Red, White, and Blue Murder

by Bill Crider

  “Of course it’s true that I was seeing Grat,” Vernell said.

  “You were?” Rhodes said.

  “Yes, but only on a business basis.”

  “You might want to explain that.”

  “He and I were the presidents of the historical associations. You know that those two groups haven’t gotten along very well in the past.”

  Rhodes nodded. He knew only too well.

  “Anyway,” Vernell said, “Grat and I thought it was time for that to change. We thought it would be for the best if we could work together rather than at cross-purposes. So we’d had a couple of meetings about establishing goals and that sort of thing, trying to see what we could agree on. We even had both groups cooperating pretty well on the Fourth of July celebration. Are you going to be there?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I don’t suppose that Grat will. That’s really too bad. He was looking forward to all of it, even the barbecue cook-off.”

  Rhodes liked the barbecue cook-off. He thought it was the best part of the whole celebration, maybe because it involved eating. Or maybe because, so far as he knew, no one had yet entered any tofu barbecue.

  “Did Grat ever happen to mention anything to you about Jay Beaman?” Rhodes asked, getting away from the subject of food.

  “Who’s Jay Beaman?”

  “He’s one of the county commissioners.”

  Vernell said, “I don’t follow politics at the local level very much.”

  Rhodes had long ago stopped being surprised by the number of people who paid no attention to local politics. He thought that was too bad, since the county commissioners controlled quite a chunk of the citizens’ tax money. The city didn’t control as much, but Rhodes thought people should at least know who was in charge of running things even there. Most people didn’t, evidently, and they didn’t seem to care much about what happened at the state level, either. Rhodes had seen a newscast not too long before on which a reporter had gone out into the street and asked people if they could name the lieutenant governor of Texas. Of the five people questioned, not a one could come up with the right name.

  “Speaking of politics,” Vernell went on, “I suppose I’ll have to narrate the historical pageant. If Grat’s really dead, I mean.”

  “You might want to start practicing,” Rhodes said. “Just in case.”

  “I’ll do that. But right now I need to work on my sex scene. How about those tips?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Rhodes said.

  “I have a feeling you’re just being modest.”

  Rhodes stood up. “Maybe so. But I read one of your books, and I’m not quite up to the standards of the hero.”

  “Don’t let that bother you,” Vernell said. “Neither is anybody else.”

  Rhodes drove back out to the fireworks stand. There was no one around, but someone had come back and closed it, pulling down the canopy in front and back to cover the displays.

  The fire trucks were gone from the field, and Rhodes could see their tracks in the burned black grass. He could smell the wet ashes.

  He stood there for a few minutes, thinking back over all he knew about the death of Grat Bilson and everything connected to it. There were plenty of suspects, including Yvonne as the current most likely.

  Rhodes hadn’t entirely dismissed Vernell, either. She was a writer, after all, and writers were liars by profession, as someone had once said. Maybe nothing she’d told him was the truth.

  Then there was Linda Fenton, an ex-convict and an arsonist. Who’d put an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stand, anyway? For that matter, who owned the fireworks stands in Blacklin County? Did the same person own them all, or were there multiple owners? It was something that Rhodes had never really thought about before.

  Rhodes went to the county car and got Hack on the radio.

  “Can you find out who owns the fireworks stands in the county?” he asked.

  “That’s my job,” Hack said. “You ask, I do. You don’t have to tell me why. You just tell me what you want, and I find it out.”

  “Hack,” Rhodes said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Are you still pouting?”

  “Poutin’? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Never mind, then. I appreciate all the hard work you do. And I need that information as soon as you can get it.”

  “I’ll call you,” Hack said.

  Rhodes signed off and reached into the car to hang the mike on the hook. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was so hot in the car that he’d stood outside to talk.

  He thought about who else might want to kill Grat. There was one person who had a sizable motive, and that was Jay Beaman. Rhodes hadn’t talked to him yet, and he figured it was about time. He got in the car, started the engine, and turned on the air conditioner. Then he headed for Jay Beaman’s precinct office.

