Red, White, and Blue Murder

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes wondered whether she was sorry because he could lock her up or because she felt bad about what she’d done. He didn’t think he’d ask.

  “Thanks for the apology,” he said. “But we still have to talk about Bilson.”

  “You can talk all you want to. I didn’t kill him. I told you why I hit you, and killing somebody didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Beaman owned the fireworks stand. He must have told you that Bilson was staying out at that house.”

  “No, he didn’t. I don’t even think Jay knew it. We didn’t have any reason to kill that man.”

  “He was trying to find evidence that Jay had accepted a bribe, and he’d already told a newspaper reporter about you. He was determined to cause trouble because Jay had been fooling around with his wife.”

  “So?”

  “So those seem like pretty good reasons to get into an argument with a man. And arguments have a way of getting out of hand.” Rhodes touched the back of his head. The knot was hard but tender. “You might even hit someone with an ashtray, or a whiskey bottle if it was handy.”

  The wind was blowing more strongly now, and it pushed a strand of Linda’s hair into her mouth. She moved it aside and tried to put it back in place, but the wind gave her trouble. After a while she gave it up.

  “I didn’t argue with anybody, and I don’t know who did. I just know it wasn’t Jay. Okay, so I hit you with that ashtray. That doesn’t mean I hit anybody else. I never even saw that Bilson guy.”

  Rhodes found himself believing her again. He was either getting really gullible, or she was telling the truth. He wished he could make up his mind about which was the case.

  From somewhere in the north there was a low grumble of thunder. Rhodes looked up at the sky and saw that it had grown darker and that clouds were moving in, throwing fast-moving shadows on the lake. There was a smell of dampness on the wind.

  “Looks like we might finally get some rain,” Rhodes said.

  “Jay was feeling pretty good about things,” Linda said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “He told me not long ago that his luck was about to change, you know? He said it was about time he got a break.”

  “What kind of break?”

  “He didn’t say, but it had something to do with the hypocrites he had to work with.”

  “The commissioners?”

  “Whatever. He was thinking maybe he could get the fireworks stands to pay off better, the way they had been.”

  “I thought nobody knew he owned them.”

  “Nobody did. What I mean was that people like you and some of the other commissioners were making it harder and harder for him to keep them going. He wasn’t selling near as many fireworks as he used to, and he needed some way to make more money.”

  “And he’d found it?”

  “I guess so,” Linda said. “He didn’t tell me what it was, though. All he said was that he and Bilson—is that his name?”

  “That’s it,” Rhodes said.

  “Funny name, if you ask me. Anyway, he and Bilson were going to have a little talk, and that Bilson wasn’t going to be bothering him anymore. So you can see that he didn’t have any reason to kill him.”

  Once again Rhodes found himself believing her. Although he still remembered getting hit by the ashtray. But what if Beaman had gone to have that little talk with Grat and wound up killing him? It could easily have happened that way.

  “I think you might be telling the truth,” Rhodes said. “At least as far as you know it. But I have to take you in anyway. You shouldn’t have hit me like that.”

  Linda nodded. “I knew it was a stupid mistake as soon as I did it.”

  “If you realized it, you should have stayed there. Maybe we could have worked something out.”

  “Yeah. I thought of that, too, but it was too late by then. I’d already aired up those tires and taken off. I got scared, you know? But I’m not going to run this time. You can take me to jail if you have to.”

  “All right,” Rhodes said.

  He managed to stand up without looking too clumsy. He could remember the time when standing up from that position would have been easy. It hadn’t been so very long ago, either, or so he told himself.

  “Let’s go,” he said offering a hand to Linda.

  She took his hand and stood up a lot more gracefully than he had. As they started walking back down the pier, the first raindrops began to fall.

  31

  BY THE TIME THEY GOT TO THE PICKUP IT WAS RAINING HARD. THE big drops splattered in the sand and rattled off the hood of the truck. Rhodes’s shirt was wet through, and his hair was plastered to his head. Linda Fenton looked equally bedraggled.

  Rhodes couldn’t spare a deputy to come to the lake and drive the pickup back to town, so he decided to take a chance on Linda.

  “I’m going to let you follow me,” he said. “If we stick to the sandy roads, we should be able to get back to the pavement without getting stuck, but we’ll have to go slow.”

  “What if I run away?”

  “I’ll have to trust you.”

  “Right,” Linda said.

  She got into the truck and rolled up the window while Rhodes ran to the county car. By the time he got there, he was thoroughly soaked, and his shoes were heavy with the wet sand that clung to them. He didn’t bother to try cleaning them off. The mud from Wednesday’s little adventure was still all over the floor, so Rhodes figured a little more dirt wouldn’t matter. He jumped into the car and slammed the door. Somebody, probably Rhodes himself, would have to clean the car later.

  He got from the yard to the road without any difficulty and drove slowly through the increasingly heavy rain. For a couple of minutes it seemed as if the car’s wipers were just smearing mud across the windshield, but eventually the dust that had settled on the car earlier was cleaned off and Rhodes could see fairly well.

