Too Late to Die dr-1

by Bill Crider

  “All right, but use my name if you have to. Tell him I’ll bring my own wire cutters out there if he wants to make it official.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” Hack said. “I think he just wanted to make a stir, and now that he’s done it he’ll probably calm down.”

  “It’s getting a little late in the day,” Rhodes said. “Save it till tomorrow, why don’t you. It’ll make a good way to start the day.”

  “Yeah, if something else don’t happen by then,” Hack said.

  “Don’t try to cheer me up,” Rhodes told him. “I’m going home for supper. Then tonight I’ll be going back to Thurston for a little talk with Elmer Clinton. Don’t call me unless it’s an emergency.”

  Hack looked hurt. “‘Have I ever called you when it wasn’t?”

  “Guess not,” Rhodes said as he went out the door.

  Rhodes was eating a bologna sandwich when Kathy came into the kitchen and joined him. “I wish you’d let me fix you a decent meal,” she said.

  Rhodes looked ruefully at the limp sandwich. “Someday I will,” he said. “I’m on the jump now, what with that latest killing.”

  “I heard about it on the news,”‘ Kathy said. Clearview, though small, had both an AM and an FM radio station. The FM station, trying to cut into the listenership of the older, more established AM one, did a lot of local news-talk shows.

  “Any commentary?” Rhodes asked.

  “Just a straight report. Not even any mention of a crime wave right here in Blacklin County,” Kathy said.

  “Not exactly a crime wave,” Rhodes said. “But I guess for a town of Thurston’s size it looks like one.” He paused. “Speaking of Thurston, how’s Johnny?”‘

  Kathy looked down at the top of the round oak table. “Fine, I guess.”

  “You guess? What’s the matter? Trouble between you two?”

  “Not trouble, exactly. It. . well, it’s hard to explain.”

  Rhodes laid his sandwich, or what was left of it, down on his napkin. He never bothered with a plate when he ate alone. “Want to try? Explaining, I mean. “

  “I don’t know,” Kathy said. “He’s been. . different the last few days. Maybe that business about the lawsuit has bothered him. I don’t know. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He just gets upset if I mention it.”

  “He get that way often?” Rhodes picked up his sandwich. After what Buddy had told him, he didn’t like the way this was sounding.

  “Not often. He’s moody, though, and sometimes a little pushy. As I said, it’s hard to explain.”

  Rhodes stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth. “You still going to be seeing him?”

  “Oh, I suppose so. He’ll get over it, whatever it is.”

  “Do you ever think maybe it’s time for you to get out of Clearview, maybe get a teaching job somewhere that has more to offer a young woman like you?” Rhodes smiled. “Not that I haven’t liked your being here, but I can take care of myself now.”

  Kathy looked up at him and grinned. “Or maybe you’ve found someone else who can take care of you now,” she said.

  Rhodes was surprised to find himself nearly blushing, not so much because he was embarrassed as that his daughter could read him so well. “You mean Ivy Daniels, I guess,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “and I think it’s just fine.”

  “We’ve just been out the one time, and that was business,” Rhodes said, aware that he was being a bit deceitful.

  “And that’s all there is to it?”

  “Well, not exactly. We’ve made sort of a date to go out tomorrow night,” Rhodes said. He felt like a schoolboy.

  Kathy’s grin turned into a smile. “I’m not sure that I’m ready to leave Clearview and Johnny just yet,” she said, “but when I go you’ll be in good hands.” She pushed away from the table and stood up. “Have a good night, Dad.”

  Rhodes watched her walk away, not having much to say. He thought for a minute of Claire, but the memory did not jab him with a sharp pain under his heart as it would have only days before. If Kathy approved of Ivy Daniels, then his own feelings couldn’t be too far out of line. He just hoped he wasn’t reading too much into one date and the prospect of another.

  Rhodes got up from the table and wiped the bread crumbs into his hand with the napkin. Then he dusted the crumbs into the trash basket and tossed the napkin in after them. There was one advantage to eating alone. The cleanup was easy. He still had plenty of time to drive over to Thurston and talk to Elmer Clinton.

