Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  She meant that she hadn’t found a thing that would be of help. There were plenty of things to find, otherwise. Rhodes sent her back to the jail with her prints while he sat down at the kitchen table and thought. Surely there was something . . .

  He went back out into the garage, which was really more like a carport since it didn’t have any doors. He admired the ‘57 Chevy for a minute and then looked around. The usual tools that he might have expected to find were missing, but because Martin was a sort of handyman who liked to fix up his own property, rental and otherwise, there was a storage shed out back for the tools.

  Except for one long wooden box with triangular ends joined by a wooden bar. It sat near the back door and contained two hammers, some nails, several screwdrivers, a pair of Vise Grips, a socket set, several plastic packages of screws, two pairs of pliers, and some wire. Probably the box Martin grabbed up when he had a quick repair to make. He wouldn’t want to carry tools around in his Suburban.

  Rhodes wondered about a crowbar. Probably there should have been a short crowbar in the box, but there wasn’t one. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could mean that Mrs. Martin’s killer had grabbed up a handy weapon, but it didn’t have to mean that. And even if it did, Rhodes didn’t see how that helped him.

  He got in his car and drove back to the jail.

  “No presents?” Hack asked.

  “No,” Rhodes said. “No presents.”

  “How about my time off?”

  “Go ahead,” Rhodes said.

  Hack got up. “I know what I’m gonna get,” he said. “Already got it figured out.”

  He put on a coat that had been hanging on the back of his chair. “Just takes a little thought, is all. You oughta give it some thought, Sheriff.”

  “I will,” Rhodes said.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” Hack said.

  Rhodes sat down by the radio and phone. “Take your time,” he said.

  Hack was gone for less than an hour. He came back in with a bright package wrapped in red foil and tied with a green ribbon. “Don’t look,” he said. “You’ll know what this is and who got it.”

  “It would be hard to avoid,” Rhodes said.

  “I think it’s pretty,” Hack said, putting it under the tree.

  “We get any calls?”

  “Just one,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah? Who was it?”

  “Didn’t say,” Rhodes told him.

  “Didn’t say?”

  “Anonymous call.“

  “Oh,” Hack said. “Wouldn’t give you a name?”

  “Right.”

  Hack looked at the presents under the tree. “Man or woman?”

  “Man,” Rhodes said.

  Hack walked over to the tree and picked up a small package with a card on it. “This ‘un’s for me,” he said. He shook the package near his ear, but it didn’t appear to make a sound. All Rhodes could hear was the rattle of paper in Hack’s hand.

  “Say what he wanted?” Hack asked after he put the package back down.

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. He got up from Hack’s chair and went to his own desk. Hack walked over and sat in his chair.

  “Well,” Hack said. “What did he want?”

  “Report somebody being murdered,” Rhodes said. He busied himself with some papers on his desk, shuffling through them and then stacking them.

  “Murder?” Hack asked.

  “That’s what he said.” Rhodes set the stack of papers aside and reached to the back of the desk for another bunch. He started shuffling through them.

  “All right, dang it,” Hack said. “I give up. Lawton said you’d been touchy lately, and I said no. But I’m beginnin’ to think he was right, for once.”

  Rhodes put down the papers and looked over at Hack. “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s not like you to try to get back at a fella, that’s why.” Hack shucked off his coat and hung it on the back of his chair.

  Rhodes smiled. “Get back at a fella for what?”

  “Nothin’,” Hack said.

  Rhodes smiled wider. “Seems to me that you’re the one who’s getting touchy,” he said. “Since there’s no reason for me to get back at you.”

  “All right, I get it. You don’t have to rub it in.”

  “Rub what in?”

  “Never mind,” Hack said.

  “You don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Who got murdered. Where they was when it happened. Who you sent out there. And why you’re sittin” so calm about it all.”

  “I didn’t say anybody was murdered.”

  “You said—said that the caller wanted to report a murder,” Rhodes said.

