by Bill Crider
“Well,” Rhodes said, “that’s the problem. Nobody knows for sure. The owner of record at the courthouse is Dill Reynolds, but he died twenty years ago. His will’s on file, too, and he left the building to his cousin. I can’t remember the cousin’s name, but he lives in Kentucky. Or he did. Nobody’s been able to locate him, as far as I know.”
“That building should be pulled down.”
“I agree, and so does the mayor, but the city council members are a little skittish about doing it. Some of them are afraid that as soon as it’s demolished, that cousin will show up and sue the city for damages.”
“It’s a public nuisance,” Ruth said. She looked over at the building. “Not to mention an eyesore.”
“Sure it is, but so far it’s not bad enough to get anything done. Besides, it’s not as much of an eyesore as the reclamation center up the street.”
“That’s a business operation, so at least it’s paying taxes. This building’s not doing anybody any good. What about the taxes, anyway?”
“I’m sure they haven’t been paid in years,” Rhodes said.
“So it could be auctioned off by the county.”
“Who’d buy it?” Rhodes asked. He waved an arm around. “It would have to be torn down, and this isn’t what you’d call a thriving business area.”
“I can see that,” Ruth said. “You want me to fingerprint that room?”
“Just bring in some of the evidence, bottles, wrappers, whatever you think will take good prints. You take the prints later.”
“They won’t be on file anywhere.”
“Nope, but we’ll have them if we need them.”
Ruth didn’t have a chance to remark on that because Sandra’s Suburban pulled into the lot, tires crunching on the gravel. Ruth went on across the street.
Sandra parked, got out, and showed Rhodes the sign she’d made. It was white posterboard with black lettering that read CLOSED FOR THE WEEK. She’d also found a black wreath somewhere.
“I’m going to put these on the door,” she said. “Is that all right?”
Rhodes said it was, and Sandra got a hammer and some tacks from the back of the Suburban. Ruth went to check out the hotel, and Rhodes watched Sandra tack up the sign and the wreath. When she’d finished, he asked if she’d thought of anyone who might have wanted Lynn dead.
“I’m still thinking,” she said.
She walked to the back of the Suburban and tossed the hammer inside. Then she got out a cigarette and lit it. Rhodes noticed that she’d started a fresh pack.
Sandra blew out some smoke and said, “There were some women who quit coming here because of Lynn. I hate to name names, but if you think it’d help, I will.”
“It might help,” Rhodes said.
“All right. Marian Slayton and Johnnie Allison. That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
“That’s fine,” Rhodes said. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Okay.” Sandra took a couple of puffs. “I guess there’s something else you should know.”
“Tell me, then.”
“You know how it is in a place like this, I guess,” Sandra said.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Rhodes said.
“What I mean is that for some reason people talk in a beauty shop. They tell their hairdresser things they wouldn’t tell their best friends. People let their hair down in here.”
Rhodes must have given her a strange look, because she said, “I mean, sure, they let it down for us to wash it and fix it up, but they let their feelings out, too. A trip to the beauty shop is a lot cheaper than a head doctor, and it’s just as good. People feel like they can say anything. We hear all kinds of stuff.”
“What kinds of stuff would that be?” Rhodes asked.
“Like I said, all kinds. We hear about who’s running around on who, who’s sick, who’s having surgery, who’s in financial trouble, who’s getting a divorce, whose kids or grandkids are giving ’em trouble, whose house is being foreclosed. Stuff like that. You know.”
Rhodes didn’t know, but he was going to find out. “What you’re telling me is that somebody might have said something to Lynn that she shouldn’t have heard, right?”
“Something like that, but there’s more to it. What if Lynn heard something that she shouldn’t have heard and decided to use it some way or the other? Like they do in the movies. Blackmail.” She looked over at Lynn’s car. “You think she made enough money to buy that just from cutting hair?”
Rhodes thought about how much a haircut cost. He thought it was possible, all right. He also thought Lynn could’ve gotten the car another way.
