by Bill Crider
Mrs. Ramsey was sitting in her living room with the TV set on. She had the sound turned very low, and she didn’t seem to be watching it. It was just on to keep her company. “Hello, Sheriff,” she said as they walked in. “Mrs. Daniel.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Ramsey,” Rhodes said. Ivy didn’t speak. Rhodes had told her on the drive out that she didn’t need to play a part in the proceedings. He just wanted her there for moral support. He wasn’t looking forward to what he had to do, but it was his job. Her being there would make it a little easier for him, he thought, and maybe for Mrs. Ramsey.
Mrs. Ramsey sat in her chair, not making any move to get up. She looked dull and listless. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I think you know that,” Rhodes said. “Do you mind if we sit down?”
Mrs. Ramsey made an idle gesture with her thick wrist as if to indicate the other chairs, but she didn’t say anything. Rhodes sat where he could look into her face, and Ivy sat nearby.
“I need to talk to you about Bert,” Rhodes said. Mrs. Ramsey shook her head but still said nothing. “You knew about what he was doing, didn’t you?”
Rhodes asked.
Mrs. Ramsey nodded. Rhodes waited. “It was that woman that ruined him,” Mrs. Ramsey finally said.
“He was a good man,” Ivy said. “He put in some flower beds for me once. He really had a skill for working like that.”
Mrs. Ramsey didn’t look at her. She seemed to be staring inward more than looking at anything in the room around her. “He surely did,” she said. “He was a fine boy. It was that woman.”
“She’s the one, all right,” Rhodes said. “If it hadn’t been for her, he’d never have gotten into growing that dope. I know that. How did you find it out?”
“It was the money,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “All that money. He bought things for me. I knew he wasn’t earnin’ that kind of money from puttin’ in flower beds. It had to be somethin’ else. He finally told me what it was.”
Now that she had started, Mrs. Ramsey didn’t need much coaching. “You knew Los Muertos was mixed up in it,” Rhodes said.
“Those motorsickles,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “He got away from that a long time ago, and that woman brought it all back.”
“The night Bert was mu—the night he died, you didn’t really hear anything, did you?” Rhodes asked.
“Naw, I never did. That Buster Cullens, he was one of ‘em, though, and he had a motorsickle. They were around, somewhere. It was all their fault, them and that woman. They ought to all be in the pen.”
Rhodes agreed, and he hated to tell her that they weren’t in jail, except for Wyneva, and that they weren’t likely to be. The one in jail would be Mrs. Ramsey. It was pretty much as he’d thought, so far. All the little things that Mrs. Ramsey had said pointed that way. It was Wyneva and Rapper and the rest that she wanted to punish. They were really to blame for Bert’s death, she thought, and Rhodes had to admit that she had a point. They hadn’t pulled the trigger, though.
“Do you have a shotgun, Mrs. Ramsey?” he asked.
“My husband’s old Remington automatic is in the gun cabinet,” she said.
“I expect you carried it with you when you went down to talk to Bert last Saturday night, didn’t you? In case you met any of his friends along the way?”
“I guess I did,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “I guess that’s right.”
“What happened then?” Rhodes asked, though he thought he knew. Mrs. Ramsey had expressed her feelings about dope pretty clearly, already.
Mrs. Ramsey sighed. “I told Bert that he’d have to give up doin’ what he was doin’. I told him that it was the Devil’s work that he was into, and that he’d lost the woman, and that it was time to stop.”
“And he didn’t want to?”
“It was the money,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “He got to where he liked it. You don’t know how it is, to have all that money. He had plenty for what he needed, just by doing jobs around town, but after he was getting so much, he got to where he liked it.”
The large old woman shook her head and closed her eyes. Her chin sank slowly toward her chest. “I didn’t go to kill him,” she said. “But that dope is the ruination of the world.”
