Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen

by Bill Crider

  Benton wasn’t a morning person, but lately he’d started to get up early enough to go out for a walk before going to the college to teach. He lived out on one of the county roads not far from the school, and Rhodes thought he could get there in plenty of time to have a chat with him.

  Sure enough, just as Rhodes drove up, Benton and Bruce were starting on their constitutional. Bruce started barking as soon as Rhodes pulled into the driveway. He was a fierce-looking animal, a leopard dog, colored like a calico cat, descendant of mastiffs, and he could be as fierce as he looked if the mood was on him. It had been on him all too often when he was living in a pen at the trailer owned by the Eccles cousins. However, since he’d been living with Seepy Benton, he’d calmed down considerably. Benton had been good for him.

  Rhodes got out of the car and said, “Hey, Bruce.”

  Bruce stopped barking and walked over to Rhodes, who held out his hand for the dog to sniff. Satisfied after a couple of quick whiffs, Bruce started to wag his tail.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Benton said as Bruce walked back over to him. “You must need my help or you wouldn’t be out here so early in the day.”

  “Maybe I just wanted to see Bruce, your faithful animal companion.”

  “A look at Bruce is worth the trip, but I don’t think that’s why you came.”

  “You’re right,” Rhodes said. He might as well admit it. “I do need your help. That is, if you have time. When’s your first class?”

  “It’s Friday,” Benton said, “so no class until ten. I can spare an hour or so to engage in fighting crime for the county.”

  “Just as long as you don’t start trying to engage in punishment.”

  “Crime … punishment,” Benton said. “Is that a literary joke? If it is, you’ll have to explain it to me. Remember, I’m a math teacher.”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said.

  “I won’t,” Benton said. “Anyway, I’m a skilled martial artist. I can deal out punishment with the best of them. Want a demonstration?”

  He struck what Rhodes assumed was a martial arts pose, maybe something from The Karate Kid. Bruce gave him a skeptical look. Rhodes thought that Bruce was a pretty smart dog.

  “What I had in mind won’t require martial arts,” Rhodes said, “although Ivy did say last night that I needed a sidekick who was good at them.”

  Benton relaxed his pose. “I’m more the hero type than the sidekick type, but I might be able to adjust.”

  Rhodes looked at Bruce. Bruce remained skeptical.

  “Right,” Rhodes said. “Anyway, I’m not in the market for a sidekick or martial artist. What I need is somebody skilled in conducting a search.”

  “I can do that, too. We learned about it in the Citizens’ Academy. Bruce didn’t attend, but he can help.” At the sound of his name, Bruce thumped his tail on the ground. “He can sniff things out even better than I can.”

  “You can take him along, then,” Rhodes said.

  “Good. Before we go searching, though, you might want to tell us what we’re looking for.”

  “A cell phone,” Rhodes said.

  The idea had come to Rhodes when he woke up that morning. Frankie might believe the phone could be traced, and even if he didn’t believe it, he might prefer getting rid of it to having it found on him if he was caught.

  “You saw where the man ran from the building last night, didn’t you?” Rhodes asked Benton.

  “Sure. I would’ve followed him, but—”

  “—he was cutting across lawns. I know. Did you see him throw anything away while he was running?”

  “I couldn’t tell. The moonlight wasn’t bright enough for me to see details.”

  Rhodes wasn’t too concerned that Benton hadn’t seen anything. That didn’t mean Frankie hadn’t gotten rid of the phone. If he had, Rhodes hoped he’d done it soon after leaving the warehouse. The whole block next to the building was bare except for weeds and junk that people had dumped there. If the phone was there, Benton might get lucky and find it.

  “What I’d like for you to do is find a cell phone that Frankie might have thrown away last night.”

  “Who’s Frankie?”

  Rhodes explained, and Benton said, “Why would he throw away a cell phone?”

  Rhodes explained that, too.

  “If it’s there,” Benton said, “Bruce and I can find it. Right, Bruce?”

