by Bill Crider
The old woman made her way carefully down to the dais and stood quietly, looking at Ivy. Then she looked around the room for the other mourners, as if she wondered where they all were. She moved as close to the coffin as she could, but she made no attempt to touch Ivy or to step up on the dais.
She stayed for around fifteen minutes, and after a while Rhodes noticed that she was swaying slightly in time to the music, which at that moment was “Rock of Ages.”
Ballinger nudged Rhodes in the ribs. “See,” he said. “Some people like it.”
Rhodes didn’t say anything because he thought he could hear someone else coming in. Sure enough, a man and a woman entered the room. The man was tall and distinguished-looking, sort of like George Sanders when he played The Saint, though not as he had looked in The Black Swan. The woman was short and dumpy, wearing a cheap black dress and crying into a handkerchief. The man was holding her arm and bending to whisper in her ear, but whatever he said only made her cry harder. Sammie Woods moved respectfully aside as they approached. She could tell real grief when she saw it.
The man and woman stood in front of the coffin, and the man moved his hand from the woman’s arm to her shoulders, which were shaking from her crying. In an excess of grief, the woman pulled away from him and stepped up on the dais, bending over Ivy. It seemed to Rhodes, from where he was watching, that she was caressing Ivy’s cheeks.
From here on, the plan was simple. If this couple was the same one who had come to view other bodies and used names with the initials “J.S.” to sign the register, Rhodes believed that they would in some way remove the jewelry from the body, or in this case from Ivy. When they started to leave, Ivy would signal, and Rhodes would meet them in the hall.
Things did not go exactly according to plan, however. After about five minutes of nonstop mourning over the coffin, with Rhodes wondering how on earth Ivy was holding her breath that long, the woman stepped back. As the man put his arm around her again, there was a low moan from the coffin.
Three heads jerked up as if the bodies attached to them had been jabbed with cattle prods.
As the moaning continued, Ivy began to rise up stiffly from the coffin, her arms stretched straight in front of her.
Sammie Woods began backing up, knocking over three of the folding chairs before finally sitting down in one. She was moaning too by this time.
The man and the woman stood as if rooted in place for several seconds, then turned and started for the door.
Rhodes slapped the folding curtain about three feet and hurtled into the room. “Hold it!” he yelled.
The man looked back over his shoulder, saw Rhodes in pursuit, and shoved the woman aside. She tried to tackle Rhodes as he passed, but he eluded her groping arms and kept after the man.
By now Ivy was climbing out of the coffin. Sammie Woods was still moaning, but the moans were threatening to turn into screams. Ballinger ran into the room and began tussling with the woman on the floor.
When Rhodes got to the door, the man was retreating back into the room. Tom Skelly was in front of him, his hands up like a boxer’s.
“Come on,” Skelly said. “Just come right ahead. I’m ready for you. Come on.”
Rhodes clapped the man on the shoulder. “I’ve got him now, Tom,” he said. “You take care of Miss Woods.”
The man made no attempt to resist. His shoulder felt almost boneless under Rhodes’s hand. Ballinger had subdued the woman and seated her in a chair.
Ivy was standing by Sammie Woods, trying to explain what had been happening, but the old woman wasn’t hearing her. Skelly finally took her by the arm and led her from the room.
Rhodes looked at Ivy.
She smiled. “I couldn’t resist,” she said.
The man and woman, a husband and wife named Melvin and Deanie Holcomb, were booked and jailed. Ruth Grady searched the woman and found the earrings that Ivy had been wearing, as well as the necklace, but the two would admit nothing else. They refused to say that they had taken anything from bodies in the past, though Rhodes was certain they had. They had signed the register this time as Mr. And Mrs. Johnny Simmons, and Rhodes was sure than an analysis of the handwriting would prove that they had signed the registers previously. Why they had such a fondness for the J.S. Combination, he didn’t know. Maybe it reminded them of John Smith.