  “Oh,” Hack said.

  “There’s a big difference,” Rhodes said. “Like the difference between a dead body in a ditch and a man with diabetes in a ditch.”

  “I said I got it,” Hack said. “I swear you’re just as bad as Lawton said you was.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Rhodes said.

  “I know I am. But you better tell me anyway,” Hack said.

  The game had gone on long enough, but Rhodes had enjoyed it. It didn’t begin to make up for the times Hack had teased him with the details of a call, but it was a start.

  “Well,” Rhodes said, “a man called to report a murder on Apple Street. Said it sounded like someone was being killed out behind a garage. Since I was stuck here, I called Buddy to check it out.”

  “What’d he find?”

  “He found out that some people just don’t have very well-developed musical tastes. Or maybe they do. Maybe they’re too developed.”

  “Music?”

  “Larry Tilley, Lester Tilley’s son,” Rhodes said. “Has him a little heavy metal band. Call themselves the Manglers. They play on weekends at some of the clubs around, if the clubs can’t get anybody else. They were rehearsing after school in Lester’s garage. I guess if you were a little hard of hearing you might take it for the sound of somebody getting killed. Buddy says that Larry can scream the high notes so you’d think so. I’m going to take his word for it.”

  “They wear those spiky leather gloves and stuff?” Hack asked.

  “I guess,” Rhodes said. “You a heavy metal fan?”

  “I lean more toward Eddy Arnold,” Hack said. “But I know about stuff like that.”

  Rhodes thought about Mr. Stuart. “An Eighties kind of guy, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, but I sort of keep up,” Hack said.

  Rhodes thought of asking how, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  That night Rhodes was talking about Dr. Martin to Ivy. He liked to discuss cases with her because she had a lot of common sense, and she sometimes saw things he missed.

  “You ought to sit down and go over everything from the beginning,” she said. “It would be a lot easier if Dr. Martin would turn up.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Rhodes said.

  “Then let’s look at it logically.”

  They were sitting on the couch in Ivy’s living room, watching the ten o’clock news. Child abuse, trouble in Nicaragua, a terrorist incident in the Middle East. Nothing new.

  “It’s not easy to be logical when we’re sitting like this,” Rhodes said. It was sitting close to Ivy that had gotten him engaged. Sitting close and what came next.

  Ivy laughed and pushed him away, moving to a safer cushion. “Who would want him to disappear?” she asked.

  “Nobody,” Rhodes said. “Maybe his wife, but now she’s dead.”

  “But his renters didn’t like him?”

  “Some of them didn’t.”

  “And you’ve got two of them in jail.”

  Rhodes thought about it. “Yes, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t do anything to him. I think they wanted to be left alone. The cursing and all that about the TV set was a mistake.”

  Ivy looked at him. “But th
ey might have killed Mrs. Martin.”

  “Why?” Rhodes said. “For a VCR and a TV set? They already had a TV set.”

  “Maybe she knew something.”

  “What? That they were homosexual? I don’t think they would have killed her for that. Who would she have told?”

  “‘I can see you’ve been thinking about all this before,” Ivy said.

  “I guess so,” Rhodes told her. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been thinking, though, so he didn’t feel he deserved much credit. “So who does that leave?”

  “The hygienist,” Ivy said. “That Carol Shamblin.”

  Rhodes shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. The tops of his legs above the knees were very sore. The bicycle must do some good if it made you that sore.

  “Why do you say it that way?” Rhodes asked.

  “What way?”

  “That way. I don’t know how to describe it.”

  “I guess I just don’t like women who plan to run away with someone else’s husband,” Ivy said.

  “I wonder if Martin ever really planned anything like that,” Rhodes said. “I wonder if he could possibly have meant it, even if he said it.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely,” Ivy said, shaking her head.

  “He may have staged the whole thing,” Rhodes said. “‘Then sneaked back and killed his wife. If there was a crowbar in the garage, he’d know about it.” He explained to Ivy about the tool box.

