That Old Scoundrel Death

by Bill Crider

  Yancey sat on one side of the kitchen, flattened out on the floor, his ears perked and alert and his eyes watching every bite Rhodes and Ivy took in the hopes that something would fall on the floor. Nothing did, so when Rhodes was helping to clean the table, Yancey got up, shook himself, and went off to bed. The cats, as usual, slept or woke at intervals and stayed right where they were. They weren’t much interested in anything the humans or the dogs did.

  After the things were cleared away and the dishes were washed, Rhodes and Ivy sat at the table. Rhodes wanted to talk the case over with Ivy because she often had good ideas about things that he might have overlooked. He filled her in on everything.

  “I don’t like it when you get shot at,” Ivy said after he was finished.

  “Nobody was shooting at me.”

  “I’ll let that pass for now,” Ivy said, “but you were there in the line of fire.”

  “Not really,” Rhodes said.

  “Really,” Ivy said, “but I’m letting it pass, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Good. Let’s look at your suspects. Roger Prentiss could’ve killed Lawrence. What if they’d ridden together to the school? Roger could have killed him and driven the car back home.”

  “I can’t come up with a motive for Roger,” Rhodes said, “and there’s no sign of the car at Roger’s house. I’m sure someone got into the building from the second floor so he wouldn’t be seen, and Roger wouldn’t have done that.”

  “That would rule out Kenny, too, then,” Ivy said.

  “Not necessarily. Noble could have let him out in the back, then driven off in the pickup. Kenny could have killed Lawrence and stolen the car.”

  “Then where is the car?”

  “Kenny could have driven it to Houston, sold it, and gotten back to Thurston all in one evening easily enough.”

  “What are Kenny and Noble hiding from, then?” Ivy wanted to know. “And who’s trying to kill them?”

  “Good question,” Rhodes said. “I have no idea.” He paused. “Or I have one, but it’s not a great one.”

  “Any idea is better than none,” Ivy said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m not sure anybody was trying to kill them,” Rhodes said. “I think it was more like a warning.”

  “That’s your idea?”

  “No. My idea is that Kenny and Noble were driving around Thurston on the night Lawrence was killed, and they saw something. Or somebody. Whoever it was isn’t happy about it and wants them to keep quiet.”

  Ivy sat and looked down at the table for a few seconds. Then she looked up and asked, “How dumb are those two?”

  “Not dumb,” Rhodes said, “but not exactly the kind to be voted most likely to succeed.”

  Ivy grinned. “What if they were trying to succeed? What if they tried to blackmail whoever they saw, if they saw anybody. That’s the kind of thing that could make somebody very unhappy.”

  “I wish I’d thought of that,” Rhodes said, remembering how quickly Noble had tried to make him believe that the Whiteside boys were the ones doing the shooting. “It’s a possibility.”

  “What about the shooter? Why not just kill them?”

  “Maybe he wanted to, but if he did, he was a terrible shot.”

  “Any good shooters in the suspect group?”

  “Charlie Reese is a hunter and likes guns,” Rhodes said. “He has some on display in his den.” Rhodes thought about the rifles he’d seen. “One of them is even the right caliber, but just about everybody in the county has a thirty-thirty.”

  “What about the others?”

  “I don’t know about the Falkners. I didn’t see any guns, and I haven’t heard that either of them liked to hunt. That doesn’t mean they don’t have guns, though. This is Texas, after all. Guns are a way of life.”

  “And the Hunleys?”

  “Con and Pete Hunley were in the army and probably both of them have marksman medals. Just about everybody gets one of those, though.”

  “They have every other medal,” Ivy said. “They like to talk about them, too, or at least the son does. Pete. He’s made his father proud.”

  “Every son wants to,” Rhodes said.

  “His war was a lot different from his father’s. Desert instead of jungle. How much do you remember about the First Gulf War, anyway?”

