Murder Among the OWLS

by Bill Crider

“I haven’t been able to find him. He hasn’t been at home.”

  “If Truck’s right, he’s hunkered down back by the fence somewhere, I guess.”

  “No wonder I couldn’t find him. You think he’s really there?”

  Rhodes said that he did and called out to Truck. “You ready to put down the pistol?”

  The rain clouds were so thick and black by this time that it was almost like night, making it more difficult to tell what Truck was doing, but he did bend down and put something on the ground.

  “Is that his pistol?” Rhodes said.

  “I think so,” Ruth said.

  Rhodes nodded and repeated his instructions to Truck, who clasped his hands on his head and started toward them. When he did, a head popped up above the roofline of a car near the fence. It looked a lot like Alton Brant’s head, but Rhodes couldn’t be sure with the rain. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to call Truck’s attention to Brant.

  When Truck reached them, Ruth told him to turn around and put his hands behind his back. She used plastic cuffs on him, and Rhodes told her to take him to Truck’s office while he went to retrieve the pistol.

  Truck trudged off through the rain with Ruth behind him. Rhodes headed for the pistol, keeping an eye out for Brant.

  “Are you back there, Mr. Brant?” Rhodes said when he got to where the pistol lay. He picked it up and stuck it in a pants pocket.

  “Is he gone?” Brant said from behind a car.

  “He’s gone. You seem to have turned into a serious menace. I should have locked you up for that fight with Leo Thorpe.”

  “He was the one with the chain saw,” Brant said, coming out from behind the car and walking toward Rhodes. “Not me.”

  “Be sure I can see your hands,” Rhodes said, not a bit sure that he trusted Brant any longer. He might have served his country with honor in a long-gone war, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t changed over the years.

  “I don’t have a weapon,” Brant said, but he kept his hands in plain sight, or as plain a sight as Rhodes could have through the curtain of rain.

  “We ought to get inside,” Rhodes said as Brant approached him. “You just walk on by. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “You’re not going to arrest me?”

  “Not yet. We’ll go have a talk with Truck and see if we can get this straightened out some way.”

  Brant passed Rhodes by and continued walking through the rain. Rhodes returned his pistol to the ankle holster and fell in behind him. They followed the little road back to the front of the lot. By the time they got to the building that served as Truck’s office, Rhodes was thoroughly soaked, and his shoes were caked with mud.

  Brant climbed up on the little porch and went inside. Rhodes followed him, glad to get under a roof. He stopped on the porch and scraped his shoes on the edge, trying to remove some of the mud. He didn’t have much success, so he went on inside. It was Truck’s own fault if the floor got muddy.

  The building had only one room. Its walls were covered with calendars, most of them years old, given to Truck by various auto-parts and tool companies. Truck sat at his desk, an old rolltop that might have been an antique but that was in such bad shape that no antique dealer would touch it. Truck’s well-oiled hair was plastered flat to his head, and he was wetter than Rhodes if that was possible.

  For that matter all of them were wet. Water dripped from their clothes to the muddy floor and created little puddles. Rhodes looked around for something to dry off with, but there was nothing. He wiped water from his face with his hand and wiped his hand on his wet pants without much effect.

  “Well?” He looked at Brant. “Let’s hear your side of it first.”

  “He doesn’t have a side,” Truck said. “Son of a bitch wanted to kill me.”

  Rhodes looked at Brant. “Well?”

  “He’s right. I was upset.”

  “You seem to get upset awfully easily,” Ruth said.

  “Only when I think someone’s killed a woman I cared about.”

  “You think Truck killed Mrs. Harris?” Rhodes said.

  “I know he was at her house. I was going to ask him about it nicely, but he got upset. The next thing I knew he’d grabbed a pistol out of a drawer and was pointing it at me.”

  “Man comes in here accusing me of murder,” Truck said, “you better believe I’m getting my hands on a gun.”

  “I didn’t have one,” Brant pointed out.

  “How was I to know that?”