Those words, or something like them, were what had not quite registered on Rhodes the previous night. If he hadn’t been so tired, so beaten up, maybe he would have caught on sooner. No one had told Mrs. Ramsey that Bert had been involved with marijuana. Cox and Malvin hadn’t talked to her, and Rhodes certainly hadn’t told her. But she had known, and with her attitude being what it was, she couldn’t have been happy. So she’d talked to Bert about it.
“He argued with me,” she said. “Told me that if he didn’t do it, someone else would. I guess we got to yellin’. I . . . I didn’t point the gun at him, but it got in his face. He grabbed the barrel, and then it just . . . it just . . .”
Ivy reached out and put her hand on Mrs. Ramsey’s hand. “It’s all right,” she said. “We know you didn’t mean to do it.”
Large tears rolled down Mrs. Ramsey’s cheeks. “No,” she said, “I didn’t mean to do it.”
Chapter 20
Later that night, after they had carried Mrs. Ramsey to the jail and gotten Lawton to install her in the “good” cell, Ivy asked Rhodes, “What do you think really happened?”
They were sitting outside her house in the county car. Rhodes wasn’t feeling particularly romantic, and he sensed that Ivy wasn’t either. “I think she’s telling the truth, as she sees it,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever find out exactly what happened.”
Ivy curled one leg up under her and turned to face him in the front seat. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that what she believes happened and what really happened may not be the same thing. I mean, she really thinks that it wasn’t her fault. It was Rapper’s fault. Or it was Wyneva’s fault. Failing all that, it was Bert’s fault. But it wasn’t her fault.”
“You mean that she can’t admit it to herself, even if it’s true that she went there with the intention of shooting him,” Ivy said.
“Maybe that’s what I mean,” Rhodes said. “I’m just a sheriff, not a psychologist. They have those in cities, but we don’t have one here.”
“You seem to do all right,” Ivy said.
“Yeah, but it’s no fun,” Rhodes said. “I’ll always wonder about a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as why she gave me the story about the motorcycles. Had she really heard them? Why try to put the blame on Buster Cullens? He was a likely suspect, in a way, but would she have let him be arrested? And why wait until the next morning to report the murder? That’s the thing that the prosecutor will hammer into the jury, if she’s tried for murder.”
“ ‘If’?.”
“If. Somehow I doubt that anyone will want that. I imagine that she’ll go to trial on a reduced charge and get a light sentence. Probably probated.”
“And do you care?”
Rhodes wasn’t sure how to answer that. If he had known for sure what had happened that Saturday night when Mrs. Ramsey picked up the shotgun and walked out of her house, he could have answered with certainty. But he didn’t know, and he never would. “I care more about Rapper,” he said finally.
“I’m glad you care,” Ivy said. Then, after a minute, “At least one good thing came out of all this.”
“What?”
“You got yourself a dog.”
It got hot early the next morning. Rhodes went out to the back yard to check on the dog, who was already asleep under the shade tree. Rhodes put out some fresh food and water, but Speedo took very little interest. He had settled in, now, and he knew there would be food and water whenever he wanted it. Rhodes walked over and scratched the dog’s head, then drove to the jail.
Hack and Lawton were waiting expectantly when he walked in. That meant that there was something going on, but he was d
etermined to go on the attack first. “How’s Mrs. Ramsey doing?” he asked.
“Fine, just fine,” Lawton said. “ ‘Course, that cot’s not near close to bein’ big enough for her, but she did all right. I think she spent most of the night readin’ one of those Gideon Bibles. Anyway, Ruth’s back there with her right now, seein’ that she’s comfortable. I put that Wyneva up on the second floor.”
“Judge ought to be settin’ bail for Miz Ramsey before too long,” Hack said. “I don’t expect she’ll be around by this afternoon.”
“She called a lawyer yet?” Rhodes asked. He wanted to be sure a lawyer was present when Mrs. Ramsey was informed of all her rights and while she gave her legal confession.
“Not yet,” Hack said. “You goin’ to ask the judge to appoint one?”
“I think I’ll get her to call Painter,” Rhodes said. “He’s a good one, and he’ll take the case, I think.”
“Good idea,” Hack said. The expectant look was back on his face.
