by Bill Crider
Michal was a short blond woman of indeterminate age. The first time Rhodes had seen her name on the window of her store, he’d thought it was misspelled, but she’d explained that it was the name of Saul’s daughter in the Old Testament’s Book of Samuel. Rhodes had never been much of a biblical scholar.
“I might have a Craig Biggio card, too,” she added, “if you’d like to have a look at it.”
“I gave up on baseball a long time ago,” Rhodes said. “Before those two were even rookies.”
“Maybe a nice forty-five, then. I have a couple by Elvis.”
“I just wanted to ask a question,” Rhodes said. “About your neighbor.”
“Jamey the barber?”
“That’s the one. Have you seen him today?”
“He was here this morning.”
When she said the word morning, Rhodes realized that he’d missed lunch again. As soon as he realized it, his stomach felt hollow and empty.
“When did he leave?”
“Not long ago. Someone parked out in front of his shop and went inside. After a few minutes, they both came back out and left”
“Do you know who it was?”
“No, but he was wearing a T-shirt that had ‘I’m with Stupid’ printed on the front.”
“Bald, a little chubby, driving an old Ford pickup?”
“That’s him. Is he in trouble?”
“No, and neither is Jamey—not yet anyway. There was something I wanted to tell him.”
“Want me to take a message?”
Michal turned to a cabinet behind her and found a pencil and notepad.
“This isn’t something I’d want you to tell him,” Rhodes said. “I’ll find him. Where does Jamey live?”
“Out in the country, about a mile past the rock crusher.”
“I’ll look for him there,” Rhodes said. “Does he close up often?”
“Actually, he does. He has plenty of customers, though. He seems to be very fast at cutting hair, gets people out quickly. Maybe that’s the secret to getting some time off.”
“Maybe,” Rhodes said.
He thanked Michal for her help and drove out to Hamilton’s house. On the way, he passed the old college campus and main building that were located just off the highway. The building was nearly a hundred years old, but it was no longer a part of any college. It had been used for any number of things, most recently as a church, but the minister had left, and now the Clearview Players were converting it into a theater.
No one was working on the building when Rhodes drove by, and he wondered if the Clearview Players would change their name to the Obert Players if they ever got the theater completed and open for business.
When he passed the college building, Rhodes went by the rock crusher at the edge of town. After that, the road wound through the countryside. In a normal year, it would have been shaded by trees whose limbs reached out over it and met in the middle. This year, the trees seemed shriveled and small, and there was only a little shade. Dead, dry leaves lay in the road and swirled aside as Rhodes drove over them.
Hamilton’s house was small and had a nearly bare yard. Crawford’s truck was parked in the shade of a chinaberry tree, but Rhodes didn’t see another vehicle. When he knocked on the door, no one answered. He walked around the house and knocked on the back door. No answer there, either.
Something was going on, and Rhodes didn’t know what it was. He didn’t like that, but there was nothing he could do about it except drive back to Clearview. He was tempted to stop off and see how Ruth was doing, but she knew her job, and he didn’t want to distract her.
He did, however, get onto the county road and head for C. P. Benton’s house. The black mailbox by the road in front of the house had a little sign dangling from it. It said CASA DE MATH in red script. Rhodes wanted to talk to Benton, but the math teacher’s Saturn was gone. Apparently, nobody Rhodes wanted to see was going to be home that day.
Rhodes pulled into the driveway. Benton’s lawn might not have been mown in awhile, at least according to Judge Parry, but it was hard to tell because the grass was brown and dry. Benton obviously didn’t believe in wasting water on something like grass. Rhodes didn’t blame him. He didn’t like mowing any more than Benton did.
The gardenia bush by the front door had a few late-summer blooms on it, white among the green leaves. At least Benton waters his plants, Rhodes thought as he backed up the car.
Rhodes drove to the highway. He decided to go to the college to see Benton. It was possible that Benton was there making some kind of preparation for the classes that would be starting in a week or so.
Max Schwartz’s music store was on the way to the college, about a quarter of a mile from the college’s new building. Rhodes saw Schwartz’s red convertible parked in front, its top up. Next to it was a Saturn that had to belong to Benton. Rhodes flipped on his turn signal and pulled off the highway and into the parking lot.
Rhodes recalled that Benton had mentioned playing the guitar when he was doing the fighting crane pose, or whatever it was. Thinking it over, Rhodes wondered if Benton had been trying to impress Ruth Grady. Rhodes knew nothing much about Ruth’s private life. He didn’t think she was dating anybody. Rhodes thought it might be because a lot of men were intimidated by a woman who carried a pistol and worked for the sheriff’s department. Somehow, however, he didn’t think Benton was the type to be intimidated by anything.
At any rate, if Benton played guitar, it was perfectly natural that he might be at a music store that just happened to be owned by another member of his academy class. The fact that Benton was there didn’t have to have anything at all to do with the destruction of the Crawfords’ mobile home or the death of Terry Crawford.
It didn’t have to have any connection to what the judge had warned Rhodes about earlier.
Vigilantes? It just wasn’t possible.
