by Bill Crider
Then Charlie started to choke and cough. His heels drummed on the floor.
“Jesus!” someone said. “Charlie’s dying! Bud’s killed him!”
“No he’s not,” Jeff said. “I think he swallowed his gum. Heimlich! Heimlich!”
Wondering what kind of person would chew gum right after eating, or, worse, while he was eating, Rhodes grabbed Charlie under the armpits and pulled him to his feet. While Charlie hung in his arms, coughing, Rhodes made the proper fist and pressed Charlie’s upper abdomen.
Nothing.
Rhodes pressed again, and a wad of gum flew out of Charlie’s mouth and struck the floor near Jeff’s foot. Jeff kicked it out of the way.
Rhodes lowered Charlie to the floor, where Charlie resumed gasping.
“Never chew gum when you’re gettin’ choked,” someone said.
“Good advice,” another man responded as if he’d just heard the wisdom of the ages.
“I hope you’ll throw their butts in the jail,” Sam Blevins said.
Rhodes looked at the restaurant owner, who had materialized at his shoulder as soon as the fighting was over.
Rhodes stood up and let his gaze roam around the room. The Bigfoot hunters were all back in their chairs except for the two men lying on their backs and Jeff, who had moved over against the wall after picking up Charlie’s purple and gray cap, which was now clutched in his hands.
All the Bigfoot hunters were pretending nothing had happened. That was fine with Rhodes. He turned to Blevins and said, “Are you going to press charges?”
Blevins thought about it. “Well, I don’t know. They didn’t break anything.” He looked down at Bud and Charlie, who were still lying on their backs struggling to breathe. “Maybe they’ve had enough punishment.”
Rhodes agreed. He didn’t want to have to take them to jail and then have their pals bond them out fifteen minutes later. He didn’t want to try to discover which of the other ones had jumped him and which ones had been drinking, either. It wasn’t worth it.
“Have the servers bring in the bill,” Rhodes told Blevins. “Who’s going to pay?”
“Their treasurer’s supposed to,” Sam said. “That’s him over there.”
He pointed to Jeff, who was twisting Charlie’s cap in his hands and looking as if he wished he were elsewhere. Out hunting for Bigfoot, maybe.
“All right,” Rhodes said, looking back to the tables. “The rest of you can leave. Quietly. And go straight back to the motel. If you’ve been drinking, you’d better have someone else drive. I’ll have a deputy right outside in the parking lot to make sure you follow instructions. You call it in, Sam.”
Sam nodded and left the room. As he went out the door, Rhodes saw Ivy, Claudia, and Jan standing there. He didn’t see a camera, for which he was grateful.
“You can forget what I said about enjoying our Clearview hospitality,” Rhodes told the Bigfoot hunters. “I’ve decided that I am going to throw your sorry butts out of town, but I don’t want you on the highways tonight. You can check out of the motel first thing in the morning.”
One or two of the men seemed about to protest, but after they took a good look at Rhodes, they changed their minds. They muttered a little among themselves about not having had their cobbler, but Rhodes didn’t blame them for that. Sam’s cherry cobbler topped with ice cream was even better than his steaks. Rhodes felt as if he were punishing a bunch of kids, sending them to their rooms without dessert.
“Clear out,” Rhodes told them, and they did, still muttering.
As soon as they cleared the door, brushing by the women who still stood there watching, one of the servers came in holding the bill.
Rhodes pointed to Jeff. “Give it to him.”
The woman stooped down and held out the bill. Jeff had to let go of the cap with one hand to take it. When he did, the server retreated.
“Get up, Jeff,” Rhodes said. “You’re not hurt.”
Jeff got up. “What about Charlie?”
“Give me a hand,” Rhodes said.
Jeff came over, and they tried to get Charlie to his feet. It wasn’t easy.
He tried to say something, but he still couldn’t get any words out. Jeff seemed to understand him, however. He pushed the combover into place as best he could and stuck Charlie’s cap on his head to cover it.
Rhodes draped one of Charlie’s arms over Jeff’s shoulder, and Charlie hung there like a wet sock.
