Murder in the Air

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes parked beside the gleaming Infiniti and went into the building. The secretary had gone home long ago. Rhodes walked down a lighted hallway to the end where Randy Lawless had his office.

  The attorney sat at a desk that could have doubled for an aircraft carrier had the need arisen. Its beautifully polished top was covered by a sheet of glass so spotless and slick that a speck of dust would have slid right off had it dared to settle there in the first place.

  Lawless wore his usual expensive dark suit, white shirt, and designer tie. Rhodes figured the shirt alone cost more than his monthly salary. Being an attorney with a reputation for winning sure had its benefits, though Lawless hadn’t always come out so well when he represented clients Rhodes had arrested.

  “Good evening, Sheriff,” Lawless said. “I had a feeling you might be stopping by. I didn’t expect you this evening, though.”

  “A sheriff’s work is never done,” Rhodes said, taking a seat in one of the big wingback chairs without being asked. “We’re like teachers that way.”

  “And attorneys,” Lawless said. “As you can see, I’m burning the midnight oil.”

  “More like the early evening oil,” Rhodes said.

  “All the same, it’s late, and I’m here, working for my clients.”

  “And being well paid for it.”

  “Just like teachers and sheriffs. The workman is worthy of his hire. Are we through beating around the bush yet?”

  “I guess so,” Rhodes said. “I want to know about Lester Hamilton’s will.”

  “I figured that was why you were here. I heard that your deputy was asking about it over at the courthouse this afternoon.”

  Rhodes wasn’t surprised that Lawless had spies in the courthouse. Unpaid spies, no doubt, but spies nevertheless.

  “It’s interesting that Lester was making a new will,” Rhodes said. “I’d like to know about that.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Rhodes wondered if everyone in Clearview was taking lessons from Hack.

  “Let’s start with why Lester changed his will.”

  “All right.” Lawless leaned forward and rested his arms on the spotless desktop. “He changed his will because he wanted to change his heirs.”

  “Aha.”

  “Is that what you professional lawmen say when you think you’ve uncovered a clue?”

  “Sometimes we say oho.”

  “Right. Well, congratulations. You might very well have uncovered a clue.”

  “It’s about time,” Rhodes said. “Tell me about it.”

  “Lester’s original heir was a cousin named Lafferty. He was the only living relative Lester had, and they knew each other pretty well when they were kids. Lafferty was a little younger than Lester, and Lester thought it would be nice to leave his property to him. Not his money, mind you. That was going to charity.”

  Rhodes was a little surprised to hear that. “Lester wasn’t as bad as people made him out to be.”

  “True. Most people aren’t. Lester was leaving his money to cancer research, but of course he didn’t think he’d be leaving it so soon.”

  “That doesn’t get us to why he changed the will.”

  “The short version is that his cousin died. No need to start thinking up conspiracy theories. His death doesn’t have any connection to Lester’s.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Lawless said. “The cousin died of a heart attack while he was on vacation in Colorado last week. He was backpacking and had a heart attack. Nothing suspicious about it. He had some kind of heart problem that he didn’t know about. They found it in the autopsy. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have been backpacking in Colorado.”

  “Shows the value of regular medical checkups, I guess,” Rhodes said.

  “Could be. Sometimes they miss things, of course, so you can never be sure.”

  “You can be sure about who the new heir is, though,” Rhodes said.

  “I can indeed.” Lawless smiled. “That’s the good part.”

  “What’s so good about it?”

  “You’ll know when I tell you.”

  “Tell me who it is, then.”

  “It’s William Qualls,” Lawless said.

  17

  “I still think you need to talk to Hal Gillis,” Ivy said as she served Rhodes another helping of vegetarian chili. “Did I get this too hot?”

  “With pepper or fire?” Rhodes asked.

  He sat at the kitchen table with Yancey cowering under his chair because Sam was looking at him.

  “Pepper. I’m never sure how hot to make things, and the peppers kind of vary. Sometimes they’re a lot hotter than others.”

  Rhodes took a bite of the chili. His eyes almost teared up, but not quite.

  “It’s just right,” he said, reaching for his water glass.

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “Nope. I like it hot.”

  Ivy had eaten earlier. She’d learned that Rhodes turned up at odd times and that dinner wasn’t something that could be scheduled, so Rhodes often got warmed-up meals. The chili wasn’t bad, even if it didn’t have any meat in it. Maybe he’d become a vegetarian after all.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” Ivy said. “Hal Gillis?”

  “I just haven’t gotten around to it,” Rhodes said. “I’m having checks run on Jared Crockett and William Qualls. I know Hal’s background, and I know Garrett’s and Terrall’s. They’ve never been in any trouble.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. All of them had been in trouble of one kind or another, though nothing had been serious. Gillis had been arrested for assault once, but that had been thirty years or more ago, and he’d never been in trouble since.

  Terrall had been sued by a man who accused him of assault, but the suit had been dropped before it reached court. Rhodes didn’t know if Terrall had paid the man off or if he’d just thought better of having filed the charges.

