Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  “No,” Rhodes said. “But maybe I better get started doing it.”

  It was nearly five-thirty when Rhodes left Allen’s office. Mrs. Wilkie had already locked her desk and gone home, which was not the disappointment to Rhodes that she might have wanted it to be.

  He went outside and got in his car, started it, and turned on the heater. While he waited for it to warm up, he got out the paper with the list of names on it. He was surprised to find that he could hardly read it.

  It was almost dark now, and that probably accounted for it. The sun was no more than half a red ball off in the west, just about to sink out of sight. Rhodes turned on the car’s interior light.

  That helped, but not much. Rhodes wondered if he could have read the names at all if he had not pretty well memorized them. He’d been putting off buying a pair of reading glasses, but it was getting more and more obvious that he was going to have to make the purchase.

  He thought about the list. He could drive on out to Obert Road and look for West, but Miss Bobbit was closer. As much as he hated the thought of it, he was going to have to talk to her sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.

  The heater was blowing warm air now. Rhodes put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking lot.

  Miss Bobbit lived in what people in Clearview still called the “new addition,” an area just within the city limits where a developer had begun building new homes about ten years before. There were now eighteen or twenty homes there, not exactly the rapid burst of development that the originator of the idea had hoped for, but then Clearview had never experienced much of a population explosion.

  The Bobbit house was one of the newer ones, set back from the street and fronted by a wide lawn. It was a lot of lawn for a new house, but when Rhodes looked the place over he decided that Miss Bobbit must have bought two lots.

  Rhodes wondered who kept the grass cut. He didn’t like mowing, himself, and he thought the best house to have would be one with no lawn at all.

  The house itself was larger than Rhodes had expected, though he didn’t know why, exactly. It had two stories, and the roof was shingled with cedar shakes. The exterior was Austin stone, and there was a high wooden fence enclosing the back yard. There was a wide sidewalk leading up to the broad covered porch. It was easily the largest house in the addition. Rhodes figured that Miss Bobbit probably didn’t have to worry about mowing her own yard.

  Rhodes parked at the end of the walk and got out of the county car. There was a light burning on the ground floor, so he supposed that Miss Bobbit was at home. He could smell wood smoke. It was going to be a cold night, and someone already had a fire going.

  He went up to the front door, which was really two doors, painted white. There was a doorbell on the right-hand wall, a soft light glowing behind its plastic button. Rhodes pushed the button and heard a gentle chiming in the house.

  He waited for a few seconds and then the porch light came on. When the door swung open, Miss Bobbit was facing him.

  She hadn’t changed much from the last time he had seen her, except that she looked a little older.

  She must have been about forty, he guessed, though he wasn’t much good at estimating the ages of women. She had a round face and a slight double chin, and her brown eyes glittered at him from behind thick glasses. The glitter might have been tears, or it might simply have been the porch light. Her mousy hair was pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. She was not tall, not more than five-one or -two, and she was wearing some kind of long blue velour robe that reached from her shoulders to the floor and covered most of her neck as well. There was a zipper down the front.

  “Sheriff Rhodes,” she said. Her voice was dry. No tears there. “It’s about time you got here.”

  Rhodes didn’t see any point in pursuing that line of talk. “Can I come in?” he said.

  Miss Bobbit stepped back and Rhodes walked past her into the hallway. She closed the door and led him into the living room, a place which surprised Rhodes because of the expensive furnishings, though the outside of the house should have prepared him.

  The beige carpet was deep and supported by a thick pad. The couch and the two chairs probably cost more than Rhodes made in six months, and the forty-inch stereo television set hadn’t come cheap. “Beauty and the Beast” was on, but the sound was muted. There was a stone fireplace that took up most of one wall, and there were logs burning behind a glass fire screen.

  Miss Bobbit did not invite Rhodes to sit down. Instead, she started to lecture him.

