Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  “That’s not what I mean,” Rhodes said. “Nobody’s seen Dr. Martin since that day you cursed him.”

  “Oh my God,” Barney said. “You don’t think that the curse . . . I mean, you can’t possibly believe that I . . . why, that cat was just a cat that happened to be black . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

  Rhodes had a strong feeling that Barney was telling the truth, just as he had felt that Swan was. Still, the situation was too crazy for him to simply let them go. He was going to hold them in the jail for a few more days and see what turned up.

  “We’ll talk about it again,” Rhodes said. “Is everything OK?”

  “But you said . . . you think . . .”

  “Right now I’m not sure what I think,” Rhodes told him. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Well. All right. I suppose I could use a jacket of some kind. It is pretty chilly in here.”

  Rhodes heard the wind again. “I’ll have Lawton bring you another blanket,” he said.

  Back downstairs Rhodes told Hack that he was going to lunch. “Get Ruth Grady to go over and fingerprint the Martins’ house,” he said. “I know that half the people in the county have been in there, but tell her to try the kitchen and especially the areas around where the stuff was stolen. There might be something.”

  “I’ll do it,” Hack said. “You think you might find the prints of those two upstairs?”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said. He wasn’t sure at all. And even if the prints were found, Swan already had a story to cover himself. Barney had said he didn’t go inside, but he could change that if he had to. Besides, Rhodes didn’t have much faith in finding any prints. He didn’t recall a single case in Blacklin County ever being solved with fingerprint evidence.

  “You goin’ shoppin’ on your lunch hour?” Hack asked,

  Rhodes didn’t answer.

  “I may want to take a couple of hours off later in the day,” Hack said. “I got a couple of presents to buy, myself.”

  “I’ll take the calls,” Rhodes said. “You can go after lunch.”

  “Mighty good,” Hack said. “I already know what I’m gettin’ for the one whose name I drew. How ‘bout you?”

  Rhodes still said nothing.

  “Lawton was right about you,” Hack said. “You’re losin’ your sense of humor.”

  “He may be right,” Rhodes said, heading out the door.

  Chapter 14

  Rhodes was sitting on the Huffy Sunsprint, his feet on the pedals, staring at the speedometer. The needle of the speedometer wasn’t moving, probably because Rhodes wasn’t pedaling. For some reason he couldn’t bring himself to try.

  Maybe, he thought, if I carried the thing into the other room and put it in front of the TV set, I could do it. At least he would have something to look at besides the speedometer.

  He picked up the bike and hauled it through the doorway. It really wasn’t very heavy. He got it positioned without difficulty and got back on the seat.

  He realized that he wasn’t overly fond of bicycle seats, though this one was fairly comfortable compared to some he’d seen, skinny little things that looked almost impossible to balance on.

  He put his feet on the pedals and gave a tentative push. They went right around, very fast. It seemed easy enough, so he got off and turned on the TV set. He searched through the channels for a movie, but none was on at that time of day. He had his choice of three different soap operas, a game show, some really miserable animated cartoons, and a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show. He’d seen all of Andy’s shows a hundred times, but he figured that it was by far the best choice.

  He got back on the bike and started pedaling, meanwhile watching Barney Fife talking on the telephone to Juanita down at the diner. Barney was just beginning to sing “ ‘Nita, Juanita,” when Andy walked in. By that time Rhodes’s feet were flying, and the front wheel of the bike was spinning at an incredible rate, faster and faster.

  It dawned on Rhodes that something was wrong. He’d thought that the exercise bike would be a painless way of getting in shape, but it wasn’t supposed to be this easy. He looked down in front of him and saw the black knob which was used for adding resistance to the wheel. He kept pedaling as hard as he could and gradually turning the black knob to increase the resistance. When he thought he had it about right, he took his hand off the knob and turned back to the television show.

  As he watched the episode unfold, Rhodes wondered if anyone had ever disappeared in Mayberry. Or if anyone had ever been murdered. He was sure that Sheriff Taylor could have solved things in less than thirty minutes and then made sure that Barney got credit for the whole thing. Rhodes wished his own case were that easy.

