by Bill Crider
The call didn’t take long, though the man Rhodes talked to was surprised to hear what Rhodes had found.
“We don’t get reports of more than one or two of those a year,” he said. “You’re sure about this?”
Rhodes wanted to say that he knew the difference between a still and a burro, but he didn’t think the man would get the joke.
“I’m sure. It’s a still all right. I’m trying to find the man who owns it.”
He went on to explain the circumstances and said he’d let the TABC representative onto the property when he showed up. After he hung up, he had time to take another swallow of the Dr Pepper before Buddy came in.
Buddy had been with the sheriff’s department almost as long as Rhodes had. He was whip-thin and had a low tolerance for wrongdoers. In the Old West, he’d have been a hanging judge.
Rhodes asked what he’d found out about the truck.
“Not a thing,” Buddy said, sitting down in the chair across from Rhodes’s desk. “That truck’s not registered to Jamey Hamilton, at least not in this county. He drives a little Chevy S-Ten. I called the Dodge dealers in the counties around here, and they don’t remember that bumper guard, so nobody installed it at a dealership. Or if it was, it was too long ago for anybody to remember it. I’ll check the welders after I leave here, but I figure it was put on in some other county, too.”
“Never mind about the welders,” Rhodes said. “See what you can find out about Jamey Hamilton. I know he’s lived in Obert for three or four years, but find out where he came from and what he did there.”
“All right. I guess I can do that.”
“I’m sure you can,” Rhodes told him.
After Buddy left, Rhodes finished his Dr Pepper and considered his next move. He couldn’t decide whether to talk to Mikey Burns or Mel Muller first. He’d look for Crawford and Hamilton, but he didn’t know where to start, and Ruth was looking for them anyway. Rhodes suspected that Lawless might know where they were. He’d talk to Lawless later.
He had an Indian Head penny in the center drawer of his desk. His father had given it to him when Rhodes was about to start the first grade. It was supposed to be his lucky piece. Rhodes didn’t know if it had been lucky or not, but he’d managed to survive first grade and the rest of his education unscathed. Why, he’d even learned a couple of lines of poetry.
He opened the drawer and took out the penny. He’d carried it with him for so many years that the date on the coin was too rubbed to read, but he remembered that it had been 1902.
“Heads, Muller,” he said. “Tails, Burns.”
He flipped the coin. It spun in the air and landed on the desk. Rhodes thought it might roll off, but it didn’t. The Indian Head was showing.
“Mel Muller it is,” he said.
He started to put the penny back into the drawer, but he slipped it in his pocket instead. He had a feeling he was going to need all the luck he could get.
Chapter 14
MEL MULLER WASN’T ANY HAPPIER TO SEE RHODES THAN SHE’D been the day before, less so if anything. Her hair wasn’t combed and her eyes were red. She held a tissue clenched in her hand.
“What do you want?” she said to Rhodes as he stood in the doorway of the manufactured home. “If it’s about that Web site, you tell Mikey Burns to give me a call and I’ll tell him what he can do with his damn Web site.”
“It’s not about the Web site,” Rhodes said. “It’s about Jerry Kergan.”
Mel choked back a sob and opened the door wider. Rhodes went inside. The place didn’t look any different. Somewhere a radio was playing songs from the 1950s. Rhodes recognized “Witch Doctor.”
“I listen to the radio on the Internet,” Mel said when he gave her an inquiring look. She brushed at her eyes with the tissue. “I hate listening to commercials.”
“But ‘Witch Doctor’?”
“I don’t much like any of the music I grew up with. I mean, disco? Give me a break. Anyway, you didn’t come here to discuss my taste in music.”
“Can we sit down?” Rhodes asked.
Mel walked over to the easy chair and brushed the computer magazines off it and onto the floor.
“Have a seat,” she said.
Rhodes sat in the chair, and Mel sat on the couch. She looked at Rhodes, waiting to hear what he had to say. The radio played “Tom Dooley.” Hearing the voices of the Kingston Trio, Rhodes was reminded of Max Schwartz.
“You’ve heard about Jerry Kergan, I guess,” Rhodes said.
Mel brushed at her eyes again. “I’ve heard. What do you care?”
“His death wasn’t an accident. I’m going to find out who killed him and why.”
“And you think I can help you?”
Her eyes were dry now, and hard. Rhodes didn’t think she was going to cooperate.
“That’s what I think,” he said.
“Well, I can’t help, no matter what you think. I would if I could, but I don’t know a thing about what happened or why it happened or anything else. If you’ll leave now, I’ll get to work on that Web site you’re so worried about.”
“I’m not worried about it. Mikey Burns is. Which reminds me. I’ve been thinking about something you said last night.”
Mel didn’t appear to care what Rhodes remembered. She just looked at him.
“You said something to the effect that Mikey Burns wouldn’t know a date if it bit him in the butt. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now I wonder if you didn’t mean a different kind of date from the one I had in mind.”
Mel looked away. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll tell you, then. When I suggested that Burns talk to you about the Web site, he didn’t want to have a thing to do with it. He insisted that I had to do it. I thought he might just be intimidated by you, but politicians don’t intimidate that easily. It had to be something else.”
