Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 09 - Death by Accident

by Bill Crider

  “That’s always a danger when somebody’s waving a shotgun around,” Rhodes said. “Why don’t you put it down, Ty?”

  Berry looked at the shotgun as if surprised to see it in his hands. Then he leaned it against the cabin door.

  “That’s better,” Rhodes said. “Now, somebody see about Mack and Grat and then tell me what’s going on here.”

  Mack was already standing, glaring in the direction of Yvonne Bilson, a skinny blonde who didn’t really look heavy enough to have borne him down. Two men were helping Grat to his feet, and he was shaking his head as if to clear it.

  “Who wants to start?” Rhodes said, looking from one to another of them. “How about you, Ty?”

  “Well, it’s clear as day,” Berry said. “I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen to me. These Society fools are out here trying to hijack the cabin and haul it into town. And we came out here to stop ’em.”

  “We’re not hijacking anything,” Faye Knape said.

  She was even taller than Yvonne Bilson, and her hair was very black, unnaturally so. She wasn’t married and lived in a house filled with cats of all sizes and colors. Rhodes didn’t know how many cats she had. No one else did, either. Probably even Faye wasn’t sure.

  “You are so hijacking something,” Berry said, and the arguing broke out again.

  “Hold it!” Rhodes yelled, and everyone got quiet. “Let’s try to talk one at a time. Just exactly what were you trying to do, Mrs. Knape?”

  “We were going to take the cabin into Clearview where it belongs,” she said. “And we have a perfect right to do it.”

  “That’s a lie!” Berry said. “You don’t have any more right to it than a ’possum!”

  “Oh, yes, we do,” Faye said. “And if you’d just listen to me, I could prove it to you.”

  “That’s another lie,” Berry said. “Don’t let her get away with it, Sheriff. Arrest her!”

  “I can’t arrest anyone for lying,” Rhodes said. “If she is lying.”

  “I’m not,” Faye said. “Just let me get my purse.”

  She started toward a car, and Berry said, “Don’t let her, Sheriff! She might be going for a gun!”

  “The only gun I see out here is yours,” Rhodes told him. “And I can arrest your for that a lot quicker than I can arrest someone for lying.”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

  “No, but I expect a lot of these people here would swear that you threatened them. To the law, that’s almost as bad as shooting them.”

  Berry didn’t have anything to say to that, so he shut up.

  Faye Knape slammed her car door and came back to Rhodes with a piece of paper in her hand.

  “This is a letter of permission to move the Burleson cabin,” she said, waving the paper in the air.

  “Bullcorn!” Ty Berry said. “It’s no such thing.”

  “Yes, it is,” Faye said. “Signed by the heirs.”

  “That’s another lie,” Ty said. “There aren’t any heirs.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Faye said. “As you’d know if you ever took the time to do any research. The Historical Society does its research before making any moves, and we found the heirs.” She handed the paper to Rhodes. “You can read all about it.”

  Rhodes looked at the paper. He couldn’t read it, not without his glasses, which he didn’t want to put on at the moment, and not in the dim light from the car headlights.

  “I’ll take it with me and read it at the office,” he said. “Right now, I think everyone should go on home until this is all straightened out.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ty Berry said. “If I do, they’ll try to steal the cabin again.”

  “No, they won’t. I’ll see to that.”

  Faye looked as if she might want to argue, but she didn’t. No one else did, either. Rhodes’s arrival had put a damper on their enthusiasm. The crowd began to break up, and people headed for their cars.

  “Are you going to be all right, Mack?” Rhodes asked Riley.

  Riley massaged his chest where Yvonne had pounded him, then touched the scratches on his head.

  “I’ll live, I guess,” he said. “She never would’ve got me down if she’d come at me from the front.”

  “What about you, Grat?” Rhodes asked.

  “Riley assaulted me,” Bilson said. “I think you should arrest him.”

  “I didn’t hit you till you called me a son of a bitch,” Mack said. “You’re the one oughta be arrested.”