  18

  RHODES DROVE PAST BROWN FIELDS AND BY THE EDGE OF THE COUNTY lake. The cracked black mud baked under the lowering sun, and a few droopy cattails grew along the former shoreline. The water had receded so far toward the middle of the lake that Rhodes knew it was just a matter of time before water rationing began for the towns that weren’t getting their water from wells. And then the wells would start going dry.

  One thing that kept itching at the back of Rhodes’s mind was the phone call Jennifer had gotten from Grat Bilson, the call that had informed her of Rhodes’s own supposed misuse of county funds. Why had Grat done such a thing? Rhodes didn’t have a clue.

  Sure, he and Grat had had their problems in the past, but that was all forgotten. Or maybe not. Maybe Grat thought he could settle an old score by getting Rhodes in trouble.

  There was a major problem with that theory, however. It was so easy to prove that Rhodes had paid for his house to be painted that the accusation didn’t make any sense. Maybe it would later on, Rhodes thought, after he’d found out a few more things.

  Jay Beaman’s precinct barn looked almost interchangeable with James Allen’s. The same kinds of machines were parked under the shed, the long shed, which was painted the same color as the one Allen was in charge of. Rhodes parked the county car and walked to the office, his long shadow going ahead of him across the white gravel.

  There was no Mrs. Wilkie working in the office. Beaman’s secretary was much younger and blonder. She was chewing gum and working on a crossword puzzle in a book of similar puzzles. The nameplate on her desk informed Rhodes that she was Charlene Fife.

  “Is Mr. Beaman in?” Rhodes said.

  The woman looked up from the puzzle book and said, “What’s a six-letter word for faithless, starts with f?”

  “Fickle,” Rhodes said. “F-i-c-k-l-e.”

  The woman started printing letters in the squares. When she was finished, she said, “That makes sixty-two across incite. I should have thought of that.” She printed some more letters, then said, “You want to see Mr. Beaman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll check to make sure he’s here.”

  She stood up and walked around the desk to knock on the office door.

  Maybe the intercom doesn’t work, Rhodes thought.

  There was a muffled voice from behind the door, and Charlene opened it for about three inches.

  “There’s a law officer here to see you,” she said.

  “Let him in, then. I’m always glad to meet an officer of the law.”

  “He’s in,” Charlene said, opening the door wider.

  Rhodes walked through. Jay Beaman heaved himself out of his chair and extended his hand across his desk.

  They shook hands and Beaman said, “Glad to see you, Sheriff. Charlene, you can shut the door now.”

  Beaman was a big man, taller than Rhodes and considerably heavier. He looked strong enough to hammer square pegs into round holes using only his fists. He was wearing western-cut slacks, a blue shirt, and a green baseball cap.

  Rhodes
had never seen Beaman when he wasn’t wearing a cap of some kind. In fact, there was a whole group of people these days who always seemed to have caps on. Not high school kids, who usually wore them backward, but adults. They wore them indoors and outdoors. They wore them in stores, and they wore them in restaurants. In offices. For all Rhodes knew, they wore them in church, in the shower, and in bed.

  “How’s it goin’, Sheriff?” Beaman said. “Have a seat and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Rhodes sat down, but he didn’t say what was on his mind. It wasn’t time for that yet. He’d known Beaman for years. Beaman never liked to get right to the point.

  So Rhodes sat there while Beaman told him a joke that involved a Texas Aggie, a sheep, and a highway cop. He tried to laugh politely when Beaman got to the punchline, but Beaman laughed loud enough for both of them.

  When Beaman was finished laughing, Rhodes nodded toward the computer that sat on its own workstation against the wall.

  “You know how to use that thing?” Rhodes asked.

  “I know a little bit about it. Not much. Computers are Charlene’s department. I just know enough to be dangerous.”