“Can you get him to the motel?” Rhodes said.
“Yeah. We came together in my truck,” Jeff said. “Come on, Charlie.”
After paying the bill, Jeff went out with Charlie wobbling along beside him. Rhodes thought that Charlie would fall over at every step, but somehow he didn’t.
Jeff got Charlie out of the room, and Rhodes looked down at Bud, who was gradually returning to something resembling his normal color.
“I hope you’re ashamed of yourself,” Rhodes said.
Bud wheezed out something that sounded like “Not really,” but Rhodes couldn’t have sworn that’s what it was. He got behind Bud and took hold of him under the armpits. With a little effort he heaved Bud into a chair.
“You’d better sit there for a while,” Rhodes said. “Then you can go home. You be careful, you hear?”
Bud wheezed out a reply that might have been “Yeah.”
“Have a nice night,” Rhodes said, and left him there.
“We were wrong,” Claudia said when Rhodes joined them at the door.
“We certainly were,” Jan said. “Clint Eastwood is all wrong. John Wayne would be much better.”
“Or Rambo,” Ivy said. “Who played Rambo?”
“Sylvester Stallone,” Rhodes said. “Let’s stick with John Wayne, pilgrim.”
Rhodes didn’t feel like talking to Karen Sandstrom that night. He wished Claudia and Jan a pleasant evening, and he and Ivy went home.
“I think the handsome crime-busting sheriff had better practice his John Wayne impression,” Ivy said after Rhodes came in from playing with the dogs.
Yancey yipped as if in agreement.
“I thought I was pretty good,” Rhodes said.
Yancey disagreed, and Ivy shook her head.
“How about this one,” Rhodes said. “It’s from The Train Robbers. Big John says it to Ann-Margret. ‘Lady, I got a saddle at home older than you are.’”
Ivy laughed, and Yancey ran in a circle around Rhodes’s feet.
“That’s even worse,” Ivy said.
“Then I give up.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” Ivy said.
“I have another one.”
“What?”
“It’s even better than the last one. Trust me.”
“We’ll see,” Ivy said with a smile.
19
THE NEXT MORNING RHODES WENT TO THE JAIL, EXPECTING Hack and Lawton to start in on him immediately about the ruckus at the Round-Up.
They didn’t disappoint.
“I heard you had to fight off five different men in a big free-for-all at the Round-Up last night,” Lawton said. “I heard they were all bigger’n you, too.”
“It was only four men,” Hack said. “Not countin’ the two on the floor chokin’ each other. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
“I didn’t fight off anybody,” Rhodes said. “It was just a little scuffle, and it was over before it even started.”
“That ain’t the way I heard it,” Lawton said. “And that reporter for the Herald’s already called. She’ll be here in a few minutes to talk to you about it.”
Rhodes sighed. He’d read the article about the murder in the paper before breakfast, and he knew there’d be another one today about the mammoth dig. He wasn’t looking forward to one about the tussle at the Round-Up.
He didn’t have time to worry about it long. Jennifer Loam arrived and got right down to business. She turned on her little recorder, and Rhodes told her the story pretty much as it had happened.
“That’s all?” she said.
“That’s all,” Rhodes said. “Nothing much in it. You’ll do better with your mammoth story. And I have a couple of people who’d like to talk to you about that, and about your story on Larry Colley.” He told her about Claudia and Jan. “They admired your work and want some writing tips.”
“I might be able to help them,” Jennifer said. “Where are they staying?”
Rhodes told her, and she said she’d pay them a visit.
“You sure worked that out slick,” Hack said after the reporter left. “Just eased her right on out of here without even tellin’ her about fightin’ off the four men at the Round-Up.”
“Five,” Lawton said. “The way I heard it, it was five men. Big ones, too.”
“I didn’t fight anybody,” Rhodes said, and he was saved from defending himself any further when Ruth Grady came in.
She asked if he’d heard anything about Colley’s truck, and Rhodes said that he hadn’t. Then she asked if he’d visited Karen Sandstrom.