  Then he thought about the similarity of names. Barney Fife and Barney Higgins. He remembered the episode in which Barney had dressed as a woman to fool Ernest T. Bass. There really wasn’t much resemblance between him and Betsy Higgins, though. Betsy actually looked like a woman. Barney could never have fooled anyone for very long.

  Rhodes’s legs were getting incredibly tired. He wondered how long he’d been pedaling. A commercial came on. He hadn’t begun at the beginning of the program, and this was the first commercial break. He’d been at it for ten minutes at the most. Maybe less. It seemed more like ten hours.

  He stopped pedaling and got off the bike. He almost fell down. His legs felt as weak as if he’d just recovered from a three-week fever. His butt hurt where the seat had poked into it.

  He took a few steps, and his legs felt better. But not a lot better. His stomach, the part of him that he worried most about, didn’t feel any different at all. He could tell already that the exercise program was going to be a failure. What he really needed was another bologna sandwich to go with the one he’d already eaten. He’d started into the kitchen when the phone rang.

  It was Hack. “You better get out to Sunny Dale,” he said. “It’s big trouble this time, and Deputy Grady is at the Martin house.”

  “Big trouble?” Rhodes asked.

  “Food fight,” Hack said.

  “I’m on my way,” Rhodes told him.

  Sunny Dale looked perfectly calm on the outside, as if it were living up to its name. The sun was indeed shining, even though the wind pierced Rhodes’s coat like a knife when he stepped out of his car. There was no one on the porch and all seemed serene.

  Rhodes walked up and opened the front door; all pretense of serenity at once disappeared. He heard screaming and the crash of plastic trays hitting the walls.

  A Christmas tree hung with scraggly tinsel that looked at least as old as Sunny Dale’s youngest resident now stood in the entrance mom. There was a moth-eaten angel on top, and the tree was covered with cloth and plastic decorations—nothing breakable. There were no lights on it. Rhodes thought it was one of the saddest-looking trees he’d ever seen. From somewhere, the speaker system probably, jolly Christmas songs were competing with the yelling. Rhodes thought he recognized “Sleigh Ride,” but he wasn’t sure. There was too much other noise.

  He walked to the reception desk. Earlene was there, with what looked like potato salad in her hair.

  “You got a gun?” Earlene asked. “ ‘Cause if you do I want you to shoot ‘em. I’ll point out which ones, and you shoot ‘em.”

  “We wouldn’t want to violate anyone’s civil rights,” Rhodes said.

  “I would,” Earlene said. “Quick.”

  “Where’s the fight?” Rhodes asked.

  “They’ve got Mr. Patterson trapped in—Look out!” Rhodes turned just in time to see a man charging down the ball with a plastic bowl held over his head. There was something white in the bowl, mashed potatoes, maybe, or flee. Or grits. Rhodes couldn’t tell.

  The old man tossed the bowl, but he didn’t have any speed on it, or any accuracy. Rhodes stepped to the side and the bowl went harmlessly past him, landing somewhere behind the desk.

  “Damn,” Earlene said. “Now I’m going to step in that for sure.”

  The old man who had throw
n whatever it was turned and headed back down the hall.

  “He’s going to Mr. Stuart’s room,” Earlene said. “That’s where they’ve got Mr. Patterson hemmed up.”

  That was the direction from which most of the noise was coming, too, and Rhodes walked down the hall toward it. He realized now that most of what he’d thought to be yelling was really high-pitched laughter.

  The speaker system was playing “Holly Jolly Christmas” by someone that sounded vaguely like Burl Ives. Rhodes tried to ignore it.

  He got to Mr. Stuart’s room. The door was open, and Rhodes looked in. Mr. Patterson was at bay in the far corner, his neat white outfit spattered by potatoes, gravy, and a few green peas here and there. The walls of the room looked as if they’d been repainted by one of the painters that Rhodes didn’t understand. There were colorful blotches everywhere.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Mr. Patterson said.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Rhodes said, as if he couldn’t see.

