Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  “That’s a sorry subject to think about,” Lawton said. “You ought to think about somethin’ better.”

  “What were you thinkin’ about ’em?” Hack asked.

  “That maybe they didn’t kill Neil after all.”

  “If it wasn’t one of them, who was it?” Hack asked.

  “Somebody else,” Rhodes told him.

  “That’s a good one,” Lawton said with a laugh. “You should’ve figgered that one out for yourself, Hack. If it wasn’t Louie and it wasn’t Earl, it just about had to be somebody else.”

  “The sheriff ain’t funny,” Hack said. “He just thinks he is, and you ain’t funny, either. Anyway, if it wasn’t Louie or Earl, what it’s lookin’ like to me is that the mouse is gonna take the fall.”

  “Other people have been involved with Neil,” Rhodes said. “Not just the mouse.”

  “You talkin’ about that redheaded woman?” Hack asked. “’Cause if you are, you’re on the wrong track. She wouldn’t kill anybody.”

  “How do you know that?” Lawton asked. “You ain’t seen her more than a time or two.”

  “I ain’t seen as much of her as the sheriff has,” Hack said, “and that’s the truth.”

  Both of them got a laugh out of that, though Rhodes didn’t. He was still a bit embarrassed by the incident in the picnic area, though it had worked out all right. That is, it had worked out if Vicki Patton hadn’t killed Neil.

  “One more thing,” Hack said, “before I forget it. Your friend Seepy Benton came by. He said to tell you to be sure and check out Jennifer Loam’s Web site for all the news about the haunted house. That’s what he called it, the haunted house. He says there was for sure a ghost there and that it led him to a corpus delicti. That’s what he called it, but even I know a skeleton ain’t a corpus delicti. It was a skeleton.”

  Rhodes didn’t bother to explain how a skeleton could be a corpus delicti.

  “Did you look at the Web site?” Rhodes asked.

  “Sure did,” Hack said. “Really nice write-up about how Seepy and that Harris fella led you to the skeleton, thanks to their advanced ghost-huntin’ techniques. That’s the exact words. There was a picture of the skeleton, too. You didn’t come off lookin’ like Sage Barton this time. Mostly it was all about Seepy and those advanced techniques. He did mention that the whole thing was official, though. I think he said something about how he was assistin’ the sheriff in his duties. Had a big ad for his business right on the page, too. Prob’ly half the people in the county are callin’ him right now so he’ll come run the ghosts out of their houses.”

  “It was a good ad,” Lawton said. “‘We open the doorway between the living and the dead,’ is what it said.”

  “They stole part of that line from William Wordsworth,” Rhodes said.

  “Poet, ain’t he?” Hack asked.

  “That’s the one,” Rhodes said.

  “Dead a long time,” Hack said. “So he won’t sue ’em.”

  “Not a chance,” Rhodes said, but he wasn’t thinking about William Wordsworth or Seepy. He was thinking about the skeleton. It was too soon for any information to have come back from the state crime lab. It would take weeks for that, or months. They wouldn’t be in any hurry since the skeleton was so obviously old, but Rhodes would like to know more about it. What he’d especially like was to identify it. That didn’t seem likely to happen, but the ghost … He stopped to remind himself that he didn’t believe in ghosts. Whether he believed or not, however, the odd happenings had ceased when the skeleton was found. Why would that be? If some purpose had been accomplished, Rhodes couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was.

  He was missing something, and he knew it. He just didn’t know what he was missing.

  He knew the answer would come to him, though, and not because some rat or ghost led him to it. He wouldn’t mind if the rat or a ghost led him to whoever killed Neil Foshee, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  Neil’s ghost wasn’t going to be any help, either. It seemed to be happy to remain quiet. Not that there was any ghost, but if there was, it wasn’t seeking revenge or anything else, not at the moment.

  Rhodes stood up. “I’m going to lunch. Try not to call me for at least half an hour.”

  “Lunch?” Hack said. “It’s nearly five o’clock. That’s a mighty late lunch.”

  Rhodes hadn’t realized it had gotten that late. “All right, then, I’m going home and have dinner. Don’t call me at all unless it’s an emergency.”