  “Not much,” Rhodes said. “Shock and awe. Operation Desert Storm. A quick win.”

  “You’re already mixed up,” Ivy said. “Shock and awe is from the Iraq war, which wasn’t a quick win.”

  “Then I know even less than I thought I did. How quick a win was the first Gulf War?”

  “Really quick. In fact, the ground war didn’t last long at all, maybe a month. I don’t remember much more than that. The shock and awe went on longer. You’d have to ask an expert.”

  “Lawrence Gates was an expert. Not just on that war but on all wars, or that’s what it seemed like, according to Roger. I can’t ask him, though.”

  “Lawrence wasn’t in any wars,” Ivy said.

  “Not as far as we know,” Rhodes said. “His expertise is all intellectual, based on reading books and information from the internet.”

  “Then we’d better move on. You say that all of your suspects are alibiing each other and that any of them could have been in town when Roger was killed.”

  “That’s right, except for Kenny and Noble. The Reeses and the Falkners lied to me about that. So did Kenny and Noble, but we’ve covered them already.”

  “We haven’t figured out where they are.”

  Rhodes shrugged his shoulders. “No, and I wish we could. I told Kenny’s mother to call me if they showed up at her house, but I don’t think she will. I’m at a dead end with those two.”

  “What do you think about Faye Falkner?” Ivy asked.

  Rhodes considered his answer for a second. “She’s a little excitable.”

  Ivy laughed. “Is that what you call it? I’ll bet you a dollar she’s the one who thought of those ‘pranks’ to play on the Hunleys. It sounds like something she’d do.”

  “It’s possible,” Rhodes said, “but if she came up with the ideas, Leslie’s the one who worked them out. Faye’s more spontaneous. She kind of erupts without thinking. If she killed Lawrence, it would have had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I’m sure she doesn’t carry a pistol. The killing took some planning, too, and that’s not her strong point.”

  “What about her husband?” Ivy asked.

  “Leslie? He might’ve done it. She might even have asked him to do it, but I can’t figure out why the two of them would be at the school when Lawrence was.”

  “You’re not much help,” Ivy said. “Every time I make a suggestion about who might have done it, you shoot it down. So to speak.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Rhodes said.

  “Right. So what about the Reeses? Charlie was out on the horse, so he could’ve gone to the school.”

  “If he had,” Rhodes said, “he would’ve been noticed. Thurston might be a small town, but there aren’t a lot of people out riding horses any time of day.”

  “He’s a bully, he likes guns, and he likes to kill feral hogs,” Ivy said.

  “I wish more people liked to kill feral hogs,” Rhodes said. “If things go on the way they are, the hogs will have taken over in a few hundred years. It’s going to be like Planet of the Apes, but with hogs.”

  Ivy laughed again. “I think we’ve drifted off the subject here. You spend too much time around Hack and Lawton.”

  “Worst fears realized,” Rhodes said. “Let me get back on track. Charlie is a bully, all right, but like most bullies, he’s all hat and no cattle. It doesn’t take much to back him down, and there’s a big difference between shooting a feral hog and a human being. As for the guns, lots of people like guns. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you use them the right way.”

  “What about the man who beat up Curtis Lambert?” Ivy asked. “Could that have been
Reese?”

  Rhodes gave the idea some thought. “Like I said, he’s a bully, but he’s easy to back down. That might not apply in Curtis’s case. He didn’t fight back, as far as I know. Here’s another thing. The man who beat him was wearing a mask. Sometimes it’s easier for someone to act when his identity is hidden. So, yes, Reese could have done it.”

  “Something to consider, then,” Ivy said. “What do you think about his wife?”

  “Arlene? She seems normal enough. She seems more likely to use a vacuum cleaner than a gun, but doesn’t care for housework.”

  “Who does?” Ivy asked.

  Rhodes knew better than to get into that discussion.

  “She and Charlie seem to have some issues,” he said, “but nothing serious.”