  It had gotten quite dark, so he turned on the lights. Then he glanced into the rearview mirror to see if Linda was actually following him. She was. Rhodes could see the pickup’s headlights only a few yards back.

  A bright flash of lightning lit up the trees, and a blast of thunder shook their leaves. Rhodes kept driving slowly, hoping for the best. When he came to a part of the road that was more clay than sand, he knew he was in trouble. If he let the wheels drift to one side or the other, he’d slide right off the road into the ditch beside it. And if that happened, he’d be stranded out there for hours. He slowed down even more and didn’t relax until he got back safely to the sand. Linda Fenton stayed right behind him.

  Just before they came to a paved county road, they crossed a little wooden bridge over what only a few minutes before had been a very dry creek bed. Now, there was water foaming swiftly under the bridge, carrying sticks and dead leaves along with it.

  When he reached the pavement, Rhodes flexed his fingers. He’d been gripping the steering wheel tightly, as if that would help him drive. Now that there was no danger of getting stuck in the mud, he could relax and enjoy the rain. Water was rushing over the road, but he wouldn’t have any trouble getting back to town, and it seemed that Linda Fenton was going to come along without causing him any difficulty.

  Then he noticed that the headlights he’d been watching in the mirror were no longer there.

  The first thing Rhodes decided as he made a U-turn, water hissing under his tires, was that if Linda Fenton got away, he’d never admit to anyone that he’d trusted her.

  He especially wouldn’t admit it to Ivy.

  Getting hit in the head with the ashtray was bad enough, but this was humiliating. How many times did someone have to fool him before he learned his lesson?

  He had gone less than a quarter of a mile when he saw the pickup parked on the opposite side of the road. He made another U-turn and pulled up beside it. Linda Fenton was sitting in the driver’s seat, but when she saw Rhodes, she opened the door and got out. Then she got into the county car with Rhodes.

  “This is the firs
t time I was ever in the front seat of one of these things,” she said.

  “What happened to the pickup?”

  “I don’t know. It just stalled out. Something must’ve gotten wet.”

  “I thought you’d decided you didn’t want to go to jail.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t, you know? But like I told you, I don’t have anyplace else to go. Maybe you can give me some dry clothes.”

  “They won’t be very fashionable,” Rhodes said.

  “Like I’d care.”

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  “This rain’s gonna really green things up,” Hack said after Linda Fenton was locked in a cell. “The drought might not be over, but this is a big improvement.”

  “We need more than just one rain,” Rhodes said. “We need about a week of this.”

  After bringing Linda Fenton to the jail, he’d gone home and gotten into dry clothes himself. Going home to change was getting to be a habit, he thought.

  “Maybe the rain’ll put some water in the lakes and the stock tanks,” Lawton said. “Too bad it didn’t happen a couple of days ago. Then we coulda had the fireworks on the Fourth.”

  “I’ve had enough fireworks for a while,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t get to see them,” Hack said. “I’d have paid a pretty penny for that show.”

  “It wouldn’t have been worth it,” Rhodes said. “It was during the day. The fireworks didn’t really show up too well. Not from where I saw them.”

  “Well, now you got the two women who shot ’em off locked up in the jail,” Hack said. “Question is, which one of ’em killed Grat?”

  “I’m not sure either one of them did,” Rhodes said. “But both of them assaulted me.”

  “Seems like you get assaulted a lot. Must be the way you treat people.”

  “I thought I always treated everybody just fine.”

  “Humpf,” Hack said.

  Lawton didn’t say anything, but from the look on his face, Rhodes could see that he felt pretty much the way Hack did.

  “Is there anything you two would like to know that I haven’t told you?” he asked, wondering what information they thought he was holding back this time.

  “Might be,” Hack said.

  “What?” Rhodes asked.

  He couldn’t think of what they could be talking about. As far as he knew, he’d filled them in on just about everything.

  “About how you’re the rib-eatin’ champion of Blacklin County,” Lawton said.

  As was often the case, Rhodes was completely in the dark, though he hated to admit it, mainly because he knew they were indulging in their favorite pastime: baiting him.

  He didn’t see any way out of the situation, however, not unless he confessed his ignorance. So he said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We mean you’re the big winner,” Hack said. “’Course people are sayin’ you had to kill your competition, and they’re not sure that’s fair.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody. And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You must not’ve heard the radio today,” Lawton said. “Seems like you’ve been announced as the rib-eatin’ champ of the whole dang county. They didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I guess they didn’t figger that’d be in good taste. At the same time, though, they must’ve wanted somebody to win. Couldn’t let something like a dead man stand in the way of givin’ out the award. So you won.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Rhodes said.

  “Sure is,” Hack agreed. “But ridiculous or not, you have to defend your championship next year.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re the people’s choice,” Lawton said. “Doesn’t make any difference what you think. You gotta play by the rules. The champ has to defend his title.”

  “It makes a difference to me what I think. I’m not going to enter again. I just did it this time go get a rise out of Beaman.”

  “You sure got one, all right,” Hack said.