  “Have I ever called you when it wasn’t an emergency?”

  “All the time,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Ivy hadn’t arrived when Rhodes got home, so he took Yancey out to the backyard for a romp with Speedo. It was still too hot for Rhodes to want to do any romping himself, but it was shady on the back steps where he sat.

  The dogs didn’t seem to mind the heat. They tussled over the squeaky ball and chased each other all over the yard. After a while they ran over by Speedo’s igloo and laid down in the shade to pant. Rhodes had always heard that dogs panted to cool down. He didn’t know if that was true, but there were times when he’d felt like panting himself.

  After he’d sat on the steps for about fifteen minutes, thinking about skeletons and meth dealers, Ivy came out of the house and sat beside him.

  “Hard day?” she asked.

  “About the usual,” Rhodes said. “You?”

  “Insurance is boring. I’d rather hear whether you’ve caught any killers or found any more skeletons.”

  Rhodes told her about all that he’d done that day and admitted that he wasn’t any closer to finding Neil Foshee’s killer.

  “I thought it was Louie,” he said, “and then I thought it might be Wade Clement. After that, I had a hunch it could be Earl. Now I don’t think it’s any of them. I’m sort of at a loss.”

  “What about the ghost?” Ivy asked.

  “There wasn’t any ghost.”

  “Let’s pretend there was.”

  “Let’s don’t. What about your new friend Vicki Patton? Do you think she’d kill anybody?”

  Ivy shrugged. “Haven’t you told me that anybody is capable of killing somebody, given the right circumstances?”

  “I might have,” Rhodes said, “but we’re talking about somebody you know. Somebody you like. What kind of circumstances would there have to be?”

  “I can’t think of any,” Ivy said. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. I don’t think she’d go to a haunted house at night and kill anybody. If somebody attacked her, that would be different. How would she even know that Neil would be in that house?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “The same goes for Ace Gable. How would he know?”

  Speedo had recovered from his romp, and he came running over with the ball, wanting Rhodes to play with him. Yancey came, too. His legs were too short for him to keep up with the black-and-white collie, but he didn’t get discouraged.

  Rhodes ignored both of them, waiting to see if Ivy had an answer for him. She didn’t, but she did have something to say about Gable.

  “I think he’s perfectly capable of killing somebody,” she said. “He’s big, and he’s kind of pushy. I’ve dealt with him a few times at the insurance office. I don’t mean that he’s a bully, but he likes to get his way, and he can be intimidating.”

  Rhodes thought that someone as big and forceful as Gable was more likely to get his revenge on somebody by using his ability to intimidate, and if that didn’t work, to use his fists. At any rate, finding a motive for Gable wasn’t easy.

  “Has Vicki ever said anything about him?” Rhodes asked.

  “She likes him,” Ivy said. “She says he’s not at all intimidating to her.”’

  Rhodes wasn’t sure that meant anything. After all, Vicki had liked Neil Foshee at one time.

  Rhodes reached for the ball in Speedo’s mouth and got it on the first try because he’d taken the dog by surprise. Usually it was hard
to get the ball, even though Speedo wanted him to have it. Rhodes threw the ball across the yard, and the dogs took off at a run.

  “Does it ever bother you that you’re suspicious of everybody?” Ivy asked.

  “I’m not suspicious of everybody,” Rhodes said. “Just the people who might’ve done something wrong. I’m not suspicious of most people.”

  Somehow Yancey had wrestled the ball away from Speedo. Speedo watched as Yancey raced back toward Rhodes. When Yancey was about halfway there, Speedo took off, caught the smaller dog, snatched the ball away, and ran off. Yancey went after him.

  “You have to look on the darker side of things all the time,” Ivy told Rhodes.

  “Not really. I can always see a little bit of light. We have more good people in this county than bad ones.”

  “Sometimes I wonder.”

  Yancey got the ball again and ran away from Speedo, who pretended he didn’t care and went off to pant beside the igloo.

  “You can take my word for it,” Rhodes said. “Nobody’s all good, but nobody’s all bad, either. It’s all mixed up in most people. Even the Foshees are just a little bit away from being good folks.”