They also refused to give any address or place of residence, which bothered Rhodes some. What bothered him even more—or at least gave him cause to wonder—was the look on Burl and Lonnie’s faces when Melvin was put into a cell. The look had not lasted long, and Rhodes might have doubted he saw it had he not been so certain he had. The look said as plain as words that Burl and Lonnie knew Melvin and wondered just what he was doing in jail.
When questioned later, everyone denied knowing everyone else, or even having seen each other before. Burl and Lonnie would also have denied knowing one another if it had been feasible.
“Jail’s gettin’ too full,” Lawton said.
“Not full enough,” Rhodes said. “We still don’t have the burglars or the killer.”
“We got the ones that Clyde was so worried about,” Hack said. “Maybe now things will settle down for him.”
“Not until we get the jewelry back,” Rhodes said. “Those two don’t seem inclined to tell where it is.”
“They’ll come around sooner or later,” Lawton said. “This ain’t exactly the Embassy Suites.” As far as Rhodes knew, Lawton had never stayed in a motel or hotel. He had probably seen an advertisement on TV.
Rhodes wasn’t so sure anyone would come around. As far as they had been able to discover, Burl and Lonnie had no previous records, not even for something like simple assault. The main thing they were concerned about was their dog, which Rhodes had assured them was being cared for. It had been taken to the county animal shelter, and they could have it when they got out.
Melvin and Deanie didn’t have records, either, at least not in Blacklin County. Rhodes figured that when he checked they’d be clean elsewhere. If they were, it was going to be hard to get anything more than a probated sentence for either of them, even though robbing a corpse was a pretty disgusting crime. Somehow, though, they were tied in with Burl and Lonnie, which was interesting and probably meaningful. Now if only Rhodes could figure out what it meant.
“You gonna hire Ivy on as a deputy?” Hack asked.
“I don’t think so,” Rhodes said. “She doesn’t follow orders too well.”
“I sure wish I coulda seen that,” Hack said. “It musta been quite a sight, her risin’ up out of the casket box like that, moanin’ and takin’ on like a ghost.”
“Yeah,” Lawton said. “And I expect Sammie Woods won’t ever go to look at another body as long as she lives. Did they ever get her calmed down?”
“Pretty well,” Rhodes said. “Tom Skelly’s good at things like that. But I’ll say one thing. I think she was paler than Ivy when the whole thing was over. She’s still not sure whether Ivy was part of a plan or just a body that the doctor made a mistake about.”
“Tell her about embalmin’,” Hack said. “After you embalm somebody, they won’t be doin’ any risin’ up.”
“Right now I need to rise up and go have a talk with Washburn,” Rhodes said, getting out of his chair. “He said he had a phone out there, so give me a call if anything comes up.”
“Yeah,” Lawton said. “Like a jail break, with all these prisoners we got in here.”
“If that happens,” Rhodes said, “I don’t even want to know about it.”
It was still cold, but the temperature was moderating. The sunshine helped a lot. Still, it wasn’t warm enough for sitting outside, and Rhodes didn’t see Mrs. McGee on her porch. He drove by her house slowly, but caught no sight of her.
Washburn’s house was a simple white frame, recently painted. Rhodes knocked on the door, and Washburn invited him in.
“I haven’t had anything to eat,” Washburn said. “No stove to cook on, no refrigera
tor to keep things in. It’s a wonder they didn’t take the plumbing fixtures, too. I hope you’re going to let me leave here today. Besides, I need to teach those classes tomorrow. I am going to get to leave, right?”
“That all depends,” Rhodes said.
Because of the beard it was hard to read Washburn’s expression, but he looked a little odd to Rhodes. “Depends on what?” he said.
“On our getting a few things straight. First of all, let me ask you something I should have asked before. Is there a Mrs. Washburn?”
“No,” Washburn said. “Why?”
“The mailbox,” Rhodes said.
“Oh. Well, there was a Mrs. Washburn a few years ago, but that’s all in the past. I didn’t paint that on the mailbox, by the way. Some guys came through here doing it. Charged five dollars a box.”