“So?” Mel said. She wasn’t going to make it easy.
“So I have a feeling you and Burns are better acquainted than I thought you were. You and Kergan knew each other pretty well, too. I’d like to know what was going on with the three of you.”
The tissue Mel held had been wadded into a small, tight ball. She unwadded it and blew her nose. She got up and walked into the computer room, where she threw the tissue into a wastebasket.
Rhodes listened to Dicky Doo and the Don’ts sing “Click Clack” until she came back.
She sat back on the couch and said, “All right, what do you want me to say?”
“I want to hear about you and Burns, and I want you to tell me how Kergan comes into whatever relationship you had.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with running Jerry down.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I don’t think Mikey did, either.”
Rhodes wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that. He kept thinking about that black truck. It could have been one that was kept off the roads as a farm vehicle, as he’d first thought, but another place where a truck like that would go unremarked was a precinct barn like the one where Burns had his office.
“If you’ll just tell me what was going on with the three of you,” Rhodes said, “I might be able to make up my mind about what you and Burns might have done. Or not done.”
“All right,” Mel said. “I’ll tell you. It’s not very interesting, though. Excuse me.”
She got up and left the room. Rhodes listened to someone singing about a little white cloud that cried. He couldn’t remember the singer’s name. When Mel returned, she held a box of tissues.
“In case I need one,” she explained, setting the box on the coffee table before she sat on the couch.
“Like the little white cloud,” Rhodes said.
She gave him a blank look.
“On the radio,” Rhodes said. “Or the Internet. It was in a song that was playing.”
“Oh.”
“Right. Now about Mikey Burns.”
“He and
I have known each other for a while,” Mel said. “When his wife died, he got interested in computers. Then when YTwoK was coming up, he got worried about what was going to happen. You remember YTwoK, don’t you?”
“Well enough,” Rhodes said.
He remembered that there had been some kind of worldwide near panic that computers everywhere would crash, throwing the cities and countries everywhere into crisis. Some people in Clearview had stockpiled food, even gone so far as to bury huge supplies of it in the country around town in preparation for the collapse of civilization.
It hadn’t happened. Midnight came and went all over the world, and the computers kept right on computing, or whatever they did. Rhodes figured some residents of the county were still digging up food supplies.
He didn’t see what any of this had to do with Mikey Burns, however.
“He hired me to check all his computers,” Mel said. “He didn’t want anything to happen to them. We got to know each other a little. One thing led to another. You know how it is, I’m sure.”
Rhodes nodded. He didn’t exactly know how it was, not being as steamy as Sage Barton, but he had a pretty good idea.
“We went out a few times. We got along. I thought he liked me more than he did, maybe. Anyway, it didn’t last. He dropped me.”
That would have been about the time Burns was running for commissioner, Rhodes thought.
“He didn’t think I was the right kind of person to have around him when he was politicking,” Mel said, confirming Rhodes’s suspicions. “As soon as he got elected, he started to come around again. Fool that I was, I went out with him. Just when I thought things were getting serious, he dropped me again.”
She reached for a tissue, pulled it out of the box, and crumpled it in her hand.
“I didn’t go out with anyone for a while,” she continued. “Then Jerry Kergan started looking around for a property where he could open a restaurant. Naturally, he needed somebody to install his computer system, and he thought a local person would be best.”
“You, for instance,” Rhodes said.
“Yes, me. He hired me, and after he renovated the building, I went to work for him. We got to be friends.”
It seemed to Rhodes that she got to be friends with a lot of her clients, but so far she’d only mentioned two. He decided that he was too judgmental.
“I don’t see how all this fits together,” he said.
“It’s like this. As soon as I started seeing Jerry, Mikey got interested again. Some men are like that.”
Rhodes wouldn’t know. He didn’t think he was like that.
“Burns didn’t like it that you were dating Kergan?”
“That’s right, but it was too late. I wasn’t going back to Mikey, not after the way he’d treated me. He talked to Jerry about it. Jerry just laughed at him. That’s it. That’s all there was to it.”
“Why did Burns hire you to do the Web site for my department, then?”
“Oh, that was his way of trying to bribe me. Or maybe he hired me because he knows I’m good at what I do. That might be out of character for him, but it could happen. Anyway, he never threatened me or Jerry. It was no big deal.”
Rhodes wondered if that was really all there was to it. He also wondered just how jealous Mikey Burns might have been. Mel might not be giving him the whole story.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mel said. “You’re thinking that Mikey killed Jerry because of me.”
She sounded almost pleased that someone would come up with the idea, but not as if she believed it was possible.
“Do you think he did?” Rhodes asked.
“Not really. If Mikey had treated me right, he’d have dated me and maybe even more than that. But all he wanted to do was keep me on the string. If he’d cared enough about me to kill for me, he’d never have dumped me twice.”
Rhodes thought she was right. Maybe there was nothing suspicious at all about her relationship with Kergan and Burns, though he still wasn’t sure.
“Did you know the Crawfords?” he asked. “Larry and Terry. Twins.”
“I don’t think so. Do they have anything to do with computers?”