  “You don’t ever surf the Internet?”

  “I don’t know the Internet from a tennis net,” Beaman said, laughing again. “You gonna be at the big barbecue cook-off tomorrow?” he asked when he was through laughing.

  “I’ll be there,” Rhodes said. “How about you?”

  Rhodes recalled that Beaman enjoyed the Fourth of July cook-off even more than Rhodes did. In fact, Beaman had won the rib-eating contest for the last three years in a row.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Beaman said. “Don’t think I’ll enter the fun run this year, though.”

  Rhodes didn’t remember that Beaman had entered the fun run any more often than Rhodes had. He said, “Have you talked to a reporter named Jennifer Loam?”

  “Whoa, there, Sheriff,” Beaman said, putting up his big, rough hands, palms out. “You kinda switched subjects in midstream there.”

  “I apologize,” Rhodes said unapologetically.

  Beaman’s eyes narrowed. “You better watch how you talk to me, Sheriff. I control the budget for your office.”

  “You and the other three commissioners,” Rhodes said. “But I know you’re a fair man. You wouldn’t cut my budget just because I was doing my job.”

  “What’s your job got to do with me and that reporter?”

  “She thinks you might have been engaged in some criminal activity,” Rhodes said.

  “That’s bull corn. She came around here trying to get me to say something for her story, implying that maybe I’d done something wrong by taking a campaign contribution from a man who got a county contract. Hell, you know all us commissioners would rather deal with somebody we know than with some stranger. So what if the man who gets the contract is a contributor? We know he’ll do a fine job.”

  Rhodes had pretty much known Beaman would say something like that.

  “So you wouldn’t consider that contribution a bribe.”

  “No, sir. No way. Ralph Oliver probably gave a contribution to every man on the commissioner’s court.”

  Rhodes didn’t doubt it, but that little fact would make Jennifer Loam’s article a lot less interesting. If she ever wrote it.

  “What about Linda Fenton?”

  Beaman tried not to look at the computer, and he almost managed it.

  “Who?” he said.

  “Linda Fenton,” Rhodes said. “She’s supposed to be a friend of yours, or so I’ve heard.”

  “Well, you heard wrong. I don’t know who that is. Never even heard of her.”

  It was cool in Beaman’s office, but the big man was sweating heavily. “You’re sure?” Rhodes said.

  “Sure, I’m sure. Who is she, anyhow?”

  “An ex-convict,” Rhodes said. “Sent up for arson. It’s just as well you don’t know her. It might be bad for your political career if people heard you were associating with someone like that. And speaking of arson, I guess you heard about the man who died in a fire the other night.”

  “I heard. Somebody told me it was Grat Bilson.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I don’t remember. Somebody who came by today. Was it Grat who died?”

  “Could’ve been. He hasn’t been positively identified yet.”

  “If it was Grat, that’s too bad. Old Grat was a big wheel in the Fourth of July celebration. We’ll miss him.”

  Beaman said it with such sincerity that Rhodes almost believed him. But then he remembered that Beaman was a politician and had long ago learned how to fake sincerity.

  “You have any other questions for me, Sheriff?” Beaman said, and Rhodes knew he was being dismissed. He wasn’t ready to leave, however.

  “I’d like to know where you were the night Grat, or whoever it was, died in that fire.”

  “I don’t remember,” Beaman said.

  “It was only a couple of nights ago,” Rhodes said.

  “I was probably at home. That’s where I am, most nights, unless there’s a meeting of the court. I don’t get out much. A man my age needs his rest.”

  Beaman had been a year behind Rhodes in school. Rhodes said, “Didn’t you used to go to the dog races down in La Marque? I hear those things can go on until pretty late at night, and it’s a long drive down there.”

  “I just go on the weekends, and not but about once a month. Can’t stand too much excitement. That all you wanted to know?”

  “For now,” Rhodes said, standing up. “I’ll see you at the cook-off.”

