Booked for a Hanging

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes left, feeling calmer. He rarely allowed himself to get personally involved in official business, though he had always cared about the people involved, but this time his objectivity was in real danger. There had to be some way to get Appleby, and he was going to find it. He told himself that he was going to find it soon.

  It was Ivy, however, who came up with the idea.

  “I was reading in the paper about a rape case in Houston,” she said as they were driving back home, having made Leona Appleby as comfortable as they could. “They can take the blood or semen samples and prove it came from a particular person, and they can prove paternity by DNA testing. Could you do that with calves?”

  Rhodes didn’t know. “You mean do some kind of DNA testing on the stolen calves to see if they came from Appleby’s bull or Adkins’ bull?” He thought about it. It seemed logical enough. “I don’t see why that wouldn’t work. I’ll try to find out tomorrow. Did I ever mention that you were probably a lot smarter than I am?”

  “Nope,” Ivy said. “But now that you bring it up, I can ride a motorcycle better than you, too.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” Rhodes said. “Where do you want to eat tonight?”

  “Tired of meatloaf?”

  “No. I just thought you might like to eat out.”

  “How about the Dairy Queen? They have those Blizzards on sale for ninety-nine cents.”

  Rhodes thought about his waistline for about a tenth of a second. Then he thought about how a Heath Bar Blizzard would taste. “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Rhodes checked with Hack about Miz McGee.

  “He took her out and bought her a cheeseburger,” Lawton said. “That’s his idea of showing her a big time.”

  “I wasn’t talking about what they ate,” Rhodes said, thinking that was his idea of a big time, too, that and a Blizzard. It beat the heck out of oat bran. “I was wondering how she was doing, considering everything that happened yesterday.”

  “She’s all right,” Hack said. “I don’t think she’ll be wantin’ to borrow any books from the library for a while, though. She was a little bit scared at first. She couldn’t figure out what that Mr. Stanley wanted to bring her down here to the jail for.”

  “She thought she was comin’ to see her sweetie,” Lawton said.

  Hack ignored him. “Anyhow, I told her all about what had happened with the books, and she could understand why Mr. Stanley was so wrought up. She said she wouldn’t want anybody messin’ with the books she reads.”

  “Ain’t no bad words in that kind of books, anyhow,” Lawton said.

  “How’d you know about that?” Hack said. “You ever read one?”

  Rhodes left them to their wrangling and called Dr. Barton Slick, a local veterinarian, and asked him about the possibility of DNA testing on the stolen calves.

  “Nope,” Slick said. “Never work. Some people aren’t that sure about how valid it is even in the case of humans. Too complicated, too.”

  Rhodes sighed. It had seemed like a such a good idea. He hated to tell Ivy.

  “But we could do the same thing just by blood typing,” Slick said. “No problem.”

  “We can?” Rhodes said.

  “Sure. We’d have to send the blood samples to a lab, but the test would prove pretty conclusively whether the calves came from a particular bull. They’ve been doing things like that for years.”

  Rhodes thanked Slick and said that he would call him back. Then he called Adkins.

  “I don’t have no bull,” Adkins said.

  “Your cows had calves,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “Yeah. They all get bred by my neighbor’s bull. Burt Sammons’ Santa Gertrudis. Can’t keep that son in the pasture when there’s cows to service. He’s over the fence like he was half rabbit.”

  Rhodes didn’t bother to point out that it certainly seemed to be to Adkins’ advantage to have a neighbor with such a willing bull.

  “Do you think your neighbor would let us take a blood sample from his bull?” Rhodes said. He explained why.

  “Don’t see why not,” Adkins said. “You really think this’ll work?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Rhodes said. He didn’t want to make any promises.

  He hung up and made another call, this time to Jack Parry, the County Judge. He wanted to get a search warrant.

  Parry agreed that the similarity of the cattle in Appleby’s pasture to the ones Adkins had lost was sufficient evidence for a warrant. But he wasn’t sure a warrant would allow the taking of blood samples from cattle.

  “The statutes say you can’t take blood from people,” he said. “They don’t mention cows, but I imagine the same thing would apply to them.”

  “You’re going to tell me that cows are protected by the Constitution, right?” Rhodes said.

  “Well, no, but maybe they are by Texas law. Besides, they’re the man’s property, or at least they’re presumed to be until we prove different.”

  “I’ll show Appleby the warrant and ask for his permission to take the blood samples,” Rhodes said. “Maybe he’ll think the warrant covers that and let me take the samples without causing any trouble about it.” Knowing Appleby, however, Rhodes didn’t think that was too likely.

  “What if he won’t?” Parry said.

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Maybe I’ll pistol-whip him.”

  Parry laughed. He knew Rhodes would never pistol-whip anyone.

  Rhodes, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. In Appleby’s case, he was willing to make an exception.

  “If he won’t,” Parry said, “you can get a court order. That way you can even get blood from a person.”

  “I’ll do that, then,” Rhodes said. Appleby was safe from pistol-whipping. At least for now.

  On the way to Appleby’s, Rhodes stopped by the college. He had been wondering about a possible connection between Appleby and Graham’s murder. As far as Rhodes was concerned, a man who would beat his wife was capable of anything, and Appleby had not seemed to have a good opinion of Graham.