  Chapter 10

  It was only seven o’clock when Rhodes got on the road, still plenty of daylight left. To the west, in the far distance, he could see a huge bank of black clouds building up. Ninety-five percent of the rainstorms came in from the west, and this looked to be a pretty good one. It was still a while off, though. In a minute the sun would sink behind the cloud bank and the evening would get cool and gray. It was the kind of weather Rhodes liked, and besides, if it rained, maybe some of Claymore’s cardboard signs would get drenched and fall apart. At the very least they would get awfully wrinkled when the sun dried them out the next day.

  He drove up to Elmer’s house and parked in front. Elmer’s car was parked by the chinaberry tree as usual. A couple of branches from the tree actually extended out over the car, and Rhodes saw a couple of chickens gone to roost in them. That won’t be much good for the finish on Elmer’s car, Rhodes thought.

  Yellow light spilled out of the screen door. Rhodes stepped up on the porch and knocked. Elmer walked into view. “Come in,” he said.

  Elmer and the room were both changed since Rhodes’s last visit. The room had been thoroughly cleaned, the floors scrubbed, all the magazines and beer cans picked up. In fact, the room was immaculate. Rhodes found himself wondering for a second if Mrs. Barrett had been there.

  Elmer reached out and shook the sheriff’s hand. “Have a seat,” he said. His voice and eyes were clear and steady. It was evident that he’d stopped drinking quite a while ago. His thinning hair was carefully combed.

  Rhodes sat in a wooden rocker and glanced around the room. Nothing had been changed, except that there was now an eight-by-ten color picture of Jeanne in a gold frame atop the TV set.

  “You found the man who killed my Jeanne yet, Sheriff?” Clinton asked.

  “No, not yet, Elmer. I think it’s time you gave me a little more help, though,” Rhodes said, making himself comfortable.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clinton asked. He continued to stand, massaging his thick left arm with his right hand.

  “It’s supposed to mean that the last time I talked to you, I didn’t want to take advantage of your grief,” Rhodes said. “But I think you lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to when I’m investigating a crime. Lying makes a fella look guilty, sometimes.”

  Clinton drew himself up to his full five feet six with a deep breath. Rhodes pretended not to notice.

  “I mean it, Elmer,” he said. “You went on and on about how there was just no chance that Jeanne had been seeing anybody while you were off at work. Well, she had. In fact, it begins to look like she’d been seeing about half the damn town, along with a few folks from Clearview. And don’t tell me you didn’t know it.”

  “That goddamn Bill Tomkins!” Clinton spat the sentence out along with the breath he’d been holding. That sonuva bitch had a poison tongue. I know what he was saying, all right, but it was all lies! My Jeanne was an angel on earth! That girl was as pure as the snow!”

  Elmer’s face was getting as red as a rooster’s comb. Rhodes hoped he didn’t have heart disease. He didn’t say anything for a minute, then looked at Elmer’s thinning hair. “How much older than Jeanne were you, Elmer?” he asked.

  “Goddamn it, Sheriff! Goddamn it! What right you got to talk like that? What right you got to say those things?” Clinton waved his arms around, then sank to the couch.

  “I didn’t say anything, Elmer,” Rhodes said mildly
. “I just asked a simple question. Seems to me there’d be no harm in answering.”

  “You know it anyway, goddamn you.”

  “No, I don’t know it, but I can make a pretty good guess,” Rhodes said. “I’d guess nearly thirty years.”

  “Close enough,” Clinton said. “Close enough. And now you’re wondering what’d make a girl that young, ‘specially one that looked as good as Jeanne, marry an old goat like me.”

  “I might have wondered about that,”‘ Rhodes said.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. She liked me.” Clinton shook his head. “It was as simple as that. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth. She’d been married once before, you know. Her husband got killed in some kind of accident up there on that Alaska pipeline, and she was livin’ by herself. We met a time or two and got to talkin’, you know. Lord, that girl loved to talk. Anyway, one thing led to another and we just got married. Never had an argument or a fight, and that’s a fact. She was the best girl in the world.”

