by Bill Crider
“Yeah,” Buddy said. “Too bad they aren’t all this easy.”
Rhodes thought about Lloyd Berry and felt the little knot of anger flare in his stomach.
“Too bad is right,” he said.
18
RHODES LET BUDDY HANDLE THINGS AT THE JAIL. THAT WAY, he could avoid dealing with Hack and Lawton, who naturally wanted to know all about Carr’s arrest. Buddy’s version of it was much better than the one Rhodes would have told, and besides, Rhodes had Alton Boyd to deal with.
“You gotta do something about that Bruce,” Alton said, chewing on his White Owl stub. “He’s not happy bein’ cooped up, and he’s gonna eat us out of house and home. I think it’s time you got yourself a new dog.”
Rhodes thought about Speedo, Yancey, and Sam. They’d never take to Bruce, and Bruce wasn’t a town dog anyway. His rough-and-ready ways weren’t suited to life inside the city limits. First thing you knew, he’d be stealing Royce Weeks’s chickens. That is, unless the city council voted that he couldn’t keep them.
“Well, Sheriff,” Alton said, “he’s a mighty fine dog. What do you say?”
Rhodes didn’t say anything. He could always drop the charges against the Eccles cousins and let them go home, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. They still had a story or two to tell, not the least of which would be about the alligator. Rhodes also wanted them to explain their relationship with Guy Wilks.
“I can’t take Bruce home myself,” Alton said. He removed his cigar stub and gave it a critical glance. It must have passed inspection, because he jammed it right back in his mouth. “I already got three, and my wife put her foot down about me having another one, even for a visit. So it’s up to you. It’s not like you’d have to keep him long, just till the Eccles boys get out of jail.”
Rhodes didn’t think it was up to him, and he knew it would be a while before the Eccleses would be leaving since they didn’t seem eager to make their bail. Rhodes did, however, have another idea.
“Let me make a call,” he said.
Rhodes went with Alton to deliver Bruce to his new, possibly temporary, home. Seepy Benton was standing in his front yard, waiting for them.
“I don’t see why you think I need a dog,” Benton said when Rhodes got out of the van.
“Look around,” Rhodes said. “A man living out here alone needs a watchdog. You never know when an alligator will drop by.”
“Too late,” Benton said. “That’s already happened, and it wasn’t so bad.”
“Next time could be worse. You could get one of those mutant alligators, like the one in that movie. Lake Placid, that was the name of it.”
“I think that was a crocodile,” Benton said.
“Whatever. You need a good dog to keep watch for you, and this is a good dog. He’d keep you company out here, too, all alone in the country like you are.”
“I’m not alone. I’m just barely out of town. People drive down this road all the time.”
“It’s not the same as having a dog around, though,” Rhodes said.
While Rhodes and Benton were talking, Alton got Bruce out of the van. Bruce strained against the leash that Alton had on him. He wasn’t used to anything like that.
“That’s a big dog,” Benton said when Alton walked up with him. “He looks . . . mean.”
As if to emphasize the point, Bruce made a short lunge in Benton’s direction and started to bark. Alton held on tight to the leash, and Bruce dragged him forward several inches.
“I think he likes you,” Rhodes said.
“I think he wants to eat me,” Benton said.
“Bark’s worse’n his bite,” Alton said around the cigar stub. “He’s a little excited right now, but he’s nice and gentle.”
Bruce stopped barking and trembled at the end of the leash. Alton tightened his grip.
“Gentle as a wolf,” Benton said.
“You have a good place for him, though,” Rhodes said. “A big fenced backyard will give him some room to run around, and you can take him for a walk down the road every day. You two are a perfect match.”
“If I can keep him from running away with me. He might drag me down the road.”
“You do a hundred push-ups every day. You’re a lot stronger than he is. Did I mention that Deputy Grady loves dogs?”
For the first time, Benton showed real interest. “She does?”
