Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes knew he had to make the necessary phone calls, but he wanted to look at the rest of the house first. He walked carefully around Mrs. Martin’s body and through the room, then down a hall leading to the rest of the house.

  Each room seemed to have been searched in the same way as the first. Closets were open, clothing scattered about. Shelves had been ransacked. Pictures had been taken off the walls. Rhodes was not able to determine what might be missing from the rooms, not having looked in them before.

  He went back to Mrs. Martin’s body. Kneeling down beside it, he looked at the spot of blood on her head. She had been hit with something, but whatever it was had not been left behind. Her robe was not so tightly belted as it had been, but there were no other signs of a struggle.

  He touched the body. It was quite cold. Mrs. Martin had been dead for a while.

  Rhodes thought things through for a minute, then got up and went to the yellow telephone hanging from one of the kitchen cabinets to make his calls.

  Clyde Ballinger came out with the ambulance that would be taking the body to Ballinger’s Funeral Home. He and Rhodes stood in the kitchen while the Justice of the Peace pronounced Mrs. Martin dead, a job that did not require much expertise in this instance. “Did you call Dr. White about an autopsy on this one?” Ballinger asked. He had a loud, almost braying, voice, though when he was performing as a funeral director it could be as smooth and soothing as anyone’s. At those times he reminded Rhodes of a short, fat Vincent Price. Not now, however. His voice could have been heard next door. He was not in awe of death.

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “He’ll meet you there.”

  “Hell, you don’t need him to tell you the cause of death,” Ballinger said. “Of course I know you’ll want him to look for clues. Skin under the fingernails, that sort of thing.”

  Ballinger liked to sit in his office behind the funeral home and read crime fiction. He thought he knew as much about crime solving as anyone, and it sometimes seemed to Rhodes as if he thought he knew more than the law-enforcement officials in Blacklin County.

  “Of course she might have been raped,” Ballinger said. “In that case the killer would have had to take her robe off and put it back on her. Or at least disarrange it and rearrange it. Might be some prints on that robe. I remember a case in the 87th Precinct—”

  “Cloth doesn’t take prints very well,” Rhodes said. He didn’t want Ballinger to get started about the 87th Precinct. He followed the adventures of Carella and Hawes religiously and could quote at length from their cases.

  “That shiny kind of cloth might,” Ballinger said. “You ought to try at least.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said.

  “It’s a good idea,” Ballinger insisted.

  “I know,” Rhodes said. “I’ll see to it.”

  After the body was removed and the J.P. had left, Ballinger went back to the funeral home and Rhodes went outside. He was walking around outside when he saw someone going into the garage.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  “It’s just me,” a quavery voice answered. “Is that you, Sheriff?”

  Rhodes walked around to the garage. Standing beside the ‘57 Chevy was a small, very old woman, about the same age as Mr. Stuart, Rhodes thought. Although the weather was still unseasonably warm, she was wearing a long, black cloth coat and had a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders. A maroon scarf was tied around her head. She peered at Rhodes over the top of a pair of half-glasses that she had probably bought at the drugstore.

  “Good morning,” Rhodes said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I can do somethin’ for you,” she said. “That is, I can if there’s been some monkey business goin’ on over here.” Her voice was thin and breathy, but no longer quavery.

  “There has,” Rhodes said. “Been some monkey business, I mean.”

  “I thought so,” the old woman said. “I thought I saw somebody lurkin’ around here last night.”

  “You might be able to help me then, Miz . . .”

  “West. Maddy West.”

  “What did you see last night, Miz West?”

  “I was out for my walk,” she said. “I go out every evenin’ for a walk. When you get to be my age, you need to keep the blood movin’ around, so I go for a walk. I usually walk by here, and I did last night. I live just down the street and around the corner and over a block or two.”

  Rhodes hadn’t thought she lived in this neighborhood.