  Bruce thumped his tail on the ground.

  “See?” Benton asked. “Bruce understands everything I say. He believes we can do it.”

  “I can tell,” Rhodes said.

  “What kind of phone is it?” Benton asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Does it matter?”

  “I wouldn’t want to bring in the wrong one.”

  Rhodes wondered how many cell phones Benton thought he was going to find. He said, “Bring in as many as you can.”

  “Right,” Benton said. “You can count on us, Sheriff. Seepy Benton and Bruce are on the case. And if you need a martial arts sidekick anytime at all, just give me a call.”

  “Sure thing.” Rhodes was sorry he’d mentioned the sidekick.

  “Come on, Bruce,” Benton said. “Let’s get the Seepymobile on the road.”

  Rhodes watched them go. It occurred to him that Benton already had a sidekick. Maybe Yancey would like a career in crime-busting. No. It would never work. Sam the cat would be jealous.

  Rhodes got in his car and went to see Randy Lawless.

  * * *

  Lawless’s offices were in a large white building that dominated Clearview’s downtown, mainly because it was the only one in the area that wasn’t about to collapse. Rhodes sometimes called the building the Lawj Mahal. In front of it was a wide asphalt parking lot. Only one car was parked there now, and that was Lawless’s black Infiniti. Rhodes pulled in beside it and got out, feeling a little shabby driving the county’s Dodge.

  Rhodes entered the building, which was already cool, thanks to the air-conditioning that probably hadn’t been turned off the previous night. Lawless could afford to let it run twenty-four hours a day if he wanted to, and apparently he did. Rhodes didn’t blame him.

  Rhodes looked around the outer office just to be sure that Lawless’s administrative assistant hadn’t arrived, but he didn’t see anyone lurking around. He walked down a short hall to Lawless’s private office and looked in.

  Lawless sat behind a black desk that wasn’t much smaller than a Ping-Pong table. The slick glass top was immaculate. If gambling hadn’t been illegal, Rhodes would have bet a dollar that there wasn’t even a fingerprint on it.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Lawless said, leaning back in a big leather chair that would have set Rhodes back a month’s wages. Or maybe two. “How can I help out the head honcho of the county’s law enforcement today?”

  Rhodes decided he might as well get right to it. “You can tell me about you and Lynn Ashton.”

  Lawless didn’t flinch. “Is Carol here yet?”

  Carol was his administrative assistant.

  “I didn’t see her,” Rhodes said, “and her car wasn’t outside.”

  “Good. Would you mind closing the door before you have a seat?”

  Rhodes closed the door and sat in a cushioned chair upholstered in red leather.

  “What do you want to know?” Lawless asked.

  “I’ve already told you,” Rhodes said.

  “What you said was a little vague. You need to be more specific.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  Lawless didn’t flinch that time, either.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “you know you shouldn’t just come right out and ask me that. You haven’t even read me my rights.”

  “You know them as well as I do,” Rhodes said. “Maybe better. Anyway, you’re not under arrest. We’re just two friends talking here, except that one of us has been running around on his wife.”

  “You don’t have any proof of that.”

  “You’re
right,” Rhodes said. “Just unsubstantiated rumors.”

  “And you want me to substantiate them.”

  “Bingo. I’ll bet you graduated at the top of your class.”

  “Close enough,” Lawless said. “Thanks for being so perceptive.”

  “I’m also impatient,” Rhodes said. “Or so people keep telling me.”

  “All right,” Lawless said. He flicked imaginary dust off the lapel of his navy blue suit jacket. “I’ll substantiate the rumors. I had a brief moment of the middle-age crazies.” He paused. “You remember the song that Jerry Lee Lewis sang about the middle-age crazies?”

  Rhodes looked for the gray in Lawless’s hair. He didn’t have any.

  “I remember,” Rhodes said.

  Lawless gave him the once-over. “Did you remember the lyrics?”