  A man in a wheelchair had Patterson blocked in the corner. The man was holding a sectioned plate with peas and meat and gravy in their various places. He looked ready to throw it at the least provocation. Three other old men, including Mr. Stuart, sat on the bed. They were empty handed, but they were grinning as if they had helped put some of the mess on the wails. Two other men, including the one who had tossed the bowl, were standing by the bed.

  “These . . . these old reprobates!” Mr. Patterson shouted. “You can just see what they’ve done. I want them all arrested for disorderly conduct.”

  “Well, now,” Rhodes said. “I guess you gentlemen have a good explanation for all of this.”

  “Of course they don’t!” Mr. Patterson said. The man in the wheelchair moved closer to him, and Mr. Patterson shut up. His face was getting very red, and Rhodes suspected that his blood pressure would set some sort of record. If they could only record it.

  “Mr. Stuart?” Rhodes said.

  The old man slid off the bed. His legs were short, and they didn’t reach the floor from the high hospital-size sleeper. He seemed pretty agile to Rhodes, at least for an eighty-seven-year-old man.

  “He’s keeping us apart,” Mr. Stuart said. “‘It’s not right, especially now at Christmas time.”

  “You and Miz White,” Rhodes said.

  “Yep,” Mr. Stuart said.

  “Of course I’m keeping them apart,” Patterson said. “I’ve told them before—”

  “I’m going to run over his foot if he don’t shut up,” the man in the wheelchair said. He gave Patterson a hard look.

  “That’s Bob Terry,” Stuart said. “He’d do it, too.”

  “Damn right,” Bob Terry said.

  “Arrest them all, Sheriff,” Patterson wailed. “It’s lawlessness, it’s anarchy, it’s—”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Patterson,” Rhodes said. “I thought we’d agreed the last time I was out here that all this would get straightened out.”

  “I said we’d try something for a week and see what happened,” Patterson said. “Well, I tried. But it just didn’t work.”

  “Why not?” Rhodes asked.

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ll tell you why not,” Mr. Stuart said. “It didn’t work because he didn’t let it work. It was goin’ just fine, but he got all upset.”

  “Why?” Rhodes asked.

  “Because he’s livin’ in the Fifties, that’s why,” Stuart said. “He ought to move into the Eighties like the rest of us. I thought it was old guys like us that was supposed to live in the past, not administrators like him.”

  “I’m still not sure what you mean,” Rhodes said. It was a familiar feeling for him these days.

  “I mean—”

  “He means that I wouldn’t let him live in sin with Miz White, that’s what he means!” Patterson yelled from his corner. “He means that I wouldn’t permit the things he wants to do, even though I offered him liberal rights!”

  “Liberal rights?” Rhodes asked.

  “Means he’d let me sit in her room at nap time,” Stuart said. “That’s what he calls liberal.”

  The old men on the bed laughed their cracking old men’s laughs.

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “Mr. Terry, you let Mr. Patterson go now.”

  Mr. Terry didn’t look happy, but he moved the wheelchair. Mr. Patterson escaped his corner.

  “I’ll talk to them first,” Rhodes said. “‘Then I’ll talk to you.”

  Mr. Patterson went out into the hall, glaring back at the old men.

  “Mr. Terry, you know a guy named Radford?” Rhodes asked.

  “That’s him,” Mr. Terry said, pointing to one of the two men still sitting on the bed.

  “You run over Earlene’s foot in a wheelchair?” Rhodes asked him.

  “Sure did,” the man said. He looked sheepish. “Didn’t really mean to, though.”

  “Well, you ought not to give Mr. Terry ideas like that,” Rhodes said. “And who started all this?” He waved his arms at the walls.

  “I guess I did,” Mr. Stuart said. “But, Sheriff—”

  “No buts,” Rhodes said. “It’s wrong, and I want you to clean it all up. Not Earlene. You.”

  The old men grumbled, but they agreed.

  “And I don’t want it to happen again,” Rhodes said. “Or anything like it. If it does, I will arrest you. Or I might even have Mr. Patterson turn you out. You wouldn’t want that would you, Mr. Stuart?”