  “I want you to find Maurice Kennedy, arrest him, and put him in jail at once,” she said. “He killed my father, and I will not tolerate the thought of him running around free and easy while my father is getting measured for a coffin.”

  “Just a minute,” Rhodes said. “We don’t know if Mr. Kennedy killed anyone. What gives you that idea?”

  “He ran away, didn’t he? Mr. Patterson made it clear that there was some kind of difficulty between Mr. Kennedy and my father, something about the stolen teeth. I want that man arrested and sent to prison.”

  “We don’t know for sure about the teeth, either,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, I never! It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and you don’t even seem concerned. I must say, Sheriff, you don’t seem to have the interests of the voters at heart.”

  “I’m checking into everything,” Rhodes said. “For example, right now I’m checking on everyone who was seen in your father’s room today.” That was a pretty big exaggeration, considering that Earlene didn’t even know who had been in the nursing home, much less where the four people she had seen had been going. But Rhodes didn’t feel like explaining.

  “What do you mean? Do you mean that you consider me a suspect in my father’s death simply because I paid him a visit? Sheriff, I’ll have you know that I loved my father. I’m the one who found him when he strayed away a few years ago, if you’ll remember.”

  It was the Houston police who’d found him, but Rhodes didn’t interrupt to remind her of that.

  “If I left things up to you,” she continued, “I’d never have seen him again. Frankly, Sheriff, I don’t think you know very much about your job.”

  Rhodes felt awkward standing in the middle of the living room. Over Miss Bobbit’s shoulder he could see Vincent running through what looked like a giant sewer pipe, his cape streaming out behind him.

  “I do my best,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me about your visit with your father today.”

  Miss Bobbit’s shoulders slumped in the robe, making her look even shorter. “What about it?”

  “Tell me what you talked about, whether he said anything that might give us a clue as to who would want to kill him.”

  “He talked about his teeth, what do you think he talked about? Mr. Patterson told me that you saw him earlier this morning. What did he talk to you about?”

  “His teeth,” Rhodes admitted.

  “That’s all he talked about for the last two days, ever since Maurice Kennedy stole them. He was obsessed with those teeth.”

  “Was there any connection between Kennedy and your father besides the teeth?” Rhodes asked.

  Miss Bobbit squared her shoulders and looked Rhodes in the eye. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve heard that they knew one another a long time back,” Rhodes said.

  “It’s just like those people out there to start stories like that.” Miss Bobbit waggled a finger at Rhodes. “Malicious stories started by people who don’t have anything better to talk about. There’s not a word of truth in any one of them.”

  She put her hand down by her side. “Well, I take that back. There might be some truth in what they say about Maurice Kennedy, but not about my father.”

  Rhodes could see that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of questioning. Miss Bobbit was obviously fiercely protective of her father, even though the old man was dead.

  “About this afternoon,” Rhodes
said. “What time did you go for the visit?”

  “It was about two o’clock. There was no one else there, if that’s what you mean. My father could afford a private room.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Rhodes said, looking around the living room.

  “He had a little bit of gas money,” Miss Bobbit said.

  “Oh,” Rhodes said. There were several people in Clearview, more than you’d think, who “had a little bit of gas money,” thanks to the wells that had been drilled on land to the south and east of town in the past few years.

  He asked Miss Bobbit a few more questions, but he didn’t learn any more. She had not stayed long, she said, because she had to go grocery shopping. Besides, she visited her father every day.

  “I feel an obligation,” she told Rhodes. “After all, he’s…he was…my father. And I demand that you find the man who killed him.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Rhodes said.

  Miss Bobbit looked at him from behind the thick lenses. “I hope so,” she told him.

  Chapter 7

  When he got back outside, Rhodes took a deep breath of the cold night air. Maybe it was the pressure of the lawsuit, but he was letting things get to him more than he usually did.

  The murder of Mr. Bobbit, for one thing. The old man probably wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway, and it seemed especially unfair for someone to rob him of the short time he had left. Despite the appearance of many of the old people in Sunny Dale, Rhodes was positive that there wasn’t a one of them who would have willingly shortened his or her life.