“He was too busy,” Hack said. “Takin’ on four men in a big fight out at the Round-Up.”
“Five,” Lawton said. “It was five men, the way I heard it.”
Rhodes gave Ruth a helpless look. Ruth grinned.
“I heard it was seven,” she said.
Rhodes stood up. He said, “I’m going to have that talk with Karen Sandstrom,” and started for the door.
But he stopped before he got there. Something had been gnawing at him for a couple of days now, and it was time to do something about it.
“I need the file on the Ronnie Bolton case,” he said, turning back.
“That happened before we got all computerized,” Hack said. “What do you want with it?”
Rhodes didn’t know for sure himself. He said, “I want to look it over. I keep thinking there might be some connection between what happened to him and what happened to Larry Colley.”
“Don’t see how there could be. That was a long time ago.”
“I still think I’ll have a look at the file.”
“Hope you can find it,” Hack said.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Rhodes said.
As Rhodes read through the file, things about Ronnie Bolton’s disappearance started to come back to him.
The family reunion had been put together by Gerald Bolton, and it had been a big deal. People from both sides of the country had come for a visit. Most of the guests had come from Texas, of course, but Bolton had cousins in California and Virginia, and they’d attended, looking forward, no doubt, to seeing their Texas cousins for the first time in years. No one could have guessed how the reunion would end.
Ronnie Bolton had played with his young cousins and then had wandered off sometime in the afternoon with one of them. According to what Gerald Bolton had told Rhodes, Ronnie and the other children had been warned repeatedly not to go beyond the fence that surrounded the camp house, and Bolton had put special emphasis on the dangers of the woods.
One of the California cousins had a son named Elliott, who was about Ronnie’s age. Elliott dared Ronnie to go into the woods with him. Gerald said that Ronnie was something of a daredevil and probably hadn’t needed much encouragement. So he and his cousin slipped away from the adults, all of whom were occupied with their own visiting and weren’t really paying much attention to the kids.
Ronnie and Elliott went to the edge of the woods, where Elliott had second thoughts and decided to go back to the camp house, being a lot more of a city boy than someone used to the outdoors. He’d told Rhodes that he didn’t like the way it got dark back in the trees.
Ronnie hadn’t wanted to go back to the camp house, though. He’d called his cousin a baby and gone right on into the woods without him.
Nobody ever saw him again. Everyone assumed that he’d become disoriented and lost in the woods and been unable to find his way out. As soon as Elliott returned to the camp house, the adults had begun to search, but they found no sign of Ronnie. They called Rhodes’s office, and a larger search had been organized. The searchers kept looking for a week, and Rhodes had looked on his own after that. Nobody had found a trace of Ronnie Bolton.
Rumors about Bigfoot, feral hogs, and serial killers naturally made the rounds as people struggled to find some kind of explanation for what seemed to be unexplainable. The resident Bigfoot experts, Bud Turley and Larry Colley, had joined in the search. No one found a trace of Bigfoot, either.
None of that was news to Rhodes. What he’d really been interested in seeing was the list of people who’d been at the family reunion, and, sure enough, there was a name on the list that tied directly to the things that were happening now.
One of Bolton’s Texas cousins was Buck Sandstrom, Karen Sandstrom’s husband.
Gerald Bolton was surprised to see Rhodes, who hadn’t called ahead this time.
“You’re always welcome here, Sheriff,” Bolton said, being the good host. “What can I do for you?”
Rhodes thought the direct approach would work best. He said, “I want to ask you a few questions about your family reunion.”
Bolton looked over his shoulder to see if his wife was anywhere around. She wasn’t. Rhodes heard music from the other room.
“Come on in,” Bolton said, closing the door behind Rhodes. They went into the den, and Bolton asked Rhodes to have a seat. Rhodes took his place in the platform rocker, and Bolton sat in the La-Z-Boy.
“I wouldn’t want Edith to hear us,” Bolton said. “We talk about Ronnie, but not with strangers. No offense, Sheriff.”
