by Bill Crider
“He didn’t stay, though,” she said, giving Harold a frown. “I oughta pinch his head off.”
“It was gross,” Harold said. “I wish I had stayed in the car. It smelled funny, too.”
Harold had obviously been very impressed by what he’d seen, and so had Gerri Vestal. Rhodes took notes on the rest of their account and then sent them on to do their shopping, telling them that he would be in touch if he needed any further information.
“Can I go back in the jail and see the cells?” Harold asked.
Rhodes was about to tell him that he could, when Mrs. Vestal said, “Not today, Harold. We have to get the shopping done before noon. Your father will be expecting lunch.”
“Come back some other time,” Rhodes said. “I’ll give you the guided tour.”
“Can I?” Harold asked him mother.
“Maybe next Saturday,” she said. “I’m sure it’s quite educational.”
Rhodes had never thought of it that way, but he said, “It sure is.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rhodes drove out to where the Toyota truck sat in the ditch. The day was bright with sun, but there was a thick purple cloud bank massing in the direction of Dallas, a sure sign that a blue norther was on the way. Rhodes knew that when the wind hit, the sky would darken and the temperature would drop far and fast. It might even rain, but he hoped not.
He recognized the Toyota immediately as the one he’d seen in Randall Overton’s driveway. Overton himself wasn’t quite so easy to identify, though there was a tiny bit of the Joe Camel T-shirt left intact.
No one else had passed by since Mrs. Vestal, or if they had passed they hadn’t been curious enough to stop and look. There was no sign that anyone had touched the truck or disturbed the area around it.
Rhodes called Hack and asked him to send Ruth Grady to meet him. He wanted all the help he could get in going over the scene, and he didn’t want any mistakes.
“So what do you think?” Ruth asked a couple of hours later when they had completed their investigation. “Spontaneous combustion?”
The norther had hit while they were doing their work. The sky was black and the wind was whistling through the barbed wire of the fence across the ditch. There was no rain, but the temperature had already dropped into the low forties. Rhodes was glad that he’d been carrying a coat in the car.
“You’ve been hanging around Hack too long,” he told Ruth. “That’s exactly what he said before I left the jail.”
“He didn’t mean it, though, did he?”
“No more than you did. What do you really think?”
“I think we’ve got something that looks a lot like another accident.”
“It’s not an accident,” Rhodes said. “Not this time, for sure.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Ruth said. “I said it looks like an accident. And somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look that way. I might even believe it was an accident if it weren’t for —”
“— for the others,” Rhodes said, finishing her sentence for her. “You can stretch coincidences only so far. This wasn’t any accident.”
There were two empty whiskey bottles in the Toyota, one in the floor and one in the seat beside Overton. The whole truck stank of liquor. It was supposed to appear that Overton had been drinking heavily and had pulled off the road, either because he realized that he was too drunk to drive or because he wanted a smoke.
There was an empty Camel Filters package in the floor of the truck not far from the whiskey bottle. Overton had been drunk, had spilled whiskey all over himself, and had tried to smoke a cigarette. Either the flame from the butane lighter that was also on the floor had ignited the alcohol fumes or the cigarette had done that. Or that was what someone wanted Rhodes to think.
Overton had been too drunk to get out of the truck or even to open a door or window. He hadn’t really burned to death, or at least Rhodes didn’t think he had. It was more likely that he’d suffocated, but it would take the autopsy to prove it.
Either way, his death had been highly unpleasant.
And it could even have been an accident.
But Rhodes didn’t believe it for a minute. He could accept a hit-and-run. Things like that happened now and then. And people drowned, too. People probably even caught on fire in their cars and either burned to death or suffocated.
But not in Blacklin County, not within weeks and days of one another. Something was going on, and Rhodes was going to find out what it was.
He didn’t know exactly how, but he was determined that he was going to do it, one way or the other.
He started with Kara West, who once again asked if he had come with news about her husband.
“I’m afraid not,” Rhodes said. “There’s been another accident.”
He told her about Overton, whom she professed never to have heard of until the previous Wednesday evening.
“So you heard Brother Alton’s sermon,” Rhodes said.
“No. I don’t usually go to church on Wednesday. But someone told me about it. I knew that there had been some problems with the roof, of course. Surely you don’t think Brother Alton had anything to do with this, do you? He’s a minister of the gospel.”
Rhodes had known a minister or two that he thought might be capable of murder, and he’d once had a personal tussle with Brother Alton, who’d jumped on him from a tree. You could never be sure what the preacher might do. But there was no need to mention that to Mrs. West.
“What about your husband?” Rhodes asked. “Did he know Overton?”
“I just don’t have any idea. He might have known him. Maybe he bought some auto parts from John. I didn’t spend much time at the store.”
“And you never had any roofing done?”
“Never. We bought this house five years ago, and the roof had just been replaced. I don’t know who did the work.”
Rhodes didn’t suppose it mattered. Kara West didn’t appear to have any connection with either Yeldell or Overton. He told her that he would let her know as soon as he found out anything new about her husband’s death and left to visit the Free Will Church.