  “Nobody’s being arrested,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think there’s any need for anyone to file charges about this.” He looked around at the thinning crowd. “Just get yourselves home and forget about it.”

  “Some things you can’t forget, Sheriff,” Ty Berry said. “Like when your wife’s been running around on you with the guy who stole your car.”

  Yvonne Bilson turned toward the cabin. “You son of a bitch,” she said.

  “Like husband, like wife,” Berry said.

  “Let’s all settle down now,” Rhodes said. “Maybe the Bilsons had better stay here for a minute. You, too, Ty.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Faye Knape said.

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes told her. “You can go on home. Come by the jail tomorrow and we can talk this over.”

  “I’ll take my letter with me, then.”

  “I think I’d better hold onto it, just in case,” Rhodes said.

  Faye obviously didn’t like it, but she refrained from saying so.

  “Don’t let him intimidate you,” she told Bilson.

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Yvonne said, and Rhodes had no trouble at all believing her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When the cars were gone, it was much darker. There was only a sliver of moon, and dust hung in the air and tickled Rhodes’s nose.

  “Now, then, Ty, why don’t you explain what you were talking about a while ago,” Rhodes said.

  He and Berry were sitting on the edge of the porch. The shotgun was safely stowed in the cab of Berry’s truck, and the Bilsons stood a few feet away, scowling.

  “It’s like I was saying,” Berry began, but Yvonne interrupted.

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s a liar from the word go.”

  “I can find out easily enough,” Rhodes said. “If not from him, from somebody else. Go ahead, Ty.”

  “Well, there’s not all that much to tell. Pep Yeldell stole Grat’s car a while back, like I told you at the jail. And later on he was trying to steal his wife, too.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Yvonne said.

  “The curse of a limited vocabulary,” Ty said, shaking his head. “But it’s the truth, Sheriff. You can ask around.”

  “Why should he?” Grat asked. “It’s all in the past. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “It’s a motive for murder,” Berry said. “That’s what it is.”

  Bilson started for Berry. Rhodes slid off the porch and stood between them.

  “You’ve already lost one fight tonight,” he told Bilson. “Don’t start another one.”

  “I’m not starting anything. That little weasel is starting it, by lying about my wife.”

  “Is it a lie?” Rhodes asked, looking at Yvonne.

  “It sure is,” she said. “Pep and I might have gone out a time or two, but I was just mad at Grat when I did it, and I was trying to get back at him. I got over my mad, and everything was all right.”

  “When was this?” Rhodes asked.

  “A long time ago,” Yvonne said.

  “How long?”

  Yvonne waved a hand in the air. “A month or so. I don’t really remember.”

  “Try,” Rhodes said.

  “What difference does it make?” Grat asked. “I didn’t kill anybody, much less Pep Yeldell. I heard he drowned while he was swimming out here. That sounds like an accident to me.”

  “Not if somebody tried to make him swing on that rope,” Berry said.

 
“Don’t start that again,” Rhodes warned him, realizing just how far-fetched Berry’s theory had been in the first place.

  “Did you know John West?” he asked Bilson.

  “Who?”

  “He was killed in a hit-and-run accident about two and a half weeks ago,” Rhodes said.

  “I heard about the accident,” Bilson said. “I never met West, though.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Berry asked.

  “Probably nothing,” Rhodes said, looking at Yvonne, who seemed about to say something.

  She didn’t, however. She went over to the porch and sat down.

  “This is stupid,” Bilson said. “I’m not going to stay out here anymore and listen to Ty Berry call me a murderer. I never killed anybody, and I’m going home. Come on, Yvonne.”

  Yvonne joined him, and they started for their car. Rhodes didn’t try to stop them.

  “Are you just going to let them leave?” Berry asked.

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “Pep Yeldell might have gone joy-riding in Bilson’s car, and he might have fooled around with Yvonne a little, but Dr. White says he most likely died by accident. Let’s just leave it that way for now.”

