by Bill Crider
Rhodes sighed. Ellendorf was a well-known nutcase. “What’s the trouble this time?”
“I bet it’s the flyin’ saucers again,” Lawton said, earning a hostile look from Hack.
“Is it?” Rhodes asked.
“Yeah,” Hack said, still looking at Lawton.
“What are they up to this time?”
Hack looked back at Rhodes and grinned. “Stealin’ his ’lectricity.”
No wonder Hack’s mood had improved so quickly. That was a completely new story from Ellendorf. On previous occasions, Ellendorf had variously claimed that the flying saucers—black ones, of course—were spying on him, trying to abduct his two dogs, causing his chickens to stop laying, or making his house shift on its foundation.
After each of the calls, Rhodes had paid a visit with his special “saucer detector,” which consisted of a couple of circuit boards from old transistor radios. No saucers had been detected, and Ellendorf had been happy. Until the next time.
“How does he know they’re stealing his electricity?” Rhodes asked.
“Because it went off right after they flew over. He says they sucked all the ‘lectricity right out of the house. He heard this high-pitched whinin’ noise and went out in the yard. Saw four of those black saucers hoverin’ over the house. Soon’s he saw ’em, they whooshed straight up in the air and took his ‘lectricity with ’em.”
“Sounds serious,” Rhodes said.
“Sure is,” Lawton said. “Man without an air conditioner’s in big trouble in weather like this.”
“Did you tell him to call the electric company?” Rhodes asked.
“Nope. I figured you’d better go out and have a look first. Takes the ‘lectric company too long to do anything anyway. It might be tomorrow before they got somebody out there. If it’s something you can’t solve, you can tell him to give ’em a call. They might get there in a couple of hours, or it might be a couple of days. Depends on what else they got to do.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “I’ll see if I can take care of him. Then I might drive down to Thurston to have a look at Jerry Kergan’s house.”
“He had an apartment here in town now.”
“He still owned his place in Thurston, didn’t he?”
“Far’s I know.”
“Then I need to have a look around. You get in touch with Ruth and have her check the apartment.”
“You be sure to let me know where you are,” Hack said.
“I will.”
“Ruth always lets me know where she is.”
Rhodes ignored the implied criticism and started for the door, but Seepy Benton came in before he got there.
“We need to talk, Sheriff,” he said.
“What about?”
“The Crawfords. I told you I knew a few things that might be important.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “Come on over to the desk.”
He sat at his desk and Benton sat beside it in an old wooden chair that might have been new when the jail was built. He kept his hat on, but Rhodes didn’t mind.
“Those authors I met today were really interested in our case,” Benton said.
“Hold it,” Rhodes said. “Our case?”
“Well, the one you’re working on. I’m just a public-spirited citizen who’d like to help out.”
“Right. Did you tell Claudia and Jan anything you haven’t told me?”
“Two things. I’d have told you, but you didn’t seem interested.”
“I’m interested now.”
“Good. The first thing’s about the Schwartzes. I think you’d better question them again.”
“Why should I do that?”
“I’m not sure I should say.”
Rhodes stood up. “And you have every right not to. I have some things I need to do anyway.”
Benton grinned. “I guess I asked for that. I came here to tell you, and then I didn’t. I don’t blame you for being a little irritated.”
“He gets like that all the time,” Hack said from across the room. “I don’t know why he does.”
Rhodes detected no trace of irony in his voice.
“Anyway,” Benton said, “the Schwartzes were pretty upset with the Crawfords. They talked to a couple of us in the academy class about doing something about them.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“I didn’t want them to get in trouble, and I didn’t really think they were serious. That was before I heard the story of what Terry did in the store. I thought it was just about the meth lab, and—”
“There wasn’t a meth lab,” Rhodes said.
“If you say so. But we thought there was. I told them we couldn’t do anything ourselves, that it was your job. You emphasized that in your class.”
Rhodes was glad someone remembered. He’d been clear about citizens’ responsibilities and how they differed from the responsibilities of the sheriff’s department.
“I thought they agreed with me,” Benton said. “They seemed to lose interest. Now I wonder if I was right. They were pretty upset, even now, about Terry Crawford.”
“Does Schwartz keep a gun in his store?” Rhodes asked.
“I don’t think so. If he did, Jackee might have used it on Crawford.”
Rhodes hadn’t thought of that. Jackee didn’t look like the type, but he knew you could never tell what a person might do by looking at her.
“You said there were two things. What’s the other one?”
“I saw somebody at the Crawford place today, at the gate.”
“You’ve been watching it?”
Benton stiffened, as if he’d been insulted.
“Watching? No. I just happened to look up that way when I was leaving home this morning.”
Rhodes didn’t think Benton could see the gate from the road in front of his house, but it might be barely possible.
“What did you see?”
“A black truck. There were two men in it.”
Rhodes hadn’t been too sure of the accuracy of the information about the Schwartzes, but this was more interesting.
“Could you tell what they looked like?”
“Not until they got out of the truck. The windows were too dark.”
“Well?” Rhodes said.
“One of them was short and hefty. Not fat, but he had a big belly. It looked solid, like a barrel.”
“Did he walk with a limp?”
