by Bill Crider
The drawers of the desk were empty except for a few blank sheets of white typing paper. There were no keys that might have fit the door to which the rope had been tied. There were none in the equally clean, equally empty bedroom, either. It was almost as if Graham didn’t live in the house at all, and Rhodes supposed that was the case. Graham lived in Houston; he visited Obert.
The kitchen provided no more information than the rest of the house. The refrigerator was better stocked than Rhodes’ had been before his marriage, but that was all you could say for it. There were no delicacies, unless you counted the six-pack of Seagram’s wine coolers with one bottle missing. The rest of the contents consisted of the staples. Milk, bread, eggs, cheese, sausage. Rhodes thought again, ruefully, about his breakfast and about how sausage smelled when it was sizzling in the pan. A couple of pounds of ground meat and what looked like a small roast wrapped in clear plastic were in the freezer.
Rhodes went back outside. There was a woman standing by his car.
“Heighdy, Sheriff,” she said. She was about fifty-five years old and wore faded jeans and, in spite of the increasing heat, a moth-eaten high-school letter sweater with a big white “0” on a black background. She may have attended public school in Obert back in the days when it had a school. There was dirt under her fingernails. She had probably been working in flowerbeds or a garden, though Rhodes hadn’t noticed her when he drove up.
“I’m Oma Coates,” the woman said. “I live right over yonder.” She pointed to a white-painted frame house across the graveled street, the only house that was near the college grounds. “I heard about Mr. Graham.”
It would have surprised Rhodes if she hadn’t. There had been a number of people crowded outside the main building the night before, curious neighbors who had been roused from their sleep by all the activity and the flashing lights. One of them could easily have been Oma Coates, and all of them would be talkative.
Red Rogers would be after Rhodes soon, he was sure.
“Good morning, Miz Coates,” Rhodes said. He didn’t have to say any more. She looked as if she had something that she wanted to tell him.
“It’s got where it’s not safe nowhere,” she said. “It’s got where there’s trash no matter where you go.”
Rhodes understood that by “trash” she didn’t mean debris, but human beings who didn’t meet her own high standards.
“Just like hogs,” she said. “Worse. Hogs won’t kill their own.”
Rhodes nodded. That was all the encouragement Miz Coates needed.
“They say he mighta killed hisself, but he didn’t. It was them Applebys done it,” she said. “Trash, ever’ one of ’em. I hope you’re gonna arrest the whole shitaree.”
“Who are the Applebys?” Rhodes said. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
Miz Coates tilted her head sideways and looked at him. “And you the high sheriff of the whole county.” She shook her head. “Uh-uh-uh.”
“I’m sorry,” Rhodes said. “But maybe if you told me about the Applebys I could do something about them.”
“They live right down this road,” Miz Coates said. “Less’n a mile. Live like hogs. Worse. Hogs’re cleaner ’n the Applebys.”
Rhodes remembered then that there had been several complaints called in from Obert about three months previously, all of them about a new family that had moved into the community. That family had been the Applebys. The complaints had been anonymous, but Rhodes had a feeling he knew now who had made the calls.
“What’s wrong with the Applebys?” he said.
“They’re outlaws, that’s what’s wrong,” Miz Coates said. “And they live like hogs.”
“Worse,” Rhodes said before he could stop himself.
Miz Coates looked at him suspiciously, but Rhodes didn’t look away.
“Well, they do,” she said. “But they’re outlaws, too. Things have gone missin’ around here since they moved in, lots of things.”
“What kinds of things?” Rhodes said.
“My lawnmower, for one. I got it out last week, first time this year. Had to go in to get me a drink of water after I got the front mowed, so I just left it out in the yard. When I come back, it was gone.”
“And you think the Applebys took it.”
“Know they did. They go to that flea market at Colton ever’ month to sell stuff. Like lawnmowers.”
“Is that all?”
“Cows. If I was you, I’d check their herd. Never the same size two weeks in a row, if you ask me. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t go in folks’ houses. They prob’ly killed Mr. Graham, too, when he caught ’em prowlin’ his buildin’.”
“Did you see them in there last night?” Rhodes said.
Miz Coates hesitated, and Rhodes wondered why. He was pretty sure she was about to tell him something important. But she didn’t.
“Nope,” she said. “I didn’t see ’em. All I seen last night was a black car parked over there. Looked like a box on wheels. But I seen them Applebys in there plenty of times, least I seen them twins, Clyde and Claude. They ain’t but about sixteen, but they’re mean ’uns.”
“Did you see any lights in the buildings last night?” Rhodes said.
“No sir, no lights. Them Applebys don’t need no lights. They can move in the dark like a ghost.”
Rhodes thought it would be a good idea to look in on the Applebys as soon as he spent a little more time in the main building.
“What about a crew working over there?” he said. “I know Mr. Graham was planning to restore the whole campus, make a museum of it. Did he have workmen over there a lot?”
“Not since he got that house fixed up,” Miz Coates said. “That was the first thing they did, and the last one. That Mr. Graham talked big, and mostly folks around here believed him. At first they did, anyhow. But then all the work stopped, and we knew he was never really gonna do what he said. He was just blowing a lot of hot air.”