  He had said something along those lines to Mr. Stuart once, though he couldn’t remember exactly what. He could remember Mr. Stuart’s answer, however.

  “Sheriff,” Mr. Stuart had said, “you’re a youngster yet, and you prob’ly still think you’re gonna live forever.”

  Rhodes didn’t feel that way at all, and he hadn’t felt young for a long time, but he didn’t tell Mr. Stuart that.

  “Well, you won’t live forever, no matter what you think,” Mr. Stuart continued. “And when you get to be my age, you damn well know it. But that don’t make any difference. No matter how close you are to dyin’, you still think about livin’. I’m not a bit more ready to go than I was seventy-five years ago, and don’t you forget it.”

  Rhodes hadn’t forgotten, which made him doubly determined to find out who had cut short whatever time Mr. Bobbit had left.

  Rhodes didn’t think he was going to like dealing with Miss Bobbit, either. As he walked to the car, he told himself to be sure to find out about Mr. Bobbit’s will. It might be a good idea to see who is going to get all that gas money.

  It might be a good idea for him to go over to Ivy Daniel’s house, too. He had told her that he would come by. He hadn’t known about the murder at the time, however, and he was going to be late.

  Still, he could see Ivy and continue the investigation at the same time. She wouldn’t mind a trip to the courthouse. At least he didn’t think she would.

  He was hungry, too. He would stop by his house and get something for them to eat. He had made pimiento cheese yesterday, and there was still plenty left for some sandwiches.

  He parked in the driveway beside the house and went into the backyard to feed Speedo, sort of a border collie whose real name was Mr. Earl. Speedo ran to meet him, barking and jumping. He roughhoused with the dog a little, then gave him some water and a bowl full of 01’ Roy. He thought it would be nice to have as few troubles as Speedo did. Dogs didn’t have to worry much about nursing homes.

  He went inside and checked the refrigerator. The pimiento cheese looked fine. The secret was to make it with American cheese, not cheddar, and to use real salad dressing, not the “light” kind or the kind with no cholesterol. He felt a little guilty about that, but there was always the exercise bike. Besides, he was using oat bran bread. Maybe things would sort of balance out.

  The bread was a little dry, but Rhodes made four sandwiches and put them in plastic bags. He didn’t have any drinks to take, but they could get a Dr Pepper at the courthouse. He put the bagged sandwiches in a paper sack and stuck in a couple of napkins.

  Speedo wanted to play some more, but Rhodes didn’t have time. He tossed the sack of sandwiches in the front seat and left.

  As he drove to Ivy’s house, he wondered just where they would be living after they got married. It was something he had thought of before, but no decision had been made. He’d just naturally assumed that they would move to his place, but what if Ivy had the same idea about her place? Just thinking about it made Rhodes uncomfortable, and he put it out of his mind.

  When Ivy answered his knock at her door, she appeared glad to see him.

  “I was thinking you might have gotten involved in something,” she said. She had short, curly hair with a little gray in it, but her face was still smooth and unlined. Rhodes still found it hard to believe that he was actually going to marry her.

  “I did get involved,” he said. “But I thought you might like to give me a little help!’ He knew that she would. She liked helping out with his law enforcement duties when she could.

  “Will we need the siren?” she asked. That was another thing she liked.

  “Not this time,” Rhodes said. “We’re just going to be doing a little research.”

  “What kind of research?”

  He told her about Mr. Bobbit’s murder, starting with the missing teeth.

  “That’s awful,” Ivy said. “That poor old man. I suppose you want to check out that story about Maurice Kennedy killing someone sixty years ago?”

  “That’s it,” Rhodes said.

  “I don’t see how that could have anything to do with Mr. Bobbit. It was so long ago,” Ivy said.