  She seemed to read his thoughts. “I don’t have the money to live in a house like this one,” she said. “But I like to walk by and look at them. Don’t hurt nothin’. Anyway, when I saw that ambulance—” she pronounced it with the accent on “lance” “—I knew that there was some trouble, and I thought to myself that I’d just take my walk early today. So here I am.”

  “Here you are,” Rhodes said. “You were going to tell me what you could do for me.”

  “So I was. I do tend to be a little forgetful now and then these days. I talk too much, too. You might have noticed that. And when you talk too much, you don’t get much said, if you take my meaning.”

  “I think I do,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah, you look like a smart young man.” Miz West took off her glasses and rubbed at them with the ends of her scarf. “What was it that I was talkin’ about?”

  “How you could help me,” Rhodes said.

  “Oh. Well, I saw somethin’ that looked funny to me, like what you don’t see around here much. You see a lot of things like this.” She pointed to the Chevy. “Or that.” She pointed to the Lincoln. “But not like what I saw.”

  “And what was that?” Rhodes asked.

  “A pickup,” Miz West said. “Now you see some fancy pickups around here, but this wasn’t a fancy one.”

  “There must have been something funny about it to make you notice it, then,” Rhodes said. “Even if it wasn’t fancy.”

  “There sure was,” Miz West said, settling her glasses on her nose. “It had one of them little yellow signs hanging in the back window. One thing you can bet on, and that’s the truth. Even if someone around here would have a pickup like that, there ain’t a single one of ‘em would put one of them signs in the back window.”

  That was true enough, Rhodes thought. “Do you remember what the sign said?”

  “Nope. Can’t see too well without my glasses. But it was there, all right, hanging in that little back window. You can bet on that.”

  Rhodes believed her, though he would have been happier if she had been able to read the sign. He couldn’t help wondering if it said BULLRIDER ON BOARD.

  Things were hectic at the dental parlor of Dr. Samuel Martin, whereabouts unknown. Rhodes walked in on an angry patient, a middle-aged woman who was irate that Dr. Martin was not in. “My time is as valuable as his,” the woman said. “I have a good mind to see a lawyer and send Dr. Martin a bill. That’s what he’d do if I failed to show up for an appointment!”

  “I’m sure we can reschedule—” Tammy Green said.

  The woman drew herself up huffily, which wasn’t easy since she was only about five feet three. “I have no desire to reschedule. And please don’t send me any reminders. I don’t believe I’ll be needing the services of Dr. Martin again.” She turned to go and saw Rhodes.

  “Dr. Martin is involved in a little police matter,” Rhodes said. “He’s not missing today because he wants to.”

  The woman was flustered. “I . . . well, of course if it’s a police matter. . . .” Then she had a new thought. “Has he been arrested? So many of these doctors and dentists today . . .”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “He hasn’t been arrested.” Looking at the woman’s doughy face, hungry for some tidbit of scandal, he was tempted to make her day by telling her about the curse, the disappearance, and Mrs. Martin’s death. But of course he couldn’t do that. “As far as we know right now, he’s in no trouble at all.” Rhodes didn’t add that it was what he didn’t know that bot
hered him.

  “Well . . .” the woman said. “I suppose . . .” She turned back to Tammy. “You may reschedule me. But please make it for a morning hour.”

  “I’ll do that,” Tammy said. “And shall I send you a reminder?”

  The woman looked surprised. “Of course,” she said.

  When the woman left, Rhodes stepped up to the window behind which Tammy sat in a beige secretariat chair on wheels. A clipboard for the patients to sign hung on a nail beside the window, and Rhodes glanced at it. Most of the appointment times had names signed beside them with the ballpoint pen that was tied to the clipboard with a piece of white string.

  “Had many like her today?” he asked. Assuming that she had been the last to sign in, her name was Sally Brandon.

  “Not too many,” Tammy said. “Most of our patients are very understanding in an emergency.”

  “Had any who didn’t show up?”

  “Only Mrs. Robinson, and she called. She’s got the shingles.”

