Too Late to Die

by Bill Crider

  “I’m sure that you’d never have looked up that Wayne character on your own,” Rhodes said. “Of course, I’m having it checked into. But that’s not my question.”

  Despite his efforts to appear relaxed, Claymore was definitely showing signs of discomfort. Although he must have had his air conditioner set at around sixty-eight degrees, there was a faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip. “I see,” he said. “Just what did you want to talk about then?”

  Rhodes stepped back from the desk a few paces and leaned on the doorframe. “I suppose that what I have to ask could have some bearing on the kind of campaign I run,” he said. “It has to do with Jeanne Clinton.”

  Claymore came forward in his chair and placed his palms down on the glass top of the desk. There was nothing else at all on the desk, not even a picture or an ashtray. “Yes, that was an unfortunate incident,” he said. “Very unfortunate. You have my word that I won’t mention it while the campaign is on. I realize that no enforcement, even the strictest, can prevent every crime, especially a crime of passion.”

  “Did I mention passion?” Rhodes asked. “Besides, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  Claymore turned his palms up and looked into them as if trying to read his lifeline. “What did you mean, then?”

  Rhodes straightened. “I think you know. I think you’d better tell me, though, instead of having me tell you. Otherwise, I might somehow get the impression that you have some pressing reason for avoiding the mention of the Clinton murder in your campaign, some reason that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with clean politics. Or dirty ones either.”

  Claymore shook his head without looking up. “Would you mind shutting the door, Rhodes?”

  Rhodes stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut. “Let’s have it,” he said.

  Claymore met Rhodes’s eyes. “It’s hard to explain,” he said.

  “I can imagine,” Rhodes responded. “But don’t worry. If you’re not involved in the murder, you can trust me to keep quiet about your involvement. I don’t want to win an election by throwing mud any more than you do.”

  “All right,” Claymore said with a sigh. “I guess it’s really simple enough. I own some property in Thurston, so I go over there pretty often. Sometimes I stop by at Hod Barrett’s store for a Coke and to talk to the fellas there. One day I met Jeanne in there, and one thing just led to another.” He raised his hands and then let them fall limply. “You’ve seen Dora. It’s not just how she looks. It’s how she lives, her whole attitude. She never wants to go anywhere or do anything. She just sits around the house all day watching that damn TV. Game shows. My God, if I never see or hear another game show as long as I live, it’ll be all. right with me. Wheel of Fortune, twice a day. Family Feud. Even reruns of Let’s Make a Deal. She won’t even let me talk to her when they’re on!”

  “Sounds bad all right,” Rhodes said. He meant it. He hated game shows. He watched only comedy reruns and old movies.

  “Anyway,” Claymore said, “Jeanne was easy to talk to. She liked people, and she had a sense of humor. I’d forgotten what it was like to laugh with a woman. So I started dropping by to see her when her husband wasn’t around. Not that there was anything wrong in what we did, you understand. Not a thing! But I just felt that her husband might not understand.”

  You and three or four others, Rhodes thought. That Jeanne Clinton should have been charging by the hour, like a psychiatrist. She could have gotten rich.

  “You ever see anyone else over there?” Rhodes asked.

  “No, no one. I was always very care . . . very discreet.”

  “You were seen, of course,” Rhodes said. “You should have known that in a town the size of Thurston everyone knows everything that goes on.”

  “Elmer?” said Claymore. “Is he the one . . .”

  “Not Elmer. Bill Tomkins.”

  “Tomkins? I think I’ve met him at Barrett’s store. Is he the one with the breathing problem?”

  “It won’t be bothering him anymore,” Rhodes said “Someone shot him with a .30-.30 this morning.”

  Claymore came apart after that. He offered to get Dora to tell Rhodes that she and Claymore had been in the house all morning, offered to let him take in his .30-.30 to see if the firing pin matched the print of the one on the casings, begged Rhodes not to release the information that Claymore had been seeing Jeanne.

  “I told you not to worry,” Rhodes said when Claymore ran down. “But you know I have to investigate this aspect of the murder. If you had anything to do with it, anything at all, God help you.”