  “I guess you know you’ve lost my vote,” Berry said.

  “You told me that already.”

  “I just thought I’d remind you,” Berry said.

  The third thing that kept Rhodes from getting home was a sermon. It was Wednesday night, and Brother Alton had held his usual mid-week services. It was the sermon that was unusual. Rhodes heard about it from Randall Overton when he stopped by the jail later that evening.

  “He called down the wrath of God on me,” Overton said. “Right up there from the pulpit. He said that the earth would swallow me up and the fires of hell would consume me.”

  “Did he yell when he said it?” Hack asked. “I like a preacher that can yell a little. I like one that can cry a little, too, when he tells a sad story. What about you, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t like yelling,” Rhodes said. “How do you know about this Mr. Overton?”

  Overton was still wearing his Joe Camel T-shirt. He didn’t look as if he’d been to church.

  “Somebody phoned me,” he said. “So I don’t know about any yelling. And I don’t care whether he yelled or not. I want you to go to that church and arrest him.”

  Rhodes thought for a minute. Brother Alton wanted Overton arrested for fraud, Ty Berry wanted Faye Knape arrested for lying, and now Overton wanted Brother Alton arrested for preaching a sermon. Rhodes wondered if it wasn’t time for him to consider moving to somewhere quieter and less stressful — somewhere like, say, New York City.

  “He was making a threat against me,” Overton said to help Rhodes along with his decision-making.

  “He was just preachin’,” Hack said. “Usin’ you as an example, you might say. Can’t arrest a man for that.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Overton said. “I was talkin’ to the sheriff.”

  Hack’s mouth drew itself into a tight line. Rhodes felt sorry for Overton if he ever did have to spend any time in the Blacklin County Jail. Hack would probably do something to his food.

  “Hack’s right,” Rhodes said, both to pacify his dispatcher and because it was the truth. “There’s no law in preaching against a man. But I’ll talk to Brother Alton and tell him that you’re going to take care of the roof. That ought to satisfy him. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about him preaching about you again.”

  “He’d better not,” Overton said. “Not if he knows what’s good for him.”

  “Now that’s a threat,” Hack said. “What you said’s not like talkin’ about a man in a sermon. It’s what we call a terroristic threat. You can get yourself arrested for that. ’Course I’m not the sheriff. I can’t arrest you.”

  “And I’m not going to,” Rhodes said. “Not this time. But don’t make any more threats. And fix that roof.”

  Overton grumbled for a few seconds, but he left without making any trouble.

  “I wish you’d locked him up,” Hack said when the door shut behind Overton. “I’d like to help clean out his cell.”

  “I’ll bet you would,” Rhodes said. “But you won’t get the chance.”

  “You never can tell,” Hack said. “He looks like the type that’ll be back this way sooner or later.”

  He didn’t come back to the jail, however.

  The next time Rhodes saw him, he was sitting behind the steering wheel of his shiny Toyota. The outside of the pickup was still in pretty good shape, which was more than you could say for Overton.

  He was burned to crisp.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gerri Vestal and her ten-year-old son Harold found Overton early on Saturday morning, two days after Brother Alton’s sermon had condemned Overton to be consumed by flames.

  Rhodes had more or less put Overton out of his mind in the interim. He’d had other things to occupy his time, such as his meeting with Faye Knape.

  The letter that she had produced seemed to be genuine, but just to be sure, Rhodes had called the brother and sister who signed it. They lived in a nursing home in south Texas, and they said that they had indeed written the letter. They also said they would be glad to send positive proof of their descent from Cletus Burleson.

  “I told you the letter was genuine,” Faye Knape said when Rhodes told her. “There was no need for you to call them. I could have provided you with the proper genealogical information if you’d just asked. As I told Mr. Berry, we in the Historical Society do our research thoroughly.”

  “I had to check,” Rhodes said. “It’s part of the job.”