“Maybe somebody gave her the money to buy the car without being blackmailed,” he said.
“You mean one of her men friends?” Sandra snorted out smoke. “I guess it could be like that, but who’s got that much money? I hope you find whoever it was that killed her, Danny, whatever the reason was.”
“I’m going to need a list of her clients,” Rhodes said.
“I knew you’d ask about that, so I put her appointment book in my car before I left.”
She tossed down her cigarette and got the book from the car. “Lynn said she was going to start keeping her appointments on her phone, and I think she’d started doing it. She might have had one from yesterday on it. I don’t have me one of those smart phones, but Lynn’s had one for years.” She handed Rhodes the book. “This doesn’t have the walk-ins written down, so I can’t help you there.”
“This will do for a start,” Rhodes said. “I might need to talk to the customers that Lynn didn’t work on, too.”
“You can ask Abby and Lonnie about their clients,” Sandra said. “I just don’t know how I’m going to tell them about this. They’re going to take it real hard. They both liked Lynn a lot.”
“Better tell them before somebody else does,” Rhodes said.
“I guess so, but I sure do hate to.”
Rhodes thought she might be hinting for him to tell them, and he’d be glad to if they were next of kin. They weren’t, though, and it wasn’t his job. He wondered who was. Lynn had grown up in Obert, a little town about five miles away, and her parents had died a few years ago in a car accident in another county. They’d been on vacation, Rhodes remembered. He’d have to get Ruth or Buddy to check on the next of kin.
“I have to get back to the jail,” Rhodes said. “You need to stay out of the shop. Call Lonnie and Abby on your cell.”
“I guess I’ll have to,” Sandra said, and Rhodes left her there in the parking lot, smoking another cigarette.
* * *
Lynn Ashton had lived in one of Clearview’s older housing additions. It had been built sometime in the 1950s, but even now it was outside of the main part of the town, just across a state highway. The town had never grown in that direction, though the community college building and strip center and a restaurant had been built along the road. All the buildings had their backs to the housing addition. Since it was separated from the rest of the town, the addition wasn’t a place that people visited casually. They had to have a reason for going there.
Rhodes went there to be sure that Lynn Ashton’s house was secure. He planned to come back later that day and go through it to look for something that might give him a hint as to who might have killed Lynn. Before he did that, however, he had to make some reports and ask some people a few questions.
The house had two doors, front and back. Both were locked, which would be a slight problem since Rhodes didn’t have the keys. They were probably in Lynn’s purse.
Rhodes went to the car and called Hack. He told him to have Buddy patrol the house for the rest of the day to be sure nobody got inside.
“Neighbors’d prob’ly do that for you,” Hack said. “Prob’ly doin’ it right now.”
“I know, but let’s keep it official,” Rhodes said.
“Sure thing,” Hack said. “You comin’ back here now?”
“I’m on the way,” Rhodes said.
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* * *
The Blacklin County jail was old, but it was in good repair. The county commissioners kept talking about building a new one, a state-of-the-art affair with cameras in the cells, everything computerized, air-conditioned throughout, electrical doors controlled from a big console in front, the works. They would’ve built it, too, except for the money problem. The economy wasn’t exactly booming, and there was no way the voters would pass a bond issue.
Rhodes didn’t mind. He liked the jail just the way it was, and it was adequate for the county without having it expanded. It might not be as comfortable as a new one, especially for the prisoners, but Rhodes thought it would do just fine.
He went inside. Hack, the dispatcher, and Lawton, the jailer, didn’t even look up. Rhodes saw that they were both reading books. He looked again and saw that both books had the same title: Terrorist Terror.
Uh-oh, Rhodes thought.
A few years earlier a couple of women, Claudia and Jan, had been in Blacklin County attending a writing workshop. They wanted to write nonfiction, but there’d been a murder at the workshop, and they’d met Rhodes. They immediately decided that their chance at becoming published lay not in writing the truth but in writing about a sheriff like him.
