by Bill Crider
What he needed was more and better information; he needed someone who had heard something. It was time to start talking to the informants. You couldn’t have as much cash on hand as Bert Ramsey had and not cause some talk, not in Blacklin County, you couldn’t. There was bound to be someone out there who’d heard something, no matter how insignificant.
The shotgun bothered Rhodes, too. A shotgun wasn’t something you carried around on a motorcycle, right out in the open. A cyclist would maybe carry a pistol, or a knife. Maybe even a length of chain around his waist. But a shotgun? No way. Unless, of course, he carried it cowboy style, in a leather scabbard. Rhodes supposed it could be concealed on a motorcycle easily enough that way.
He had another sandwich, drank a canned Dr. Pepper, even though he vastly preferred the bottled ones, and watched the end of the movie. Then he went into the bedroom and got ten one-dollar bills out of a cigar box he kept on top of the dresser. He was willing to pay for information, but he wasn’t going to pay much.
The cigar box had once held Hay-A-Tampa Jewel cigars. Rhodes had been to a restaurant where the waiter brought all the male diners a Hay-A-Tampa Jewel after dinner. He remembered that the cigars were small, with a wooden tip. He wondered if they were still being made. As he closed the lid of the box, the telephone rang.
Chapter 8
Hack was on the line. “I’ve had a call about some motorsickles, Sheriff,” he said.
Rhodes had a feeling he’d just saved a few dollars. “You want to check it out yourself, or have somebody else do it?” Hack asked.
“I’ll check it,” Rhodes said. “Who made the call?”
“You sure you don’t want me to put Ruth on this one?” Hack asked. Rhodes noticed that he hadn’t called her “the new deputy,” and he wondered what was going on.
“No,” Rhodes said. “I want to take care of this myself. Now, who made the call?”
Hack didn’t exactly laugh. “Mrs. Wilkie,” he said.
“Oh,” Rhodes said. After a few seconds, he said, “I’ll take care of it anyway. I’ll be going out there now.”
“All right, Sheriff,” Hack said. “You’re the boss.” He hung up.
Rhodes held the phone for a minute, then set it down. He walked back to the dresser, opened the cigar box, and put the ten dollars back inside. He thought that he’d rather have paid out the money than visit Mrs. Wilkie, but there wasn’t really any choice.
It wasn’t that he exactly disliked Mrs. Wilkie; it was just that she had ideas that he didn’t agree with. One of the main ones was that he should marry her. His wife had been dead about a year when Mrs. Wilkie began making what Rhodes considered “advances.” She was at least ten years older than he, though she would never have admitted it, and she had a good ten pounds on him. She also had the most amazing red hair he’d ever seen, or to put it more accurately, the most amazing orange hair he’d ever seen. After Rhodes had become involved with Ivy, Mrs. Wilkie had more or less given up her pursuit, but the thought of having to meet with her made him slightly nervous. It wasn’t beyond her to have concocted some story just to get him out to Milsby, the tiny community where she lived. No wonder Hack had been nearly laughing.
Still, it didn’t seem likely that Mrs. Wilkie would have made up a story about motorcycles. Hardly anyone knew that Rhodes was looking for that sort of information. He’d have to check it out.
Rhodes drove by the old schoolhouse which was just about all that remained of what had once been the town of Milsby. He was fond of that schoolhouse, because that was where he’d first really become aware of Ivy Daniel.
He hadn’t really allowed himself to think of Ivy all day. After last night, he was sure that they had crossed a certain line in their relationship and that there would be no going back to where they had been before. He was going to have to give that some serious thought, but not until he had time to devote his full energy to it.
Mrs. Wilkie lived in a nondescript brick-veneer house that was a little newer than most of the homes around it. Not too many houses had been built in Milsby in the last few years.
Rhodes parked in the drive, got out, and knocked on the door.
Mrs. Wilkie was a little flustered to see him. “Oh, my,” she said. “I really didn’t expect . . . I mean, I thought one of the deputies . . .”
“I do a lot of the work myself,” Rhodes said. “We’re a pretty small county.” He smiled.
“Well, come in, come in,” Mrs. Wilkie said, opening the door wider.
Rhodes stepped inside. Mrs. Wilkie was wearing a flowered print dress of the same basic color as her hair, with bright yellow and white flowers on it. The yellow flowers had white centers; the white ones had yellow centers. It was quite a sight.