  The cars were still parked by the house, but Wallace and Rolingson were in the main building. Rhodes found them there on the third floor. The police line was still in place, but that obviously had not bothered them in the least.

  It wasn’t that things were out of place on the third floor; Rhodes couldn’t have sworn that anything had been moved. But it still seemed to him when he saw it that the whole floor had been given a thorough going-over.

  Marty Wallace greeted him at the door of the office. She was wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans as faded and tight as those Twyla Faye had been wearing the day before. She looked even better than the first time Rhodes had seen her.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” she said, reaching out and touching his arm when he reached the office. Her hand was soft and warm.

  Rhodes’ voice stuck in his throat at first, but he finally managed to get out a “Good morning.” Then he said, “Where’s Mr. Rolingson.”

  “In here,” Rolingson said from inside the office.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Rhodes said.

  Marty Wallace smiled at him, her blue eyes sparkling. “We weren’t looking for anything. We were just getting everything in order.”

  “They were looking for Tamerlane, you can bet on that,” Hal Brame said from the doorway behind them.

  Rhodes decided that he would take the ribbon down. It wasn’t doing any good anyway, and he really didn’t care who visited the floor now. It was too late to worry about that. Besides, he was pretty sure they hadn’t found anything. If they had, they wouldn’t still be looking.

  Marty’s eyes hardened at the sound of Brame’s voice. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Just looking after my interests,” Brame said, walking across the room toward them, carefully avoiding the pieces of scaffolding in the floor. “Simon did say that he would give me
the opportunity to buy Tamerlane, you know.”

  “You always were a liar, Brame,” Rolingson said, coming out of the office. He too was dressed in shorts, and his legs were as impressive as his arms. He looked as if he could bend his leg and crack a coconut between his calf and thigh.

  Brame was not intimidated, despite the fact that he was only about half Rolingson’s size. “Prove it,” he said.

  “You know I can’t do that,” Rolingson said. “Simon’s dead, so we can’t prove what he said. That’s probably why you killed him.”

  “Did you hear that, Sheriff?” Brame said. “That’s libel, isn’t it?”

  “Slander,” Rolingson said. “But I take it back.”

  “You can’t do that,” Brame said, clearly not intimidated at all by Rolingson’s size.

  Rhodes was beginning to enjoy himself. These people certainly didn’t like one another; he might be able to find out quite a lot if he kept them stirred up.

  “Why would Mr. Brame want to kill anyone?” he said. “Especially Simon Graham?”

  “To get Tamerlane,” Marty Wallace said. She was standing disturbingly close to Rhodes. “You know Hal’s reputation, of course.”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s a vulture,” Marty said. “He knows where all the really prime books are, and if a serious collector ever gets into a real financial bind, he can count on a visit from Hal, who you can bet will have a big roll of cash in his pocket. It’s all off the books with Hal. The collector gets the cash, and he gets it faster than he ever would through legitimate channels, but he doesn’t get nearly as much as he would if he did things the right way. And Hal gets the books he wants. The thing of it is, he’s never had a book like Tamerlane.”

  “Bitch,” Hal Brame said.

  “I notice you didn’t call it libel,” Rolingson said. “You probably didn’t have enough cash for Tamerlane, though. I don’t even know how you heard about it, but Simon would never have sold it to you, no matter how desperate he was.”

  Brame smiled a tight smile. “Yes he would. If he were desperate enough.”

  “No,” Marty said. “Not to you. He didn’t like you very much, Hal. He never did. He thought you were a jealous little sneak.”

  “And he was right,” Rolingson said. “That’s the only reason he told you about the Tamerlane. So you’d be even more jealous. And this time there was nothing you could do about it.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Brame said.

  “We know about the Byron letters,” Rolingson said.

  Brame’s temper flared. “The fake Byron letters. And you know as well as I do that Simon was aware that they were forgeries. He probably forged them himself. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe you did it for him.”

  Rolingson came through the office door more quickly than Rhodes would have thought possible. For such a big man, he could really move.

  He reached Brame in two steps, grabbed the smaller man’s shirt front in his fist, and lifted him a foot or so from the floor.

  Brame made gagging sounds and kicked his feet uselessly.

  Rolingson drew back his other fist.

  Marty Wallace was watching breathlessly, the tip of her pink tongue caught between her front teeth. She didn’t seem nearly so attractive now.

  “Better put him down,” Rhodes said before Rolingson could throw a punch that would no doubt have crushed Brame’s skull like a wicker basket stepped on by King Kong.

  Rolingson didn’t even look at Rhodes. “You gonna make me?” he said.

  Rhodes was getting tired of people asking him that. “If I have to,” he said.

  Rolingson considered it for a while. Then he opened his fist and let Brame go. Brame hit the floor and stumbled backward for a step before gaining his balance.

  “Bully,” he said.

  Marty Wallace was looking speculatively at Rhodes. “You’re cute,” she said. “But you don’t scare.”