Brother Alton was sitting in his office, reading his Bible.
“The judgment of the Lord is swift and sure,” he said when Rhodes came in. “I told you that God would provide a judgment for Mr. Overton if you didn’t.”
“I remember that,” Rhodes said. “And you told me that you’d help me and my deputies to see that no liquor was brought into the Old Settlers’ Grounds during the celebration. What I’m wondering now is whether you helped God bring about that judgment on Randall Overton.”
Brother Alton closed his Bible. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“You said that before, too,” Rhodes reminded him. “But did you help Him out?”
“I am a servant of the Lord,” Brother Alton said. “And the commandment says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“And you wouldn’t break a commandment.”
“I didn’t say that. Man is a weak reed, even a man devoted to the work of the Lord. But the story I heard was that Mr. Overton died by accident. Don’t people call accidents ‘acts of God’?”
“I don’t,” Rhodes said. “And I don’t believe it was an accident.”
“I’m sorry you’re suspicious of me, Sheriff. I admit that I’ve given you cause in the past, but I’ve repented of my sins and confessed them to my flock.”
“That’s not all you’ve been talking to your flock about. I’d hate to find out that one of your members got it in mind to kill Overton after listening to your sermon last Wednesday night.”
“I didn’t tell them anything but the truth.”
“What exactly did you say, anyway?”
“I said that Randall Overton had robbed the church and that robbing the church was an affront to God.”
“And that’s all you said?”
“I might have said a bit more. I don’t remember.”
“Let me help you out.
You called down the fire on him, didn’t you?”
“I might have said something about fire,” Brother Alton admitted. “But if you think that I or someone in the church killed Mr. Overton, you’re forgetting your own good influence on him.”
“You mean my little talk with him did some good?”
“That’s right. He came by on Thursday to say that he was going to finish the repairs this weekend. He especially asked me to let you know that he’d been here and that he was going to do the job.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because he hadn’t done it yet.” Brother Alton raised his eyes, either to the roof or to heaven. Then he looked back at Rhodes. “And now I guess he never will.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon when Rhodes left Brother Alton, and Rhodes had missed lunch again. He thought about stopping by the Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, but he knew that if he did he’d feel guilty for the rest of the afternoon. So instead he went by his house and ate a sandwich made of low-fat cheese and turkey bologna.
Rhodes supposed that turkey bologna was really just as tasty as the real thing to most people. It probably tasted like its plastic packaging to him only because he knew it was made of turkey instead of pork lips, or whatever it was that they put into real bologna. At least there was real Dr Pepper to wash it down with.
When he had finished eating, Rhodes tidied up the kitchen and went outside to see how his dog, Speedo, was doing. The cold wind was moaning through the nearly bare limbs of the pecan trees in Rhodes’s yard, and dry leaves were blowing everywhere. Rhodes hoped they’d all blow into his neighbor’s yard. Raking leaves wasn’t one of his favorite pastimes.
Speedo was glad to see Rhodes, and unlike most humans Rhodes knew, Speedo didn’t mind so much when the north wind blew and the weather turned cold. In fact, he enjoyed the cold. He dashed around the yard for a few seconds and then brought Rhodes an old yellow squeeze toy that he liked to play with. He dropped it at Rhodes’s feet and looked at him hopefully.
Rhodes had taken the whistle out of the toy, which was shaped like a frog, so Speedo wouldn’t accidentally choke on it, but Speedo didn’t seem to miss the whistle. He liked the toy anyway.
Rhodes threw the rubber frog, and Speedo charged off after it. He over-ran it, skidded to a stop, spun around, and grabbed the toy in his mouth. Instead of taking it to Rhodes, however, he put it on the ground between his front legs and waited expectantly.
Rhodes walked over slowly, as if he had nothing better to do. Speedo wasn’t fooled. His eyes followed Rhodes’s every move.
Rhodes pretended to be completely uninterested in the frog. He looked up at the bare trees and the dark sky, then turned away. Speedo remained frozen in place, and Rhodes quickly turned back, bending down and reaching for the toy.
Just before Rhodes’s fingers touched it, Speedo snatched it up and ran for the other side of the yard. When he got there, he put the frog down on the grass and waited. Rhodes obliged him, and they went through the entire routine again.
And again. After about ten minutes of the game, Rhodes was getting tired. Not Speedo. He would have kept it up all day if Rhodes had been willing.
Rhodes rubbed the dog’s head and went to sit on the back steps where he could be out of the wind. Speedo, knowing that the game was over, left the frog in the grass and came over to sit by Rhodes.
“What do you think, Speedo?” Rhodes said.
Speedo, who apparently found the question a little vague, kept quiet.
“Here’s the thing,” Rhodes said. “We have three accidents. Or that’s what they seem like. The hit-and-run, that’s a crime for sure. The other two aren’t so easy to figure.”
Speedo looked at Rhodes and gave a friendly growl.
“That’s what I think, too,” Rhodes said. “There’s no reason why there has to be a connection between one or the other of them, but I think there is one. I think somebody killed all three of those men.”