  “I didn’t,” Claymore said. “I swear it. I’ll pull out of the election campaign if you want me to.”

  “I said I didn’t want to win that way, and I meant it,” Rhodes said. “You can continue your campaign exactly as you have.”

  Claymore’s eyes reflected his gratitude. “I never said you weren’t a good sheriff,” he said. “About this Terry Wayne . . .”

  “I don’t think I want to hear it,” Rhodes said. “I’ll deal with him myself. It’s a matter for the department. If there’s anything to his accusations, I’ll find out. I’d just as soon not have any private citizens mixing in, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “I understand,” Claymore said, rising from his chair. “I’d like to shake your hand, Sheriff.” He extended his right hand.

  Rhodes took it. Maybe he’ll vote for me, he thought. But somehow he doubted it.

  The blast of hot air that escaped from Rhodes’s car when he opened the door almost bowled him over. It seemed especially bad after the cool comfort of Claymore’s air-conditioned house. He steeled himself, but the touch of the vinyl seats caused him to shift about briskly nevertheless. Sticking the key into the ignition slot on the steering column was like touching the glowing tip of a welding rod.

  Rhodes started the oar and turned the air conditioner on high. Hot air from the vents hit him in the face, but he drove around until the temperature was bearable. While he drove, he thought about what had just gone on. Just how badly did he want to win the election? How much did it really mean to him? Had he really meant what he said to Claymore? And how sure could he be that Claymore was telling him the truth?

  The last thought led to an interesting complication. What if Claymore and Jeanne were actually quite involved? What if Jeanne had threatened to let their involvement be known? The question then became one of how badly Claymore wanted to win. Would he have killed to prevent Jeanne from spoiling his chances? Would he have killed Tomkins to keep Tomkins from talking?

  Rhodes didn’t think so, and he was a man who trusted his hunches. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little checking on Claymore’s whereabouts on the night Jeanne Clinton had died.

  Chapter 9

  Rhodes drove out to Sally’s Truck Stop. He hadn’t asked anyone else to check Elmer’s story about eating breakfast there the morning of Jeanne’s death, and it was time somebody did so.

  Sally’s was a small wooden frame building set nearly a block back off the highway. The block was taken up with a wide white-gravel parking lot, so white that it hurt Rhodes’s eyes in the glare of the sun. He knew that the lot was spotted with oil stains from the big trucks that stopped there, but he couldn’t see them from the road.

  At this time of the day, Sally’s was quiet. There was only one eighteen wheeler parked in the lot, right up near the door. Rhodes drove his car over the uneven graveled surface, parked beside the truck, and got out.

  The inside of Sally’s was cool and spotlessly clean, though maybe not as clean as Hod Barrett’s wife kept her house. There was a long Formica counter with stools, and a row of booths covered in red vinyl. The trucker was sitting on one of the stools drinking a cup of coffee and eating a piece of Sally’s justly renowned pecan pie.

  Leaving a stool between himself and the trucker, Rhodes sat down. Sally came out of the kitchen. She was a bottle blonde of indeterminate age, though Rhodes had been around long enough in the same to
wn to make a pretty accurate guess. He pegged her at fifty-five. She looked as if she enjoyed her own pecan pies.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” she said. She had a deep voice, almost as deep as a man’s. “A Dr Pepper, right?”

  “Right,” Rhodes said. He loved Dr Peppers and had drunk a lot of them in Sally’s.

  She brought him the drink and he sipped it while the trucker finished his pie, paid up, and left. When Sally came back down to his part of the counter, they talked about the weather, about her business, and about her customers, not all of whom were as taciturn as the trucker who had just left.

  When the opportunity came, Rhodes asked about Elmer Clinton. “He come in here often?”

  “Often enough,” Sally said. “Course he ain’t been in since his wife got killed. He liked to come in for a little breakfast, shoot the breeze a little. He was in here the very morning y’all found her body, as a matter of fact. Lordy, that must’ve been a shock to him. He really loved that girl. Poor fella.”