OK, Rhodes thought, I might as well dive in. “Any calls this morning?” he asked.
It was what they had been waiting for. “Two,” Lawton said happily. Hack was quiet, letting Lawton have the only line he was likely to get in the conversation.
“Ah,” Rhodes said, dragging it out to see if he could avoid having to ask who had called.
“One of ‘em was from Clyde Ballinger,” Lawton said.
Hack clamped his teeth together, but he managed not to say anything. He was giving Lawton a lot of rope today.
“Clyde Ballinger?” Rhodes was actually surprised, and the question popped out before he thought. “What did he want?”
“Seems like after you and Ivy left the buryin’ the other afternoon, one of his helpers slipped and turned his ankle while he was fillin’ in the grave,” Hack said. “He wants to know if the county is insured for that sort of thing.”
Rhodes had been holding his breath. Now he let it out in a lengthy sigh. “I was afraid he’d found out something about those arms and legs that would change things around,” he said. “You can tell him that the county isn’t liable if he calls again, but don’t bother to call him. That little job was purely private enterprise, even if he was doing me a favor.”
“That’s what I thought,” Hack said. “I’ll tell him. He said it reminded him of somethin’ out of a book, but I can’t recall what he said the name of it was.”
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. He looked at Hack. He knew they were saving the second call for the last because it was the best. It was always like that.
This time they out-waited him. “All right,” he said after a minute or two, “who was the other call from?”
“The preacher,” Lawton said.
There were more churches in Blacklin County than there were people, someone had once said. That made for a lot of preachers, too. “Which one?” Rhodes asked.
“Where the demonstration was,” Hack said.
“The Reverend Funk,” Rhodes said. “And there wasn’t a demonstration.”
“That’s the one,” Hack said.
“Fine,” Rhodes said. “What did the reverend want today? I hope there hasn’t been another disturbance.”
“Not exactly,” said Ruth Grady as she stepped through the door leading to the cell block. “But it’s pretty close.”
“Good morning, Ruth,” Rhodes said. “I hope you aren’t getting like these two old reprobates.”
Ruth Grady smiled. “Well, they’ve been letting me hang around a little. Hack’s been teaching me about the radio.”
“She’s pickin’ it up pretty dern quick, too,” Hack said. “Before long, she’ll know near about as much as I do.”
“Now, Hack, you know better than that,” Ruth said.
She winked at Rhodes over Hack’s head. Rhodes had to smile.
“Don’t you laugh, Sheriff,” Hack said. “I know you don’t think much of how smart some women can be, but some of us are more . . . uh, liberated, than you are.”
“I guess that’s right,” Rhodes said. “But I’m trying to improve myself. Now, back to Reverend Funk.”
“Oh, yeah,” Hack said. “Seems he had a crowd on the church parkin’ lot last night and this mornin’. He called to complain about it and asked for a little help. I told him that the sheriff’d have to deal with it.”
“First time I ever heard a preacher complain about a crowd,” Rhodes said. “But you say this one stayed all night?”
“All night,” Hack said. “Messed up that parkin’ lot somethin’ awful.”
“Messed it up how?”
Hack looked at Ruth Grady, who was standing with a very straight face. “Well, they messed it up,” he said. Rhodes didn’t get it. He looked at Ruth, too.
To keep from laughing, Ruth said, “It was cows, Sheriff. The crowd was a herd of cows. They spent the night on the church parking lot.”
“Oh,” Rhodes said.
“That preacher’s hoppin’ mad,” Lawton said.
“Mad ain’t the word,” Hack said. “They call it ‘wrath’ in the Bible.”
“Same thing,” Lawton said.
“Anyway,” Hack said, “he says it’s Mr. Clawson’s cows. You know, he has that little feedlot three or four blocks from the church. I guess the fence broke. Reverend Funk’s been out on that parkin’ lot most of the mornin’, so far, with a shovel and some plastic garbage bags. He wants you to arrest Mr. Clawson and put him on the other end of a shovel. If you won’t do that, he wants you down there yourself.”
