by Bill Crider
“The book’s not about me,” Rhodes told Mrs. Wilkie. “It’s not even based on anything I’ve ever done.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “I wonder if they say anything about the times I helped you out.”
Mrs. Wilkie had more than once called Rhodes’s attention to a couple of men who’d invaded Blacklin County and caused problems. Their names were Rapper and Nellie, and they claimed to be members of a motorcycle gang called Los Muertos, though Rhodes didn’t think the gang really existed except in their imaginations. Just thinking about Rapper and Nellie made Rhodes nervous, but he didn’t think they were around.
“Heard any motorcycles lately?” Rhodes asked her.
“No.”
Rhodes relaxed a little.
“Are there any motorsickles in the book?” Mrs. Wilkie asked.
“Not a one,” Rhodes said. “Is Mr. Burns here?”
“Let me check.”
Mrs. Wilkie picked up the phone on her desk and pushed a button. Rhodes heard Burns answer, and Mrs. Wilkie told him that the sheriff would like to see him. After listening to a mumbled response, she hung up.
“You can go on in,” she said, and Rhodes did.
Burns had on a different Hawaiian shirt today, one that was primarily green, white, and blue, with dolphins and waves. He also had a self-satisfied smirk on his face, and Rhodes was sure that couldn’t be a good sign.
“Mrs. Wilkie tells me you’ve been doing personal business on county time,” Burns said when Rhodes sat down. “That’s something I’ll have to mention at the next meeting of the commissioner’s court. I hate to do it, but we can’t have you cheating the taxpayers out of their money, can we?” He shook his head with mock sadness. “You need to be more careful, Sheriff. That’s the kind of thing a man’s opponent can use against him at election time, or maybe you don’t think anybody’d dare to run against you.”
Rhodes, who hated campaigning, had been unopposed in the last election, but he figured it might be time for someone to make another try at him. He was grateful that Hack had been looking out for him earlier.
“I signed those books on my own time,” he said. “Filled out the right forms and everything to be sure I wasn’t cheating anybody. You can call the jail and check if you want to. Better call now, so you’ll know I did it earlier and didn’t wait until after you reminded me.”
Burns, who had been a little puffed up, deflated. His little smirk changed to a disappointed frown.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. Rhodes could hear the lie in his voice, which didn’t sound glad at all. “I don’t need to call. I don’t doubt that you’re a conscientious public servant and careful with the people’s money.”
Rhodes wondered again why Burns didn’t like him. Part of it might have had to do with what had happened to Burns’s predecessor, but surely that couldn’t be the only thing.
“What about that Web site?” Burns asked, changing tactics. “Is it up and running yet?”
“No,” Rhodes said. “But I’m glad you asked about it. That’s the main thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
Burns had worked up the beginning of a false smile, but even the trace of it disappeared, as if it had never been.
“Well,” Rhodes went on, “not the Web site specifically. Mel Muller’s what I really wanted to talk to you about.”
“You did?”
“That’s right. Jerry Kergan, too, while we’re at it. I hear you were a pretty good friend of his.”
“You hear a lot of stuff, don’t you?” Burns said with a sullen look. “Always sniffing around, sticking your nose in, finding things out.”
“It’s what the taxpayers expect of me,” Rhodes said. “I don’t want to cheat them.”
Burns glared at him. Rhodes answered the glare with a grin, and finally Burns dropped his eyes. They sat without speaking for a while, and then Rhodes said, “Why don’t you tell me about your relationship with Mel Muller.”
Burns opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. Rhodes looked out the office window, hoping to catch a glimpse of a black Dodge pickup. A backhoe rumbled past, and that was all Rhodes saw.
“Did she tell you about us?” Burns asked when the backhoe was gone.
Rhodes didn’t want to give anything away. “A little.”
“She’d been dating Jerry Kergan, you know.”
“Is that why you spent so much time in his office?” Rhodes asked.
Burns slumped in his chair. “Who told you that?”
“One of my sources,” Rhodes said, hoping that made it sound as if he had hundreds of them.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Burns said. “It was that C. P. Benton. I know it was.”
Rhodes just smiled.
“He saw me out there at that restaurant. He can’t sing a lick, you know that?”
“I heard him last night. I thought he was pretty good.”
“Well, that just shows you don’t know anything about music. It was him who told you, wasn’t it?”
Rhodes kept quiet.
“All right, I was there, and I talked to Kergan. It was strictly business, though. He’s in my precinct, and I was checking to see if things were going all right for him. I like to keep in touch with the voters.”
“Right,” Rhodes said.
“So that’s all there was to it. You have any more questions?”
Burns leaned forward, half-rising from his chair, plainly indicating that it was time for Rhodes to get up and leave. Past time, in fact. Rhodes sat right where he was.
“I do have a few more questions,” he said. “You and Mel Muller were going together. You broke up and then took up again before Jerry Kergan started beating your time.”
Burns balled his fists. “He wasn’t beating my time. I wasn’t even going with Mel anymore. If you think I killed Kergan because I was jealous of him and Mel or something like that, you’re all wrong.”
“I didn’t even mention that he was dead.”