Rhodes doubted it. “They knew Kergan. Did you know much about his business at Dooley’s?”
“All I know is that he was hoping to make a go of it. The restaurant business runs on a pretty narrow profit margin, so it’s hard to get started and even harder to keep going. He was making it, but just barely.”
“Do you know if he was doing anything to make a little extra money?”
“Like what? Something illegal?”
“Like selling moonshine whiskey,” Rhodes said.
For the first time since he’d met her, Mel smiled. “You’re joking, right? Moonshine whiskey? That sounds like something out of the thirties.”
“It’s still around,” Rhodes said. “No pun intended.”
“Pun?”
“Never mind. The Crawfords were making illegal whiskey on their property. I’ve heard they might have been selling it to Jerry Kergan.”
Mel laughed. Rhodes was glad he was making her feel better. It was too bad he wasn’t joking.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’d have known about it. I taught him how to do his accounts on the computer, showed him how to use spreadsheets. He didn’t have anything set up for selling whiskey.”
“He wouldn’t,” Rhodes said. “He’d know enough to keep that off the books.”
“I guess he would. I still think I’d have known.”
Maybe, maybe not, Rhodes thought. He thanked her for her help. Next, he’d go have a talk with Mikey Burns and see how the stories matched up.
He left Muller’s manufactured home and got in the county car. Before he started for the precinct barn, he gave Hack a call to see if he was needed for anything else.
“You sure are,” Hack said. “You need to drop by the Lawj Mahal. Randy Lawless wants to talk to you.”
“What about?” Rhodes said.
“It ain’t just him. It’s him and another two guys.”
“What two guys?”
“Larry Crawford,” Hack said. “And Jamey Hamilton. You gonna go by there?”
“Call Lawless and tell him I’m on my way,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 15
THERE WAS PLENTY OF ROOM IN THE BIG PARKING LOT IN FRONT of Lawless’s large white office building. Rhodes parked right by the door.
He got out of the car and felt the heat reflected off the white walls. He stood for a second and looked over what remained of Clearview’s downtown. There wasn’t much. Only a few years ago, just about where the county car was parked, an old furniture store had stood, with a mural painted on its wall. Part of the town’s Christmas celebration had been held on what was now the parking lot. Rhodes recalled the theft of the Baby Jesus that had occurred one year, and the death that had followed. It hadn’t been one of the town’s best celebrations, so maybe it was just as well that all the reminders had disappeared.
Rhodes shrugged off his thoughts and went inside the Lawj Mahal. The light was subdued, but the air was cool, almost cold after the heat in the parking lot. Rhodes wondered what Lawless’s electric bill was, not that it mattered. Whatever it was, the lawyer could afford it.
Lawless’s secretary said that Mr. Lawless was waiting, and she showed Rhodes into the inner sanctum. It was even nicer than Judge Parry’s office. The law books lining the shelves were all bound in red leather, and the plush chairs were upholstered in leather of the same color. The pile of the rug was high enough to tickle Rhodes’s ankles.
“Morning, Sheriff,” Lawless said. He was sitting behind a desk big enough to serve as a softball field in a pinch. “I think you know my clients.”
Sitting in two of the big red chairs were Jamey Hamilton and Larry Crawford. Crawford was dressed pretty much as he’d been when Rhodes had last seen him, but the T-shirt was different. It said I’M ON DEBT ROW in red letters.
No doubt Crawford didn
’t have much of a wardrobe left after the explosion of the trailer, Rhodes thought, so he must have bought some more clothes. Except that the ones he was wearing didn’t look new.
Hamilton was much younger than Crawford. He had black hair, blue eyes, and a smooth face. Rhodes wondered who was running the barbershop. Maybe Hamilton didn’t have many customers and didn’t have to stay open for long hours. But that couldn’t be right, not according to what Michal Schafer had said.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Crawford said. “You found the man who killed my brother yet?”
“How did you know he’d been killed?”
“Mr. Lawless told me. How do you think? So did you find who killed him?”
“Not yet,” Rhodes said. “But I will.”
“I bet. I told Jamey you would.”
“Hey, Sheriff,” Hamilton said. “That’s what he was telling me all right.”
“I want that son of a bitch,” Crawford said. “Whoever he was, you better find him before I do. Nobody’s gonna kill my brother and get away with it.”
“Have a seat, Sheriff,” Lawless said, ignoring Crawford’s comment. “We have a few things to discuss.”
“We do at that,” Rhodes said. “Jerry Kergan would be one of them.”
“What?” Lawless said. He’d been leaning back in his chair, relaxed and at ease, but at the mention of Kergan’s name, he sat forward. “What about Jerry Kergan?”
“He’s dead,” Rhodes said. “And then there’s the whiskey still.”
“I know about Mr. Kergan,” Lawless said. “I was sorry to hear it, but I don’t see what his death has to do with my clients.”
“Maybe nothing,” Rhodes said. “The whiskey still does, though.” He looked at Larry, who avoided his eyes. “With one of them anyway.”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Lawless said. He tapped a fingernail on his desk. “My clients have nothing to do with the still, either.”