  “But the missing television set doesn’t fit,” Ivy said. “A fugitive wouldn’t take a TV set.”

  “He would to throw us off,” Rhodes said. “He might have taken a few things, ditched them, and left. The whole house was set up to look as if there’d been a burglary, but it’s hard to tell if anything’s really missing, except for the big stuff. Whoever did it might have taken just a few things, hoping we’d think more things were missing.”

  “Was Dr. Martin that smart?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “I guess a dentist has to be pretty smart to get out of school.”

  “Say it wasn’t Martin. Who does that leave you with?”

  “Hardly anybody,” Rhodes said. “There’s Little Barnes, but I don’t know how we’d ever get him to admit it. What we need is a body. Or for Martin to turn up wandering around the back roads with a severe case of amnesia.”

  “Does that ever happen in real life?” Ivy asked. “Or just on the soap operas?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “I never heard of a real case of it, though.”

  “So you’re in real trouble on this one, right?”

  “Right.”

  “At least it’s not an election year.”

  “Sure it is,” Rhodes said. “I’ve already been elected.”

  “So now you get to enforce the law.”

  “I guess so, but it would be a lot easier if I could find someone to enforce it on.”

  Ivy got off the couch and turned off the TV set. “I’m not in the mood for Nightline,” she said.

  Rhodes was going to ask if there weren’t some old movie on, but then he thought better of it. Ivy didn’t necessarily share his enthusiasm for obscure Hollywood classics

  Ivy sat back on the couch closer to Rhodes than she had been. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  He knew that he was going to wind up remembering only too well why he was unofficially engaged.

  Chapter 16

  The next day Rhodes woke up officially engaged. He had admitted to himself and to Ivy that their romance had reached a serious stage. They had set the date.

  Rhodes didn’t want to tell anyone yet, however. He wanted Kathy to be the first to know, and he wanted to tell her in person when she came home for Christmas.

  If she came. He still hadn’t heard from her.

  Ivy understood. “We’re both too old to worry about the formalities,” she said.

  “Me, maybe,” Rhodes said. “Not you.”

  Ivy laughed. “I didn’t get these gray hairs from worrying,” she said.

  Now that he was entirely committed, Rhodes felt better about the whole thing. In fact, he wondered why he had ever hesitated. It had been foolish and even childish.

  But he still hadn’t bought any Christmas presents.

  He went out to feed Speedo, who didn’t want to come out of the barrel. It had gotten even colder, though the wind was not blowing so hard. The sun was shining and glinting on the frost that topped the grass in the yard, the grass that Rhodes had intended to mow one more time before it got really cold. He’d never gotten around to it, so the lawn was a little shaggy. Well, he could mow it early in the spring.

  There was nothing new at the jail. Hack had logged in a few drunks and there had been a robbery at the Dairy Creem. The robber had waved around some kind of gun and demanded three cheeseburgers and three large orders of fries. The frightened clerks had complied.

  “I called the hospital emergency room,” Hack said, “but nobody had checked in with stomach cramps. I guess he got off clean.”

  “Their cheeseburgers aren’t that bad,” Rhodes said. “Lawton ate one there last month, and he says they are,” Hack said.

  “How are the prisoners?”

  “Both doin’ fine. That Swan writes a lot. Must be writin’ letters to his momma.”

  “I can’t see any way to tie them into this Martin case,” Rhodes said. “I think I’ll release them.”

  “What if it turns out they’re in it?”

  “I tell them to stay in town,” Rhodes said.

  Hack looked doubtful, but he said, “I’ll call the judge for you.”

  The day went by without anything of interest occurring. The radio crackled occasionally, but everything was routine. Rhodes caught up on his paperwork and worried what he’d say at the next Commissioners’ Court meeting. The commissioners tended to get a little touchy if there were any unsolved murders in the county. Of course no one was really sure that Dr. Martin had been murdered, not that an unsolved disappearance was much better. And there wasn’t any doubt about Mrs. Martin.

