by Bill Crider
“I’m glad to hear it,” Rhodes said. “Here’s the problem. There’s a rumor going around that some of the players have been using steroids.”
Jay leaned forward. “That’s a bunch of crap. Who told you that?”
“Nobody in particular. It’s something that’s going around, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s crap. Why would anybody do that? It’s crazy. Steroids turn your balls to wood. Everybody knows that.”
Rhodes hadn’t known that. He’d have to remember to avoid steroids at all costs. No need to take any chances, even if it wasn’t true.
“It has other effects, too,” Rhodes said. “It helps you bulk up. Builds up muscle, makes you a little more aggressive for the game.”
“Turns you into a maniac, that’s what Coach Meredith always said. Man, he was always preachin’ against drugs like that.”
Rhodes wondered if Meredith was the one who’d passed along the information about the effect of steroids on one’s gonads. Oh, well. Whatever worked.
“Besides,” Jay went on, “if the UIL caught anybody takin’ a drug like that, we’d be out of the play-offs in about half a second. Probably have to forfeit all our games. Boy, those Garton assholes would love that!”
Young people these days were also considerably less inhibited in their language around their elders than Rhodes remembered his generation having been. While assholes would have been a perfectly acceptable word among one’s peers, it would have been nearly impossible to say it in front of an adult. Jay Kelton, however, didn’t even seem to notice that he’d said anything unusual.
“So no one that you know of takes steroids?” Rhodes asked.
“That’s what I’ve been sayin’.”
“And the coaches have never mentioned them?”
“I told you that Coach Meredith was always preachin’ about them, didn’t I?”
“Favorably, I meant.”
Jay’s eyes flicked to Rhodes left. Rhodes turned his head slightly and saw nothing more interesting than a Candlebox poster. He looked back at Jay, who was now meeting his eyes. But it was too late. Rhodes knew he was about to hear a lie.
“Nobody was ever favorable about drugs,” Jay said. “That would be stupid.”
Rhodes didn’t know exactly what approach to take. There were some people who didn’t take very well to being called liars, and Jay Kelton looked like one of them.
“What about Coach Deedham?” he asked.
“Who told you that?” Jay slid off the bed and stood up. “That’s a damn lie. Coach Deedham never said a thing about any drugs, and I’ll whip the one who says he did.”
“I was just asking a hypothetical question,” Rhodes said. “Let’s just forget that I brought it up.”
“Fine. Let’s do that.”
Jay sat back down on his bed and leaned against the wall. But this time his back was stiff and his arms were crossed in front of his chest. Rhodes was certain his sudden burst of hostility was inspired by a genuine feeling of outrage, not steroids.
“I’m glad to know that the coaches were so strongly against drugs,” Rhodes said, getting out of the chair. “I thought it was just a false rumor, and it’s good to hear the truth.”
“Yeah,” Jay said. “It was a false rumor.”
“I appreciate your being so honest with me,” Rhodes told him. “You can tell your father about this, but I hope you won’t mention it to anybody else.”
“I told you, I can keep a secret.”
“That’s right. Thanks for your help.”
Rhodes left Jay scowling in his room, sitting under the Pearl Jam poster.
“Was the boy any help?” Mr. Kelton asked when Rhodes returned to the den.
“I think so,” Rhodes said. “We’ll see.”
“Well, I sure hope you catch whoever it was that killed Coach Meredith. We’ve talked to Jay about it, tried to help him deal with it. He seems all right, but you never can tell.”
Rhodes thought that in spite of their tendency to dramatize things, young people had a lot less trouble dealing with death than most adults thought.
“He seems fine,” Rhodes said.
“We don’t want him to be down for the game next weekend,” Kelton said. “It’s a big one.”
Rhodes nodded. “That’s right.”
“Then there’s that restraining order. I sure hate it that those Garton folks are such bad sports. I talked to Jay about that hit, and he says that he didn’t know that boy was out of bounds. When you’re running down the field full tilt that way, you’ve got your eye on the ball carrier, not on the sideline. There wasn’t any reason for Jay to get thrown out of the game. I’m sorry there was a fight, but I sure don’t think there’s any need to carry this in front of some judge. I say let’s keep football on the field and out of the courtroom.”
Rhodes thought that was a pretty catchy saying, but he didn’t think it would meet with much approval in Garton.
“From what I gather,” he said, “there’s not much likelihood of a judge ruling against the officials on a football game. I think you can rest easy about that.”
“I hope so. We don’t need any more distractions.” Kelton glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “I think supper’s about ready. You want a little fried chicken?”
The answer was yes, but Rhodes said, “No, thanks, I’ve got a lot of work to do. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“Martha makes about the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted,” Kelton said. “I could snag you a piece to take with you.”
“No, thanks,” Rhodes said, hoping that his mouth wasn’t watering too obviously. “I’ll eat later.”
“Well, you go on and catch whoever killed the coach, then. I think it’ll be a big load off the team’s mind when that’s taken care of.”
“I’m sure it will be,” Rhodes said.
Chapter Fourteen
Rhodes thought it was a little strange that while everyone seemed to want him to find Brady Meredith’s killer, no one seemed to care much about Meredith himself. They wanted the killer found so the team wouldn’t be affected for the big game, not because a man was dead or because they wanted to see justice done.