“None taken,” Rhodes said.
“What kind of questions did you want to ask?” Bolton said. “Do you have some new information?”
Rhodes shook his head. “Not a bit. But I’m curious about a couple of things.”
“You know I’ll help you if I can.”
“Thanks. You have a cousin named Buck Sandstrom. He was at that reunion.”
“Sure. Buck and I grew up together. We were friends for a long time. I was older, sort of the leader, I guess you could say. I haven’t seen Buck for a good while, though.”
“Why not?” Rhodes asked.
“Edith and I don’t see people much, not since that reunion. Edith, well … she just doesn’t feel like it.”
The muted music from the other room played on. Rhodes couldn’t quite make out the tune.
“I don’t know exactly how to explain it,” Bolton went on. “It just seems that people get uncomfortable around us. It’s not so much that we’ve changed, which we have, of course, or that they’ve changed. It’s like the whole situation between us has changed. They’ve moved on. We haven’t. Not really.”
“Buck moved on to marry Larry Colley’s ex-wife,” Rhodes said.
Bolton managed to smile a little. “One of them,” he said. “You don’t think he killed Larry, do you?”
Rhodes said that he didn’t know what to think. “I was just wondering if he was around all the time at the reunion or if he was out of sight part of the time.”
Bolton frowned and sat forward in the chair, which wasn’t an easy trick in a La-Z-Boy. “Which part of the time?”
“The part where Ronnie went to the woods,” Rhodes said.
Bolton leaned back in the chair and didn’t say anything for a while. Rhodes didn’t prod him. Finally Bolton said, “I can’t remember. It’s just been too long, and there were a lot of people there.”
“Twenty-eight,” Rhodes said. He’d counted the names on the list.
“And they were all talking, moving around, swapping stories. We were getting ready to grill some hamburgers and hot dogs. People were going to their cars and getting drinks and food. It was all pretty confusing.”
“Do you remember swapping any stories with Buck?”
“I must have. We had plenty of tales to tell in those days. But I just can’t remember.”
“What about your wife,” Rhodes said. “Do you think she would have noticed anything
?”
There was a pause, and Rhodes heard the music again. He still couldn’t make out the tune.
“I hate to ask her,” Bolton said. “Like I said, we don’t talk about Ronnie with other people. Edith gets upset pretty easily.”
“I’ll try not to upset her, and she might be able to help me out,” Rhodes said. He wished he knew what he was hoping to find out.
Bolton rocked forward in the La-Z-Boy and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll ask her,” he said, and left the room.
While he waited for Bolton to come back, Rhodes looked at the collection of glass skunks. There was one that looked familiar, and Rhodes finally realized that it was Flower, from Bambi. He looked around to see if the amorous Pepé Le Pew was there—after all, if there was one movie skunk present, there might be another—but if he was, Rhodes didn’t see him. He was thinking about getting up and walking over to the shelf for a closer look when Bolton came back into the room. Edith was with him. Rhodes stood up.
“Hello, Sheriff,” Edith said in her wispy voice. “Please, keep your seat.”
She walked over to the couch and sat down. Bolton went to his La-Z-Boy. Rhodes remained standing.
“Gerald says you want to ask something about That Day,” Edith said. Rhodes could hear the capital letters on the last two words.
“It’s about Buck Sandstrom,” Rhodes said. “Do you know him?”
“Oh, yes. We used to see Buck often. Not so much anymore, though. I can’t remember the last time.”
“I was wondering about that day,” Rhodes said, hoping he hadn’t put the capitals into his own voice. “At the reunion. Did Buck ever wander off away from the rest of the group?”
Edith sat and thought it over for even longer than her husband had. Her eyes took on a faraway look, and Rhodes was beginning to wonder if she’d forgotten that he was even in the room.
Evidently she hadn’t. She said, “I wish I could help you, Sheriff. I really do. But I just can’t remember. We were all having such a good time …”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her hands. Rhodes saw that she had a tissue crumpled up in one of them. She smoothed it out on her lap and then dabbed at her eyes.