  “It might be a little bit, but it makes a big difference,” Ivy said.

  “Sure it does, but usually the ones who are a little bit away from being bad manage not to cross the line too often. If they didn’t, I’d need a few hundred new deputies.”

  “What you really need,” Ivy said, “is a good night’s sleep. Everything will be clearer in the morning.”

  Rhodes wasn’t so sure. “I keep thinking I’ve been going about this the wrong way. It’s like a puzzle with a piece missing.”

  “If it’s missing, you’ll find it.”

  “I hope so,” Rhodes said. He stood up. “Come on, Yancey. Time to go in.”

  Yancey dropped the ball and ran to the house.

  * * *

  Ivy suggested that they have dinner at a restaurant, so they went to Max Schwartz’s barbecue place. It wasn’t Saturday night, which was why Rhodes agreed to go. He knew there was no danger of Seepy Benton performing. Seepy had been replaced a few months before by a barbershop quartet called the Next Edition, but the quartet had broken up when their tenor moved out of state. The tenor’s move out had allowed Seepy to move back in, and he was again providing the alleged entertainment on Saturday nights.

  “He’s not that bad,” Ivy said, when Rhodes mentioned Seepy’s singing.

  “He’s not that good, either,” Rhodes said.

  “I think his songs are funny,” Ivy said.

  So did Rhodes, though he thought they were funny only in the sense that they were odd, not that they were amusing. Rhodes hoped that the ghost hunting would keep Seepy busy and maybe even keep him out of Rhodes’s hair for a while.

  Rhodes felt better after a Seepy-free evening of lean brisket smoked over a mesquite fire. The potato salad and coleslaw were good, too. Rhodes was in an optimistic mood by the time he got home, but then he dreamed about skeletons again, all night long.

  Chapter 21

  The dreams had Rhodes feeling out of sorts the next morning, even though he couldn’t quite remember exactly what they’d been about other than the skeletons. He went out to feed Speedo and to spend a few minutes playing with him and Yancey. Yancey, unlike Rhodes, was feeling peppy, and when they went back inside, the little Pomeranian even ran over and yipped at the cats.

  Jerry opened one eye and looked at him. Sam didn’t open his eyes, but he reached out and swiped at Yancey with one clawed paw. He missed, but even the miss was enough for Yancey, who ran yipping from the room. He’d hide under the bed for a while, but then he’d be all right.

  Rhodes had shredded wheat for breakfast instead of turkey bacon, and while he liked shredded wheat just fine, it would’ve been better with whole milk. Ivy preferred skim milk, which Rhodes thought was really just slightly off-color water, no matter what anybody said.

  When he got to the jail, he asked Hack if there was anything that needed his attention.

  “Nope,” Hack said. “I’ll bet you hoped Louie or Earl would call somebody back to the cellblock durin’ the night and confess to killin’ Neil. Didn’t happen, though.”

  “No emergencies?” Rhodes asked.

  “Nope. I’d’ve called you if we’d had one, even if I had to wake you up. Worst I can tell you is that there was some speeders and some copper thieves. Just the usual.”

  What was unusual at the moment was that Hack didn’t have any long, involved tales to tell. His partner in crime wasn’t around, so that could’ve been the reason.

  “Lawton and me got to talkin’ last night,” Hack said.

  Rhodes suppressed a sigh. He’d been wrong about the long, involved stories. Hack was going to start up, all right, even without Lawton being there to help him out.

  “You wanna know what we talked about?” Hack asked when Rhodes didn’t respond.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You know what?” Hack said. “I’ll tell you what. One of these days you’re gonna hurt my feelin’s, that’s what.”

  “I apologize,” Rhodes said, knowing he’d have to listen now. “Please tell me what you and Lawton were talking about.”

  “Not sure I want to,” Hack said.

  “We’re getting to be like an old married couple,” Rhodes said. “Either tell me or don’t tell me.”

  “Now you’re gettin’ snappish. Lawton’s always sayin’ how snappish you’re gettin’.”

  It was Hack who was always saying that, but Rhodes didn’t bother to point it out.