  “Poor fella?” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah, I mean, you take a guy like him, he was lucky to get him a wife at all, much less one like Jeanne, young and pretty like she was. Course she was a little wild for a while there, but she settled down and made Elmer a fine wife. Why, he practically worshipped the ground that girl walked on. Many’s the morning he’d sit here and tell everybody what a lucky man he was. Lots of the fellas that come in here, well, they don’t always talk so nice about their wives, but not Elmer. I surely do feel sorry for that man.”

  Rhodes thanked her for his drink and paid her thirty-five cents. Then he went out into the heat again, but not to his car. There was a public phone at the side of Sally’s, and he went over and dropped a quarter in the slot, then dialed Claymore’s number.

  Mrs. Claymore answered. Rhodes could hear the frantic voice of an emcee in the background. He identified himself and then asked to speak to her husband.

  “Why, I believe he’s out doing a little campaigning, Sheriff,” she said. “Can I have him call you when he gets back?”

  Rhodes was glad to hear the news that Claymore wasn’t home. “No,” he said, “no need to bother him. I just wanted to ask him about that little rally the Clearview Breakfast Club sponsored last Tuesday night. I didn’t get to attend, and I thought I’d see if your husband could tell me about it. I meant to ask earlier, but it slipped my mind.”

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Claymore. “I’m sure he couldn’t help you. Ralph and I never miss The A-Team on Tuesday nights.”

  “Well, thanks anyway, Mrs. Claymore,” Rhodes said, hanging up the phone. Claymore wasn’t necessarily in the clear, but he’d been home the early part of Tuesday night.

  Rhodes got in his car, called up Buddy on the radio, and asked him to meet him at Ferguson’s Feed Store.

  Claude Ferguson was a cousin of Claire’s, and he and Rhodes had been friends for years. He didn’t mind at all if the sheriff used the back of his feed store for a meeting place if he wanted to discuss something that he didn’t want to talk about at the jail. There was a small parking lot behind the store that no one ever used, and any conversations held in the rear part of the cavernous building were easily kept private.

  Rhodes liked the place. It was an old tin building, with its wooden floor set up on concrete blocks. In many places the tin sides were gapped, and there were double-wide doors on all sides, all of which contributed to the free circulation of air. There was a wall between the small front section of the store and the back area so that the front could be heated and cooled. The wall had a large door in it, but the door was always closed unless someone was loading feed through it.

  Rhodes pulled into the parking lot, got out, and stepped through the back door. He was greeted with the distinctive smell of feed stores everywhere, a combination of ground corn, wheat shorts, horse and mule feed mixed with molasses, laying mash, pig starter, and who knew what else. There was a strong ammonium tinge from the fertilizer, and just a whiff of Diazanon as well. It was a smell that Rhodes didn’t mind at all.

  He walked between rows of paper and burlap feed sacks stacked as high as his head, and even higher. When he came to a stack of shelled corn that was about waist high, he sat on the top sack to wait for Buddy.

  Buddy wasn’t long in appearing. He came in and sat across from Rhodes on a red, white, and blue sack of hen scratch.

  Buddy didn’t look much like a deputy sheriff. Rhodes had never quite been able to decide just exactly what Buddy did look like. He was tall and thin, and he could never get a uniform shirt (or any other shirt) that quite fit. The sleeves were always too short, or if they were long enough, the shoulder seams hung over his shoulders. His head didn’t match his body. It was far too big for his thin neck, and it always seemed in a precarious state of balance.

  His appearance didn’t affect his work, however. Buddy was good at his job.

  “Had any time to look into that Terry Wayne business?” Rhodes asked when Buddy had settled himself.

  “Sure have, Sheriff,” Buddy said. His voice was a nasal tenor. “I talked to the man himself.”

  “And?”

  “And I think you better talk to him, Sheriff,” Buddy said seriously, his big head bobbing up and down. “I b’lieve that old boy really thinks he has a case.”

  Rhodes sighed and leaned back against the stack of corn sacks at his back. “You don’t think he’s bluffing?”

  “I didn’t say what I thought. I said what he thinks. If you get what I mean.” Buddy pulled up a thin knee and locked his hands around it.