“You’re not tricking me, Rhodes. Everybody in town knows he’s dead. You think something like that doesn’t get around? I heard about it first thing this morning, and I was sorry to hear it. I hardly knew him, but I was sorry.”
“And you never got upset with him because he was seeing Mel Muller?”
“Never. You think I’d have given her the Web site job if I was upset?”
“You didn’t want to talk to her about it. You sent me to do it.”
“Sure. It’s your department. You should do the talking.” Burns paused and rubbed his hand across his face. “All right. Maybe I would have felt a little awkward talking to her. What difference does it make?”
“None, probably,” Rhodes said, “but you never know. The thing is that the Crawfords spent a lot of time with Jerry Kergan, too. So did you, and so did Mel Muller. I have to wonder what was going on in there.”
“I don’t know anything about the Crawfords. I was there on precinct business, like I told you, and that’s it. That’s all I have to say about it.”
Rhodes knew better than to push it. He had a feeling that Burns would be on the phone to Judge Parry soon enough, complaining about his treatment by the mean old sheriff. It’s a good thing my position is elective, he thought. I’d be fired within the hour if Burns had the power to do it.
Rhodes was sure that Burns had talked to Kergan about his relationship with Mel Muller. It appeared to Rhodes that Burns was still interested in Mel but didn’t know how to do anything about it. Rhodes knew he wasn’t as smooth with women as, say, Sage Barton, but he knew that confronting Kergan about his relationship with Mel was the wrong way to go about winning a woman’s heart.
The best thing to come out of the conversation was that Burns most likely wouldn’t be bothering him about that Web site again. Not anytime soon at least.
Rhodes went back to the jail to meet with the representative from the TABC, who turned out to be Jack Mellon, a barrel-chested, no-nonsense lawman wit
h whom Rhodes had worked on a couple of other occasions.
“How come you didn’t bring me a book?” Mellon said when Rhodes handed copies to Hack and Lawton.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” Rhodes said.
“Mine’s not signed,” Lawton complained.
“Mine, neither,” Hack said. “I can’t take vacation time just on a whim like some folks, so I couldn’t get out to the Wal-Mart, but I was expecting an autograph.”
“I’ll sign the books,” Rhodes said. “I’m sorry I forgot.”
Hack handed him a pen, and Rhodes signed the books.
“Don’t read them while you’re on the job,” he said.
“I’m just gonna look at the cover,” Lawton said. “That’s a mighty good likeness of you.”
“Yeah,” Hack said. “Who’s the woman? I don’t remember seein’ her around town.”
“She just comes in for the bank robberies,” Rhodes said.
He turned to Mellon and explained the situation with the Crawfords and told him the location of the still.
“So this Larry Crawford’s claiming his dead brother was the sole owner and operator of the still,” Mellon said.
“That’s it. He swears he had nothing to do with it and that he tried to persuade Terry to stop making whiskey. By the time you meet him, he might be claiming he didn’t even know the still was down there in the woods.”
“If the land’s in his name, or both their names, that might not matter. Is he where you can put your hand on him?”
“His lawyer’s supposed to know where he is. We can find him when we want him.”
“Let’s go have a look at that still first,” Mellon said.
“We can take my car,” Rhodes told him.
At the gate to the Crawford property, the chain was still locked around the post, and the fence was undisturbed. Rhodes felt good about that. He’d been a little worried that the chain would be cut or the fence would be down.
He got out of the car and keyed the lock, which snapped smoothly apart. Then he got back in the car and started to drive up the hill. The ruins of the manufactured home looked no better than they had the previous day, and having lain in the sun for hours, they were probably almost as hot.
Mellon wasn’t interested in the wreckage, though. All he cared about was the still.
Rhodes drove up and over the hill, pointing out on the way down to the creek the spot where he’d found Terry Crawford’s body. Mellon didn’t care about that, either.
Rhodes stopped the car at the edge of the trees. “The still’s about thirty yards in, under a little shed covered with camouflage netting.”
The two men got out of the car, and although it was late afternoon, the heat was still powerful. Dead grass crackled under Rhodes’s shoes. The walking didn’t bother his chest or shoulder, but it did make him aware that he was still a little sore.
“How many stills have you ever found in this county?” Mellon said as they entered the trees. “Couldn’t have been too many, not in a long time.”
“This is the first one in years,” Rhodes told him. He tried to remember the last time. It had been awhile. “Only two others, a good while back.”
“You might find a few more than that this year, what with white lightning coming back into style,” Mellon said. “It’s a fad, won’t be around long, but somebody’s going to make a dollar off it while it lasts.”
They walked along, dead sticks cracking under their feet. When they came to the little shed, it was just as it had been on the previous day. The camouflage netting was also undisturbed.
The still, however, was gone.
“Looks to me like you haven’t found one this time, either,” Mellon said.
Chapter 19
THE TRACKS RHODES FOUND AFTER LOOKING AROUND FOR A while came from the direction of the creek. The dry grass was flattened at the edge of the trees, where someone had parked, and there was a spot of black oil the size of a large pancake on the ground.