“How did you know?”
“Call it a lucky guess. What about the other one?”
“Skinny, wore a baseball cap, black jeans, and a black T-shirt.”
Rapper and Nellie. No wonder Rhodes had been thinking of them. Maybe he’d recognized them in the truck without even realizing it.
“You can really see well from your place,” Rhodes said. “Do you have binoculars?”
“No. After I saw them, I drove up that way instead of coming to town.” Benton put up a hand. “I wasn’t investigating. I didn’t put myself in any danger. I was just doing what a responsible citizen would do.”
“You’re right,” Rhodes said. “This county needs more responsible citizens who’re ready to help out law enforcement now and then.”
“I’m always happy to help out,” Benton said.
“Good,” Rhodes told him. “Because I have a little job for you.”
Chapter 20
“THAT WAS A PRETTY MEAN TRICK,” HACK SAID WHEN BENTON was gone.
Rhodes shook his head. “He said he wanted to help.”
“Yeah,” Lawton said. “Maybe so, but I don’t think he knows much about possums.”
“What’s there to know?” Rhodes said. “He goes up in the attic and chases them out. One citizen helps out another.”
“Miz Owens won’t like it,” Hack said.
“Sure she will. She just wants to get rid of the possums. She doesn’t care who does the job.”
“She asked for you, though.”
“She’ll like Benton. Everybody does.”
“He did seem like a nice fella,” Lawton said. “Maybe he’ll bring his guitar around and give us a concert.”
Benton had mentioned his guitar playing before leaving. He always manages to work it into the conversation, Rhodes thought.
“I’d like to hear him,” Hack said.
“We work here,” Rhodes reminded them. “This is a jail, not a music hall.”
“Irritable,” Hack said, turning to Lawton. “Like I said.”
“Kinda sad,” Lawton said. “He didn’t use to be like this.”
Rhodes left before they could say any more.
Dave Ellendorf looked like a perfectly normal guy. He was nearly seventy, with white hair so thin that Rhodes could see the pink skin of his scalp. He wore glasses and baggy pants that slid down and lapped over the tops of his shoes because of the belly that pooched out over his belt. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Rhodes thought, reminded that he couldn’t always be sure of seeing his own belt buckle.
Appearance aside, however, there was something distinctly odd about Ellendorf, and it wasn’t just his belief that black flying saucers were hovering around and stealing his electricity. It had something to do with his high-pitched voice and the way he never quite looked directly at whomever he was talking to. His small eyes darted to the left and right and never stopped darting around.
“Where’s your saucer detector?” he asked Rhodes first thing.
“I didn’t think I’d need it,” Rhodes said. “The saucers are gone, right?”
Ellendorf nodded. “Sure they are. They got what they wanted, and they were gone in a flash. Sounded like they’d been sucked right up into the sky in a big vacuum cleaner. Took that electricity with ’em, dammit.”
“We’d better check,” Rhodes said. “Maybe they brought it back.”
“I didn’t see ’em.”
“They’re sneaky, though.”
Ellendorf thought that over. “I guess you’re right about that. But the electricity’s still gone. I’ll show you.”
The house was small, and it was located just outside the city limits. There was a fenced chicken yard in back, and a couple of dogs slept in the shade on one side of the house.
Ellendorf took Rhodes into the cramped one-car attached garage, leading him past an old Ford Escort that was red, faded, and dusty. Its nose almost touched the door to the interior of the house. There was a dirty plastic light switch beside the door, and Ellendorf flipped it up. The light didn’t come on.
“See?” he said.
“What about the rest of the house?”
“I’ll show you that, too.”
Ellendorf opened the door. They went into a utility room that was almost too small for the washer and dryer it held. Ellendorf flipped the light switch on the wall by the door. Nothing happened.
“No air-conditioning, either,” he said. “Mighty damn hot in here.”
Rhodes had to agree that it was. “You’ve been running that AC day and night, I guess.”
“Damn right. Too hot not to. Got it cranked right down to seventy-four, too. I say to hell with that ‘keep it on seventy-eight’ crap they keep preaching. A man wants to be cool in this weather.”
Rhodes went back into the garage. It must be about 120 in here, he thought. He looked across the top of the Escort to the opposite wall and saw the gray metal door of the circuit-breaker box.
He went around the back of the Escort and slipped sideways along the side of the car so he could get to the breaker box. He pulled on the silver ring and opened the door.
Sure enough, the main breaker had been tripped. Ellendorf had strained his electrical system.
Rhodes flipped the breaker back on. He heard an air-conditioner compressor kick in somewhere behind the house, and the garage light came on.
Ellendorf came into the garage. “They brought it back! How’d you make ’em do it?”
Rhodes explained about the breaker and told Ellendorf to turn up the thermostat. “And you’d better call the electric company. Have them come out and check your electrics. You might want to call an air-conditioner repair place, too. Get your whole system checked.”
“Costs money,” Ellendorf said. “Those E.T.s’d just come back and steal my electricity again.”
“I have something that might keep them away,” Rhodes said. “An E.T. repeller.”
“You shoulda brought that before.”
“I just got it. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”
“You think it’ll help?”