  “No, sir,” the old man said. “I wouldn’t want that. Might have to go live with my daughter.”

  “Everyone has to live by the laws,” Rhodes said. “Sometimes we can bend them a little, but that’s all. I’ll talk to Mr. Patterson, but he’s the boss here. He runs the show. You got that?”

  The old men nodded.

  “And I want you to apologize to Earlene,” Rhodes said.

  There was more grumbling, and then the nods.

  “All right,” Rhodes said. He went out and left them there.

  Patterson was at the reception desk. He’d cleaned his whites a bit, and Earlene had the mess out of her hair.

  Rhodes glanced down the hall to the women’s wing. A white head slipped back inside a doorway.

  “Well?” Mr. Patterson asked.

  “Well, it won’t happen again,” Rhodes said. “At least, I don’t think it will.”

  “What about punishing them?” Patterson asked.

  “They aren’t kids,” Rhodes said. “They know they were wrong, and they’ll clean up their mess. I’m sure not going to arrest them.

  “I guess I didn’t really expect that,” Patterson said.

  Earlene looked disappointed.

  “I think you ought to rethink your rules,” Rhodes said. “I don’t like to tell a man how to run his business, but it seems to me I see in the papers all the time about old people meeting in places like this and getting married.”

  “Not in ‘places like this,’ “ Patterson said. “Sunny Dale is different. At Sunny Dale, we don’t allow—”

  “Don’t allow old people to fall in love?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Patterson said.

  “Well, you might at least think about it,” Rhodes said. “It’s Christmas, and a lot of the families will be coming in regularly. You could ask some of them how they’d like to have married couples living here and see if they’d object.”

  “Well . . .”

  “And if any of them objected, you could bring Mr. Stuart to them and let him hear. Then maybe he’d understand and give in a little bit.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Patterson said. “But I don’t like to think that the inmates are running the asylum.”

  “You probably didn’t mean to say that.”

  Patterson thought about it. “I guess I didn’t. Not exactly the way I said it, at least.”

  “Besides,” Rhodes said, “you wouldn’t want any families or friends to walk into something like this mess today.”

&nb
sp; “That’s true too,” Patterson said. “It’s just that it’s so hard to know what to do. I try to do the right thing . . .”

  “I’m sure you do,” Rhodes said, “and I’m sure you do a fine job.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff,” Patterson said. “I think sometimes that no one really cares. They just dump these old people here and leave it up to me to cope with them. As you can see, most of them are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, at least for short periods of time. I don’t mean to cause you trouble, and I know you have other things to do, but these last few weeks have been a real strain on me. This romance business is for the birds.”

  “I know what you mean,” Rhodes said.

  “Does this mean you aren’t going to shoot anybody?” Earlene said.

  “I don’t think I’ll have to,” Rhodes said.

  “You don’t know this bunch very well,” Earlene said. “You just wait till you’re out the door.”

  “They’ll behave,” Rhodes told her. “I’ll bet that if you go down there right now, they might even apologize to you.”

  “Sure they will,” Earlene said.

  “Give it a try, Earlene,” Mr. Patterson said. “It couldn’t hurt.”

  “If one of ‘em runs over my foot with that wheelchair, I’m suing you and this whole place,” Earlene said.

  Mr. Patterson looked pained.

  “Don’t worry,” Rhodes said. “It won’t happen.”

  “I hope not,” Patterson said. “She’s not kidding.”

  “I believed her,” Rhodes said. As he went out through the entrance hall, “Silver Bells” wafted to his ears through the speaker system. He managed to get out before he heard more than a line or two.

  Chapter 15

  Rhodes drove out to the Martin house, where Ruth Grady was finishing up with her fingerprinting.

  “I raised plenty of prints,” she told him. “All you have to do is match them up.”

  “Most of them are the Martins’, I’m sure,” Rhodes said. “Did you find anything else interesting?”

  “I looked over the whole place pretty carefully,” she said. “I didn’t find a thing.”