Ghost of a Chance

by Bill Crider

  “That was just the weather,” Rhodes assured him. “Four people saw that ghost out at the cemetery last night, and I saw something, too.”

  Rollins wanted to know what it looked like.

  “Nothing much,” Rhodes said. “It was like a shadow, didn’t have much shape at all.”

  “That’s it, all right,” Rollins said. “Tell you the truth, I’m glad it’s moved out of here. Ghosts belong in the graveyard, not in any jailhouse.”

  “You’re well acquainted with graveyards, are you?” Rhodes said.

  “What do you mean?” Rollins asked.

  “I was just wondering if you might know something about who’s taking things out of the cemeteries around the county. If you did, you might be able to help us out.”

  “Not me,” Rollins said. “I stay away from graveyards. Not my kinda place at all.”

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “But if anything occurs to you, let Lawton know.”

  “I’ll sure do that, Sheriff,” Rollins said, with all the sincerity of a used-car salesman.

  Rhodes went back to the office and let Hack and Lawton know that he’d done his duty with the prisoners.

  “They believe you?” Lawton asked.

  “I think so. Hard to tell with that bunch, though.”

  “That’s the truth,” Hack said. “They’ve told so many lies themselves they wouldn’t know the truth if it bit ’em in the butt.”

  Rhodes told Hack and Lawton that he was going to drive down to Thurston and asked if there’d been any calls that morning.

  “Just one,” Hack said, with a glance at Lawton.

  Rhodes knew what that meant. They wanted him to ask what the call had been about rather than just telling him. He might have tested their resolve, but he didn’t have time.

  He said, “What about?”

  “It was about Vernell Lindsey,” Hack said.

  Rhodes didn’t have to hear any more than that. He knew what the trouble was. But he didn’t say so.

  “I was just talking to Ivy about her last night,” he said. “She finally sold a book. Ivy has a copy of it.”

  “Seen it,” Hack said. Wild Texas Wind. Got Terry Don Coslin on the cover.”

  Since Hack hardly ever left the jail, Rhodes could never figure out where he got all his news.

  “And it’s got a woman, too,” Lawton said. “Not Miz Lindsey, though.”

  “And it don’t have her goats, either,” Hack said.

  The goats were the crux of the problem. Vernell Lindsey had three of them, named Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy.

  “Which one’s loose this time?” Rhodes asked.

  “Shirley,” Hack said.

  “Jumped the fence again?”

  “You got it. You can’t fence in a goat. Ever’body knows that.”

  Everybody except Vernell, Rhodes thought. He said, “Tell Ruth to take care of it. I have to go down to Thurston.”

  “Can she shoot it?” Hack asked.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Tell her to handle it with kid gloves.”

  “Kid gloves,” Hack said. “You know, Sheriff, I think marryin’ Ivy’s been real good for you. You might even develop a sense of humor.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lawton said.

  “Let Hack explain it,” Rhodes said, and headed for the door.

  15

  WHEN RHODES REACHED FOR THE DOORKNOB, THE DOOR swung open and almost hit him in the face. Faye Knape came inside so fast that she bumped into him.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” she said, stepping back and not sounding very sorry at all. “I hope you weren’t leaving. I have some important information.”

  “I was leaving,” Rhodes said. “But I can stick around if you have something to tell me.”

  “I don’t,” Faye said. “But Sharon does.”

  Sharon Carlisle was standing behind Faye, just outside the doorway.

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “Come on in.”

  He walked over to his desk. There was already a chair beside it, and he pulled up another one for Sharon, who was much shorter than Faye and about ten years younger. She had large eyes and a small nose.

  “Have a seat,” Rhodes told them.

  “This won’t take long,” Faye said. “You were asking about how I could prove Ty Berry was connected to Richard Rascoe. Well, here’s how. Tell him, Sharon.”

  “All right,” Sharon began. She had a deep voice that didn’t seem to go with her size. “What happened was—”

  Faye interrupted. “What happened was that she was going into Richard Rascoe’s store on Monday, and she saw Ty Berry there.”