The living room in which they stood didn’t go with the house. It reminded Rhodes of something you might have seen fifty years before. On his left was a bookcase covered with a heavy black stain. It had glass doors that slid up to the top and protected a very old, green World Book Encyclopedia and a complete set of The Book of Knowledge. There was a set of the works of Mark Twain, and a set of the complete works of James Whitcomb Riley. The couch and chairs all had print covers, and there were doilies on the arms. Even the television set was old. It had a round picture tube.
“Sit down, Sheriff,” Mrs. Wilkie said.
Rhodes sat in one of the chairs. Its springs had held up well over the years. “I understand that you’ve had some trouble with motorcycles,” he said.
Mrs. Wilkie put her hand to her hair and patted it. “That’s right, Sheriff. It’s just disgraceful, the noise they make. And all hours of the night.”
“They come by the house, here?”
“Yes, right in front, rousing the whole neighborhood. Al James lives right down the road, and she says—”
Rhodes interrupted. “Have they ever come by during the day?”
“No, never, but Al says—”
“Has anybody seen who these motorcycle riders are?”
“Please, Sheriff, I’m trying to tell you something.” Mrs. Wilkie sounded exasperated, and Rhodes didn’t blame her. He’d been breaking in and not letting her tell her story the way she wanted. He knew better, but he was always defensive around her, and he was trying to get the information and get out as quickly as possible. He didn’t let things affect him that way, usually.
“I’m sorry,” Rhodes said. “What about Mrs. James?”
“Well, as I was trying to say, Al believes that they’re camping out down by the lake on the Gottschalk place. She hasn’t seen them, and as far as I know no one else has seen them. They don’t seem to be around during the day. But we hear them every night, and Al says they come up that road that runs by her house and on down by the Gottschalk land. So she thinks that’s where they are.”
“How long has this been going on?” Rhodes asked.
“Not long, I can assure you, or I would have called before now,” Mrs. Wilkie said. Her tone made it clear that she had suffered great aggravation. “I value my rest, Sheriff, and when I’m disturbed in the middle of the night I can seldom get back to sleep. The first time I heard them was last Thursday.”
And Bert Ramsey gets himself killed on Saturday night, Rhodes thought, after his mother hears motorcycles. “I think I’d better get on down to that lake,” he said. “I’ll see if anyone’s there, and I’ll find out if they have permission to be there. If they don’t, I’ll move them along and maybe you can begin getting a little rest again.”
“Oh, good,” Mrs. Wilkie said. “You just don’t know what it’s like to be disturbed like that.”
Rhodes wondered how many nights in the last year he’d been disturbed by telephone calls from people wanting him to locate wayward tomcats or quiet down noisy parties or settle a marital argument. Probably a lot more often than Mrs. Wilkie had. But he didn’t say anything. He got up to leave.
Mrs. Wilkie stepped to his side and plucked at his sleeve. “You don’t really need to rush off,” she said coyly. “Would
n’t you like a cup of coffee? I could perk some in just a minute.”
Rhodes, who didn’t drink coffee under any circumstances, felt depressed. He’d thought Mrs. Wilkie had given up on him, but evidently she hadn’t, quite. Probably since his relationship with Ivy Daniel hadn’t developed beyond the “good friends” stage, at least in its most public phase, Mrs. Wilkie was encouraged.
“Ah, no,” he said. “It’s getting late, and I’d like to get on down there before it gets dark.”
It was a good long time until dark, and Mrs. Wilkie knew it. Rhodes had to give her credit, though. She let him go with good grace. As he backed out of the drive, he saw her standing in the door in her flamboyant print dress.
It was still hot and dry, and a rooster-tail of white dust followed the county car along the dirt road onto which Rhodes turned at Al James’s house. The cows had grazed nearly all the grass off the pastures beside the road, and Rhodes could see bare dirt and rock showing through. The cows were gathered under the trees to take advantage of the little relief offered by the shade. If it didn’t rain, and rain soon, the cattlemen would be in real trouble.
Rhodes came to the Gottschalk property and turned in. There was no gate, only a cattle guard of iron pipe. Rhodes had never thought cattle guards were very effective, and he was pretty sure Gottschalk wasn’t running any cows on his land. Otherwise, there would have been a gate.