Speedo didn’t comment. He got up and walked over to his food bowl and nosed around in it. There wasn’t much there, but he ate what he could find. Then he went to his water dish and started lapping noisily.
“I don’t even know if it’s the same somebody,” Rhodes said. “It could be that somebody read about the hit-and-run and then decided to kill the other people and make the killings look like accidents.”
Speedo came back to the steps and sat down. He put his head on Rhodes’s knee.
“What would you do if you were me?” Rhodes asked, rubbing Speedo’s head.
Speedo wagged his tail. It lashed against Rhodes’s ankle and against the step.
“I don’t think wagging my tail would help,” Rhodes said. “But thanks for the advice.”
Rhodes decided to take a look at Overton’s house. Maybe there would be something there that would give Rhodes a place to start. He also wanted to check on the dog he’d heard barking. He didn’t want it to go hungry or mess up the house. And then there was the Edsel …
There was a gray Ford Tempo parked in Overton’s driveway, so Rhodes went to the door and knocked. The dog started barking, and a heavyset woman with graying hair came to the door. Her eyes were red, as if she might have been crying.
Rhodes told her who he was, and she said that she was Alma Burkett, Overton’s sister. Rhodes would have guessed that. Her face was flat, like her brother’s, though her nose was more prominent. Rhodes had asked Ruth Grady to get in touch with the sister, who was Overton’s only living relative, as far as Hack could discover.
“Have you talked to my deputy?” Rhodes asked, just to be sure.
“Yes. She came by the house. I thought I should come over here and see if there was anything I could do.”
Rhodes looked over her shoulder into the dim interior of the house. He still couldn’t see the dog, which had stopped barking.
“I wonder if I could come in,” he said.
“The house is a mess. Randy wasn’t a very neat person.”
It was a mild shock to hear her call Overton Randy. It was hard for Rhodes to imagine a man like Overton having a nickname.
“I don’t mind a little mess,” Rhodes said. “I’d like to look around, see if there’s anything that might help me in my investigation.”
“Your deputy said that Randy had died in an accident.”
“It might have been an accident,” Rhodes said. The wind was blowing through his pants legs as if they were made of cheesecloth. “Or it might not. Could I come in?”
Mrs. Burkett moved aside, and Rhodes stepped into the house. He didn’t have to go far to realize that Mrs. Burkett hadn’t been exaggerating: Overton wasn’t a very neat person.
There were newspapers on the floor, and there were socks and undershirts scattered here and there. Some were on the floor, and some were in chairs and on the couch. Rhodes smelled the strong odor of stale cigarette smoke mingled with the unpleasant aroma of unwashed clothes.
“I wish I could help you,” Mrs. Burkett said. “But I don’t know what it is that you’re looking for.”
Rhodes wasn’t sure, either. But he said, “Business records. Did, uh, Randy keep accounts or tax records?”
Looking at the living room, Rhodes didn’t have much hope of finding anything. If Overton kept records at all, they were most likely in complete disarray.
“He had a little bedroom that he used for an office,” Mrs. Burkett said. “It’s right over there.”
She pointed at a door that was half open, and Rhodes started toward it. When he reached it, he pushed it open, and a dog charged out, yelping in what was no doubt supposed to be a threatening manner. It was hard for a dog that looked like a dust mop to be threatening, however, and Rhodes laughed aloud.
“It’s just Yancey,” Mrs. Burkett said. “He’s a Pomeranian. He won’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t think he would,” Rhodes said, as the dog sank its teeth into the bottom of his pants leg and wagged its head from side
to side, growling viciously, or as viciously as it could with a mouth full of cloth.
“You stop that, Yancey,” Mrs. Burkett said. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. He just doesn’t like strangers. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him now that Randy’s gone.”
Yancey let go of Rhodes’s pants, barked, and ran back into the office.
“You could take him home with you,” Rhodes said. “He doesn’t look like he’d eat a lot.”
“Oh, I could never take him home. My husband, his name’s Walter but everyone calls him Wally, he doesn’t like dogs. He doesn’t like cats, either. He doesn’t like any animals at all. He won’t have them around. I’ll have to take Yancey to the pound.”
Rhodes didn’t much care for that idea. The pound was clean and well-managed, and there were quite a few kind-hearted people in Clearview, but it was by no means a certainty that someone would adopt Yancey.
“Don’t you have any friends who’d like to have him? He’s a feisty little guy.”
“I’m afraid not. Most of the people I know have pets already, and the ones who don’t wouldn’t want one.”
“Give it some thought while I see what’s in the office,” Rhodes said. “Maybe you can think of somebody. Or maybe your husband would know someone.”
“Wally wouldn’t want to be bothered. He just doesn’t like animals at all, and he won’t care what happens to Yancey. One reason he and Randy didn’t get along was because of Yancey.”
“Your husband didn’t get along with Randy?”
“No. When I called and told him Randy was dead, he didn’t shed a tear.”
“Where does he work?”
“He drives a truck for Franklin Brothers. This is his week out of town.”
“Oh,” Rhodes said.
That let out Wally as a suspect. Franklin Brothers was a big wholesale beer distributor, and their drivers went practically all over the state.