Chapter 4
RHODES DIDN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT GUITARS, BUT HE DID KNOW the difference between an acoustic guitar and an electric one. Schwartz had several of both kinds hanging on the walls of his store. He also had posters advertising a variety of other instruments, which he no doubt hoped to sell to members of the Clearview Catamount marching band and stage band. The biggest poster of all didn’t picture an instrument. It was an ad for a long-ago concert by the Kingston Trio, all the members of which were dressed in striped shirts.
Some kind of folk music came from a couple of big speakers on the walls, a song about a long black rifle. Rhodes didn’t know if the song was by the Kingston Trio or not.
Schwartz’s black Lab was asleep in a back corner. The music didn’t seem to bother him, and he didn’t even look up when Rhodes came in.
Schwartz wore a shirt similar to the ones in the Kingston Trio poster, but his was mostly pink, with gray stripes. He was middle-aged and had the spread to prove it, though his hair was still thick and black. He wore glasses with black plastic frames, the kind that Rhodes had last seen in a photograph of Buddy Holly.
Schwartz held an acoustic guitar and was showing C. P. Benton what might have been a chord. Rhodes wasn’t sure. His musicianship wasn’t any better than his biblical scholarship.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Schwartz said when Rhodes came in. “I was just teaching C.P. a song. ‘Everglades’ is the name of it. You know it?”
Rhodes shook his head, so Schwartz strummed a few bars and sang the words. Benton sang, too, keeping more or less to the tune in a rumbling bass. Rhodes thought that the song on the speakers might be causing him trouble.
“Turn off the music,” Schwartz called to someone Rhodes couldn’t see. “It’s great, but it’s interfering.”
The music stopped after a couple of seconds. Benton and Schwartz started to sing again.
To Rhodes, what they sang sounded something like an old Everly Brothers song, though he couldn’t have said which one. Maybe if Schwartz and Benton had been better singers, he could have figured it out.
When they were finished, Sc
hwartz put the guitar down on a counter and said, “Benton tells me that the Crawfords’ meth lab blew up.”
“It was a mobile home,” Rhodes said, looking at Benton. “Not a meth lab.”
Schwartz looked contrite. “I should have said alleged meth lab. I’ve only been selling guitars for a year, and I’ve already forgotten all my legal training.”
“You and Benton didn’t happen to go out that way earlier today, did you?” Rhodes said.
“Why would I do that?” Schwartz asked, raising his eyebrows and furrowing his brow. “I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with blowing up that meth—that alleged meth lab.”
“It’s about more than blowing things up,” Rhodes said. “Terry Crawford’s dead.”
Benton, who had been looking at the guitar on the counter, turned around. He looked a little pale.
“I just told Max that the Crawfords were probably all right. I didn’t know one of them was dead.”
“He wasn’t killed in the explosion,” Rhodes said.
Schwartz’s wife, Jackee, came into the room from the office in the back of the store. Her blond hair was cut short, and she had light blue eyes.
“Who wasn’t killed?” she said.
“Terry Crawford,” Benton told her. “But he was killed.”
“Not in the explosion, though,” Max said. “It happened some other way.”
Jackee looked a little confused, and Rhodes didn’t blame her. He said, “The Crawfords’ mobile home blew up today. Terry was killed, but he didn’t die in the mobile home.”
“How did he die, then?”
“Somebody shot him.”
Jackee nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
She might not have been, but her answer gave Rhodes a little jolt.
“Why not?” he asked.
Jackee’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Rhodes looked at Max, who shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“This is a murder investigation,” Rhodes said, though he wasn’t absolutely certain. It was always possible that Crawford had shot himself. If that was the case, Ruth would find the gun and let Rhodes know. For the moment, he was treating the death as a homicide.
“Then I guess we’d better tell you,” Max said. “The Crawfords like to think of themselves as guitar players. They were in some honky-tonk band when they were young, but I don’t think they knew more than three chords.”
“That’s all you need,” Benton said. “C, F, and G. They’ll get you through nearly anything.”
“Maybe you,” Schwartz said. “Not a real player.”
Benton looked hurt. “I write my own songs. Some of them are pretty good.”
Schwartz didn’t seem impressed. “Who says?”
“Everybody who’s heard them.”
“Your mother?”
“Actually, she doesn’t like them very much.”
Rhodes wondered just when he’d lost control of the interrogation he’d started. From just about the first sentence, he thought. He wondered if they were nervous, oblivious, or trying to distract him. That’s what they might do if they were guilty of something.
“About the Crawfords,” he said. “Remember them?”
Schwartz and Benton looked at him as if he’d just wandered in and interrupted their conversation. It was Jackee who spoke up.
“Those two came in one morning when Max wasn’t here. They clowned around a little at first and then started talking about guitars and prices. I’m not much of a salesperson, but I told them what I knew. I could tell they weren’t really interested. They joked around some more, and then they made some suggestive remarks.”
Max’s face reddened. “Nobody makes suggestive remarks to Jackee but me.”
“And he doesn’t make them all that often,” Jackee said.