  Rhodes was afraid that Clinton might get maudlin again, so he changed the subject back to what Elmer was trying to avoid. “She liked to talk, all right. She liked to talk so much that when you went off to work she talked to anybody that came around.”

  Clinton sprang off the couch. “Don’t say that, Sheriff. Don’t ever say that.”

  “It’s true, Elmer, and you might as well face it. Bill Tomkins might have been a gossip, but he wasn’t a liar. I can give you the names of three men, including him, who dropped by on your wife. And I think you knew all about it.” Rhodes stood up.

  Elmer Clinton shook his head. “You’re wrong, Sheriff. I didn’t know. I never even dreamed it.” His shoulders sagged. “I never even dreamed it,” he said again.

  Looking at him there, Rhodes believed him. “I’m sorry, then, Elmer, but it’s true. I’ve been told by people who’d be better off if they hadn’t been here. They weren’t lying.”

  Elmer Clinton just stood there, shaking his head. Rhodes let himself out the screen door and walked to his car. He could hear the thunder in the distance now, and he saw a faint streak of lightning behind a cloud. There was a tang of ozone in the air. He got in the Plymouth and drove away.

  It was raining lightly by the time Rhodes got back to Clearview, and he stopped by the jail to check in. Hack and Lawton were sitting around talking as he came in the door.

  “Thought you was going over to Thurston, Sheriff,” Hack said.

  “I’m back,” Rhodes said. “Anything come up tonight?”

  “Just the usual round of drunks and wrecks,” Hack said. “Nothing special. It’ll get worse, though, what with this rain.”

  That was the one aspect of rain that Rhodes disliked. It slicked the highways and always increased the number of accidents. It was particularly bad on weekends. “Highway patrol will have its hands full, all right,” he said. “How’s Billy Joe?”

  “Still nothing to say,” Lawton said. “I checked that door real good now, every time I go by.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rhodes said. “What’s been bothering me is how he got through this room without anybody seeing him.

  Lawton and Hack looked at one another. They hadn’t thought of that, just as Rhodes hadn’t until driving back from Thurston. It was easy enough to imagine Billy Joe trying the door of his cell and finding it open, but it wasn’t easy to imagine him getting down from the block and out past Hack. It must have happened, but Rhodes couldn’t see how. He excused himself from not having thought of it earlier by recalling that he’d just gotten back from the candidates’ forum. Seeing Mrs. Wilkie and being confronted by Terry Wayne all in the same night would be enough to play havoc with anybody’s thought processes.

  “Think about it,” Rhodes said. “One or both of you had to be in here, unless you’d both stepped into the back room, and I know you wouldn’t stay there for very long. Did anything unusual happen that you can remember?”

  The two old men were silent, thinking back to the previous evening. “Seems like things went about as usual,” Lawton said. “I recall Johnny coming in, and we did a little hoorawin’ like we always do, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “No calls came in, I remember that,” Hack added.

  Then Lawton snapped his fingers. “We was both in that back room,” he said. “Remember, Hack.”

  Hack obviously remembered. He shook his head ruefully. “Couple of dirty old men,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Rhodes asked.

  “Well,” Hack said, “Johnny came in and checked the prisoners over, and when he came back down he said he had a copy of one of them men’s magazines, one with some pretty good pictures of some movie star.”

  “Wasn’t just some movie star,” Lawton said. “It was that woman in one of them nighttime soaps. Fifty years old, she is, and looks just like a young girl. Hard to believe anybody nearly old enough for me or Hack here could look that good. ‘Course she’d never give one of us a second look, I guess.”

  “That’s the truth,” Hack said, “but that’s what it was, Sheriff. We couldn’t of been out of here more than ten minutes, though.”

  “Didn’t want one of the registered voters to come in and catch us lookin’ at dirty pictures,” Lawton said apologetically. “Goes to show where that kind of thing gets you, though. That must be when Billy Joe got by us.”

  “Hard to believe he’s that smart,”‘ Rhodes said. He didn’t blame the two men for going to look at the magazine. He’d have been tempted himself.

  “Maybe he’s smarter than we give him credit for,” Hack said. “Maybe he did kill Jeanne Clinton.”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said. “But I don’t really believe it.”