Well, not exactly like him. Their character’s name was Sage Barton. Barton, who’d trained as a Navy SEAL, had retired and gone into law enforcement in a small Texas county, the typical kind that was infested with serial killers, terrorists, and others of that ilk. Barton fought them all with a pair of pearl-handled Colt Peacemakers that were a far cry from the pistol Rhodes carried, which Rhodes was pretty sure Sage Barton would think of as a sissy gun.
As different as Rhodes and Barton were, however, there were some people who insisted on thinking that the two were one and the same or at least that they were very similar.
Hack and Lawton, who seemed to believe it was their mission in life to have as much fun as possible at Rhodes’s expense and to drive him crazy in the process, were two of those people. Rhodes could have told them that it was against the rules for them to be reading on county time, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good and that they’d just use it against him sooner or later.
He went to his desk, put on his reading glasses, and turned on his computer so he could do some of the paperwork relating to Lynn Ashton’s death. As if Hack and Lawton would let him. Well, he could at least try.
Hack, who was sitting at his own desk, put a piece of paper in his book to mark his place and looked over at Rhodes.
“You know somethin’?” he asked.
Rhodes didn’t answer.
“Sheriff?” Hack said. “You too busy to talk?”
Rhodes gave up. Sure enough, they weren’t going to let him ignore them. He shouldn’t have bothered to try.
“I can talk,” he said.
“Good,” Hack said. “Me and Lawton, we been readin’ this new book. It’s by those two women that know you so well.”
“They sure do,” Lawton said. “Why, readin’ this book is just like havin’ you in the same room with me.”
“I am in the same room with you,” Rhodes said.
“That ain’t what he means,” Hack said. “What he means is—”
Lawton interrupted Hack with a glare. “I can tell him what I mean my ownself. What I mean is, Sage Barton is so much like you that readin’ this book is like readin’ about you.”
“Sure is,” Hack said. “It’s you to the life.”
“I don’t have pearl-handled revolvers,” Rhodes said. “I don’t fight terrorists, either.”
“You would if any was around,” Hack said.
“How’d you know this book was about terrorists?” Lawton asked.
“I’ve taught myself to be observant,” Rhodes said. “Like Sherlock Holmes. The title was a clue.”
“Oh,” Lawton said. He turned the book over and looked. “I shoulda noticed that.”
“Where’d you get those books, anyway?” Rhodes asked.
“They come in the mail this mornin’,” Hack said. “Signed with autographs and ever’thing. Hot off the presses.”
“I know what he’s wonderin’ now,” Lawton said.
“What’s that?” Hack asked.
“He’s wonderin’ where his copy is. Prob’ly has his feelin’s hurt because we got copies and he didn’t.”
“I’d be wonderin’, too, if I was him. It’s not like Claudia and Jan to forget him. After all, if it wasn’t for him, there wouldn’t be any Sage Barton.”
“Sure enough wouldn’t,” Lawton said. “Why, Sheriff, Sage Barton is you to the very life. He’s the spittin’ image. It’s like you got a twin. It’s like—”
“Just a minute,” Rhodes said. “Is Sage Barton married?”
“Nope,” Lawton said.
“Does he need reading glasses?”
“Heck no. He’s got twenty-twenty. Maybe even better. He can shoot a squirrel out of the top of a tree a hundred yards off. With a pistol.”
“A pearl-handled .45,” Rhodes said.
“That’s right,” Hack said. “He sure don’t need any glasses. Could prob’ly do it with both eyes closed.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Rhodes said. “Does he have a little bald spot in back?”
“I wouldn’t call what you got a bald spot, exactly,” Hack said. “More like a thin spot. Ain’t that what you’d call it, Lawton? A thin spot?”
Lawton nodded. “That’s what I’d call it. A thin spot. Prob’ly be entirely bald in another year or two, but right now, just a thin spot.”
“Getting back to Sage Barton,” Rhodes said. He wished he hadn’t brought up the hair, but it was too late now. “Does he have a thin spot in back?”