  “I’ll be there,” Beaman said, but he looked a little bilious. Rhodes figured the rib-eating title might be up for grabs.

  19

  RALPH OLIVER MUST HAVE MADE A LOT OF MONEY BUILDING ROADS, Rhodes thought. The contractor lived outside the city limits of Clearview in a house that sat on top of a low hill. The house was just a little bit smaller than the county’s only country club. It occurred to Rhodes that a man like Oliver had a lot to lose if he were involved in fraud. Oliver had as much of a motive for killing Grat Bilson as anyone if he was guilty of bribing Beaman. And if he knew that there was some kind of investigation being done by a local reporter.

  Oliver’s lawn covered most of his hill, and it was beautiful. That was the only word for it. And Rhodes could see why. The grass was trimmed perfectly, and it was being watered by a sprinkler system. The water drops sparkled in the late-afternoon sun as they fell. Oliver clearly didn’t care that there was a shortage of water in the county. Or he might have had his own private well. Lots of people who lived outside of town had them.

  Rhodes drove up the paved semicircular drive to the top of the hill and stopped in front of the house, feeling almost as if he’d driven onto the set of Gone with the Wind. There was a fenced pasture in back of the house, and a large metal barn stood on part of it.

  Oliver and his wife, Julia, were sitting on the columned porch of the house in white-painted wooden rocking chairs, drinking what appeared to be lemonade. There was a pitcher of it sitting on a white table between their chairs.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” Oliver said when Rhodes got out of the car. “Hot enough for you?”

  Rhodes grimaced, and Oliver laughed.

  “Just kidding around,” he said. “Come on up and have a glass of lemonade with us.”

  Rhodes said he’d be glad to, and Julia got out of her chair.

  “I’ll be right back with a glass,” she said, and disappeared through the front door.

  Oliver stayed in his chair. He was a stocky man with a lot of hair. All over. He was wearing a T-shirt and tennis shorts. Wiry black hairs stuck out of the T-shirt here and there. His legs were hairy all the way up to the shorts, and his head was covered with a tangled mass of thick curls, mostly black but with a little gray mixed in. A tennis racket and a towel lay near his feet.

  “Julia and I just finished a game,” Oliver said. He picked up the towel and mopped his fac
e, then dropped the towel back on the porch. “The tennis court’s out back. I built it so we could get some exercise. Of course with this heat we’re having, we’re so tired when we finish a set that all we want to do is sit here and watch the traffic on the road. That’s what we were doing when we saw you driving along. Sure didn’t think you’d be stopping by, though. Is this a social call?”

  Rhodes didn’t have to answer because Julia came back out. She handed him a glass with a paper napkin wrapped around the bottom.

  “Let me pour for you, Sheriff,” Julia said.

  She was about forty, with short blond hair and an athletic build. She looked a lot more like a tennis player than her husband did.

  When she’d finished pouring, she handed Rhodes the glass and sat down. There was an extra chair, so Rhodes sat in it and sipped his lemonade. It was sweet and cold, and it felt good going down his throat, which was still scratchy from all the smoke he’d inhaled.

  “You asked whether this was a social call,” Rhodes said when he’d drunk about half the lemonade. “It isn’t. Not exactly. I came by to ask you if you knew a man named Grat Bilson.”

  “Grat?” Oliver said. “Sure, I know Grat. Everybody knows Grat, isn’t that right Julia?” Julia nodded, and Oliver went on. “He’s a big wheel in the historical society. What about him?”

  “Somebody killed him,” Rhodes said, even though he still wasn’t positive. He just wanted to get Oliver’s reaction.

  Oliver looked down at his tennis shoes and sipped at his lemonade. After a couple of seconds, he said, “Damn shame. Grat was an okay guy. What’s his dying got to do with me, though?”

  “Probably nothing,” Rhodes said. “Seen Jay Beaman lately?”

  “Good old Jay. Haven’t seen him in a week or two. Don’t tell me he’s dead, too.”