  “Me neither,” Hack said. “It was just a thought.”

  “And if he didn’t, who did?” Lawton put in.

  “I wish I could tell you,” Rhodes said. “I really wish I could.”

  Rhodes reached home during a lull in the thunderstorm, which by then had become what the locals referred to as a real toad strangler. He managed to get from his car to the house with only minor water spotting.

  Kathy was in her room, reading probably. Rhodes got ready for bed and turned on his television set in time to catch the last few minutes of Hangman’s Knot, a western with Randolph Scott. Rhodes had always thought that Scott was a fine actor who had never received the recognition he was due. Could anybody name an actor who had consistently done such good work in as many low-budget westerns? Rhodes doubted it. He hoped that Donna Reed appreciated what kind of man she was getting at the picture’s end. He had read somewhere that Scott was still alive and, incredibly, in California, and he hoped that was true. Scott deserved it.

  Rhodes lay on his extra-firm mattress and tried to drift off to sleep, but it was impossible. Too many things kept running through his mind. Usually he could go to sleep almost as soon as he lay down, but the murders of Jeanne Clinton and Bill Tomkins had really disturbed him. He kept thinking that he should know more than he did, that he was asking the wrong questions or the wrong people.

  He thought about Jeanne. Barrett, Tomkins, and Claymore had all told him the same thing about her-that she was a wonderful girl who just liked to talk, that she was only someone who listened to them. Since only Tomkins seemed to know about the others, they obviously hadn’t gotten together to prepare a story. Maybe they were telling the truth. That made Jeanne Clinton a really rare individual, but it didn’t give anyone a motive to kill her, unless it was her husband.

  But Elmer Clinton seemed genuinely grief-stricken over Jeanne’s death. It was almost impossible for Rhodes to believe that Elmer had killed her. He was so incredibly protective of her reputation that he almost certainly would not have killed her, if only to keep her friendships with other men secret. He would have known that the secret would come out in any murder investigation.

  Besides, it seemed to Rhodes that Jeanne’s visitors were truly a secret from Elmer, who was shocked and angry about Bill Tom
kins’s gossip. He’d heard it, but he apparently hadn’t believed it.

  Of course, there was the possibility that one of the men had pressed Jeanne to do more than talk. Barrett certainly had the strength to beat her, for example.

  But then, who killed Tomkins? Barrett hadn’t been in his store when Rhodes arrived to call in the word of Tomkins’s death. Where had he been?

  And who was the other man that Tomkins had been about to mention when he’d been shot? A few more seconds, and Rhodes would have had himself another suspect, one whose name he couldn’t even guess right now, unless he included Billy Joe, and he still wasn’t ready for that.

  Then there was Mrs. Barrett. She was a hardworking woman, no doubt tough as wet leather, but Rhodes couldn’t picture her as the type to beat another woman. That seemed to him a man’s crime, and if that made him a male chauvinist pig, then so be it. He’d just have to suffer the consequences. Even at that, he couldn’t just exclude Mrs. Barrett entirely from his suspects.

  When Rhodes finally drifted off to sleep, he dreamed that he was Randolph Scott and that Ivy Daniels was Donna Reed, or maybe it was Jeanne Clinton who was Donna, and Lee Marvin was beating her, and Rhodes was trying to get to him to make him stop, and when he grabbed Marvin’s arm, it wasn’t Marvin who looked back at him but someone else, but Rhodes couldn’t quite make out the face. He woke up the next morning with the dream still vivid in his mind.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday morning at the Blacklin County jail was pretty much the same as always. A good many drunks were in the cells, but they would all be gone by noon. No other crimes to speak of overnight, unless you counted the poisoned beer.

  “Poisoned beer?” Rhodes asked Hack. “That’s a new one on me.”

  “New one on all of us,” Hack said. “Jack Turner, down on the Bellem Road, found a six pack of Miller on his front steps about three o’clock when he got in from clubbin’. He figured nobody’d leave a six pack on his porch ‘less there was a good reason. He figured the best reason would be that it was poisoned.”