Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  The mileage still hadn’t changed. Rhodes looked at the machine at least once a day, and he really intended to get on it and try it out soon, but somehow the right time never seemed to come.

  He looked down at the floor. He could still see his feet. You certainly couldn’t say he was fat, even if he couldn’t quite see his belt buckle. Actually, he thought, he was in pretty good shape for a man of his age. He could still mix it up in a fight if he had to, as he had proved fairly recently. If he had to chase someone, he could do so without too much huffing and puffing.

  On the other hand, no one would mistake him for Skinny Minnie, either. He had to admit that he had put on a few pounds in the last three or four years, part of the aging process, he supposed. He certainly hadn’t changed his eating habits any. They were still bad.

  Thinking of his eating habits led him to think of lunch. He had grabbed a hamburger before going to Dr. Martin’s office, but that was all. Well, that and a Dr Pepper. One of these days, maybe he would think about diet drinks. But only as a last resort. He wondered if there was anything to eat in the refrigerator.

  He went to look, mainly to get out of the room with the stationary bike. As he had suspected, there was nothing he wanted—the somewhat shriveled apple and the slightly off-color bologna held little appeal.

  He walked into the living room and turned up the fire in the brown Dearborn heater. He would get started on his exercise program later. If Ivy Daniel really liked him, she liked him for what he was, and she wouldn’t care if he carried a few extra pounds. He would have to ask her about that if the subject came up. They had been what Rhodes considered “sort of” engaged for several months now, and the subject shouldn’t be embarrassing.

  The problem was that Ivy wasn’t carrying any extra weight around, and she was nearly as old as Rhodes.

  Well, he thought, there’s always the bicycle. He turned on the TV set to watch the last twenty minutes of Walk the Proud Land.

  Chapter 3

  Dr. Martin disappeared a week and a half later.

  His wife called Rhodes at home in the middle of the night, distraught. “I just can’t understand it,” she said. “He’s never been away this late. Never! Not in the whole time we’ve been married. I just know something terrible has happened to him. You’ve got to find him, Sheriff!”

  It was a Saturday night and Rhodes had been up very late. It was less than two weeks before Christmas, and the celebrating had already begun at various clubs and private parties around the county. Celebrating often led to drinking, which in turn often led to speeding, hazardous driving, accidents, and any number of other minor problems, all of which involved the Sheriff’s Department. Rhodes was not at his best when awakened after only two hours’ sleep.

  He turned in the bed and looked at the clock, which to his gummy eyes seemed to say 3:13 in red digital letters. He lay back on the pillow. “Maybe he’s just out getting in the Christmas spirit,” he said.

  “You haven’t been listening, Sheriff,” Mrs. Martin said. She had a pleasant enough voice, but it definitely had an edge to it. “Sam would have told me if it had been anything like that. He has never stayed away without letting me know. I want you to find him.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might be?” Rhodes asked, still lying back in the bed.

  “Not really. He left home around noon. He said he had to check up on some of his renters. He wanted to get the money they owed him before they spent it all on Christmas presents.”

  What a guy, Rhodes thought.

  “Did he say which renters he was going to visit?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  Great, Rhodes thought.

  “I know he’s been in some horrible accident. He might be lying dead in a ditch right now,” Mrs. Martin said. “And you’ve got to do something about it!”

  Rhodes sat up. “I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Martin, but I’ll have to have some idea of where he might have gone. I can’t just search the whole county at random. Do you have a list of the properties he owns and who owed him rent?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I’ll pick it up as soon as I can get dressed,” Rhodes said

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  Mrs. Martin hung up.

  Rhodes sat with the phone in his hand for a minute, then forced himself to get out of the bed. The weather had been unusually warm for the past few days, almost like early fall, but the floor was still cold to his feet as he stepped on it.

  He avoided the bicycle and stepped into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. It didn’t really wake him up, but it seemed to help a little. It was too bad he didn’t like coffee, he thought. Right now the caffeine rush would probably do him some good.