Someone had driven a vehicle, which Rhodes was willing to bet was a black Dodge pickup, along the nearly dry creek and up into the woods, then loaded the still. Rhodes would have to look for the place where the truck had left the road, but he figured it was down by the bridge. Because there was no fence between the Crawfords’ property and the creek, it would have been easy enough for someone to get to the still that way. Then whoever it was had taken the still apart and carted it off. It would take at least a couple of people to do that, Rhodes thought.
He’d made a mistake by overlooking the fact that someone could come up to the trees by the back way, and it looked like he’d been outsmarted. Mellon was too kind to say so, but Rhodes could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“What with Crawford claiming he didn’t own the still, and what with the still being gone and all, I don’t have much of a case against him,” Mellon said.
“We have pictures of the still,” Rhodes said, remembering that Ruth Grady had taken them. “Two of us saw it here and can swear to it. That should be good enough for the court.”
“It should,” Mellon agreed, “and it probably would. I’m not willing to make the arrest on that basis, though, not with this Crawford fella ready to say the still wasn’t his and having a high-powered lawyer to back him up. It’s just not worth it. You can arrest him if you want to, but I don’t recommend it.”
“We have whiskey from the still,” Rhodes said.
“Any proof that Crawford made it?”
Rhodes thought about the lack of fingerprints and said, “No.”
“Then you’re right back where you started.”
Rhodes saw Mellon’s point, but he didn’t like it.
“Since this is a dry county,” Mellon said, “if you catch him in possession, you’d have a case. One quart would do it if you were really out to get him.”
Rhodes didn’t think he’d be lucky enough to catch Crawford in possession, not now.
“Who do you think took the still?” Mellon said.
“Somebody driving a black Dodge,” Rhodes told him, and then went on to explain what had happened when he and Ruth found the still. “Later on that night, the same truck killed a man named Jerry Kergan. So whoever was driving it is our man.”
“Your man,” Mellon said by way of correction and clarification. “Maybe it was Crawford.”
“Could be, but we haven’t been able to connect him to the truck so far. We haven’t been able to connect anybody to it.”
“You will. But as for the still, just forget it. Crawford might not even own this property. If he doesn’t, you’ll really be on shaky ground. Anyway, you have two murders on your hands. That’s enough.”
Though he didn’t say so, Rhodes didn’t agree. He wanted to get Larry Crawford for the still, too. It didn’t seem right that he should get away with making illegal alcohol.
That thought reminded him again of Rapper and Nellie, both of whom had gotten away with a lot in Blacklin County, maybe even murder.
Not that they’d gotten off scot-free. Once, Rapper had lost a couple of fingers in a fight with Rhodes. Another time, both he and Nellie had wound up in the hospital, Nellie with broken ribs and Rapper with a severe thigh wound, the result of another fight with Rhodes, who had sunk the sharp point of a hay hook in him.
Rapper and Nellie, however, hadn’t learned much from those encounters. They’d returned to the county one more time, and Rhodes had been in yet another fight with Rapper, who that time had gotten most of one ear shot off.
Each time, however, Rapper had come close to getting the better of Rhodes. He’d outthought him and outmaneuvered him on more than one occasion.
Why do I keep thinking about him? Rhodes wondered. He and Nellie are motorcycle guys. They don’t drive trucks.
“We might as well go on in,” Mellon said. “We’re not going to find anything else here.”
Rhodes thought about following the tracks, but he decided to come back later. No need to delay Mellon’s return t
o his home base. They went to the car, and Rhodes drove them back to town.
After Mellon had left, Rhodes checked with Hack to see what was going on with the donkey at the car wash, among other things.
“Franklin Anderson took care of him,” Hack said. “Got him roped and penned up without much trouble. Didn’t find out who owned him, though.”
Rhodes wasn’t worried about that. The owner would be calling sooner or later.
“Could be a mule,” Lawton said, walking into the room from the cell block.
“Anderson says it was a donkey,” Hack told him. “Just like I thought.”
Rhodes didn’t recall that, exactly, but he kept quiet. He didn’t want to get them started again.
“Anderson didn’t do anything about those possums, though,” Hack said.
“We’re working on it,” Rhodes told him.
“Right. That’s what I told Miz Owens, just like you said. I’ve had to tell her twice since the first call. I don’t think she took any comfort from hearin’ it.”
“It’s the best I can do right now. What else is going on?”
Rhodes hoped that Hack would say “Nothing,” but that had never happened before. Something was always going on.
“Buddy called in about that Jamey Hamilton. He can’t find out a thing on him except that he cuts a lot of hair.”
“I knew that already.”
“Buddy says it’s kind of suspicious how much hair he cuts. Lots of folks in and out of that shop. More than you’d think for a little town like Obert.”
Rhodes recalled what Michal Schafer had told him.
“Does Buddy think something else was going on?”
“He’s checkin’ some more, but he says it might be that Hamilton was sellin’ liquor out of the shop.”
Rhodes wanted to get some evidence of that and tie it back to Larry Crawford, though it wasn’t likely that anyone who’d bought liquor there would admit it.
“Tell him to keep working on it. Anything else?”
“Dave Ellendorf phoned,” Hack said.