  In his younger days, Garrett had gotten quite a few tickets for traffic violations, mostly for speeding. He’d always paid his fines and never complained. As he got older, he wised up and stopped being so lead-footed. Or he got too smart for anyone to catch him at speeding.

  “You never know what somebody might do,” Ivy said. “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

  “You heard that on TV.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s the truth.”

  Ivy sat across from Rhodes at the table and watched him eat. And drink. Rhodes needed a lot of water with the chili, but he hadn’t lied to Ivy. He liked it hot.

  “What about Qualls?” he asked. “He has the best motive.”

  “You think he’d want to be the owner of the chicken farm?”

  “Sure. He’d like nothing better. Not for the money. Looking at his house, I’d say he doesn’t need money. If he owned the place, though, he could close it down.”

  “But you don’t even know if Lester had told him about the will.”

  “That’s the catch. Qualls has kept quiet about it if he knew, and Lawless says he didn’t tell him. Lester might have told him, just for meanness, but I don’t know if he did.”

  “Qualls might have told his friends if he knew about it.”

  “Seepy Benton is as close a friend as he has here, and he didn’t mention it. I’m sure he would have told me if he’d known. He can’t keep a secret for very long. I think Qualls can, though.”

  Yancey stirred under Rhodes’s chair. Rhodes looked down at him, and Yancey yipped. Not loudly. Rhodes glanced over at Sam, who’d closed his eyes and gone to sleep, which explained Yancey’s bravery.

  “So can you,” Ivy said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It just means you haven’t told me what you did this afternoon.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Robin Hood showed up at the chicken farm,” Rhodes said. “I thought I might catch him, but he got away.”

  “Did you catch anybody else?�
��

  Rhodes put his spoon down on the plate that held the chili bowl. The spoon clinked against the china.

  “I helped Buddy break up a demonstration. Some animal rights people showed up to protest the inhumane treatment of chickens.”

  Ivy smiled at him. “Sometimes people who protest inhumane treatment of animals show up without any clothes on. There’s even a Web site for that kind of thing.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Rhodes said.

  “No. You could check it out.”

  “I’m not too good with a computer.”

  “Some of the county employees are. Good with the computer, I mean.”

  “Hack,” Rhodes said. “You’ve been talking to Hack.”

  “What would give you that idea?”

  “Knowing Hack, is what. I’ve been beating him at his own game lately, so he found a way to get back at me.”

  “I’m not admitting anything, copper. I’m no stoolie.”

  Rhodes laughed. “You’re not much of a James Cagney imitator, either. That’s all right. You don’t have to squeal. I know who told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “About the protestors and how they were dressed.”

  “Or not dressed,” Ivy said.

  “You could put it that way, but they were dressed, all right. They were wearing feathers. Not real ones. They’d never do that. Fake feathers.”

  “How did they look?”

  “I think I’ll take the Fifth on that one. You could ask Buddy for his opinion. I’m sure he’d be happy to share it with you.”

  “I can just imagine. I’d rather hear your version.”

  “Later, maybe. I still haven’t read Jennifer Loam’s article today.”

  Ivy got up and went into another room. When she came back, she was holding a newspaper.

  “You’re going to like this one. Lester Hamilton wouldn’t have, though.”

  “He doesn’t have to worry about it anymore,” Rhodes said

  Ivy handed him the newspaper. The article was on the front page, and it took up several columns. Rhodes didn’t have to read far before he came to the part Ivy must have been referring to. Not only were the incinerators inadequate, but the litter hadn’t been changed between batches of chickens. No law required it, but the litter also hadn’t been rototilled. According to Loam, nothing had been done with the litter for at least a year, which had led to a higher mortality rate, which had led to more improper incinerations. A vicious, smelly circle if Rhodes had ever heard of one. No wonder people had been complaining. Their health was in danger, all right.

  “So,” Ivy said when Rhodes laid the paper aside. “What do you think of that?”

  “I think Hamilton was guilty of slipshod management and that he should have been watched more closely. I think some of the state agencies should step in and do something about what’s going on out there.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “Supposedly tomorrow’s article will be even more startling,” Rhodes said, referring to the teaser at the close of the story. “Taking that and today’s demonstration into account, you have to think something will be done.”

  “Maybe. But what? They won’t close down the farm. You know that.”

  “They can at least make them follow the proper procedures. Or maybe they won’t have to. Maybe Qualls will just close the place down.”

  “It’ll take a while for the will to be probated,” Ivy said. “Sometimes those things take forever.”

  Rhodes felt something move against his feet. He looked and saw that Yancey had crept out from under the chair and was crawling on his belly toward Sam.

  “This ought to be good,” Rhodes said.

  “Shame on you, Dan Rhodes,” Ivy said. She got up and swept Yancey into her arms. “Sam would kill Yancey.”

  “I don’t think Yancey would get within six feet of him even if you let him go,” Rhodes said. “As soon as Sam opened his eyes, Yancey would be long gone.”

  Ivy sat down with Yancey in her lap. She patted his head, and he looked up at her adoringly.

  “You spoil that dog,” Rhodes said.

  “And you don’t.”

  “Not all the time.” Rhodes stood up.