Rhodes thanked Miz Coates for her information and promised to make a thorough investigation of the entire Appleby clan that very day.
She went on back to her yard, but Rhodes was pretty sure she was not completely satisfied with either his promise or his abilities. He saw her shaking her head as she went and muttering “Uh-uh-uh,” to herself.
He had met a lot of people like her in the course of his career. She lived alone and had a lot of time on her hands. She knew everybody’s business and didn’t mind talking about it. She probably kept a close eye on everything that went on in the vicinity, and Rhodes was sure she had seen more at the main building than she had told him about. He wondered what it could have been.
Rhodes went on around to the front of the old building. Ruth had strung a strip of the stretchy yellow plastic ribbon across the columns. The black lettering on the ribbon warned the public not to cross the police line.
Rhodes ducked under the plastic and entered the building. Light slanted in through the long windows with their irregular glass panes. Rhodes wondered how old the glass was. Probably as old as the building itself, he thought. The paint on the window frames was crackled and peeling, the putty was falling out, and there was a musty smell in the air that Rhodes had not noticed the night before. He supposed the heat caused it.
He mounted the stairs. The third floor was exactly as it had been left, with one exception. The door to which the rope had been tied was open.
The room itself looked even more of a mess in the daylight than it had in the dark. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to paint the rear wall, but since there were about six earlier coats of paint that had not been cleaned off, the attempt had made things worse rather than better. The floor was dirty, and there were little piles of dirt in the corners. Cobwebs were thick in the rafters above, and Rhodes watched as one broke off and drifted slowly down to the floor. Why Graham had done anything at all to the room was a mystery to Rhodes, since what had been done was worse than nothing.
He crossed the wi
de room, though he could see even from where he was that there was no sign that the door had been forced. He did not try the knob; he would let Ruth Grady dust it for prints again, though he didn’t really put much stock in fingerprints. He thought they were highly over-rated as evidence.
Behind the open door was a small one-window room that had apparently been Graham’s real office. There was a desk in there, and there were papers on it. There was a six-foot bookshelf, and there were several books on the shelves. Most of them appeared to be about book collecting. None of them looked very old or valuable to Rhodes, but he was no judge.
He looked through the window. He could see for miles across the valley on the side of the hill opposite the one he’d come up. Several stock tanks were silvered by the sun, and he wondered if they were stocked with bass. April was coming up, and April was a prime bass fishing month.
Just then he heard a noise behind him. He turned in time to see two men jump up from behind a pile of lumber and run toward a window opening.
“Stop!” Rhodes yelled, but neither man—or boy, for they were no more than teenagers—paid any attention to him. They dived through the window.
There was no danger in that. The window opened into a large metal tube that Rhodes knew was the fire escape. There had been one just like it in the elementary school he had attended. Everyone had loved fire drills because the tube contained a circular slide leading to the ground. It was the next best thing to going to the park. Maybe it was even better, since the tube was almost completely dark inside.
Feeling like an awkward fool, Rhodes ran to the fire escape and climbed in. He hoped he didn’t get stuck and thought fleetingly that if he escaped this time, he would definitely ride the stationary bike more often.
The slide was quite slick, and Rhodes was convinced that this was not the first time the two young men had used it. He twisted rapidly to the bottom of the chute.
When he shot out the opening at the bottom of the tube, his feet hit the ground and he tried to take off at a run. He’d always been able to do that when he was six or seven years old.
That had been a long time ago, however, longer than he liked to think about, and he wasn’t quite as well coordinated as he had once been. He stumbled awkwardly for ten yards or so, his arms flailing as he tried to get his balance, and then stopped. He could see the boys fleeing across a pasture, and they were already so far ahead of him that he had no chance to catch them. Maybe if he had been six or seven, he would have tried. As it was, he simply watched them run.
They were both tow-headed, lean, and muscular, with large hands and feet that had slapped on the floor like rubber. He hadn’t seen their faces very well, but he was sure that they looked very much alike. Clyde and Claude, no doubt about it. The Applebys were getting more interesting all the time.
He walked back around to the front of the building and up the stairs. This time he had to stand for a minute and catch his breath after he got to the third floor. It was a long way up, and it seemed even longer the second time.
Then he got his third surprise of the morning. There was someone standing in the office, looking through the books on the shelves, pulling them out and opening them carefully.
It was a woman, and she had her back to Rhodes. She was tall, nearly as tall as Rhodes, and she was wearing tight black pants and a silky red blouse. She had long blonde hair that caught the light from the single window, done in the crimped style that had been popular for a while. Rhodes couldn’t get used to it. He thought it looked like Elsa Lancaster’s hair would have looked in The Bride of Frankenstein, if she’d let it down. The woman was so intent on what she was doing that she didn’t hear Rhodes come up behind her.
“I guess you don’t believe in signs,” Rhodes said.
The woman jumped and said “Oh.” She put the book she was holding back on the shelf and turned to look at Rhodes.