  “Is that true?” Rhodes asked.

  Sharon nodded. “Yes—”

  “Of course it’s true!” Faye Knape said. “Why would she make up something like that? She was going into the store and she saw Ty Berry coming out of that back room where Rascoe is hiding the angel. Isn’t that right, Sharon?”

  “Yes,” Sharon said. “You see—”

  “There!” Faye Knape said. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s exactly like I said it was. Ty and Rascoe were working together all the time!”

  “I think it would be a good idea to let Ms. Carlisle tell the story herself,” Rhodes said.

  Faye sat up and crossed her arms. “Well, I never.”

  Rhodes ignored her. “Go ahead, Ms. Carlisle.”

  She told the story pretty much the way Faye Knape had. She had been looking for “something cute for Easter,” and she’d heard about Rascoe’s store. So she decided to pay it a visit.

  “Tell him about seeing Ty Berry,” Faye Knape said. “Tell him about how Ty was in that back room.”

  Sharon looked at Rhodes and rolled her eyes. Rhodes tried not to smile.

  “It’s true,” Sharon said. “I was looking at this little tea set that had Easter bunnies on the teapot and cups, and I saw Ty Berry coming out of that back room.”

  “Did he seem upset?” Rhodes asked.

  “Of course he was upset!” Faye said. “Wouldn’t you be upset if someone had caught you in the act?”

  Rhodes looked at Sharon.

  “Well, he didn’t look upset to me,” she said. “He just looked the way he always did, a little worried, maybe, but not upset.”

  Faye took a deep breath, but Rhodes headed her off.

  “Did he say anything to you?” he asked Sharon.

  “No. Well, he said, ‘Good morning,’ or something like that, but we didn’t have a conversation or anything.”

  “And did he talk to Mr. Rascoe?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see Mr. Rascoe until later.”

  “And do you know why?” Faye Knape asked.

  Rhodes didn’t know, but he was sure that Faye was going to tell him. And she didn’t disappoint.

  “She didn’t see him,” Faye said, “because he was in the back room, where he and Ty had been making their deal. He was probably gloating over getting that angel.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rhodes said.

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “How?”

  Faye Knape looked at Rhodes as if he might be somehow mentally deficient.

  “Because it has to be that way,” she said, as if stating something that would be obvious even to a child. “Otherwise, why would Ty Berry have been there? He and Rascoe were back in that room making one of their shady deals, like they’ve been doing all along. They’re in cahoots! Ty was stealing things, and Rascoe was buying them.”

  Rhodes nodded just as if she were making sense. He’d learned long ago that a nod didn’t really commit him to anything. If people wanted to think he was agreeing with them, that was their business.

  “I’ll be going down to Thurston today,” he said. “I’ll have a little talk with Rascoe and see what he knows.”

  “He knows plenty,” Faye said. “You mark my words. Come on, Sharon.”

  They got up and left. Rhodes watched them go, slightly in awe of Faye Knape. In spite of all his experiences
with people over the years, he could still be amazed at the different ways they could convince themselves that they were the only ones in the parade who were marching in step.

  “Now that she’s solved your case for you,” Hack said, “what’re you gonna do for the rest of the day?”

  “Maybe I should just go home and take a nap,” Rhodes said.

  Thurston had been well on the way to becoming like Milsby before someone came up with the idea of lining its main street with antique stores. Hob Barrett’s grocery store sat between two of the refurbished buildings, unchanged. It still had the faded Rainbo Bread signs stenciled on its screen doors, and it still had the same old Coca-Cola cooler, from which Rhodes took a Dr Pepper that was wet and frigid in his hand. He walked to the counter and paid Hob fifty cents.

  “How’s business?” Rhodes asked.

  “It’s been better,” Hob said, putting the two quarters in an old cash register that would have looked right at home in one of the antique stores. “What brings you down here?”

  “Looking at antiques,” Rhodes said.