  “Let’s clean up the kitchen, and then we can go see if there are any old movies on TV.”

  He didn’t really expect to find anything he wanted to watch. The kind of movies he preferred had long since been relegated to the dustbin of history. Not even TCM would touch them, and hardly anybody other than Rhodes even remembered things like Hercules in the Haunted World, or so he thought. While there was probably a good reason for that, Rhodes didn’t want to think about it.

  “What are the odds you’ll get to sit through a whole show before you get a call?” Ivy asked.

  Rhodes didn’t want to think about that, either.

  “I recorded something for you,” Ivy said. “I think you’ll like it.”

  Rhodes was apprehensive, but he asked what it was.

  “Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd.”

  “A classic,” Rhodes said, suddenly enthusiastic. “Thanks.”

  After they’d cleaned up the dishes, they went into the living room and turned on the TV and DVR. Rhodes got to watch almost twenty minutes of the movie before the phone rang.

  The caller was one of his deputies, Duke Pearson, who’d run the background check on Jared Crockett.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be much of a suspect,” Pearson said. “His record’s pretty clean.”

  “Not entirely?” Rhodes asked.

  “No, he’s had a few run-ins with the law. When he was a kid, he got picked up a time or two for shoplifting, and he lost his last job because he got into a fight with his foreman at a furniture factory.”

  “That sounds serious to me,” Rhodes said.

  “It wasn’t a physical fight. They just had words.”

  “What about?” Rhodes said.

  “That’s not in the records. He seems to have had a good bit of trouble holding jobs, but lots of people have that problem.”

  “You might as well check it out. Not that it’ll do us any good. Anything else?”

  “Not a thing,” Pearson said. “Aside from those things, the guy’s a saint.”

  “So is everybody else,” Rhodes said. “I’m beginning to think a catfish did drown Hamilton after all.”

  “What are the odds?” Pearson asked.

  “Not good,” Rhodes admitted, “but they’re better than the odds on anybody else.”

  “Want me to do a background check on the catfish?”

  “We’re not that desperate,” Rhodes said. “Yet.”

  After he hung up, he and Ivy started to watch the movie again.

  “Those two remind me of somebody,” she said as Abbott and Costello engaged in one of their routines.

  “Me, too,” Rhodes said, “but it’s not nearly as much fun to deal with people in real life as it is to watch them in a movie.”

  It was one of the few color films that Abbott and Costello had done, and Rhodes was enjoying it, especially Charles Laughton as Captain Kidd. Laughton must have felt like he was slumming to appear in a movie with a former burlesque team, but he was a good sport and got right into the slapstick spirit of things as he tried to get his treasure map back from the two comedians.

  “Charles Laughton reminds me of somebody, too,” Ivy said.

  “His size or his attitude?”

  Ivy poked Rhodes with her finger. “Maybe around the stomach a little bit.”

  Rhodes was saved from responding by the ringing of the phone. This time Rhodes had gotten to watch only ten minutes of the movie. The caller was Mikey Burns.

  “I hear Robin Hood shot up the chicken farm,” Burns said.

  “News travels fast around here,” Rhodes said.

  “Never mind that. You didn’t catch him, did you.”

  Rhodes admitted that he hadn’t. “I got close, though.”

  “Close doesn’t
count except in hand grenades and horseshoes,” Burns said.

  Rhodes thought about asking if he should write that down, but he restrained himself. Instead he said, “I’ll catch him sooner or later.”

  “You’d better make it sooner. Some of the other commissioners are just as unhappy as I am.”

  Rhodes thought it was odd that they didn’t seem to worry as much about the chicken farm as they did about Robin Hood, but then Lester Hamilton had been a major taxpayer. The commissioners liked taxpayers.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Rhodes said.

  “And next time, arrest the naked women,” Burns said. “We can’t allow that kind of thing in Blacklin County.”

  “I sent them on their way,” Rhodes said.

  “Domestic terrorism,” Burns said. “That’s what it is. Robin Hood and those women, too. That’s why we need an M-16.”

  Rhodes was a little taken aback. “To shoot naked women?”

  “Terrorists,” Burns said.

  “You’re making light of terrorism,” Rhodes said. “Robin Hood might be guilty of malicious mischief, if that, and the women were peaceful protestors. There’s a big difference between killing people and destroying property and protesting.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure that he did.

  “Take care of it. I don’t want any more incidents like that happening in the county.”

  Rhodes was an elected official, just like Burns. Burns hadn’t hired him, and Burns couldn’t fire him. Commissioners had control over the sheriff’s department’s budget, but they could be swayed by public opinion just like anyone. They couldn’t cut too much law enforcement without giving their opponents some good arguments for the next election. So Rhodes wasn’t too worried about what Burns wanted. Sometimes men in Burns’s position forgot that they couldn’t order other county officials around.

  “I’ll do my best to see that you aren’t disturbed again by naked women,” Rhodes said.

  Burns was quiet for a little too long, and Rhodes wondered if he knew he’d been kidded.

  “I know you’ll see to it,” Burns said finally. “You keep me posted.”

  “Roger,” Rhodes said and hung up before Burns could comment further.