“She does. I’m sure she’d like to come out and visit Bruce now and then, see how he’s getting along.”
Alton looked at Rhodes out of the corners of his eyes. Rhodes avoided his glance. Both of them knew Ruth wasn’t all that fond of dogs and wasn’t at all likely to come to check on Bruce.
“I suppose we could let him stay overnight,” Benton said. “To see how he likes the place and to see if we can get along together.”
“You’ll be soulmates within an hour,” Rhodes said. “Alton and I even have a surprise for you.”
“You mean another surprise.”
“All right, another one. We went by and picked up some dog food for Bruce so you wouldn’t have to worry about that. I paid for it out of my own pocket.”
“Feeling guilty, were you?” Benton said.
“Just doing you a favor. I’ll get the dog food while you and Alton introduce Bruce to the backyard.”
Rhodes went to the van, and the other two men went around the house with the dog, Bruce in the lead. Rhodes got the bag of dog food and put it on Benton’s porch. Then he returned to the van for two more surprises.
When Rhodes got to the backyard, Alton had taken Bruce off the leash, and the big dog was sniffing around the base of the wooden fence. Any second now and he’d start marking it.
“Here you go,” Rhodes said to Benton.
Benton turned toward him, and Rhodes tossed him a large rawhide bone.
“Bruce will love that,” Rhodes said.
Benton held it in his hand and stared at it.
“Heads up,” Rhodes said, throwing Benton a big rubber ball.
Benton dropped the bone and caught the ball.
“You and Bruce will have a lot of fun with that,” Rhodes said.
“You know a lot about dogs?” Benton said.
“A couple of them live at my house. You and Bruce are going to enjoy each other’s company.”
Benton looked skeptical. “I wish I was as sure of that as you are.”
“Trust me,” Rhodes said. “I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”
“No,” Benton said. “After all, you’re an officer of the law, and officers are our friends.”
“You got that right,” Alton said.
Rhodes was sure he’d done the right thing by Bruce and Benton both. Bruce would have a good home while the Eccles cousins were in jail, and Benton would have some company.
“You don’t really think Ruth’s gonna go by there to see about that dog, do you?” Alton said when he let Rhodes out at the jail.
“She might,” Rhodes said. “You never know.”
“You’re mighty sneaky, Sheriff, and that’s all I got to say about it.”
“Sometimes that’s what it takes,” Rhodes said.
After Bruce was taken care of, Rhodes had a few more stops to make before he went home. The afternoon was almost gone, but he thought he had time see the two people he wanted to talk to.
Tom Fulton was behind the counter in his store, cheerful as ever, when Rhodes walked in.
“Welcome back, Sheriff,” Fulton said. “You decide you needed a good GPS to tell you where to go?”
Rhodes didn’t reply.
“That’s another joke, Sheriff. A little more GPS humor. ‘Tell you where to go.’ You get it?”
Rhodes got it. He wasn’t sure he wanted it, however. He said, “I have a question for you.”
“Fire away. As you can see, I’m not exactly surrounded by customers here.”
Rhodes wondered how Fulton managed to pay the rent on his store. It could have been that he was just having a slow week. He d
id have customers now and then, and so did the other shops in the center. Rhodes still couldn’t quite understand why nobody had seen anyone go into Lloyd’s place.
“When I was in here yesterday,” Rhodes said, “you told me that Lloyd Berry came by occasionally.”
“That’s right. He did. We’d talk a little, maybe I’d tell him a GPS joke or two.”
Rhodes hadn’t thought there could possibly be more than two GPS jokes. “There’s more?” he said.
“I got a million of ’em,” Fulton said with pride.
Rhodes wasn’t so sure it was anything to be proud of, and anyway he hadn’t come there to talk about jokes. He said, “Lloyd didn’t always come by just to talk, did he?”
Fulton looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he had a GPS in his car. I didn’t find a receipt for it when I searched his house, but I thought he must have bought it from you.”