  He took a sip of the Dr Pepper, which was very cold. Rhodes could feel it all the way down his throat.

  “I hope you ain’t doin’ it on county time,” Hob said.

  Hob was short and stout, a little like an anvil on legs, and he didn’t much like Rhodes, even though Rhodes had solved the murder of his wife not so very long ago.

  “I was just making conversation,” Rhodes said. “Antiques are connected with a case I’m working on.”

  “Humpf,” Barrett said, clearly not believing a word of it.

  “Do you know your neighbor, Mr. Rascoe?” Rhodes asked.

  “Not much. He’s a city fella, doesn’t live here and doesn’t buy anything from me. Prob’ly goes to one of those big HEB stores somewhere.”

  Rhodes figured that, in Hob’s book, buying from a chain store like HEB would be a sizable crime. Rhodes could remember the days in Clearview when there had been little mom-and-pop groceries every two or three blocks. Now there wasn’t a single one. They’d all been replaced by a chain of convenience stores with headquarters in some city like Dallas or Houston. And of course there was an HEB supermarket.

  Rhodes drank some more of the Dr Pepper, then said, “You ever go in Rascoe’s store?”

  “Hell, no. Why would I want to do that? He won’t come in here, and he doesn’t have a damn thing I want over there. What about you? Need anything besides that Dr Pepper?”

  Rhodes was about to say that he didn’t, but he changed his mind.

  “How about a can of Vienna sausage and some crackers?” he said.

  “I’ll get ‘em,” Hob said.

  He went to the shelves and got a small can of sausages and a box of crackers.

  “More crackers here than you’ll need,” he said, setting them on the counter.

  “I don’t mind,” Rhodes said, paying him.

  While Hob put the groceries in a sack, Rhodes stuck the Dr Pepper bottle in a wooden case sitting by the Coke box. Then he got his sack and left.

  Richard Rascoe’s store had once been Thurston’s drugstore, though you couldn’t tell it now, not unless you recognized the tiled floor. There was no sign of the soda fountain or the red vinyl-covered round stools that spun around on their chrome poles.

  That was too bad, Rhodes thought. The fountain would have been a nice touch for an antique store.

  On the other hand, Rascoe had plenty of antiques without it. Or maybe they weren’t antiques, not by any strict definition of the term. Rhodes wondered what the right word would be. Collectibles, maybe.

  There was one display case that held baseball cards and Dixie cup tops. There was one shelf full of soft drink bottles and several that held all kinds of glassware. There were churns and crocks. Several boxes of different kinds of barbed wire. Old costume jewelry. On an end table sat a tea set like the one described by Sharon Carlisle, decorated with colorful Easter bunnies. Or maybe they were just plain bunnies. Rhodes didn’t know the difference. In one corner there was a traffic light on a short pole, and sitting nearby was a barber chair. There was a shelf of dusty old books that didn’t look as if they’d been touched in years. There were quilts on a quilt rack, and old rocking chairs, and even a rack of old clothes. The whole place had a musty, dusty smell that Rhodes liked.

  He looked at the Dixie cup tops for a minute or so. He especially liked the one with the picture of Roy Rogers on it.

  “See anything you need?” someone said behind him.

  Rhodes turned around. “You must be Mr. Rascoe,” he said.

  Rascoe stuck out a hand. “That’s me. And you are?”

  “Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”

  Rhodes shook Rascoe’s hand. The antique dealer had a firm grip that went with his lean, tanned features. He looked like a man who either spent some time out-of-doors or in a tanning booth. Forced to make a choice, Rhodes would have gone with the tanning booth. Aside from the tan, Rascoe didn’t seem to be the outdoors type.

  “What brings you to my little store, Sheriff?” Rascoe asked, releasing Rhodes’s hand.

  “Ty Berry,” Rhodes said, watching Rascoe closely.

  “Ah, the good Mr. Berry. Has he told you about something here you’d like to see?”

  “He mentioned an angel.”

  “I have a couple of those,” Rascoe said. “There’s one right over there.”