  “Well enough,” Rhodes said. “You thought a pretty young thing would understand what you were trying to prove.”

  “I wasn’t trying to prove anything, much less that I still could. I want you to know that. It was just something that happened. It’s been over for a while.”

  “Let me guess,” Rhodes said. “She told you that she’d found someone else, that certain someone she’d always been looking for.”

  Lawless surprised him. “No. It wasn’t that at all.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Nope. The little gold digger was going to blackmail me.”

  That was an entirely new wrinkle. Or maybe it wasn’t, after all. Rhodes had suspected that Clifford Clement and Mikey Burns hadn’t been entirely straight with him. It might well be that their story about Lynn’s finding someone else was just a cover for the more embarrassing fact that she’d tried a little blackmail with them, too. Maybe they’d even paid her.

  “Tell me about it,” Rhodes said.

  “I just told you.”

  “Remember what you said about being specific?”

  “All right. Why not? I knew I was making a mistake, but like I said, it happened. I was discreet, or as discreet as you can be in a town this size. I don’t think anybody knew we were going out, and that’s the way I wanted to keep it. There was nothing serious about it. We were just friends.”

  Rhodes tried to keep a straight face, but a little of his doubt must’ve shown.

  “You have a dirty mind, Sheriff,” Lawless said.

  Rhodes shrugged.

  “I’m being honest about this,” Lawless said. “Trust me.”

  At that comment, Rhodes thought of about a hundred lawyer jokes, but he refrained from telling any of them. He just said, “All right.”

  “Good,” Lawless said. “Things between Lynn and me were going along fine. In a friendly way, of course. Then one night she said she was going to tell Sharon about us.”

  Sharon was Lawless’s wife. She was a statuesque blonde with, so Rhodes had heard, a fiery temper. She’d be the kind to wreak a terrible revenge if the rumors were true. Not to mention taking Lawless to the cleaners in a divorce case. She’d get the bank account, the Infiniti, the house, and maybe even the Lawj Mahal. Lawless’s own standing as an attorney wouldn’t save him. Nothing would.

  “She must not have told,” Rhodes said. “Otherwise, you’d probably be standing out at the entrance to the Walmart parking lot, holding up a sign that said WILL GIVE LEGAL ADVICE FOR FOOD.”

  “You’re funny as well as perceptive and impatient,” Lawless said, but he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smiling. “Maybe you could try going on the comedy club circuit.”

  “I don’t have the patience,” Rhodes said.

  Lawless ignored him. “You’re right about Lynn. She didn’t tell Sharon. I made it clear to her that while she might damage my reputation and mess up my marriage, I’d see to it that she got some jail time. She must’ve believed me. After all, I’m a lawyer.”

  “Did you say ‘trust me’?”

  Lawless grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant sight. “I might have.”

  “You won’t have to worry about her now.”

  “Neither will anybody else. I’m not a special case, Sheriff. She was pretty, she was bright, but she was rotten. I wasn’t smart enough to see that at first.”

  “Sharon must have found out, eventually,” Rhodes said. “If I know, a lot of others must know, too.”

  “She did find out, but the fling was over. Sharon now has a new car and some very expensive jewelry.”

  “Good for her. Who else was seeing Lynn, do you know?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Lawless said.

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “Probably not.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 17

  Rhodes had a lot of things to do and not enough time to do them in, a condition that seemed to occur more and more often to him. The older he got, in fact, the less time he seemed to have. There was something unfair about that, but there wasn’t anything he could do to change it.

  He was on his way to the recycling center when Hack called on the radio.

  “Seepy Benton says he’s got the phone you sent him to find,” Hack said.

  Rhodes was surprised. He hadn’t been at all optimistic about Benton’s chances of finding the phone. Maybe Bruce had helped.

  “Where was he when he called?”

  “He was out by the Environmental Reclamation Center somewhere. He said you’d know. He said to tell you he hadn’t touched the phone and he’d be waiting there for you. Unless it was after ten. He has a class at ten, he said.”