  Truck could have killed Brant with his bare hands without breaking a sweat, but Rhodes wasn’t interested in hearing them argue. He said, “Truck went to Mrs. Harris’s house to get her to tell him what she’d found on an outing with the Rusty Nuggets. Isn’t that right, Truck?”

  Truck nodded, and water ran out of his hair and down his face. He couldn’t brush it off because his hands were cuffed behind him.

  “So what I want to know,” Rhodes said to Brant, “is if she told you what she found.”

  “No. I wasn’t interested in metal detecting, so we never talked about it much.”

  “She seemed awfully proud of that find,” Rhodes said. “I thought she might have mentioned it.”

  “She didn’t, though.” Brant paused. “She did seem pretty pleased about something lately. I didn’t know what it was, and when I asked her, she just said it was the gas wells and the money she’d be getting.”

  “What she found wasn’t any gas well,” Truck said. “It was something little enough for her to stick in a pocket.”

  Brant shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. She never said a thing about it to me.”

  Rhodes didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but he was inclining toward the not. He didn’t get to think any further about it because Truck lurched up out of his chair, knocked Ruth to one side with his shoulder, hit Brant and spun him around with the other shoulder, and ran right over Rhodes, flattening him to the floor.

  Truck was out the door and off the porch by the time Rhodes recovered. He jumped up and went outside, where Truck was running awkwardly toward the highway.

  Rhodes went after him.

  A slight incline led up from the car lot to the highway. Truck slipped going up it, and his feet slid out from under him. He fell face forward onto the slick mud.

  Rhodes reached him and pulled him up. Mud covered his shirt and stuck to his face. Rhodes had almost as much on himself, having picked it up from the floor when Truck had knocked him down.

  “That wasn’t very smart, Truck. What did you plan to do, hitch a ride?”

  Truck didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t have a free thumb. You’d just have gotten run over.”

  “Might be the best thing,” Truck said in a sorrowful voice. “I’ve really screwed up this time.”

  Rhodes turned him around and marched him back toward the office. “Maybe not so much. It’s your first offense, so you’ll probably get off light. All you’ve done is assault an officer, resist arrest, attempt murder, and for all I know engage in mopery.”

  “What the hell is mopery?”

  “I never figured that out, myself.” Rhodes told him, helping him up on the porch. “But even if you’re guilty of it, it’s better than running out on the highway and getting flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.”

  Instead of taking him back inside, Rhodes put him into the backseat of Ruth’s car. Ruth was standing on the porch, and he asked if she was all right.

  “Sure. I bounced off the wall, but I wasn’t hurt. Mr. Brant’s okay, too. He’s inside.”

  “You take Truck to the jail and book him,” Rhodes said. “I’ll have a few more words with Mr. Brant.”

  “What if he tries to escape again?”

  She was probably thinking of Thorpe. “Shoot him.”

  “How about if I just pistol-whip him?”

  “I guess that would be all right,” Rhodes said.

  Ruth came down off the porch. “All this because of one murder. I wish I k
new what was going on.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Rhodes told her.

  Brant was sitting in the chair when Rhodes went back into the office. He was a lot drier than Rhodes now, and a lot less muddy, but there wasn’t anything Rhodes could do about his appearance.

  “I think you know more than you’ve been letting on,” Rhodes said.

  “I wish I did, and I wish I didn’t let my temper get the best of me.”

  “You don’t think things through,” Rhodes said. “First Thorpe and now Truck. Truck wouldn’t kill anybody over something dug up on a metal-detecting trip.”

  “He sure acts like someone who would.”

  “So do you.”

  “I don’t mind confrontations, if that’s what you mean. Some people avoid them, but I’m not like that.”

  “Maybe you should be.”

  “That’s what Helen used to tell me. She didn’t like confrontations. She was more the sly type when it came to getting back at people.”

  This was another side of Mrs. Harris that Rhodes hadn’t heard about. “She liked to get back at people?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  Rhodes nodded. “Not everybody. Too many, though. That’s one reason I’ll always have a job.”