Rhodes also thought that he should have come up with the connection between Deedham and steroids a long time before now. Deedham was, after all, the one coach of the four whom everyone had said would do anything to win.
It had been obvious from the first that Deedham cared more about winning than he cared about Brady Meredith’s death, more than he cared about his wife, more than he cared about anything or anyone. If a coach was encouraging the use of steroids, Deedham was the most likely candidate.
As Rhodes drove back to the jail, he thought about how different Deedham and Meredith were. On the one hand, there was Deedham, a coach who thought that winning was everything and would probably even give illegal drugs to his players in order to get a victory. On the other hand, there was Meredith, a coach who presumably liked winning — what coach didn’t? — but who was so opposed to drugs that he didn’t even like caffeine in soft drinks. There was certainly a potential for conflict between the two of them, maybe deadly conflict.
Rhodes wasn’t too clear on what Deedham might actually have said or done about the steroids, and he knew that he could never have gotten the truth from Jay Kelton, but he had gotten close enough to it to draw some inferences.
Deedham had certainly mentioned steroids at one time or another if Rhodes had read Jay Kelton’s reaction to his questions rightly, but whether any of the team members were actually taking the drugs was another question. Judging by what Rhodes had heard from Jay, it seemed that Meredith’s philosophy had been influential enough to keep the Catamounts honest.
Rhodes hoped so, because Jay was right about one thing. If anyone were caught using drugs, the team would be out of the play-offs, and all the coaches would lose their jobs. It was too bad that Deedham would even consider such a risk, but Rhodes was convinced that he had.
So it was possible that Deedham had not been at The County Line to spy on his wife. Maybe he had been there to talk to Rapper instead.
The possibilities that opened out from that idea were endless. Meredith could have seen Deedham and Rapper, guessed their business, and confronted them. That might make Rapper the killer, but it didn’t let out Deedham, who might have been angered because he’d seen Meredith with Terry.
Just exactly how Hayes Ford fit into that scenario, Rhodes wasn’t sure. He’d have to work that out later.
When he arrived at the jail, Ruth’s car was already there. The deputy was talking to Hack and Lawton when Rhodes went inside.
Before Rhodes could ask Ruth about her talks with Bonny and Ron Tandy, Hack said, “We got us a big shot in jail, Sheriff.”
Rhodes looked at Ruth, who just grinned and rolled her eyes. Rhodes knew he was in for it then.
“What kind of big shot?” he asked.
“One of them bull fighters,” Lawton said. “Buddy brought him in.”
“He was drunk,” Hack said, taking back the story. “Buddy found him wanderin’ around out at the city park. Prob’ly went there when he realized he couldn’t drive, and got out of his car for some reason or other —“
“Had to go to the bathroom, I bet,” Lawton said. “His pants was unzipped when we locked him up.”
“— but we don’t know why,” Hack continued as if Lawton hadn’t spoken. “Buddy was takin’ a short cut through the park and saw him wanderin’ around over by the band stand, couldn’t hardly stand up. So Buddy went and tried to talk to him, and then he brought him in.”
Rhodes had a lot of questions, but he was almost afraid to ask them.
“You say Buddy tried to talk to him?”
“That’s right,” Lawton said. “He tried, but he couldn’t.”
“Why not? Was the man too drunk to talk?”
“He wasn’t too drunk,” Hack said. “He just couldn’t talk English. He’s a bullfighter. They come from Mexico or maybe from Spain.”
“And you say he’s a big shot?”
“Sure he’s a big shot. Famous, anyway.”
“If you can’t talk to him,” Rhodes said, “how do you know he’s famous?”
“He could tell us that much,” Lawton said. “That’s about all the English he could talk.”
“But he said that he was a famous bullfighter?”
“That’s right,” Hack said. “Famous bullfighter. That’s what matador means, ain’t it? Bullfighter?”
“He said he was a famous matador?”
Hack looked first at Ruth and then at Lawton. “Ain’t that what we been tellin’ you all along?”
“That’s what we been tellin’ him,” Lawton agreed.
“Isn’t there a Mexican food restaurant in Garton called The Famous Matador?” Rhodes asked.
Hack thought for a second. “By gosh, I believe you’re right. Got a big sign out in front, a bullfighter with a neon cape that sorta waves back and forth.”
“That’s the place,” Rhodes said. “I think I’d better have a talk with the prisoner.”
Rhodes spoke a little Spanish, enough to make himself understood most of the time, and he could understand more than he spoke. It didn’t take him long to find out that the prisoner was from Garton and that he worked in the kitchen at the Famous Matador. His name was Jaime Saenz. He’d come to Clearview for the football game, met a young woman who spoke Spanish a lot better than either Rhodes or Buddy, and stayed in town for an extra couple of days.
He was desperate to get back to Garton, he said, because he was afraid he was going to lose his job at the restaurant. He’d been drunk that afternoon when Buddy found him, though maybe not as drunk as Buddy thought. The language barrier had no doubt compounded the problem. At any rate, he seemed sober now.