  “Tell him I’ll write him an excuse if he’s absent,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  He got there in one. Seepy’s car was parked on the shoulder of the road, and Rhodes parked behind it. Benton stood beside it, while his sidekick cavorted in the vacant lot.

  “I remember about the chain of custody from the academy classes,” Benton said. “So I left the phone right where it was. You’re the officer, not me. I didn’t touch it.”

  “What about Bruce?” Rhodes asked.

  “He didn’t touch it, either,” Benton said.

  They both looked across the big lot to where Bruce seemed to be trying to catch something or other that fluttered just above his head. When Bruce jumped for it, it would flutter away. Rhodes thought it might be a butterfly.

  “His bark is worse than his bite,” Benton said.

  “Thanks for that information,” Rhodes said. “What about the phone?”

  “Over here,” Benton said. “It’s not far from the warehouse.”

  Rhodes got some polypropylene gloves and followed Benton across the lot. Looking down he saw a plastic bottle lying in the dead grass. A beer can was off to one side. The reclaimers should come over here and pick up a few things.

  Benton stopped and pointed at the ground. “Here it is.”

  Rhodes put on the gloves. He didn’t know one smart phone from another one. This one lay faceup, so Rhodes could see a screen and a tiny keyboard, but that didn’t tell him much. He picked it up and saw the word SAMSUNG printed above the keyboard.

  If the Blacklin County crime lab had been equipped like the labs on TV shows, Rhodes could have hooked the phone up to an extraction device and downloaded everything on it: pictures, phone numbers, e-mails, texts, and even every location where Lynn had been. However, Blacklin County didn’t have one of the extraction devices, so Rhodes would have to take other measures.

  “Do you know how to use these things?” he asked Benton.

  Benton looked at him. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Just about,” Rhodes said, “but I need an expert.”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “Good. Call the college and have the dean dismiss your class.”

  Benton was horrified. “I can’t do that. It’s a calculus class. My students love calculus.”

  “I’m sure they do, but this is more important.”

  Benton’s horror increased. “More important than calculus?�
�

  “It’s a murder case,” Rhodes said. “I’d call that more important than calculus.”

  Benton didn’t look convinced, but he got out his own cell and made the call. When he was finished, Rhodes said, “Let’s go. I’ll meet you at the jail.”

  “I’ll have to take Bruce home first.”

  “That’s fine. I have some things to take care of, too. Just get there as soon as you can.”

  “I have another class at noon.”

  “You might have to phone in about that one, too,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Since Benton was going back home, Rhodes thought he had time to make a call on Al, or whoever was in charge at the Environmental Reclamation Center today. The gate was open, but Rhodes drove past it and parked on the side of the street. He went inside the center, and when he knocked on the office door, Al opened it. He seemed to be wearing the same shirt he’d worn the previous day, the one with his name stitched on it. Maybe he had two of them.

  “Yeah?” Al asked.

  Rhodes decided that since neither Al’s manners nor his vocabulary had changed, the shirt was probably the same one, all right.

  “Your warehouse across the street was broken into last night,” Rhodes said. “I came by to let you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  Al could profit by taking vocabulary lessons from Lonnie.

  “Yeah,” Rhodes said, just to see if Al would react. He didn’t, so Rhodes said, “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  “Yeah,” Al said. “I guess so. Place looks okay to me.”

  “Let me show you where they broke in,” Rhodes said.

  He took Al across the street and pointed out the recent repair to the wall of the warehouse. Al didn’t thank him for fixing it.

  “You’d almost think they knew they could get in that way,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah,” Al said.

  Rhodes suppressed a sigh. “The thing is, it was the same fellas I chased in your place across the street yesterday. They seem to like it here.”

  Al shrugged and opened up. “Can’t blame ’em. It’s a nice place.”

  “Palatial,” Rhodes said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Let’s go inside. I want to show you the damage.”