  He dressed, slipped on a light nylon jacket, and went outside. It was a dark, almost cloudless night, crisp and cool. The sky was filled with stars. Rhodes looked up for a minute, almost glad that Mrs. Martin had called him.

  Speedo padded over to see what was happening. Rhodes knelt down and roughed his fur. Mrs. Martin could wait for a few more minutes. The more he thought about it, the more Rhodes was convinced that her husband had just gone out for a little holiday fun and would be back eventually. There didn’t seem to be any need to hurry.

  The Martins lived in what passed for opulence in most of Clearview. Their house was only five years old, and it sat on a large lot with several shade trees. There were only a few houses around it, most of them owned by lawyers, doctors, or other dentists. Clearview had three dentists, and all three lived within two blocks of one another.

  The house was mostly brick, single story, and probably had over three thousand square feet of living space. It also had a four-car garage, and Rhodes could see as he pulled up to the side that only three vehicles were home: a Lincoln Town Car, which he assumed was Mrs. Martin’s; a completely restored 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air, white over green, which Rhodes wouldn’t have minded owning himself; and a Toyota Camry. The fourth stall was empty, and Rhodes figured that Dr. Martin had been driving whatever had been parked there.

  Rhodes walked past the open garage, to the front of the house. The porch was made of wide, flat stones of varying sizes. Rhodes walked across it and rang the doorbell.

  Almost immediately one of the double wooden doors was pulled open. “Come in, Sheriff,” Mrs. Martin said. She was a short woman wearing a pale blue dressing gown of some shiny material that looked like silk but probably wasn’t. The gown was belted tight around her waist. She had what Rhodes thought might be described as a “buxom” figure—wide hips and large breasts—but he almost caught himself staring at her hair, an old-fashioned bouffant style that was so stiff with spray that it looked as if you could crack pecans on it.

  She didn’t wait for Rhodes to come in, but turned and walked down the short entry hall to the den. Rhodes followed her. The den was about as big as Rhodes’s whole house, divided into two sections by the arrangement of couches and chairs. In one corner was a Christmas tree that Rhodes was sure had to be compressed to come in through the double door. The room’s vaulted ceiling gave it plenty of room, however, even though it was at least nine feet tall. It was decorated entirely with red ornaments. The lights weren’t on, but Rhodes thought that they would undoubtedly be red, too.

  On the wall to Rhodes’s right there was a built-in bookcase and home entertainment center. The bookshelves were not filled, but there were a few neatly arranged volumes. There was also a small desk. Mrs. Martin was standing by it.

  “I have the information you wanted, Sheriff,” she said. The edge was in her, voice. “I hope I can count on you to check these places out.”

  “I will,” Rhodes said, “but I can’t guarantee that I’ll find anything. For all we know, he might have gone somewhere that you don’t have on the list.”

  “I’m sure that’s possible,” she said. She handed Rhodes a sheet of white paper. The list was neatly written in small rounded letters. There were four names.

  “All of
those people owed us rent,” Mrs. Martin said. “I assume that he was going to see one or all of them.”

  Rhodes glanced at the list. Betsy Higgins, naturally. Little Barnes, too, along with Steve Reed and Harry Stokes.

  “Do you all know any of these folks?” Rhodes asked.

  Mrs. Martin looked at him, her young face at complete odds with her dated hairdo. “If you mean that Higgins person, Sam has told me about the ‘curse’ she laid on him. Surely you don’t think—”

  “No, I don’t,” Rhodes said. “I don’t put much stock in that sort of thing, myself.”

  Mrs. Martin clasped her arms beneath her breasts as if to hold them up. “I can assure you that I don’t, either. And of course neither did Sam. Of course he was upset at first, but when he thought about it for a while, we both laughed.”

  “She’s on the list, though,” Rhodes said.