Rhodes went back downstairs and told Ruth that he was going to release the prisoner. She could take him back to the park for his car.
“What if he gets drunk again?” Ruth asked.
“Follow him until he leaves the county to make sure he doesn’t,” Rhodes told her. “We don’t want him to lose his job, but we don’t want him to have an accident, either.”
“Can you hold him for a few more minutes? It won’t take long for me to tell you about Bonny and Tandy.”
“All right. What did you find out?”
She’d found out that both men had indeed bet with Ford and that both were eager to keep their involvement with the gambler a secret.
“It’s not public opinion that they’re worried about, though,” she said. “Not in Bonny’s case, anyway.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s his wife. He wouldn’t talk to me at his house. I had to meet him at his office. He’s lost a little more money than he’d like for his wife to know about. In fact, I got the impression that any money he lost would be more than he’d like for her to know about.”
“Does he have an alibi for last night?”
“He was with his wife. He says she can vouch for him, but he really doesn’t want to have to bring her into it. If he does, she’ll find out about the gambling.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think he murdered Ford,” Ruth said. “Anybody who’s that scared of his wife wouldn’t kill somebody.”
Rhodes wasn’t sure that the theory made sense, but he’d known Bonny a long time. He didn’t think Bonny was a killer, either.
“What about Tandy?” he asked.
“He says he’s never made a bet over ten dollars in his life. He doesn’t believe in it. He even went to Las Vegas last year just to see the shows.”
Rhodes had known Tandy for a long time, too. There was a rumor around Clearview that he still had the first nickel he’d ever made, which was an exaggeration, but not too much of one. If he said he didn’t bet excessively, Rhodes believed him.
“Of course, he’s a deacon at First Baptist,” Ruth said. “Nothing would happen to him if the congregation found out he’d bet with Ford, and probably nobody would even say anything about it to him. But they’d talk about it when he wasn’t around, as he well knows, so he’d hate for the word to get out.”
“We won’t tell anyone unless we have to,” Rhodes said. “Let me tell you about another angle on this mess.”
He told Ruth about his talk with Jay Kelton and his theory about the steroids.
“It sounds like it might lead somewhere,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to call Ivy to let her know I’ll be late,” he said. “And then I’m going to talk to Bob Deedham.”
When he left the jail, Rhodes didn’t go straight to the Deedhams’ house. He stopped at the H.E.B. and bought a can of Vienna sausages, a quarter pound of mild cheddar cheese, and a box of whole wheat crackers. A man could go only so long without food.
He opened the sausages in the parking lot and felt a mild twinge of guilt when he saw the congealed grease collected around the tops. The guilt passed when he ate one, however. He sliced through the plastic wrap of the cheese with his pocket knife and cut off a chunk. He put it on a cracker and ate it, hardly thinking of the fat grams. The crackers were whole wheat, he told himself. That had to count for something.
He ate all the sausages, but not all the cheese. And of course there were plenty of crackers left. He got a Dr Pepper from the machine in front of the store and drank it as he drove to the Deedhams’.
He tried not to let the fact that he didn’t like Bob Deedham influence his thoughts on the case, but it was hard not to. If he could prove a connection between Deedham and Rapper, he thought he would have a pretty good reason to suspect the two of them in Meredith’s death. The problem was that he wouldn’t have anything more than suspicion. There was no proof, and proof was what he had to have.
He was almost to the Deedhams’ house when Hack called on the radio.
“Miz Wilkie just phoned,” he said. “She said she heard motorsickles again and thought you’d
want to know.”
“When?” Rhodes asked.
“Just then,” Hack said. “I called you soon as she hung up.”
“I don’t mean when did she phone. When did she hear the motorcycles?”
“Right before she phoned me. They were headin’ toward town, she said.”
“All right. I’ll drive over toward Milsby and see what I can see.”
“You be careful,” Hack said.
“I always am. Has Ruth already gone to escort that famous bullfighter of yours home to Garton?”
“She just left. If you want some back-up, I can call Buddy.”
“I’m not going to do anything except look around. If I need help, I’ll call you back.”
“You won’t have time. You’re always gettin’ in some kinda mess and then —“
“Let’s not talk about that on the air,” Rhodes said, and signed off. He turned right at the next cross street and headed toward Milsby.
The motorcycles shot across an intersection a few blocks from where Rhodes was stopped at a stop sign. There were four of them. They had already turned off the Milsby road and were on the highway that led out of Clearview toward the southeast. It was also the highway that led to The County Line, so Rhodes thought he might as well tag along and see if that was where they were going.
He was too far away to see who was riding the motorcycles, but it was reasonable to assume that Rapper and Nellie were on two of them. There were very few motorcycles in Blacklin County.
Rhodes stayed far enough behind not to alarm the bikers. If they were going to The County Line, he wanted them to get there so he could find out why. He thought they might be meeting someone.
If they were just leaving Blacklin County for some reason or other, that was all right, too. He could locate them eventually if he needed them later on. He let them pull even farther ahead of him, and soon they were out of sight.
When he reached The County Line, the parking lot was not nearly as crowded as it had been the night before. Sunday night wasn’t prime honky-tonking time in Blacklin County.