  “It probably wouldn’t seem that way to them,” Rhodes said. That was something else he had learned from Mr. Stuart, and he was beginning to see nagging symptoms of it in his own life.

  “You know,” Mr. Stuart had said one day, “it seems like I can remember things that happened sixty or seventy years ago better than I can things that happened yesterday.” He gave a little smile. “I can remember the first automobile I ever rode in, a Model T Foul. Remember the day I rode in it just as plain as anything. Summertime. Hot? Let me tell you, it was hot. My daddy was drivin’. We were ridin’ down that road, all the hot dust blowin’. I still remember the way that dust smelled. But if you asked me what the weather was like last week? Hell, I couldn’t tell you.”

  Rhodes understood what the old man meant. It was getting a lot easier for him to recall the details of a movie he’d seen twenty years before than of one he’d seen last month.

  “What about supper?” Ivy said, getting his mind back on the track. “Have you eaten?”

  “I brought us something,” Rhodes told her.

  ‘‘What?’’

  “It’s a surprise,” he said.

  “Let me get my coat,” she said. “I can’t resist a surprise.”

  The courthouse was closed and locked, but Rhodes had a key. They went inside and walked across the marble floor, their steps echoing hollowly down the hall.

  Ivy took Rhodes’s arm. “It seems a lot different in here at night.”

  “Sure does.” Rhodes didn’t say so, but he liked the courthouse even better at night, when it was entirely empty. The building was not quite as old as the jail, and it had been kept up better, but it was still a reminder of the past, of the history of the county and all the things that had happened there. Rhodes felt closer to that history when he was practically the only one in the building.

  They went up the stairs to Rhodes’s office. Ivy had never been inside before.

  “This isn’t bad,” she said, looking around as he turned on the light.

  Rhodes put the sack of sandwiches on the desk. “How about a Dr Pepper?” he said.

  “Sounds good,” Ivy said, and Rhodes went to get the drinks.

  When he came back, she was looking at the shelves on the right wall
. There were bound volumes of old records there, and she was looking for the ones from sixty years ago.

  “Could be fifty-nine years,” Rhodes said, setting the bottles on the desk. “Or sixty-one. Or anywhere in that area.”

  “We may as well try sixty-five years first, then work forward,” Ivy said, pulling down the thick volume. The top of it was covered with dust. “Don’t you ever clean in here?” She blew on the dust, which came off the top of the volume in a cloud.

  “Somebody comes in and sweeps out, I guess,” Rhodes said. “Empties the trash can.” He looked under the desk. Sure enough, Parry’s cigar was gone. “I don’t think they do much dusting.”

  Ivy brought the book over to the desk and plunked it down. Dust came out of the binding and puffed up around it.

  “I hope you clean better than that at home,” Ivy said. Rhodes didn’t want to talk about that. He opened the sack and brought out the sandwiches. “Pimiento cheese,” he said. “My favorite,” Ivy said.

  He couldn’t tell if she was kidding him or not. He handed her a sandwich, and she opened the plastic bag. He gave her a napkin.

  “All the comforts,” she said.

  Rhodes pulled the chair that Jack Parry had sat in earlier around to the other side of the desk so that they could both look at the records as they ate. He began flipping through the pages while Ivy took a bite from her sandwich.

  The old records made interesting reading because the twenties had really roared in Clearview; in fact, the town had been much larger than it now was, thanks to the discovery of oil. People had poured in from all over the state, all over the nation, really, to try cashing in on the boom times. The population of the town had swelled to four or five times its usual size in a matter of weeks after the first well was brought in, and there was a consequent increase in crime.

  The sheriff for most of those years had been a man named Reb Trotter, just as Mr. Stuart had said, and Rhodes didn’t envy him. He’d had to deal with more barroom fights, burglaries, robberies, and murder in just one year than Rhodes had ever encountered, and at the same time there were the same kinds of recurring petty problems that Rhodes was still dealing with today, including stray dogs, marital spats, and kids throwing rocks.