He looked back. She was in her late twenties and one of the best-looking women he’d ever seen close up. She had a perfectly clear complexion and the kind of cheekbones models would die for, along with deep blue eyes, red lips, and perfect teeth. Only the hair was wrong.
“You must be the police,” she said. Though Rhodes did not wear a uniform, he had his badge on his belt, and he did wear a gun some of the time. He was wearing it today, but it was out of sight.
“The sheriff,” he said. “Dan Rhodes. You did see the ribbon?”
“I saw it,” she said. “I didn’t think it applied to me. I mean, I might be the owner of this place now.”
“You must be Marty Wallace.”
“That’s right.” She stuck out her hand. She had long red fingernails and a firm, dry grip that held onto Rhodes’ hand a little longer than he felt comfortable with.
“I thought sheriffs were supposed to be old men who wore big cowboy hats and whose stomachs hung over their belts,” she said. “I didn’t think they were supposed to be cute.”
Rhodes shifted uncomfortably and tried to hold in his own stomach, which he was sure covered his belt buckle. He never wore a hat.
“Even if you do own this building, you shouldn’t have crossed the line,” he said. “And you shouldn’t be here going through these books.”
Marty put on a pouty mouth. “But they’re mine. I mean, I’m sure Simon left them to me in his will. Why can’t I look at them?”
“You can, if he did leave them to you, but not now. Right now, there’s an investigation in progress.”
Marty Wallace perched herself on the edge of the desk. Rhodes looked at her eyes.
“The call I got last night didn’t say what had happened,” she said. “Was it an accident?”
Rhodes told about finding Graham’s body. Marty Wallace’s eyes widened, and she gasped in horror.
“How awful!” she said. “I just can’t believe Simon would kill himself!”
“He might not have killed himself,” Rhodes said. “That’s one of the things we’re investigating. We didn’t find a note last night, and I haven’t been able to find one today. I thought there might be one in here.”
Marty’s eyes widened. “You’re saying he was murdered?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Marty shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?” Rhodes said. “Just how closely were you and he associated?”
“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” she said.
“Whatever you want it to mean. You said that you presumed that you were his heir.”
“Oh. Well, yes, we were close. But you have to understand that we were nothing more than business associates.”
“You’re a rare book dealer?” Rhodes couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He knew it was a mistake to make assumptions about anyone based on appearances, but somehow he couldn’t see Marty Wallace spending her time poring over the cracked leather spines of old books in some warehouse or store all day.
“I didn’t say that. I was more like Simon’s social director.”
Rhodes remembered the parties Ivy had told him about. He felt his back pocket to make sure the magazine hadn’t fallen out in the fire escape. It hadn’t.
“I see,” Rhodes said. Maybe she was telling the truth. That would explain her relatively calm acceptance of Simon’s death. “I don’t suppose you found a note of any kind in the desk drawers.”
Marty shook her head, causing her blonde hair to fall across her face. She brushed it back.
“No,” she said.
The fact that she had not been authorized to look in the drawers seemed to bother her not at all. She had the kind of self-confidence that came from being the most beautiful girl in any crowd, the one that all the men wanted to please. Rhodes didn’t think anything would bother her very much. She didn’t even seem as bothered by Graham’s death as Rhodes would have expected. Just the one little reaction, then calm again.
He changed the subject. “When did you get here, by the way? I didn’t notice your car when I came.”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “Do you have a key to this office?”
“No. Simon didn’t let anyone in here. It was his inner sanctum. But the door was open, so I walked in. I do have a key to the house. I’ve stayed there a number of times. I hope I can stay there until all this is cleared up.”
Rhodes thought about it. Did social directors get house keys? He didn’t know, but he doubted it. However, he didn’t see that it would do any harm for her to stay there now, and he said so.
“Good. I’ll want to keep up with the progress of your investigation. If Simon was murdered—”
“I didn’t say that. It’s a possibility, of course.”
“I still can’t believe it. It’s just too horrible.”
“Do you think suicide is any better?” Rhodes said.
Marty pressed her lips together and drew the corners of her mouth down. “No. I don’t suppose it is.”
“Did Simon have financial problems? Gambling losses?”
Marty continued to frown. “You’ve been investigating, all right. Yes. It could have been those things. I suppose you know about the college, too.”
Rhodes had to admit that he didn’t.
“You might as well, then. Simon was six months behind on his note for this place. It was just a matter of time before he lost it, and if that happened, his whole life would have started unraveling.”
“Why?”
“This would just have been the first thing to go. He wasn’t meeting his other payments, either. He was paying the rent on his little shop in Houston, where he got his start, but that was all. He owed the rent for the warehouses where his books were stored. He even owed the caterers.”
Rhodes thought about the ineptly painted wall. “Why was he working in here? His paint job is pretty bad, but he must have intended to do more. He had the scaffolding.”
“He was trying to put up a front. The bank was insisting that the job show some progress. They didn’t really want to call in the note, not the way things are now, and he was hoping to convince them that he really would be able to convert this place into a museum. The trouble was, he couldn’t afford to hire a work crew.”