,” Ivy said.
“Maybe I should go to work for him,” Rhodes said. “Work the other side
of the fence for a while.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Me neither,” Rhodes said.
When they left Max’s office and went back to the dining room, Rhodes was surprised to see Ruth Grady eating at a table alone. He couldn’t remember having seen her in civilian clothes in months. He and Ivy went over to talk to her, but Benton also saw her. He slipped past Rhodes and Ivy and got to her first.
“Did you come to hear me sing?” he said.
Ruth gave him a smile. “I thought that it might be fun. Anybody who’s as kind as you are to a dog like Bruce might be worth listening to.”
Rhodes couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could Benton actually be on his way to getting a date with Ruth?
“I’ll do a song especially for you,” Benton said.
“Which one?”
Rhodes didn’t wait around to hear the title. He said hello to Ruth and got out of there.
“What’s the hurry?” Ivy said. “I wanted to talk to Ruth for a minute.”
“I need to go to work,” Rhodes said, and it was the truth. “I’ll take you home first.”
“Why not let me go with you?”
“This is county business, and you haven’t even taken the academy course yet.”
“I’ve been thinking about doing it, though,” Ivy said. “When is it going to be offered again?”
“I don’t know. It might be a long time.”
“Let me know when you decide.”
“I’ll do that,” Rhodes said, but he didn’t really mean it.
28
AFTER HE DROPPED IVY OFF AT THEIR HOUSE, RHODES DROVE out to the strip center. All the shops were dark, but there were plenty of cars on the end where Rollin’ Sevens was located. The neon sign flashed red and blue over the door.
Inside, Rollin’ Sevens looked exactly as it did during the day. Rhodes looked around for the bouncer. He saw a man called Nob Russell at one of the machines near the back. Nob was a shade-tree mechanic who got most of his money from a small inheritance and worked on cars as a sideline. He also worked out with some kind of exercise machine he’d bought at a pawnshop in Dallas. He had the muscles of a lifer in the state pen.
Rhodes went to him and asked if Guy Wilks was in.
“Why are you asking me?” Nob said.
He hadn’t shaved in a day or so, and his stubble was thick and black. His eyes were black, too, and so was his buzz-cut hair.
“I thought you might know,” Rhodes told him.
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Guy’s not here. Sammy’s pulling the duty tonight.”
“Sammy?”
“Sammy Reddington. You might not know him. He’s just been around for the last couple of weeks.”
“Where’s Guy?”
“Don’t know. I don’t keep up with him. He doesn’t work nights, and what he does then is his own business.”
Rhodes didn’t think there was any need for him to talk to Reddington. He thanked Nob and left.
When he got to his car, he called Hack on the radio and asked if Duke Pearson was still keeping an eye on Happy Franklin’s place.
“He’s been goin’ by ever’ so often,” Hack said. “I guess it’s quiet out there tonight, since he hasn’t called in about it. Nobody’s tryin’ to tear down Miz Franklin’s house or anything. Not yet, at least.”
“Send Duke out there, and let him know I’m headed out that way. I don’t want him mistaking me for one of the bad guys.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Have a look around. I might need Duke for backup.”
“What’s goin’ on?” Hack said.
“I’m not sure,” Rhodes told him, which was just the kind of thing that would make Hack even more curious, as Rhodes well knew. It was a perfect situation, so he signed off before Hack could ask anything else.
While he drove toward Franklin’s place, Rhodes thought things over. The thought of Jerry Kergan’s death had reminded him of the Dumpster in back of the strip center, but it had reminded him of a lot of other things, too, including something he’d seen in Happy Franklin’s barn: two metal easels like the kind wreaths were often placed on at funerals.
Where would Franklin have picked up something like that? Several places came to mind, and one of them was the back of Lloyd Berry’s shop.
Franklin might have been making his usual rounds on Tuesday morning about the time Berry was killed. What if he’d seen someone coming out of Berry’s back door? It might not even have registered with Franklin that what he’d seen was important, but if Wilks had seen Franklin, it would be important to Wilks. Maybe even important enough for him to take a couple of shots at Franklin in hopes of getting rid of a potential witness against him.
Rhodes didn’t know a thing about Guy Wilks other than that he managed Rollin’ Sevens, but he had no reason to believe that Wilks was any kind of marksman. He’d missed badly when shooting at Franklin. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again, however, and this time he might not miss. Even a blind hog turned up an acorn now and then.
“We haven’t had any trouble today or this evening,” Happy Franklin said.