“I’d have to check my records on that,” Fulton said. “I don’t remember him buying one.”
It seemed to Rhodes the kind of thing Fulton should have remembered. Having so few customers, he’d certainly be likely to know if a shopkeeper in the same strip center had bought a GPS from him.
“I’m not the only one who sells these things,” Fulton said. “Wal-Mart’s got ’em, and you know how that goes. They undercut everybody on the price, and some folks don’t care about supporting their local businesses if they can get what they want for a dollar less. Just look at what’s happened to the downtown.”
Rhodes had looked at downtown enough for one day. He knew what it was like, though he wasn’t sure it was all Wal-Mart’s fault.
“Why don’t you check your records,” he said. “Just to humor me.”
“You don’t have to get touchy, Sheriff. I’ll take a look.”
Rhodes didn’t think he’d been touchy. Fulton was the one who’d seemed that way to him. Fulton pulled back a green curtain and went into his office. He sat down at a desk and started doing something with a computer.
After a while he came back out. “He didn’t buy it from me. Like I said, he must’ve got it at Wal-Mart.”
That surprised Rhodes, who’d thought that Lloyd would support the other businesses in the center. Unless, of course, he had a reason not to buy from Fulton. Rhodes wondered what the reason might be. To save a dollar? Or was there more to it than that?
“If I’d been buying flowers, I’d have bought them from Lloyd,” Fulton said. “Wal-Mart sells flowers, but I wouldn’t have bought them there. I guess Lloyd didn’t feel the same way I do about things.”
“I guess he didn’t,” Rhodes said. He thanked Fulton for the information and went next door to Rollin’ Sevens.
The crowd looked pretty much the same as it had the day before, except that Hugh and Lance were missing. Rhodes still wondered about those two. They’d had no real reason to get feisty with him yesterday, and even less reason to attack him that morning. There was more to it than chickens and alligators, Rhodes was sure, but so far the cousins weren’t talking. He hoped that after they’d spent a night in jail, they’d change their minds.
Wilks came out of the back room before Rhodes had gotten more than a couple of steps inside the front door of Rollin’ Sevens. Unlike Fulton, Wilks didn’t seem at all happy to see Rhodes again.
“Are you trying to ruin me, Sheriff?” he said.
His tone wasn’t aggressive, but it was clear he thought Rhodes was out to get him.
“You’ve come in here two days in a row,” Wilks continued. “I think that’s a little excessive. I run things right here, and I don’t appreciate it.”
He turned around and walked back to his office. Rhodes followed along behind.
“Are you still here?” Wilks said when he turned and saw Rhodes enter the office. “I thought you’d be leaving.”
“Not until we talk,” Rhodes said.
Wilks walked around him and looked out into the gambling room. Rhodes turned and looked, too. A couple of people were already leaving.
“You’re harassing me, Sheriff,” Wilks said. “You’re trying to close me down, and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say you had,” Rhodes told him.
Wilks went behind his desk and sat down. “If you’re not trying to shut me down, what do you want?”
Rhodes sat in the wooden folding chair. “I want to ask you about the Eccles cousins.”
“What about them?”
“They jumped me yesterday after I finished talking to you.”
“I’m not responsible for those two. They’re just people who like to play the games, and they didn’t like having you run everybody off.”
“I didn’t run anybody off. All I came in for was to talk about a man who’d been murdered. Just like now.”
Wilks shook his head. He wasn’t interested in hearing about the murder or Rhodes’s reasons for dropping in.
“And all my customers are leaving again,” he said. “Before long, they’ll be afraid to come in at all. It’s not right, Sheriff.”
Rhodes wondered if Wilks had seen the story on the news about the Houston police crushing the eight-liners. He supposed a story like that would make Wilks a little too quick to take offense where none was intended.
“I went out to see the Eccles boys this morning,” Rhodes said. “They jumped me again.”
“And that’s supposed to be my fault? I can’t help it if they don’t like you.”