Rhodes thought she was trying to calm her husband with humor. “What did the Crawfords say?”
“It was Terry,” Max said. His face was still red, and his hands were clenched at his sides. His voice was loud. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t here.”
The noise woke the black Lab, which had slept through everything so far. The dog stirred around and lifted his head to see what was going on.
“Max,” Jackee said. She put a hand on his arm.
Schwartz took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His hands unclenched.
“Sometimes I get a little carried away,” he said. “I don’t mean anything by it.”
Jackee removed her hand. “Max is a softy down deep, but he doesn’t like it when I’m threatened.”
Somehow they’d moved from suggestive remarks to threats. Rhodes felt a little lost.
“‘Threatened’?” he asked.
Back in the corner, the Lab lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“Let me start over,” Jackee said. “The Crawfords came in. They looked at a couple of electric guitars, the cheapest ones we have.”
Max pointed to a couple of guitars hanging on the wall. “Those little Johnson novice models aren’t bad. Under a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You can get one at Wal-Mart for a lot less,” Benton said.
“Sure, if you want something like that. These are cheap, but good.”
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. “Let her finish.”
“I’m sorry,” Benton said, but he didn’t look sorry to Rhodes.
“I got one of the guitars and handed it to them,” Jackee said. “They took it and asked me if I’d ever noticed how the body of a guitar was shaped like a woman. They started stroking it.”
She stopped and looked at Max, but he was breathing normally, so she went on.
“You’d have to have been here,” she said. “You’d have to have seen their faces, the way they looked at me.”
“I can imagine,” Rhodes said.
“Then one of them—maybe it was Terry; it’s hard to tell them apart—said I must be here in the store alone a lot. He said he’d like to come for a visit sometime.”
Rhodes assumed that was the threat she’d mentioned.
“That’s when I came in,” Max said. “I told the Crawfords to get out of here and not to come back.”
“What did they say to that?” Rhodes asked.
“They said it was a free country. They said they’d come in whenever they wanted to.”
“You know, you could have reported this to me.”
“They didn’t make any overt threats. They didn’t say anything that couldn’t be made to sound innocent if we’d tried to get a restraining order.”
“Did they ever come back?”
“No,” Schwartz said. “I told them that it was a free country all right and that if they ever came back, I was going to feel free to beat the hell out of them.”
He stopped and looked at the floor, as if realizing that he might have said too much.
“He’d never do that, though,” Jackee said. “They’d knock his glasses off, and he can’t see three inches in front of him without them.”
Rhodes looked over at the dog. “What about him?”
“He’s lazy,” Jackee said. “When he’s awake, he loves everybody. He wouldn’t hurt anybody, any more than Max would. The Crawfords could tell that about him. He lay there asleep the whole time.”
“Max should learn the martial arts,” Benton said, striking a pose. “I’m quite an expert myself.”
“Really?” Schwartz said. “Where’d you learn? Watching old Chuck Norris movies?”
Benton appeared not to notice the sarcasm. “I learned from Shen Chuan at Professor Lansdale’s school in Nacogdoches.”
“I don’t think Shen Chuan has all those funny poses.”
“Well, I added those myself, to impress people and maybe avoid a fight. My body is a lethal weapon, and I don’t want to hurt anybody if I don’t have to.”
“Really?”
“Really. I could teach you a few things.”
“Too late,” Rhodes said.
�
��Why’s that?”
“Terry Crawford’s already dead.”
Chapter 5
AFTER HE LEFT THE MUSIC STORE, RHODES WENT BACK TO the jail. Hack Jensen and Lawton, the jailer, already knew about Terry Crawford, thanks to Rhodes having called Ruth Grady to the crime scene. They would have dragged all the details out of Rhodes, but they had other things to talk about.
Unfortunately, even in a place as small and quiet as Blacklin County, there were things other than major cases that had to be dealt with. A man’s death was important, and a terrible thing, but the sheriff’s department couldn’t stop and concentrate on that one thing. The regular crimes and annoyances demanded at least a little attention.
Hack could hardly wait to bring one of the annoyances to Rhodes’s attention.
“Mikey Burns called,” he said as soon as Rhodes came through the door.
Burns was the commissioner in whose district the Crawfords lived.
“What did he want?” Rhodes asked, knowing he’d never get a straight answer from Hack. The dispatcher and Lawton sometimes seemed to Rhodes to derive most of their pleasure in life by making him drag information from them. They had a physical resemblance to two comedians from the past, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, but their act was a bit different.
“We’re behind the times,” Hack said. He was chubby but not soft, and though he was well past normal retirement age, his hair was still black. “That’s what it is.”
Rhodes knew they were behind the times. They were supposed to have video cameras installed in all the county cars by now, but they didn’t. Rhodes blamed the commissioners, who hadn’t appropriated the money that he’d requested in the budget he’d prepared for them. The commissioners, on the other hand, blamed the taxpayers. Burns was the one who’d said the public wouldn’t stand for any tax increases, so something had to be cut from the budget. For the last two or three years, the cut had been the video cameras.
“Is it the car cameras?” Rhodes asked.