  “I apologize again,” he said.

  “I accept. What we was talkin’ about was that skeleton and how it must’ve got there in the house. You know how we told you that people didn’t disappear around here?”

  “I remember,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, Mika looked, and we don’t even have a missing persons file. If you don’t count a few runaway kids, that is, and the thing about the kids is that none of ’em’s run away in years, not since you been in office. That ain’t all, either. The ones that did run away was all found. Any disappearances, such as there was, they’ve all been cleared up.”

  “So did you and Lawton come to any conclusions about where the skeleton came from?”

  “First thing we thought of was aliens. Like in that Area Fifty-one. You know about that?”

  “That’s where the government is supposed to have the carcass of the alien that crash-landed in Roswell, right?”

  “Right. I didn’t think you believed in stuff like that.”

  “I don’t,” Rhodes said.

  “Well,” Hack said, “you can believe it or not, but that’s the idea that we come up with. An alien.”

  “You didn’t stick with that one?”

  “Couldn’t think of any flyin’ saucer crashes around here. There was a big flyin’ saucer scare back in the fifties, people saw a bunch of ’em. As far as Lawton and me could remember, though, none of ’em crashed.”

  “I guess that lets out the aliens, then.”

  “Not necessarily. We tried to think of some other answer, but we couldn’t come up with one. So it might be an alien.”

  “If it is, what should I do about it?” Rhodes asked.

  “You might oughta check with the air force, or whoever it is that keeps records on that kinda thing. They could tell you if there was some UFOs that we didn’t know about.”

  “Judging from what I’ve heard,” Rhodes said, “they don’t give out that kind of information to just anybody.”

  “You ain’t just anybody. You’re the high sheriff. They oughta tell you.”

  “Let’s wait until we get a report back from the state. That skeleton looked human to me.”

  “Like you’d know an alien if you saw one.”

  “I think I’d know,” Rhodes said.

  “If it wasn’t an alien, then what was it?” Hack asked.

  “Just somebody like you and me.”
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  “If it was somebody like that, who was it, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said, “but I’m going to find out. If you need me, I’ll be at the Moore place.”

  “Gonna check with the ghost about the skeleton?” Hack asked.

  “Something like that,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Rhodes looked around for the turtle before he went inside the Moore house, but he didn’t see it. It might have moved on, or it might be under the house or in another part of the yard. Or maybe it hadn’t been there at all. Rhodes was starting to think he’d imagined at least a few of the things that had happened lately. Not the skeleton, however. That was real enough.

  He went inside and stood in the room where Neil Foshee had died. Because the house was so old, the rooms were big, and the ceilings were high. It had been around a long time, and it had quite a history. It was just the kind of house that would have a ghost in it if there were such a thing as a ghost.

  Rhodes waited for a full five minutes, hoping he’d notice a ghostly presence or experience the feeling of being watched. After the five minutes had passed, all he felt was foolish. What had he expected? He knew ghosts didn’t exist.

  He looked around the room and at the spot where Neil Foshee’s body had lain. This must also have been the room where Ralph Moore had died. Two deaths in the same room. Did that make the house more likely to be haunted? Would Neil’s death add to the legend?

  Rhodes went up to the attic. The stairs still didn’t squeak. The closet was empty, of course. Rhodes wondered why he’d even come up there. Had he really planned to ask the ghost anything? He heard a stirring in the walls. He’d disturbed the mice, he supposed. This was their place now, for good and all, as far as Rhodes was concerned.

  He went back down the stairs and outside. The turtle was waiting for him. Well, not really. He knew that. It just happened to be there. For all Rhodes knew, it wasn’t even the same turtle he’d seen before. The markings on the shell might’ve been the same, or they might not. Rhodes couldn’t tell.

  He went on to the county car, and a little breeze rippled through the weeds. The temperature in the yard dropped, although the sun was still shining through the trees. Rhodes turned to look at the house. He saw nothing unusual, but when he turned back to the car, he knew what he’d been missing all along. It was as if he’d known the whole time, and maybe he had. It had just taken this long for it to bubble to the surface of his mind.