  “Did you ever find Thorpe?”

  “No. Buddy’s been looking for him all day. We don’t know where he’s gotten to.”

  “And you don’t have any ideas?”

  “No,” Rhodes repeated, but it wasn’t true. He thought he might know where Thorpe had gone, and he planned to have a look as soon as he got a chance, but he certainly didn’t want Brant getting in the way. Or doing something even worse.

  “Are you going to charge me with anything?” Brant said.

  “No. As far as I can tell, you were obnoxious, but there’s no law against that.”

  “Truck might have other ideas.”

  “If he says you threatened him, we might have to file on you. Otherwise, you’re free to go. The next time you get after somebody, though, I’m going to lock you up for a month.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be careful not to let my temper get the best of me.”

  Brant got up and walked out of the little office, leaving Rhodes behind to wonder how he was going to lock the place up for the night.

  Chapter 18

  RHODES WENT BY THE JAIL BEFORE GOING HOME TO BATHE AND change. It was late afternoon, and the rain had finally stopped for good. Off in the west the sun was going down behind the black clouds, edging them with orange and red. In the distance a train was passing through town, and Rhodes heard the whistle when it came to a crossing.

  “Jennifer Loam didn’t believe you were in Canada,” Hack said when Rhodes entered the jail. He looked the sheriff over. “Neither do I. You look like you’ve been to some place really muddy. The Amazon jungle, maybe. I bet the inside of the car looks bad, too.”

  The county didn’t like it when Rhodes or his deputies made a mess of the cars. Rhodes wondered if Ruth had filed her report on the chain-saw damages.

  “You should see the other fella,” Rhodes said.

  Hack grinned. “I saw him, all right. He don’t look much worse than you do. We got him locked up, and he’s not happy about it.”

  “He didn’t make bond?”

  “Didn’t even try. He says he belongs in jail. His wife came by, madder’n a wet hen. If I was him, I’d stay in jail, too.”

  Rhodes thought it was a good idea, himself. He asked if Buddy had found Leo Thorpe.

  “Nope, not a sign of him, not hide nor hair. Buddy says he’s just dropped off the edge of the world.”

  “We’ll find him. Sooner or later. Have there been any calls I should know about?”

  “Just one that might interest you. From some fella named Sherman.” Hack looked through his call log. “Gid Sherman. He says somebody’s been at Thorpe’s trailer.”

  “Who?”

  “He didn’t know. Said he wanted to talk to you about it. You want to call him?”

  Rhodes was wet, muddy, and tired. He wanted a bath and a hot supper. But he wanted to talk to Sherman, and he preferred face-to-face visits to phone calls. He could pay Sherman a visit on the way home.

  “Call him and let him know I’m on the way to see him,” Rhodes said.

  “You look like somebody drug you through a mudhole.” Sherman stood in the doorway of his trailer, looking out at Rhodes, who felt even worse than he looked. All around him in the mobile-home park, lights were on behind the windows, and he knew that the people inside the trailers were warm and dry, eating dinner and watching television, little realizing that the crime-busting sheriff was still on the job. They’d never even think about that when it came time to vote in the next election.

  “I’d ask you to come in, but I just cleaned the place up today. No offense.”

  Rhodes told Sherman that none was taken. “You told the dispatcher that you saw somebody at Thorpe’s trailer.”

  “Yep. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Thorpe, though.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Couldn’t tell. It was raining too hard. I would’ve gone out and looked, but I didn’t want to get wet.” Sherman gave Rhodes an up-and-down look. “Getting wet doesn’t seem to bother you much, though.”

  “Just doing my job. What else can you tell me about whoever was over there?”

  “Not much. He went in and didn’t stay long. Left in some kind of old car.”

  “How old?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  The old car made Rhodes think of Truck and the car lot, but he knew Truck couldn’t have been there. He was too busy chasing Alton Brant with intent to kill. Or at least to hurt badly.

  “How big was the person you saw?”