  “Only because she still owes the rent she hadn’t paid when she came into Sam’s office and started cursing him,” Mrs. Martin said. “It’s only a coincidence.”

  “Well, I’ll check it out,” Rhodes said. “What I can do tonight is drive around all these places, see if there’s been an unreported accident. Make sure your husband didn’t drive off in a ditch and get stuck. I really can’t begin talking to people until daylight.”

  “Why not?” Her voice was sharp.

  Rhodes answered softly because he could tell that she was genuinely worried. “Because there hasn’t been enough time for your husband to be an official ‘missing person.’ I can’t go knocking on folks’ doors in the middle of the night when he’s only been gone a little over half a day. Tomorrow, when everybody’s awake, I’ll knock on doors.”

  “Well . . . if that’s the way it has to be done.” She still wasn’t happy. Rhodes thought that she was a woman used to getting her way.

  “That’s the way,” he said. “But don’t worry about it. He probably just had a flat, or engine trouble. Something like that. He’ll be right here before daylight.” He didn’t mention what he really thought, that Dr. Martin was probably carousing somewhere.

  “I hope you’re right,” Mrs. Martin said. “And you will check?”

  “Of course,” Rhodes said. “I’ll get started right now.”

  She showed him to the door.

  As he stepped out, he turned. “What kind of car is he driving?” It was the first thing he should have asked. He was sleepier than he had thought.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Martin said. “It isn’t a car. It’s a Chevrolet Suburban, a 1985. Solid black.”

  “Do you know the license number?”

  “It’s a personalized plate,” she said. Rhodes called them vanity plates. “It says ‘TEETH.’ ”

  “Shouldn’t be hard to spot,” Rhodes said.

  “No,” she said. For the first time she almost smiled.

  Rhodes drove through the downtown area just to see if anything was happening. Nothing was. The red and green tinsel hung limply from the light poles and the wires at the intersections, but the holiday lighting had been turned off. There was no traffic at all. All of the buildings were lighted except the vacant ones, and there were too many of those. Rhodes could remember the time when everybody in Clearview, it seemed, was downtown on Saturday night, though of course not at this late hour. Now most of the stores closed at noon, and the town was dead and deserted by five o’clock. Everyone went to Wal-Mart.

  After passing through town, Rhodes drove by the nightclubs on the outskirts of town. The Paragon. The Hot Club. The Club 44. All were closed, since it was now Sunday morning. Blacklin was what Rhodes called semi-dry. No liquor could be sold within the county’s borders, either in bottles or by the drink, though beer and wine could be sold in grocery stores and in the clubs, which had been called honky-tonks in Rhodes’s younger days. Some of the buildings had been around for at least that long, though there were newer ones like the Paragon that catered to the upscale crowd. The blue-collar drinkers liked it too, however.

  No one had run a car in the ditches near any of the clubs. The area was completely deserted. Rhodes turned and drove toward Mt. Roma, a name he’d never quite understood. There was no mountain, and there was no resemblance to Rome. Maybe someone had just liked the name.

  Rhodes wound among the peach orchards on the country road and soon came to Little Barnes’s place, or the place he was renting from Dr. Martin. It was only about four miles from town, easy walking distance if anything had happened to a Suburban. The ditches were clear, and there were no signs of anyone having driven off the dirt road. Rhodes went on by the Barnes place for about a half mile, but he found nothing. He was beginning to think that maybe Mrs. Martin was correct. Maybe something was wrong.

  He drove back into town and by the house where Betsy Higgins lived. Parked beside it was a pickup he hadn’t noticed before. In the back window was one of those diamond-shaped yellow signs with black lettering: “Bullrider on Board.” There was no sign of the dentist’s Suburban.

  Steve Reed and Harry Stokes, the other two names on the list, were not familiar to Rhodes. He would have to wait until morning to check them out. He’d looked around, as he had promised. Now he was going to go home and sleep for a couple of hours. Or maybe three. He’d have to get up and catch everybody before church, except that he was pretty sure Betsy Higgins didn’t go to church, being a witch, and he would be willing to bet that Little Barnes didn’t go to church either. At least he didn’t have the reputation of a church-going man. He didn’t know about the others, though. Well, he could find out.