  “That about usual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, about usual for no-shows,” Rhodes said.

  “Oh. Yes, I guess it is.”

  Rhodes nodded. It would have been a very long shot indeed had one of Martin’s Monday patients been somehow involved with his disappearance and thus known that there was no need to keep the appointment.

  “Sheriff?” Tammy said.

  “What?” Rhodes said.

  “Could you maybe tell us what this is all about? I mean, we haven’t had too much trouble, but rescheduling the appointments isn’t easy, and we haven’t heard from Dr. Martin. When you called . . .”

  When he had called, Rhodes hadn’t told the office staff anything. He had implied that perhaps the reason for his wanting them to open without their boss had something to do with Betsy Higgins and her curse, but he hadn’t been too specific. Now, he realized, he was going to have to be very specific. And besides that, he was going to have to give them the even worse news about Mrs. Martin.

  “Is there some way you could close up now?” Rhodes asked. “Put a funeral wreath on the door or something?” It wouldn’t be too much of a deception; soon enough it would be literally true.

  “I . . . I guess so,” Tammy said “If you’re sure it’s all right. We do have a wreath, and a sign saying that all appointments have been rescheduled.”

  “That ought to do the trick,” Rhodes said.

  After Tammy put the wreath on the door, she and Rhodes went on back to the kitchen. Carol Shamblin and Jamie Fox met them there. Rhodes, not enjoying the job, told them about Dr. Martin. Then, liking it even less, he told them about Mrs. Martin.

  Tammy cried quietly. Carol went over and looked silently out the window at the pecan tree, and Jamie sat at the table. “Do you know who did it?” Jamie asked.

  “To tell the truth,” Rhodes said, “no.” He looked at Carol’s back, the rigid spine showing tight against the cloth of her white uniform.

  “And Dr. Martin?” Tammy said. “What about him? Where could he be?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Rhodes said.

  “What should we do?” Tammy asked. “I mean, I guess Carol could do some of the cleaning, like she did when she got here today, but what about . . . everything else?”

  Rhodes didn’t know exactly what to say. He wasn’t used to giving advice about how to conduct business, particularly in dentists’ offices. “I think you’d better start calling your patients and asking them to find another dentist,” he said, realizing for the first time that he really never expected to see Dr. Martin again. Not alive.

  Tammy started crying again. Jamie joined her. Rhodes walked back out into the reception area, waited a few minutes, then went back to the kitchen. Everyone seemed fairly composed now, though Carol was still staring through the window.

  “I’m going to do all I can,” he said. It was lame, he knew, but there was really nothing else he could say.

  “We know you are, Sheriff,” Tammy said. “I just hope you get whoever did it, so they’ll get what they deserve.”

  “I’ll try,” Rhodes said. That much he could promise.

  The south wind, unduly warm and humid, was sending the dead leaves scraping across the parking lot behind Ballinger’s Funeral Home. Rhodes parked his car and got out, heading for Ballinger’s office.

  Just as he had almost reached the door someone called his name. He turned to see Dr. White coming out the back door of the funeral home, followed closely by Clyde Ballinger. White was the one who had called out.

  “I was hoping to catch you,” Rhodes said. “You have anything to tell me?”

  “Not much,” Dr. White said. “She obviously hadn’t eaten anything for quite a while, and so it’s hard to fix the time of death.”

  “I think we can guess at that pretty well,” Rhodes said. “It was last night sometime, no doubt about it.”

  “Well, that’s not very close,” Dr. White said. “Anyway, she was killed by a blow to the head, as you probably guessed. Caved in the left temple. I’d say it was something like a crowbar, just guessing. Something long and thin, anyway. No sign of a struggle, though. Not at all.”

  “That’s it?” Rhodes asked.

  “That’s it,” White said. “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” Rhodes said. “Thanks.”

  “Call me if you need anything else,” White said. He was a retired doctor who did the county’s autopsies if they weren’t too complicated. They usually weren’t.