“He’s kidding,” Rhodes said.
“I don’t think so,” Ruth said.
“You’re the sheriff,” Hack said.
“Seems like I’ve heard that one before,” Rhodes said.
That evening Rhodes and Ivy were eating supper at the Bluebonnet—hamburgers and Dr Peppers, Rhodes’s favorite. Ivy wanted to know how his day had been.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rhodes said.
“Considering the things I’ve seen, heard, and done in the last few days just being around you, I’d believe just about anything,” Ivy said.
“Speaking of that, you never did tell me about learning to ride a motorcycle,” Rhodes said. He thought fleetingly of Ivy’s legs and how they had looked when she hiked up her skirt. He looked down at his Dr Pepper in case he was blushing.
“I told you, my brother taught me,” Ivy said. “He had a bike when we were teenagers, and I wanted to learn to ride. We had to go out to an old field on the far side of town so my mother wouldn’t catch us. She’d have died if she had known.”
Rhodes looked wistful. “I always sort of wanted to own a motorcycle,” he said.
“It’s fun, but it’s dangerous,” Ivy said. “And look at the kind of people it can get you involved with.”
“That’s the truth,” Rhodes said.
“Now, about your day,” Ivy said.
Rhodes told her.
Ivy laughed. “Do you get any extra pay for that?” she asked.
Rhodes shook his head. “I even had to provide my own shovel,” he said.
“Maybe your job isn’t as glamorous and exciting as I thought,” Ivy said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Tomorrow, two government guys are going to show me how to burn a whole field of marijuana.”
“Now that does sound exciting,” Ivy said.
Rhodes shook his head again. “No,” he said biting into the last chunk of his hamburger. “It’s the same thing. We just won’t be using a shovel.” He wadded up the paper the hamburger had been wrapped in and threw it at the trash can.
Ivy stood up and took his hand. Then he drove her home.
A Preview of TOO LATE TO DIE
Book One of the Dan Rhodes Mystery Series
Chapter 1
It was another damn election year, and if there was one thing that Sheriff Dan Rhodes knew for sure it was that Hod Barrett wasn’t going to vote for him this time either.
Unfortuna
tely, that didn’t mean that Barrett could just be ignored. As sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, Rhodes was obliged to listen to Barrett’s complaints and even try to help him out when his little grocery store got robbed, which seemed to be about every two or three weeks here lately.
“It’s just some damn kids, Sheriff Rhodes,” Barrett said, jamming his big, blocky fists deep down in his pockets. He was about as tall as an anvil sitting on an oak stump, and just as solid. Thin, bristly red hair stuck straight up all over his head, and his face was almost as red as his hair. “They don’t never take nothing but a few cartons of smokes and some beers. Maybe a Moon Pie or two. Looks like you could catch a bunch of damn kids, or at least give us folks here in Thurston a reg’lar patrol.”
Thurston, according to the green and white City Limit sign not a quarter of a mile from Barrett’s store, had a population of 408. It was seven miles from Clearview, the county seat. Rhodes considered these facts for a second or two. “Well, Hod,” Rhodes said, “if you could persuade the commissioners to hire me five or six more deputies, I’m sure we could have one of them spend lots of time around here. As it stands right now, though, the best I can do is send one through every now and then. Johnny Sherman was by here last night, if he followed his route.”
Hod shoved his hands even further down in his jeans, not quite hard enough to cause the brass rivets to pop off the stitching at the top. “That Johnny Sherman couldn’t find his butt with both hands,” he said.
“Now, Hod,”‘ Rhodes said patiently, “you know that’s not so, but if you don’t like the way we’re doing things over at the county seat, maybe you and some of the folks here in Thurston could get together and hire yourselves a town marshal.”
Hod made a face and looked like he was about to strangle. “It’s the sheriff’s responsibility to protect us and our property!” he said in a choked voice. “We pay your salary with our taxes. You’re elected by the people of this county, and you’re supposed to protect us from damn thieving kids!”