  Rhodes got to the jail at nine o’clock, a little later than he had intended. He’d gotten home and made the mistake of turning on the TV just in time for a few minutes of Untamed Women, which was about a group of women druids who lived on a South Sea island. Rhodes didn’t know just exactly how they had gotten there, and he never did find out before the volcano blew up at the end. He had been tempted once or twice to buy a video recorder, but he hadn’t. He thought that to appreciate a movie like Untamed Women you had to watch it at around four-thirty in the morning with commercials for waterbed companies. So he’d overslept a little bit, despite his good intentions.

  “I didn’t expect to see you this morning,” Hack said.

  Rhodes told him about the disappearance of Dr. Martin.

  “Ain’t he the one got the curse put on him?”

  “He’s the one. I imagine he’ll turn up, though. Probably out for a little Christmas cheer.”

  “We could use some of that around here,” Hack said, looking around the office. “When all you got for decorations is Christmas cards from forensic labs, you ain’t got much.”

  “Don’t forget the one from Mrs. Wilkie,” Rhodes said.

  “She’s not givin’ up easy,” Hack said.”She thinks she’ll get you yet. You better watch your step.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rhodes said. “Anything happen last night that I should know about?”

  “It was all quiet after you signed off,” Hack told him.

  Rhodes asked about Steve Reed and Harry Stokes.

  “I’m not sure,” Hack said. “Both of ‘em rent out around Milsby, I think. Small places, not like the one Little Barnes has. They don’t live there, though. They’re just weekend cowboys. Live in town and mess with cows in their spare time.”

  “You mean I can look them up in the phone book,” Rhodes said.

  “If they got phones. We got a city directory, you know.” They were both in the phone book.

  “I’ll check with you later,” Rhodes said. “Give me a call if you need me.”

  “Always do,” Hack said.

  The sun was shining in an almost cloudless sky, and the temperature was nearly sixty degrees. Rhodes had a hard time believing that it was nearly Christmas. He wondered what he could get Ivy. He hadn’t bought a gift for a woman for a while.

  Neither Reed nor Stokes would admit to having seen Dr. Martin the previous day. Both in fact protested that their checks had been mailed, and Stoke
s even showed Rhodes the check stub. Reed was in a hurry to get to church, but he told Rhodes to come back later and he’d show him the records. Rhodes said he might not need to see them.

  In fact, Rhodes was not a modern cop who believed in lie detectors, computers, and fancy interrogation methods. He relied on instinct and dogged investigation, asking questions until he got the right answers. He liked to think he was a good judge of people, though he would admit that he’d been fooled more than once. Anyway, his impression was that Stokes and Reed had nothing to hide.

  So he drove to the house where Betsy Higgins and Phil Swan lived. The pickup was still there. Rhodes got out of his car and started walking to the door. Before he got there Swan shouldered his way outside.

  “What’s the trouble, Sheriff?” he asked.

  “No trouble,” Rhodes said. “I just wanted to talk to you and Miz Higgins again.”

  “What about?”

  The house was up on blocks, and that made the porch where Swan was standing about a foot off the ground. He was already quite a bit taller than Rhodes, and now he looked down on him from an even greater height, glowering. He had a good face to glower with.

  “Dr. Martin,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, we told you about that the other day,” Swan said. “I don’t know as we have any more to say.”

  “I don’t think Dr. Martin ever got his money,” Rhodes said. He didn’t make any attempt to get up on the porch with Swan. There was room, but he didn’t think he’d feel comfortable.

  “‘Yeah, well the mail service is pretty bad these days,” Swan said. “He’ll get it sooner or later.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Rhodes said. “Is that what you told him yesterday?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Swan said.