  He went out and got hamburgers for lunch from the Dairy Creem. Hack admitted that his was just fine. “Just the right amount of grease on the wrapper,” he said. “It was prob’ly the cheese that made Lawton sick. A man oughtn’t to eat cheese with meat.”

  Rhodes, who liked cheeseburgers, didn’t say anything to that.

  Late in the afternoon Rhodes said, “I’m going to take off now. I think everything’s under control here, and I’ve finally got caught up on all the papers. You and Lawton need anything?”

  “Lawton can get us supper,” Hack said. “I don’t want anything yet, and you need to go shoppin’.”

  Rhodes went outside into the late afternoon cold. He could tell that by night the temperature would dip even lower than the night before. It was getting to be wintertime. The air made the inside of his nose cold when he breathed in, and he thought he could smell leaves burning somewhere. There was an ordinance against burning, but he wasn’t going to hunt for the offender. It was too late in the day, and besides, he liked the smell.

  The metal door handle of the car was cold under his hand, and he wondered if he should buy himself some gloves. He’d had a pair that he liked and had worn them for years—genuine leather, lined with soft rabbit fur—but they’d finally worn out and he hadn’t bought any more. He thought he’d just drive down to Hubbard’s and look for a pair, maybe see if anybody had bitten Santa lately.

  Hubbard’s closed at five-thirty, so he had a few minutes to spare if he could find a parking place. He did, only a block away. He got out of the car and was up on the sidewalk about to go in Hubbard’s when he saw a familiar figure down the street by Lee’s Drug Store. Little Barnes had just gotten out of his dark blue pickup and started for Lee’s.

  Something that had been nagging at the back of Rhodes’s mind pushed its way to the front, and instead of going in Hubbard’s he walked down the street toward Lee’s. When he came up in front of it, he
looked through the long plate-glass window and saw Little Barnes all the way at the back of the store, talking to Billy Lee, the pharmacist. Probably Little had caught a winter cold and was asking for a recommendation and a remedy. He’d gone to the right man, because Billy Lee knew his business.

  Rhodes stepped off the sidewalk and looked into the pickup. The windows were rolled up, of course, thanks to the cold weather, but there was really nothing to see. Like a lot of people in Blacklin County, Little had a gun rack in the back window, but there were no guns in it. Theft was too much of a problem.

  Rhodes didn’t try the doors. He would wait and talk to Little when he came out. There were still shoppers on the streets and in the stores, but on the whole the street was better.

  Rhodes stood by the truck and spoke to some of the passersby. If anyone wondered what he was doing there, no one asked. He knew many of them by sight if not by name, just as they knew him, but he knew none of them very well. Most of them probably thought he was standing by his own pickup.

  Little’s truck was not immaculately clean, but it wasn’t particularly dirty, either. There were mud spots on it, and there was a lot of mud stuck up under the back wheel wells. The truck hadn’t been washed very recently.

  Rhodes stepped back and looked in the pickup’s bed. There was an accumulation of hay next to the cab and a couple of strands of baling wire, but that was all.

  Except that the floor looked a little gritty. Rhodes ran his hand over the floor, then looked at his fingers. He rubbed the tips together. Cement. He’d seen Little Barnes digging the postholes, and he recalled seeing the bags of cement stacked against the pickup that day. Barnes had said he was going to set his fence posts in concrete.

  Rhodes shivered, and he wondered if it was because of the cold. It was getting dark now, and the street lights had come on, along with the Christmas lights. People were leaving the stores, getting in their cars, and heading for home. He could hear the cars starting, smell the exhaust.

  Martin had disappeared, and Rhodes had thought it was as if he’d fallen down a well. A well like the one he’d seen the day he visited Little Barnes. The one he’d asked about drinking the water from.