  Rhodes decided not to pursue the conversation any further. He put on his reading glasses and started to work on his arrest reports, but he hadn’t gotten very far when the telephone rang. It was Jennifer Loam, and she wanted to speak to Rhodes.

  “Want me to tell her that you’re in a sulk and can’t talk?” Hack asked.

  “I’ll talk,” Rhodes said, picking up the receiver on his desk.

  He greeted the reporter and asked how he could help her.

  “I want to know about the latest arrest,” she said.

  “Which one would that be?”

  “Linda Fenton. I understand that she’s been arrested.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Rhodes looked around at Hack, who was pretending to be very busy with his computer. Lawton had disappeared.

  “Mr. Wilson told me when I called earlier about an interview with Ms. Bilson. He said you were bringing in another prisoner, and I asked him who it was.”

  “Oh,” Rhodes said, turning back to his desk.

  “Now I’d like to interview both of them. I could do a long article about the two of them, I think. You know the angle, two women in love with the same man, and now they’re sharing the same jail cell.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. And they’re not sharing the same cell. Maybe you could do something later. I’ll think about it.”

  “What are they charged with?”

  “Assault, among other things.”

  “And they can’t talk to a reporter? That’s not constitutional.”

  “They get a phone call, not a meeting with the press.”

  “How about an interview with you, then?”

  “Me? What about?”

  “You’re the rib-eating champion of Blacklin County. Or didn’t you know that?”

  “I heard. But I’m not doing interviews.”

  “It might be a good idea if you did. You could give your side of the story.”

  “My side?”

  “About how you killed Jay Beaman.”

  Rhodes counted silently to ten. He said, “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “That’s why you need to do the interview. I’ll come by around two o’clock.”

  Rhodes looked at his watch. It was already after one. He was going to tell Jennifer that he’d be out of the office at two, but she’d already hung up. Rhodes put his own phone down and turned to look at Hack again. Hack was still engrossed by something on the computer screen.

  “Hack,” Rhodes said.

  Hack looked up and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve been talking to reporters.”

  “No law against that. I didn’t tell her a thing she couldn’t find out by just coming here and asking. It’s all a public record.”

  He had a point. Rhodes said, “She’s coming to interview me about Jay Beaman. I don’t plan to be here.”

  “Where you gonna be?”

  “Elsewhere.”

  “What’m I supposed to tell her?”

  “Make something up.”

  “I don’t like lyin’,” Hack said.

  “Then tell her you don’t know where I am. That will be the truth.”

  “No, it won’t. I know where you’ll be. You’ll be out avoidin’ her.”

  “Tell her that, then.”

  “You shoulda just told her not to come.”

  “I was about to,” Rhodes said. “She hung up on me.”

  He was about to leave the jail when the phone rang again. It was Dr. White, who had some news for Rhodes.

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, though,” he said. “Can you come by the office?”

  Rhodes, who’d been trying to figure out where to go, said, “I’ll be there around two o’clock. Will that be all right?”

  “I’ll make time for you. I’ll let the receptionist know you’re expected.”

  Rhodes hung up and said to Hack, “Now you won’t have to lie. You can tell Jennifer Loam th
at I had to visit the doctor.”

  “What if she asks me if you’re sick?”

  “Use your imagination,” Rhodes said.

  32

  THE RAIN WAS STILL FALLING, BUT IT HAD SLOWED TO A DRIZZLE, which was good for the grass and for everything else. The water would have a better chance to soak into the soil.

  Rhodes parked as close as he could get to Dr. White’s office. As usual the parking lot was nearly full, and when Rhodes got inside, he saw that the waiting room was full as well. People were sitting around looking miserable, some of them sneezing, some coughing, some just silently enduring whatever their problem was while they read tattered magazines. Young children crawled around on the floor playing with red and blue and yellow plastic blocks while their parents watched. The whole place smelled of the peculiar odor typical of doctors’ offices and hospitals.

  Rhodes wasn’t fond of either hospitals or waiting rooms. They reminded him of illness and suffering. He knew that was wrong, that they should remind him of health and healing, but for some reason he could never make himself think that way.

  The only thing he liked in Dr. White’s waiting room was the aquarium, to which no one else was paying any attention at all. It was full of guppies as colorful as the plastic blocks, and Rhodes watched the fish drift slowly past the glass sides.

  The receptionist, a woman of about forty, beckoned to Rhodes, and he walked over to the window. He looked at the receptionist’s name tag. It said that she was Brenda. The room behind her was full of gray metal filing cabinets.

  “If you’ll come through the door,” Brenda told him, “I’ll take you to Dr. White’s office.”

  Rhodes went through the door and down the hall past the examining rooms. Brenda let him into the doctor’s office and said, “He’ll be right with you, as soon as he finishes with his current patient.”

  Rhodes thanked her, and she closed the door behind her as she left. Rhodes looked around the office. Dr. White was the clean-desk type. There was a black leather chair on casters by the desk, and a wooden chair with a cloth cushion was nearby. Rhodes figured that chair was the one designated for visitors, so he sat in it.