Rhodes got the impression that Wilks believed the Eccles cousins were just showing good judgment in attacking Rhodes. In fact, Wilks looked as if he wouldn’t mind having them do it again, preferably where he could watch.
“You didn’t ask them to cause trouble, did you?” Rhodes said.
“Of course not. Why would I do that? It’s bad for business.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. If the gamblers thought that Rhodes could be intimidated, they’d be less likely to worry if he showed up at the Rollin’ Sevens.
“I didn’t come here about the Eccles boys anyway,” Rhodes said. “I came about Lloyd Berry.”
“I thought we’d covered that yesterday,” Wilks said.
“Things have changed since then,” Rhodes said. “I’ve talked to a few other people. What they said didn’t quite jibe with what you told me.”
Wilks leaned forward on his desk. “So you think I didn’t tell you the truth? How about these ‘other people’? They could be mistaken, you know.”
“Sure they could, but I believe them.”
Wilks pushed himself up so that he was leaning forward with his arms braced on the desk. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No,” Rhodes said, “but I do think you might want to reconsider what you told me and see if you could have been mistaken.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Wilks said. He sat back down in his desk chair.
“I’ll tell you what I mean,” Rhodes said.
He took his little notebook out of his pocket and flipped through the pages. He couldn’t really read what he’d written there without his glasses, but he didn’t bother to put them on. It didn’t matter. The notebook was just for show. Rhodes remembered very well what he’d written. He stopped flipping the pages and put his finger on one, pretending to read it to himself. After a second, he looked up at Wilks.
“Yesterday you said you didn’t really know Lloyd very well. You mentioned that you’d seen him a time or two at Max’s Place, though.”
“That’s right. I eat lunch there now and then. It’s a new place, so it’s a change for me.”
Rhodes wondered if it was the place that was the change or if Wilks thought the barbecue was better than at the other local spots. Rhodes thought it was at least as good and that Max had a chance to make a success of the restaurant.
“You didn’t tell me that you sat at the same table with Lloyd,” Rhodes said. “You didn’t mention that you were friends.”
Wilks dismissed that i
dea. “Who said we were friends? When that place first opened, it was crowded. I couldn’t take one whole table for myself, so maybe I shared. That doesn’t make me somebody’s friend.”
“It’s funny you didn’t say anything about sitting with Lloyd, that’s all. Seems like you’d have mentioned that.”
“I must’ve forgotten it. It didn’t make any impression on me.”
Rhodes was sure that Wilks was lying. Rhodes didn’t know why, but he could tell something was out of kilter.
“Now that I’ve refreshed your memory,” he said, “do you happen to remember what you talked about?”
“Sports, maybe. It was a while back. We didn’t share anything intimate, I can tell you that much. If we had, I’d remember that.”
He sounded convincing.
Rhodes didn’t believe him anyway.
19
RHODES WENT BACK TO THE JAIL AND HIT THE LAW BOOKS, looking for something about alligator ownership. It wasn’t the kind of legal question that occurred every day, and he still wasn’t clear about it.
Neither was the law, he discovered. The legislature had tried to do something about it around the turn of the new century by having the state’s counties enact their own laws, so Rhodes had to look into the county book. As far as he could determine, Blacklin County had so far taken no action regarding the scaly reptiles, which meant that as far as he was concerned Hugh and Lance were in the clear when it came to having the alligator on their property.
“They still assaulted you, though,” Hack said when Rhodes told him what he’d been looking up in the law books.
“Sicced their dog on you, too,” Lawton said. “Don’t forget that.”
Rhodes wasn’t forgetting anything. “They assaulted me twice. I let them get away with it once, so maybe the second time was my fault, in a way.”
“That’s what they’re sayin’,” Lawton told him. “They’ve hired Randy Lawless to get ’em out of here.”
“All they have to do is post their bond,” Rhodes said. “Then they can go home.”
“They don’t want to post their bond,” Lawton said. “They want the charges dropped.”