  “About housework?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I’m glad we don’t have issues,” Ivy said.

  Rhodes thought about all the healthy meals he’d eaten in the last few years, which was sort of an issue, but he thought this would be a bad time to mention it. So he didn’t.

  I’m glad, too,” he said. “Peace and harmony, that’s us.”

  “Don’t make it sound so icky,” Ivy said.

  “I didn’t mean to. Does this mean we have issues?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ivy said, “but you’d better watch your step.”

  “Count on it,” Rhodes said, “but aren’t we getting away from the subject again?”

  “I blame Hack and Lawton,” Ivy said. “Where were we?”

  “Charlie and Arlene Reese.”

  “I hate to write them and the Falkners off. They all wanted to get rid of the old school building, and now it’s gone.”

  “That might account for the fire,” Rhodes said. “It doesn’t account for Lawrence, though, and I’m not writing anybody off for either of those things.”

  “So you think the murder and the fire might not be connected?”

  “That’s right. There’s no reason why they should be.”

  “It just seems like they would be,” Ivy said.

  “Seems that way to me, too, but I haven’t come up with the connection yet.”

  “Maybe you just need to sleep on it, or if that’s not what you need, we could go outside and clear our heads.”

  “Going outside sounds like a good idea to me,” Rhodes said, and they got up from the table and went into the backyard.

  It was cooler now than it had been during the day, but not a lot. It would be midnight before the temperature started to drop much, and even then it wouldn’t go below the low seventies. The night air made it seem a little cooler than it was, though, and Speedo emerged from his Styrofoam igloo and ambled over to them, wagging his tail. Rhodes rubbed his head and told him he was a good boy but that they weren’t going to play.

  “We’re just here to look at the sky,” Rhodes said.

  As if he understood, Speedo sat back on his haunches and looked up. Rhodes wondered what he was seeing. Could dogs see the stars? Rhodes had no idea.

  In spite of its name, Clearview didn’t provide an entirely clear view of the stars. A bit of light pollution had crept in, even though the nearest city of any size was nearly forty miles away. Even Clearview provided some of the light that dimmed the stars a little.

  Rhodes could remember going out into his backyard on summer nights when he was small. It was darker then. He’d lived in the country, of course, which made the nights even darker. There had been no light pollution at all. Lightning bugs flickered all around, and the sky was blistered with stars. The Milky Way was like a wide highway across the darkness. Rhodes could even identify some of the constellations then, although the only ones he could remember with any certainty now were the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. He could see the man in the moon in those days, but now he wasn’t so sure. It didn’t matter at the moment since the moon was in the first quarter and not showing much of a face.

  Ivy stood close to him and he put his arm around her. “Think we’ll ever send anybody else to the moon?” he asked.

  “Not in our lifetimes,” Ivy said. “We lost sight of that goal somewhere along the way.”

  “Too bad,” Rhodes said. “Or maybe not. We might not belong up there, anyway.”

  “You’re feeling philosophical tonight,” Ivy said.

  “That’s a bad sign,” Rhodes said. “Time to go in and go to sleep. You, too, Speedo.”

  Speedo went back to his igloo, and Rhodes and Ivy went inside.

  * * *

  Sleep would have been a good idea if it had been restful, but Rhodes didn’t sleep well, and he got very little rest. He got up at the usual time, sat on the edge of the bed, and rubbed his face with both hands. His head had been full of dreams all night. Or nightmares, which were becoming a bad habit, although he could hardly remember any of them in the morning. Most of them involved fire, as best he could recall, but some of them had to do with being shot at while pinned down in an old house. He was pretty sure there was one about him walking on the moon. That one hadn’t been too bad.

  Rhodes knew that there were people who believed that dreams were a way in which a person’s unconscious was trying to communicate something to the sleeper, but he couldn’t think of a thing that had been communicated to him. He needed something more clearly stated, like having somebody in the dream hold up a sign that said “The Killer Is…” Or “The Arsonist Is…” That would clarify things if the blanks were filled in, and it would make his job a lot easier. Or it would if dreams could be trusted to tell the truth.