“So there wasn’t any real reason for you not to see Mrs. Clayton—that is, no real reason if she hadn’t been married.”
“No. And since she and her husband were having trouble, I didn’t see anything wrong with what we did.”
“I understand that you and she had a big argument not so long ago.”
“Who told you that?”
“I can’t say. It’s confidential.”
“That meddling old McGee bat, I’ll bet.”
“Meddling?”
“What else could you call it? She’s always slipping around, watching people, snooping through their yards. If that’s not meddling, I don’t know what is.”
“I got the impression that she never even left her house,” Rhodes said.
Washburn laughed. “That’s the impression she wants you to get. She wants everyone to think she’s a harmless little old lady, always sitting on her porch. It’s just not true. Sula had me chase her out of the yard one time. I think she was trying to get a look in through the window to see what we were doing.”
Rhodes sighed. He was used to being lied to, but he had really thought Mrs. McGee was telling him the truth. He was going to have to rethink his whole attitude toward her.
“We’ll worry about her later,” he said. “Just tell me what the argument was about.”
“Look,” Washburn said. “I argued with her about her husband. I thought she should get a divorce from him and live in Houston with me. It was obvious that they were never going to get along.”
“When was this argument?”
Washburn slumped a bit. “All right. I was here after New Year’s. That’s when we had the argument. It must’ve been right before she got killed. But I didn’t do it. Look, I don’t need this. There aren’t too many things that can get a teacher fired, but being involved in a murder might be one of them.”
“Your job isn’t one of the things that bothers me,” Rhodes said. “Murder is.”
“But I told you I didn’t do it. Sure, I was here around that time, but I didn’t do anything. We had an argument, I left. She said she was going to try to patch things up with her husband, and I told her it was a big mistake. We got a little excited and maybe there was a little yelling. But that’s all there was.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I don’t have to. I know that much about the law. After the argument, I went back to Houston. I can prove that.”
Rhodes asked him about Burl and Lonnie and the Holcombs.
“Never heard of them,” Washburn said.
Rhodes hadn’t really thought he would have. “I’ll probably need to talk to you again,” he said. “You’d better call and see if you can get someone else to sit in on those classes for you tomorrow.”
Washburn wasn’t happy, but he said he’d try.
Chapter 14
Rhodes went home after the interview with Washburn. He wanted to spend some time thinking about what he knew and what he didn’t know as far as the murder and the burglaries were concerned.
He played in the yard with Speedo for a minute, then went inside to watch the Million Dollar Movie. Watching movies helped him think, and it didn’t matter whether the movies were any good or not. In fact, it was usually better if they weren’t any good. That way he didn’t really try to follow them.
He had stopped on the way in and picked up a Number Two To Go at the Jolly Tamale. He heated it up and located a Dr Pepper. By then, the movie had already started, but that didn’t really matter. It was Man’s Favorite Sport?, which he had already seen numerous times before. He had long since decided that its principal virtue was Paula Prentiss, though even she wasn’t up to the high standard she had set in Where the Boys Are. And she was wasting her time on Rock Hudson, though Rhodes had to admit he hadn’t known that the first few times he’d seen the movie.
So while the man who knew everything about fishing but had never fished tried to work out his problems, Rhodes thought about his own difficulties. There was the dead woman, first of all. Wrapped in duct tape. Found in a house that had been burgled, like all the unoccupied houses in the neighborhood, by very neat burglars who apparently owned a U-Truck-’Em van, or at least had access to one.
Rhodes had seen the van, all right, up close and personal, but he hadn’t seen the driver or the passenger. He knew more or less the direction the van had been headed in, but he hadn’t been able to locate it. Instead, he’d located a marijuana stash. That didn’t mean the van wasn’t still in the same general area. There were plenty of places it could be hidden back in those boondocks. But all he’d come up with was Burl, Lonnie, and their stash.