  “Like I said, it was raining, and it was dark, too. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. Best I can tell you is that it was just some normal-sized fella. Could’ve been a woman, far as that goes. He was wearing rain gear. Or she was. Couldn’t say one way or the other.”

  “Did Thorpe ever have women visit him?”

  “Now that you mention it, he was quite a hand with the ladies for an old fella. Me, I don’t mess around with the ladies anymore. Maybe I oughta try some of that Viagra.”

  Rhodes thought that was a little more information than he’d asked for.

  Sherman shook his head regretfully. “Anyway, Thorpe was different from me. Either that or he had a prescription. He had him a woman somewhere or other. I know that cousin of his didn’t like it.”

  “Mrs. Harris.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. She came out here with Colonel Brant a time or two and I heard ’em arguing about it.”

  “I don’t guess you heard any names mentioned.”

  “Not a one. Don’t even know for sure that’s what all the fuss was about, but it sounded like it was.”

  “Did any women ever visit him here?”

  “If they did, I didn’t see ’em. He liked the ladies, though. You could ask around the park. People know that about him because he liked to talk. Never named any names that I know of. He was a gentleman that way. You can bet that’s the only way he was.”

  Rhodes talked to Sherman for another couple of minutes without finding out anything else useful, so he thanked him for the call and drove home.

  On the way he thought things over, trying to sort out all he’d heard and to see what he was overlooking. Experience had taught him that he always overlooked something that didn’t seem significant at the time he heard it or saw it but that later turned out to be important. This time, however, he couldn’t think of a thing.

  “You’re scaring Sam,” Ivy said.

  Rhodes looked over at the cat, who didn’t look scared at all. He lay near the refrigerator, so relaxed that he looked boneless.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’re scaring me. Are you going to tell me about it, or are you going to clean up first?”

  “I need to feed Speedo.”

/>   “I’ve already done it. Yancey, too.”

  Rhodes glanced around the kitchen, but Yancey was nowhere in sight.

  “He’s in the bedroom,” Ivy said. “Under the bed. He and Sam had a falling-out.”

  Rhodes glanced over at the cat, which twitched its tail and didn’t appear to be the least sorrowful or guilty. “The cat doesn’t seem to be any the worse for wear. What about Yancey?”

  “His feelings are hurt, but other than that, he’s fine.”

  “I’ve been trying to find the cat a home,” Rhodes said. “I can’t find anybody who wants him.”

  “We want him. Just look at him. You can see how much he likes it here.”

  Rhodes could see it all right. He couldn’t understand why the cat had adopted them, but then there were lots of things about cats that he didn’t understand.

  “You need to get out of those clothes,” Ivy said.

  “Would it lead to anything if I did?”

  “Not unless you’re a lot cleaner under them than I think you are.”

  “I can take a bath.”

  “Now there’s a fine idea. You do that, and I’ll get dinner ready.

  I’ll warm the meat loaf in the oven, and we’ll have mashed potatoes with it.”

  That sounded fine to Rhodes, and he went off to bathe.

  The warmed-up meat loaf was excellent, and while they were eating, Yancey came out of hiding. He peered around the kitchen from the safety of the hall. Rhodes expected him to flee when he caught sight of the cat, but he walked over to it and sniffed its nose.

  “See?” Ivy said. “They’re still friends. Even friends fall out sometimes.”

  Rhodes thought about all the friends who’d fallen out in the last couple of days: Thorpe and Brant, Truck and Brant, Helen Harris and someone as yet unknown. Most of them weren’t really friends, more like acquaintances, and they weren’t getting along anywhere nearly as well as the cat and Yancey.

  Alton Brant seemed to be the instigator of a lot of the trouble, which bothered Rhodes a bit. Brant had even at one point said that he had trouble controlling his emotions, and he’d lost his temper with both Truck Gadney and Leo Thorpe. Rhodes wondered if Brant had ever lost his temper with Helen Harris, and what he might have done if it had happened. Would he have picked up a stool and hit her with it?