  Could you really trust something you recalled from a dream? Some people might believe that. Seepy Benton, for example. Seepy had once told Rhodes that he was a “lucid dreamer,” which meant that he had control of his dreams, at least to some extent, and could even manipulate them.

  “I never have to worry about nightmares,” Seepy had said. “If bad things happen in a dream, I can either change them to good things or wake myself up. Usually bad things don’t happen, though, since I’m pretty much in charge.”

  Rhodes never knew whether to take Seepy at his word, but he’d sounded perfectly serious when talking about the lucid dreaming. Rhodes wondered if Seepy could also interpret dreams. Even if he could, he wouldn’t be of any use to Rhodes, since Rhodes couldn’t remember his dreams. Even Seepy, with that brain he was so proud of, wouldn’t be able to interpret the fragments and phantoms that Rhodes could recall.

  Maybe not being able to recall his dreams was a good thing. Except for the one about walking on the moon. He’d like to remember that one. He was still thinking about it when the phone rang. Ivy answered and called him.

  “It’s Seepy Benton,” she said.

  Seepy never called Rhodes at home, although he had the number, so Rhodes knew the call was important. He got up and went to the phone.

  “This is the sheriff,” he said.

  “Great,” Seepy said. “I have good news for you.”

  “I could use some,” Rhodes said. “What is it?”

  “I’ve cracked the case,” Seepy said.

  Chapter 23

  Rhodes wasn’t sure Seepy knew what it meant to crack a case, but he figured it would be a good idea to find out.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “I’ll meet you at Roger Prentiss’s house in half an hour,” Seepy said. “I’ll tell you then. I don’t want to go into it over the phone. I’ve already called him, and he’ll be ready for us when we get there. Don’t eat breakfast. He says he’ll pick up some doughnuts.”

  The doughnuts sounded good. Rhodes hoped Prentiss would pick up some buttermilk doughnuts. They were Rhodes’s favorites, and it had been so long since he’d had one that he couldn’t remember when it was.

  “I’ll be there,” Rhodes said.

  He hung up the phone and went to get dressed. Once again he had to turn the morning romp with the dogs over to Ivy.

  “I can handle that,” she said. “I think they’re starting to have
more fun with me than they do with you.”

  “You trying to make me jealous?” Rhodes asked.

  “Not in the least,” Ivy said. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

  “To see Roger Prentiss and Seepy. Seepy says he’s cracked the case.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Ivy said. “Are you going to let Hack know where you’ll be?”

  “I’ll do that right now,” Rhodes said, going to the phone.

  “You gonna put me in the loop?” Hack asked when Rhodes told him that he’d be late getting in.

  “As soon as I see you again,” Rhodes said. “Right now even I don’t know any more than that Seepy Benton says he’s cracked the case.”

  “Fat chance,” Hack said. “Now let me put you in the loop on something.”

  Uh-oh, Rhodes thought. “Go ahead.”

  “You remember that woman robber you brought in yesterday?”

  “How could I forget?” Rhodes asked.

  “Well, she bonded out right after you left yesterday.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Rhodes said. “It happens all the time.”

  “Yeah, but not ever’body does what she did when they leave.”

  Rhodes knew he’d have to ask if he wanted to know what Madison had done. Hack would never tell him without spending ten minutes building up to it. “What did she do?”

  “She stopped right in front of me and said, ‘I’ll be back.’”

  “Was it a friendly ‘I’ll be back’ or a Terminator ‘I’ll be back’?” Rhodes asked.

  “Terminator,” Hack said. “You think we need to put some steel doors on the front of the jail?”

  “Probably too late for that,” Rhodes said, “although considering the way she drives, it might not be a bad idea. You might want to move your desk into the cellblock just in case.”