“It’s guaranteed,” Rhode assured him.
“All right, then. I’ll try to stand it with the AC temp turned up a little.”
“You do that,” Rhodes said.
He left Ellendorf standing there looking up at the hot blue sky.
Thurston was a town that had fallen on hard times. It had always been small. Now it was almost nonexistent: one grocery store, and not much else.
The owner of the store was Hod Barrett, a short, stout, solid man with red hair stiff as brush bristles. And a temper. He’d never been one of Rhodes’s supporters, and he didn’t much like seeing the sheriff in his store.
“You oughta be out solvin’ crimes,” Barrett said. “Not stoppin’ by here for a Dr Pepper.”
Rhodes sat on the wooden bench in the front of the store. The boards had been worn smooth by generations of customers who’d sat there, just as Rhodes was now, drinking Dr Pepper in glass bottles and eating MoonPies.
Rhodes had the Dr Pepper, and he wished he had a MoonPie, but even missing lunch didn’t mean he could splurge like that, or so he told himself.
“I’m here on business,” he said. “In fact, that’s why I stopped here.” He held up the Dr Pepper for Barrett to admire. “The drink’s just a bonus for me.”
The interior of the store was dim and cool. The high ceilings helped, and Rhodes liked to look at the pattern of the stamped tin. He wondered how old that ceiling was. Older than either he or Barrett, for sure.
“What’d you want to ask me?” Barrett said. “I got customers to wait on.”
Rhodes looked around the store. He didn’t see any customers. He doubted that any would come in. Thurston was just about dead.
“I make deliveries,” Barrett said, as if he could tell what Rhodes was thinking. “Lots of folks here can’t get out and shop for themselves, so they call in their orders. They’ve got old, need somebody to help them out. I don’t charge ’em anything for the deliveries.”
“I won’t bother you long,” Rhodes said, a little surprised, though he shouldn’t have been, that Barrett was willing to help people. Things like that still happened in small towns, maybe even in cities, but you never heard about them. “I want to ask you about Jerry Kergan.”
“Him,” Barrett said in a tone that indicated a low opinion of the man. “He moved off to Clearview to get rich. Couldn’t make it here. Not enough business. I guess you can figure out why.”
“Not many people left in town,” Rhodes said. “There are still some out in the country and down by the lake, though.”
“Yeah,” Barrett said. “But not many.”
Rhodes noticed the scant stock on the store shelves and wondered how much longer Barrett would be able to keep his store open. What would happen to those people who needed deliveries when it closed?
“Kergan still had a house here, didn’t he?” Rhodes asked.
“Yeah,” Barrett said. “I think maybe he rented it out to somebody.”
Rhodes hadn’t heard that. “You know he was killed last night?”
“Ever’body in town knows about that.” Barrett gave Rhodes a crooked grin. “Heard you were right there when it happened and didn’t do a thing to stop it.”
Rhodes thought that Barrett would have been a happy man if the sheriff had been crushed instead of Kergan.
“I wasn’t in much of a position to stop it,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah.”
Barrett’s tone implied that he didn’t believe a wor
d of it. Rhodes didn’t challenge him.
“Who rented Kergan’s house?” he asked, taking a sip of the Dr Pepper.
“Now that’s kind of funny,” Barrett said. He rubbed a hand across his bristly head. “Not ha-ha funny. You know. The other kind.”
“What’s funny about it?”
“I pass by there now and then making deliveries, and I see signs that somebody’s around, but I never see who it might be. Maybe it’s not rented out after all. People been messing around there, though.”
“You should have called my office if you were suspicious that something like that was going on.”
“Huh.”
Barrett was able to put a lot of meaning into a single sound. Rhodes interpreted it as “Fat lot of good that would do.”
“Where’s the house located?” Rhodes asked.
“On the road going to the Plunkett Cemetery,” Barrett said. “You know where that is?”
“Not far from the old Gin Tank,” Rhodes said.
Once, Thurston had been a cotton town, with two or three cotton gins running day and night at cotton-picking time. That had been a long time ago. There were no cotton fields around Thurston anymore, and hardly a trace of the gins remained. A big pond, called the Gin Tank, had been near one of them, and though the gin was gone, the pond still had the same name. Probably only a few people in the town even remembered how it had gotten it.
“That’s right,” Barrett said. “Go around the curve by the tank, and it’s the first house you see on the right.”
Rhodes thanked him, finished the Dr Pepper, and left.
Chapter 21
THE AIR FELT A LITTLE COOLER TO RHODES WHEN HE GOT OUT OF the car in front of Kergan’s house, but that was likely because it was late in the afternoon and the sun was coming at him from a slant instead of bearing down from directly overhead. The actual temperature hadn’t changed much.
The Gin Tank wasn’t far from the house. Willow trees grew all around it, and Rhodes couldn’t see the water. He hoped that the tank hadn’t gone dry. He liked to think that the water shielded by the willows was still and green and cool, that lunker bass swam in the weeds near the banks, waiting for someone to toss in a lure.
He knew better than that, however. He’d talked to more than one rancher who’d had to shoot a cow that had bogged down in the mud while trying to reach the small pool of water that was in the middle of the tank.