  Faye Knape sniffed. Rhodes could see cat hairs on her blouse, and he wondered if she were allergic to her cats.

  “Very well,” she said. “You checked, and you found out I was right. The descendants of Cletus Burleson, the legal heirs to the cabin, have given their permission to move it. I’m sure that settles everything to your satisfaction, and I hope you won’t interfere again.”

  “I don’t know about interfering,” Rhodes said, “but I don’t think I can let you go out there and move the cabin just yet. I told the Burleson heirs a few things that I haven’t discussed with you yet.”

  Faye arched a very black eyebrow. “Who asked you to tell them anything?”

  “Nobody,” Rhodes said. “But it seemed like a good idea.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Just a few things I thought maybe they didn’t know about. It turns out that you didn’t tell them the whole story about the cabin.”

  “I told them everything I thought they needed to know. They’re getting on in years, and I was afraid that if I told them too much, it might just confuse them.”

  “I don’t think Ty Berry would agree with you on that,” Rhodes said. “Anyway, they didn’t get confused at all.”

  Mrs. Knape sniffed again, but she didn’t say anything.

  Rhodes continued. “You didn’t mention that the Sons and Daughters of Texas had paid for the cabin’s restoration and had seen to it that it got taken care of.”

  “Out at the Old Settlers’ Grounds. It doesn’t belong there, and the heirs agreed.”

  “That was before they knew about what had been done. Somehow they got the impression that the cabin was in a pretty run-down condition and that no one was looking after it.”

  Faye inspected the floor for a while, and then she looked up at the ceiling. There wasn’t much to see up there except a spider web up high in one of the corners where Lawton couldn’t reach with his broom.

  “I’m sure I don’t know how they could have gotten that idea,” Faye said finally.

  “Me neither,” Rhodes said. “But when I told them about the restoration and about the big celebration this summer, they seemed to think the best thing to do would be to leave the cabin where it is.”

  Faye drew herself up straight. “I hope you’re not counting on the votes of any Historical Society me
mbers in the next election, Sheriff.”

  “When you think about it,” Rhodes said as if he hadn’t heard her, “the Grounds are the best place for the cabin. If you brought it to town and put it in the park, more people might see it, but it wouldn’t be much of a tourist attraction. It’s just a one-room cabin with nothing special about it.”

  “It’s special to the Historical Society.”

  “Then you should get together with Ty Berry and see what you can do to help with the celebration next summer. As it stands now, the cabin gives people one more reason to drive out to the Old Settlers’ Grounds. If your two groups worked together, we could have something really nice for the county.”

  “Ty Berry’s planning to have Indian dances,” Faye said. “There’s already been talk of trouble about that.”

  “Maybe you could help him work it out so there wouldn’t be any trouble. I imagine a woman with your ability to get along with people could work something out with Brother Alton.”

  “Well, maybe, but I don’t think I can work with Ty Berry on anything.”

  “Why don’t you give it a try? You might be surprised. Remember, his bunch cares just as much about that cabin and about the county’s history as you and your group.”

  “Very well,” Faye said. “I’ll think about it. But I’m not making any promises. And I’m still not going to vote for you.”

  When she left, Hack said, “I really liked that part about her ability to get along with people. That was a good ’un.”

  “I thought you were watching that TV set.”

  “I can watch and listen at the same time. Besides, there’s nothin’ to see on Saturday mornin’ except cartoons.”

  “I thought you liked cartoons.”

  “I like The Tick, but that’s about it. And that’s not on yet.”

  “The Tick?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hack started to tell him about the show, but Rhodes didn’t get the details. That was when Mrs. Vestal walked in.

  Mrs. Vestal lived out on a little-traveled county road near Milsby, and she told Rhodes that she and Harold were driving into Clearview to do the weekly grocery shopping. They saw a red Toyota truck nosed into a ditch, and Harold yelled that he could see someone inside. Mrs. Vestal pulled over to the side of the road and got out of her car, telling Harold to stay where he was while she took a look.