He and Rhodes were in his barn, where Franklin had been working on the old radio when Rhodes showed up. Happy had pulled his worktable away from the window and put it where he couldn’t be seen from either the window or the big front door of the barn. The light wasn’t good, but working in shadow was better than getting shot.
“Glad to hear it,” Rhodes said, and then he asked Happy where he’d picked up the green metal easels.
“I got those in back of Lloyd Berry’s shop,” Happy said. “I don’t know why he got rid of them.” He walked over to the stands and put his hand on one. “You can see that this one’s a little wobbly, but that’s easy to fix with a little tightening up. The other one’s got a bad weld, but I can fix that, too.”
Rhodes wondered what Happy planned to do with the stands when he got them fixed, but he didn’t ask. He said, “How long have you had them?”
“Just got them the other day.” Happy paused. “Come to think of it, I guess I picked them up the day Lloyd was killed.” He paused again, longer this time. “You think somebody shot at me because of that?”
“Could be,” Rhodes said.
“I don’t see why. You said Billy Joe Byron didn’t do it, and these things were right there for the taking. Billy Joe is the only one who’d care if I got them.”
“If you saw somebody coming out of Lloyd’s shop, that person would care.”
Happy thought about it, then shook his head. “The trouble with that idea is that I didn’t see anybody.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you did, but it didn’t register at the time.”
“Nope. I’d know if I saw anybody. There’s nothing behind that strip center but the Dumpster. Nothing in back of it except a cow pasture. It’s hard to miss anybody if he’s there, and nobody was.”
“That kind of spoils my theory,” Rhodes said. “Maybe somebody was coming out the door of Lloyd’s shop and ducked back inside. Did you notice any sudden movements?”
“I was looking for treasures in the trash,” Happy said. “Not sudden movements. What I saw was these two green flower stands leaning up against the side of the Dumpster like maybe somebody was going to come out later with more trash and toss them in. That’s it.”
Rhodes was disappointed to hear it. He’d thought for sure he was on the right track, but now it appeared that if he had been, he’d been headed in the wrong direction. He asked if Mrs. Franklin had heard any more prowlers.
“No,” Happy said, “and I’m not convinced she ever heard the first one. You know, whoever put those bullets into the barn might just have been hunting rabbits or something. It could have been just an accident. That kind of thing happens around here now and then, doesn’t it?”
It did, but usually during deer season, not when somebody was hunting rabbits. Rhodes didn’t think anybody ever hunted rabbits anymore. And since Wilks wasn’t in Rollin’
Sevens, Rhodes was still going to take a look around, just in case.
“You can do it if you want to,” Happy said with a shrug. “I don’t mind if you go tramping through the pasture, but it’s muddy and wet. You’d better be careful.”
Rhodes smiled, thinking about it. “I can always take a shower later. I think a deputy will show up here in a little while. You can tell him what I’m up to.”
“I’ll do that,” Franklin said, and Rhodes left the barn to see what he could see.
Franklin was right about the wet and the mud, not that Rhodes was surprised. He’d known what he was getting into. He squished along, avoiding the mesquites as best he could as he made his way toward the roundhouse. If anybody was lurking about, that would be the ideal place to lurk.
Before he was halfway there, water had soaked through Rhodes’s shoes. He feet were cold, and the lower quarters of his pants legs were soaked, too. If he’d been smart, he’d have driven along the road below the pasture and looked for a car. A car could be hidden, however, and probably was. Or so Rhodes tried to convince himself. He’d be better off looking for someone who was hiding in the pasture or the roundhouse, waiting to sneak up to Franklin’s barn. If he’d found the car, he’d still have had to check out the pasture.
The moon was out, nearly full, and although a heavy dark cloud crossed its face now and then, Rhodes didn’t really need his flashlight. He stuck it into his back pocket and hoped it wouldn’t fall out without his knowing it.
As he walked, he listened. Besides his own squelchy footsteps, he heard an occasional car as it passed Franklin’s house on the paved road. A barn owl screeched somewhere. That was followed by the thump of something moving in the brush and then rapid thrashing as it sped away. A spooked armadillo, maybe. Certainly nothing human.
By the time Rhodes reached the roundhouse, he could no longer see the light from Franklin’s barn. Both the railroad tracks and the gravel road beside them were deserted. Rhodes might have been the only person for miles around.
Somehow, though, he didn’t think he was. It was just a feeling, but it was a strong one. The closer he got to the roundhouse, the more cautious he became.