“Got more hair than a go-rilla,” Hack said. “That guy could probably stuff a pillow ever’ time he gets a haircut. Two pillows, maybe, but then he doesn’t get many haircuts. He likes to look a little shaggy. The women like it, too.”
“So let’s get this straight,” Rhodes said. “He carries Colt .45s, he sees like an eagle, he’s single, he has a lot of hair, and he doesn’t have a bald spot.”
“That’s right,” Hack said, and Lawton echoed him.
“Yet you say he’s like me.”
“To the life,” Hack said. “The very life. When they make the movie, they’ll have to get you for the part. Couldn’t nobody else possibly do it.”
“Less it was Tommy Lee Jones,” Lawton said. “Tommy Lee Jones can do just about anything.”
“Got a thin spot in back, though,” Hack said. “Wouldn’t work.”
“Hold on,” Rhodes said. “I thought you said Sage Barton was just like me.”
“Well, sure,” Hack said, “except for the thin spot and some other little things like that, he’s just like you.”
Rhodes gave up. He should have never gotten started. He turned back to the computer.
“Sheriff?” Hack said.
“Yes?”
“What about Lynn Ashton?”
“She’s dead,” Rhodes said. “Murdered.”
“That’s a shame,” Hack said. “Everybody liked her.”
“Not everybody,” Rhodes said.
* * *
While he filled in the forms, Rhodes tried to make sense of things. One thing he knew for sure, besides the fact that Lynn was dead, was that her purse was missing. Was it robbery, or did someone hope Rhodes would think it was a robbery?
There were other reasons the purse might have been taken, of course. One of them would be to get rid of the cell phone that must have been inside it. Sandra had mentioned that Lynn had one, and a smart phone, at that.
Rhodes could get access to the phone records easily enough, but first he had to find out which company Lynn had her service with. While the records might be helpful, Sandra had also said something about Lynn’s having planned to put her appointments in the phone rather than in the book Rhodes had been given. What if she’d kept some appointments on the phone, the ones she wanted to ke
ep off the books, so to speak? The killer might not want the phone to fall into the hands of the law if that was the case.
Or maybe the phone held the names and addresses of some of Lynn’s male friends. If it did, their numbers would be among those she called. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d been told not to call. Or not to call on that phone. Rhodes sure wished he had it to check.
He looked through Lynn’s appointment book. Some names showed up more often than others, and Rhodes put them on a list. He made a second list of the ones who showed up less frequently. There were more women than men on both lists, but not many. Rhodes wasn’t surprised. It must have been pleasant for some men to have their hair cut by someone like Lynn.
Ruth Grady came in and interrupted Rhodes’s thoughts. She had a box of bags that she took to the evidence locker, and when she came back, she sat down in the chair by Rhodes’s desk. Before she could say anything about Lynn’s murder, Hack got her attention.
“Got somethin’ for you,” he said. He took a padded envelope from his desk and held it up. “Came in the mail this mornin’.”
Ruth got up and took the envelope. She sat back down and opened it. Rhodes wasn’t surprised that it was another copy of Terrorist Terror. He had to admit that the cover was eye-catching. It showed Sage Barton, both guns blazing as he raced across the top of a long concrete dam. He appeared to be chasing several heavily armed men.
“Is it any good?” Ruth asked Hack.
“You bet,” Hack said.
Lawton had gone to check on the cellblock, so Hack had the floor to himself. That was the way he liked it, Rhodes thought.
“You remember the last one?” Hack asked.
“The one about the terrorists attacking the nuclear plant?” Ruth asked.
“That’s the one. This time they’re after a big hydroelectric dam.”
“Hold on,” Rhodes said. “You’re always saying how Sage Barton is like me, but there’s no hydroelectric dam around here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”
“Well, you ought to have,” Hack said. “There’s twenty-three of ’em in the state of Texas.” He patted his own copy of the book that lay on his desk. “These books are real educational.”