  “I’m not sure that I do,” Rhodes said. “Does he have a case, or doesn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” Buddy said stubbornly. “I just know he thinks he has a case. He’s getting himself a lawyer and everything.”

  Rhodes groaned. “What about that business with Claymore?”

  “Well, I think you could say that it was mostly Wayne’s idea.”

  “It’s that ‘mostly’ part that I’m interested in,” Rhodes said. “You don’t have to be diplomatic about it.” Rhodes suspected that Buddy was watching his words because if Claymore were elected and Rhodes were out of a job, Buddy would still be a deputy. The county wasn’t exactly on the spoils system.

  “What I mean is, I think he went to Claymore with the idea. It wasn’t something that Claymore knew about in advance. I could tell that much. If the fight was staged, Claymore didn’t know a thing about it, but I guess he didn’t mind using it.”

  Rhodes had just about reached the same conclusion after his talk with Claymore, and it didn’t make him happy. “OK, Buddy, thanks. You can get back on your run,” he said.

  But Buddy didn’t get up. It was plain that he had something more to say, but that he wasn’t quite sure how to say it. Finally he got it out. “Sheriff, how much do you know about Johnny Sherman?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he rushed on. “I mean, I know he goes out with your daughter and all, and you wouldn’t of hired him if he hadn’t been a good man for the job, but this Wayne fella really seems to think he can get the department on this. I mean, he’s convinced that he and his pal were whipped up on by Johnny for no reason at all.”

  Despite the sinking feeling in his stomach, Rhodes tried to be optimistic. “Look at it this way, Buddy. Nobody we ever arrested was guilty of a thing to hear him tell it, was he? Can you ever remember arresting a guilty party in your whole career?”

  “No, Sheriff, not when you put it like that. But this Wayne ain’t like that. He sounds mighty damn truthful to me. I’m afraid that with a good lawyer, he can really cause some trouble.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see about that,” Rhodes said. “You can be sure of one thing. If Johnny did anything wrong, I’ll find out about it.” He stood up, clapped Buddy on the shoulder, and walked out to his car.

  When he got back to the jail, Rhodes let Hack catch him up on the latest happenings. “That Polish fella’s wife came and got him this morning,” Hack said.


  “His wife?” Rhodes said. “And I thought you said he wasn’t Polish.”

  “Wasn’t,” Hack said. “He was just as American as you and me.”

  “Then why was he speaking Polish?” Rhodes felt vaguely that he was playing his part in one of Hack’s Abbott and Costello routines.

  “Wasn’t. Told you that already. He was drunk, but he was trying to make us think he was Polish, so he was just gabblin’ away.”

  Rhodes hated to ask why, but he knew it was expected, so he did.

  “Because he was trying to get away from his wife. I think he hoped we might ship him to Poland or something,” Hack said. Then he laughed. “After a look at that wife of his, I didn’t blame him. Things might not be too good in Poland, but that fella had a lot to contend with at home. I guess any place’d be better, to him.”

  Rhodes grinned. At least there was one less problem for him to deal with. “Billy Joe started talking yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Hack said. “I think he misses the Polish fella.”

  Rhodes went out and up to the cells. Billy Joe didn’t appear too happy to see him, but at least he didn’t cower and babble. He just sat quietly on his bunk and looked at Rhodes. Lawton wasn’t around, so Rhodes walked over and rattled the door of Billy Joe’s cell. It was safely locked.

  “I’d give a lot to know how you got out of that cell, Billy Joe,” Rhodes said. He waited for a minute, but there was no answer. Billy Joe continued to sit quietly, hardly seeming to breathe.

  “Give a lot to know just what happened over in Thurston the other night, too,” Rhodes went on. “Seems like you’d have a mighty interesting story to tell.”

  Billy Joe still said nothing.

  “That blood, now, that blood on your shirt surely makes things look bad for you,” Rhodes said. “It wasn’t your blood, Billy Joe. It looks to me like it was Jeanne Clinton’s blood, and she’s sure enough dead. I don’t guess word’s got out in town yet that we’ve got you here, or there might be a lot of folks wanting to know if you were the guilty party. They could cause a lot of trouble, Billy Joe.”