  “That’s enough of that crap,” Rolingson said. “Look, Sheriff. We’re Simon Graham’s closest associates, and I was his business partner. We have a right to look through his things, but that little worm there—” he glowered at Brame “—doesn’t belong here for any reason at all. I want him out of here right now.”

  “Just a minute,” Brame said. “I think we’re letting personalities get in the way of a very important issue here. It’s obvious that you and I don’t like one another, Rolingson, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need one another. Suppose you find that copy of Tamerlane. Who’s going to buy it from you?”

  “Not you, butthole,” Rolingson said.

  “And why not? What if I happen to have a large sum of cash instantly available to me? I happen to know that your own financial position isn’t much better than Simon’s was. You needed his success, and he didn’t have a lot of it lately. You’ve suffered financially, I’m sure, simply because he did. And I think a lot of those books he was stuck with were ones you bought for him. That can’t have helped your reputation very much.”

  “Maybe,” Rolingson said. “That doesn’t mean I have to deal with you, though.”

  “There are a few other things I could say, too,” Brame told him, giving a sidelong glance toward Rhodes.

  “Mitch,” Marty Wallace said. “Can I have a word with you in the office?”

  “Huh?” Rolingson looked at her. “Oh. Sure. Excuse us.” He and Marty went into the office.

  “What was that all about?” Rhodes said.

  “Nothing much,” Brame said.

  “You told him that there were other things you could say. What does that mean?”

  “Just that I know more about those forgeries than he thinks I do.”

  “If you’re concealing knowledge of a crime, you’re committing a criminal act yourself,” Rhodes said, thinking there was more to it than that.

  “Nothing like a crime,” Brame said, as smiling and persuasive as if he were selling Rhodes a used car. “Nothing like that at all. I might know something about where the paper for the forgeries was obtained, that’s all. I don’t think you could trace it to anyone specifically.”

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Marty Wallace and Rolingson came out of the office. Rolingson didn’t look happy.

  “Look,” he said. “We don’t have the book. Whoever killed Simon probably took it. But if we find it, we might make a deal with you. I’m not promising anything, though.”

  “I’m not looking for a promise,” Brame said. His eyes were alight with what Rhodes took for either greed or the simple desire to get the better of Rolingson. “All I want is the chance to bid on the book. The first chance is the one I would prefer, of course.”

  “OK,” Rolingson said. “I guess I can go that far.”

  Marty stood beside him, smiling while he spoke. It was clear that she had somehow talked him into agreeing to let Brame make an offer on the book.

  “Fine,” Brame said. He looked around the room. “I guess I’ll be going now. Ta-ta.” He turned and walked back to the door.

  When he was gone, Rhodes said, “I’m not at all sure you two have a legal right to be here, much less a right to talk about selling a book that you don’t even have yet. If there’s a will, it hasn’t turned up yet, but I expect we’ll be hearing from Graham’s lawyer any time now.”

  “That book doesn’t have anything to do with a will,” Rolingson said. “If he bought it, he bought it with money from the business, and we were partners. It might have even been in a lot of books I bought for him. The book’s mine now.”

  “It must be worth a lot,” Rhodes said.

  “It is,” Marty Wallace said. “A lot.”

  “I hope you find it, then,” Rhodes said.

  “We will,” Rolingson said. “Trust me.”

  Rhodes didn’t trust Rolingson at all, but he was more worried about Cy Appleby, and it was time for him to meet Dr. Slick at the pasture. He drove down the hill, wondering i
f there was any way that Appleby could have known the value of the Poe book. Any man who would steal cows and beat his wife would certainly murder someone for a book that valuable, but Appleby didn’t strike Rhodes as the sort of man who would be interested in rare American first editions. So why would he have taken the book?

  There were several other questions about Graham’s murder that were nagging at the back of Rhodes’ mind, but he didn’t have time to consider them at the moment. He had to see about blood-typing the calves.

  Dr. Slick was waiting beside a blue Ford pickup with two burly assistants when Rhodes arrived at the Appleby house. Appleby’s truck was not in the yard, and no one appeared on the porch when Rhodes called out, so he finally had to walk across the muddy yard. His feet did not sink into it as Appleby’s had, but it was still unpleasant.

  Rhodes stepped up on the porch and knocked on the door facing with his knuckles. “Anybody home?” he called through the screen door.

  There was no answer, but in a few seconds Twyla Faye emerged from the dimness inside.

  “What do you want?” she said from behind the screen. She did not open the door.

  “I want to talk to your father,” Rhodes said.

  “He’s not here. Is that all?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “That’s not all. I know why your mother wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and I know what your father did to her. I want the two of you to get out of this place and talk to a counselor. I have somewhere you can stay.”

  He and Ivy had talked over the idea during their high-fiber breakfast that morning. Ivy had agreed to talk to Leona Appleby, while Rhodes was to speak to Twyla Faye as soon as he had the chance.

  Twyla Faye laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You think he wouldn’t find us?”

  “I’ll take care of that part,” Rhodes said.

  “You don’t look big enough.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave right now,” Rhodes said. “Just think about it.”

  “Maybe. Who are those men out there?”

  “They’re here to take a few blood samples from your cattle,” Rhodes told her. He showed her the search warrant. “Is that all right with you?”