  “I’ll do that,” Rhodes said as White walked over to a three-year-old Pontiac and got in.

  “What a story this one would make,” Ballinger said as the Pontiac drove out of the parking lot. “Wealthy dentist’s wife murdered in her dressing gown, house ransacked. Course you’d have to throw in a little sex if you wanted it to sell. They knew how to handle that stuff in the old days. You ever read anything by Jonathan Craig?”

  Rhodes had to admit that he hadn’t. Most of Ballinger’s enthusiasms were writers Rhodes had never heard of.

  “He wrote stuff sort of like the 87th Precinct books,” Ballinger said. “Only not exactly. Police stuff, though. They always had this kinky sex angle, but since they were written in the Fifties he had to play it down and build it up at the same time. You know.”

  Rhodes didn’t know, but he nodded.

  “This could be the same way. I bet old Pete Selby—”

  “Who’s he?” Rhodes asked.

  “The main cop in the books. Anyway, I bet he—“

  “I bet he would, too,” Rhodes said. “But he’s not here, and this isn’t the Fifties. You wouldn’t hint to anyone that there was a sex angle to this would you, Clyde?”

  Ballinger’s round face took on a look of injured innocence. “You know me better than that, Sheriff.”

  It was true. Rhodes knew him better than that. He was letting his own frustrations show. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that these things don’t always work out like they do in stories.”

  “Yeah,” Ballinger said. “I know.” He looked at the asphalt of the parking lot for a second or two. “Say, what about Dr. Martin? How does he figure in this?”

  Rhodes told him. “I know you won’t breathe a word of this,” he said.

  “Of course not,” Ballinger said. “Boy, this is even better than I thought. Husband missing, wife murdered . . .”

  “It’s not as much fun as it sounds like,” Rhodes said.

  “I guess you’re right. I’m glad I don’t have your job. I’d rather read about it.”

  Rhodes didn’t say that he was glad he didn’t have Ballinger’s job. He didn’t want to hurt his feelings again.

  Chapter 8

  Rhodes drove aimlessly after leaving the funeral home. He was trying to put the pieces together in his mind. Missing husband, murdered wife. Abandoned vehicle. Bad blood between the missing husband and his renters, particularly Betsy Higgins and her friend Phil Swan. And Little Barnes. Mrs. Martin’s prot
esting too much. Looked like he’d never find out what that meant now. The pickup Miz West had seen, the one with a yellow diamond in the back window. But no idea of what was on the diamond. Well, an idea, all right, but nothing that was anywhere near certain.

  This was the way Rhodes always worked, nothing scientific about it. He often thought that it might be interesting to live in a big city, work on a force with computers and labs, encounter all sorts of strange and unusual crimes. But he knew that he wouldn’t be happy there. His method was to ask questions, probe into things, and rely on his instincts. So far he had been reasonably successful, given the kind of crime he had to deal with in Blacklin County. But this was begin-fling to look too complicated. He would give it a try, though, and go with what he had to work with. Maybe things would turn out to be simpler than they looked, though they seldom did.

  He supposed that it was time to pay a visit to Betsy Higgins and Phil Swan again. So far theirs was the only pickup, at least the only one with a diamond in the window, that had turned up in the case.

  He looked around to see where he was, having been driving more or less on automatic pilot. He had gotten a little way out of town, out in the area by the new high school. He looked at the windowless building and wondered what it would be like to attend classes in it, walking the coolly lit fluorescent halls, never seeing the daylight until you got out of class in the afternoon. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, and he was sure the air conditioning was more efficient in a building like that. Still, it wasn’t a place where he’d want to spend every day.

  He turned the car around and looked over at the football stadium. It was the same stadium that had once stood on the opposite side of town, the same one that had been the stadium ever since Rhodes could remember. It had simply been disassembled and moved, then put back together. At least some things stayed the same.

  Rhodes called Hack on the radio to tell him where he’d be.

  “You sure you don’t want some backup, Sheriff?” Hack asked.