  He pointed to an angelic figure made of pieces of stained glass. The figure was probably Gabriel, Rhodes thought, since it was blowing a horn.

  “That’s not the one,” he said. “The one I’m talking about is the kind you find in cemeteries.”

  “Oh, that one,” Rascoe said. “It’s in the back room, but you’re welcome to look at it if you’d like.”

  Rhodes said he’d like, and Rascoe led the way to a room in the back of the store. Just as Faye Knape had said, there was a sign on the door saying, EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  Rascoe pushed open the door and said, “Here it is, right over there.”

  He pointed to a stone angel that sat on top of a cedar chest that was mostly covered by a blue blanket.

  “It just came in the other day,” Rascoe said, “and it’s already sold. That’s why it’s back here instead of out there with the rest of the stock. But if you want it, I can get you another one just like it.”

  “Where?” Rhodes asked.

  “I’d have to look for the catalog,” Rascoe said. “It’s somewhere down around Houston, I think. I can get it within a couple of days.”

  Rhodes looked the angel over and touched its head.

  “So this is brand new,” he said.

  “Well, almost. I’ve had it for a week or so.”

  “And Ty Berry saw it here.”

  “That’s right. He thought it was a nice example of what people are doing these days, and I agree that the craftsmanship is excellent.”

  “I’d like to see that catalog,” Rhodes said, not exactly sure that craftsmanship was the right word to use, since the angel seemed to be a mass-production item.

  “Catalog?” Rascoe said. “Sure thing. It might take me a minute to find it. Just have a look around the store, and I’ll be right with you.”

  Rhodes went back into the main part of the store and admired the Dixie cup tops for a few minutes while Rascoe rummaged around in a rolltop desk in the back. Before long, Rascoe came up to Rhodes with a catalog in his hand.

  “Here it is,” Rascoe said. “Benson’s Concrete Works. They have birdbaths, statues, porch steps, you name it. If it’s made out of concrete, they have it.”

  Rhodes flipped through the catalog and found the page with the angels on it.

  “Mind if I keep this?” he said.

  Rascoe looked puzzled. “I suppose not. I can get another one. Does this have something to do with a crime?”

  Rhodes stuck the catalog in a back pocket.

  “You never can tell,” he said.

  16

  THERE WAS STILL PLENTY
OF TIME BEFORE NOON, AND Rhodes had accomplished both of the things he’d set out to do. He wasn’t sure he was any wiser than before, but he was in motion if not making progress. Since he had time, he thought it might be a good idea to stop by the library and do a little research.

  The library’s official name was the Clarence P. Mullin Memorial Library, though no one called it that. Everyone in Clearview referred to it simply as “the library,” since, after all, it was the only one in town. For that matter, it was the only one in the county.

  Clarence P. Mullin had been a farmer before oil was struck on his land during the early part of the century. The story was told that after coming into more money than he’d ever dreamed of, Mullin had told his friends that he wanted to do something for the town of Clearview, where he’d grown up and gone to school. The friends had asked what he thought the town needed more than anything, and he’d said that it needed a library. “So why don’t you build one?” they asked, and he had. Not only that, but he’d endowed it, which Rhodes thought was a good thing, the way the county commissioners were always worrying over their budget. They couldn’t touch the library money, so there was always something in the budget for books, upkeep of the building, and even improvements.

  Rhodes parked the county car and went inside. Millicent Conway was working at the desk, just as she had been ever since Rhodes could remember. She had faded blue eyes, faded red hair, and hands that were beginning to tremble a little because of her age. But her mind was just as sharp as it had always been.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” she said as Rhodes walked up to the desk. “What can we do for you today? Do you need a good book to read?”

  Rhodes was tempted to ask if she had a copy of Wild Texas Wind, but he didn’t. He said, “I need to find out something about history.”

  “Well, we certainly have plenty of history books. We have books on world history, United States history, Texas history, and even the history of Blacklin County. Which one would you be interested in?”

  “The one that would tell me what happened in A.D. 11,” Rhodes said.