Rhodes also had Melvin and Deanie—the people who were robbing the corpses—and was convinced that there was a connection between them and Burl and Lonnie. Rhodes just didn’t know what the connection was, or whether it was meaningful.
There still might be something to tie Burl and Lonnie to the burglaries, if he could only figure out what it was. But could he tie them to the murder? He still didn’t know if the murder had been done by the burglars or by someone else. If someone else, who was that? Both Washburn and Clayton were convincing in their protestations of innocence, but Washburn had already lied more than once about where he’d been and what he’d done.
Unfortunately, so had Mrs. McGee, a seemingly harmless little old lady who sat on her porch with a .357, had taken a shot at Washburn, and probably had at least one other gun in the house. She had made Rhodes believe that she never left her own front yard, but Washburn, who might or might not be lying, said that she was a snoop who even tried to peek in her neighbors’ windows.
What if her other gun was a .38?
Rhodes took his paper plate into the kitchen, where he dumped it into the trash. He went back to the living room and stared at the ending of the movie without really seeing it. He was sure that he had all the pieces—or most of them, but he could see no way to put them together that made any sense.
It was time to go back to the jail.
Nothing had changed. Melvin and Deanie still maintained their silence, and Burl and Lonnie still wanted to see their dog.
“Anything new come up?” Rhodes asked.
“Nothin’ much. Got a call from a lady over in the north part of town, said there was some boys shootin’ birds out of all the trees in the neighborhood,” Hack said. “Ruth went over to take care of it.”
“What were they shooting with?”
“Just BB guns,” Hack said. “Happens sooner or later after ever’ Christmas. Their mamas and daddies tell those boys not to go shootin’ the birds with their new guns, but they finally forget, or they just can’t resist tryin’ those guns out on somethin’ besides a target.”
“You’re sure that’s all there is to it?” Rhodes asked. Sometimes boys got .22s for Christmas, and the problems were multiplied. There had been no cases in Blacklin County of children killing their friends yet, despite a number of reports from around Houston, and Rhodes hoped the record would remain clean. When there were guns around the house, however, anything could happen.
“That’s all there was,” Hack said. “She didn’t hear any loud shots or anything like that. Just saw
the boys shootin’ up in the trees with their BB rifles.”
The trouble was, Rhodes thought, anyone could pick up a gun with ease, at a flea market or nearly anywhere else, these days. It was a thought that had occurred to him before and had given him an idea that he should follow up on.
“They still have that big flea market up around Dallas somewhere?” he asked Hack.
“I don’t keep up with that stuff. I got all the junk I need already. You ought to ask Clyde Ballinger a question like that. Why? You thinkin’ about gettin’ rid of some of your stuff?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Rhodes said, thinking about Ivy’s question to him about whether they would live in his house or hers. Either move would no doubt involve getting rid of a number of possessions. “I’m going over to the funeral home.”
Ballinger was happy to tell Rhodes about the flea market. “I haven’t been in a long time, though,” he said. “When I first started going, I could find all kinds of good books there, but lately there hasn’t been a thing worth buying. Seems like everybody’s got these big thick books by Irving Wallace and Sidney Sheldon. Nobody even wants to sell you anything that doesn’t have a cover price of four-fifty. All the good paperbacks, the ones that sold for twenty-five or thirty-five cents, you can hardly find those now’days unless you get lucky at a garage sale. Or maybe from some dealer that wants ten dollars for one of them.”
Rhodes hadn’t meant to get Ballinger started on his favorite topic. “I wasn’t looking for books,” he said.
“Well, if you do see any like these”—Ballinger waved a hand to indicate the books lining his shelves—”be sure to pick them up for me. Guys like Harry Wittington and Jim Thompson could tell a story in less than two hundred pages. They didn’t need six hundred like everybody seems to now. And they were good stories, let me tell you. Not like most of this bloated stuff you read now.”
“You say they get started on Thursday?” Rhodes said. He hated to interrupt, but it looked as if Ballinger was good for another three hours.