The car topped a gentle rise, following the ruts that made up what now passed for a road, and Rhodes looked down at the lake. It really wasn’t a lake, of course, and probably wouldn’t have been considered much more than a good-sized swimming hole in a wetter part of the country, but in Texas it passed for a lake. Unfortunately, because of the hot, dry weather, the lake was even smaller than usual. About half of the shallow end was now mostly mud-flat, and most of the water was concentrated by the twelve-foot-high dam. Also near the dam, but a good way out on the dry land, there were four motorcycles and a small tent. There was a huge oak tree nearby, and four men sat under it. Rhodes drove on down.
The four men didn’t bother to get up when Rhodes stopped the car and stepped out. They just looked at him. He looked back. All four were wearing jeans covered with dirt and grease, and all had on denim vests but no shirts. Rhodes was surprised that all of them looked fairly clean. He guessed that they’d been swimming in the lake to keep cool.
Finally, one of them spoke. He was sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree, smoking a cigarette. “Well, fellas, looks like we’ve got us a visit from the High Sheriff himself. What’s the trouble, Sheriff?”
Rhodes looked at the man. He was older than Rhodes would have thought, and he didn’t really fit Rhodes’s idea of a biker at all. His iron-colored hair was greasy, but it was short and combed straight back in a widow’s peak. He looked quite short, and Rhodes guessed that if he stood up he wouldn’t be over five-feet five or six. He was slightly pudgy, but his face had a vaguely satanic look because of a pointed chin. He looked to Rhodes like a congenital liar. On one arm was the Los Muertos tattoo.
“I was just wondering if you folks had permission to camp here,” Rhodes said. His eyes looked over the area, but no shotgun was in sight. It could have been in the tent, however.
“Well, now, Sheriff,” the one who had spoken first said, “I expect we have as much right to be here as you do. More, in fact. Isn’t that right, Nellie?”
The man addressed as Nellie stood up. His hair was cropped close to his head, and he looked lean and fit. In fact, Rhodes thought he looked a lot like the German SS officers in old war movies. “That’s right, Rapper.” He looked at Rhodes. “The guy that owns this land is my uncle. He said it was fine with him if we stayed here a few days. Don’t recall him saying anything about letting anyone else visit, though.”
“I’m investigating a complaint,” Rhodes said.
Rapper stood up. Rhodes had been right about his height. “What complaint would that be, Sheriff?”
“Some of the residents have mentioned a lot of noise late at night,” Rhodes said.
“That’s just too bad,” Rapper said. “We have a right to go where we please, when we please. If the local yokels don’t like it, they can buy some ear plugs.”
One of the other men stood up. He had wavy hair that seemed to Rhodes to have a strangely greenish tinge. “Yuh,” he said. “You tell ‘em, Rapper. If they don’t like it, let ‘em—”
“Shut up, Jayse,” Rapper said. He didn’t even bother to look at the man, who shut up immediately. Rhodes didn’t have any doubt who was the boss of this bunch. He wondered if it was another case of the little guy who loved and took advantage of authority.
“Let me tell you something, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “We’re just four guys who like the great outdoors. We may drive noisy machines, but we’re not hurting anybody. So why don’t you just go catch some real criminals and leave us alone. If you do, we won’t report you for trespassing.”
The arrogance seemed to come off the little man in waves, and Rhodes could sense that he was accustomed to getting his way through fear and intimidation. Rhodes, however, didn’t intimidate as easily as some people might have guessed by looking at his easy-going face. “I’ll leave,” he said. “But if I have any more complaints about the noise, I’ll have a deputy out on these roads every night. With backup from the DPS. And if one of you has a cracked taillight or goes one mile an hour over the speed limit, you’ll be looking at the inside of a cell. We’ll check your records, too, and if there’re any outstanding warrants against you, you’ll be a gone goose.”
“Yuh, uh, don’t talk to Rapper like that, man,” Jayse said. “He’s put guys—”
“Shut up, asshole,” Rapper said, again without even looking at Jayse.
“Ah, but Rapper . . .” Jayse began.
Rapper spun on him. “I said shut up!” he screamed. His face turned a deep, dark red as the blood rushed to it. The loose skin under his neck shook like a turkey’s wattle.
Jayse cowered away. Nellie said nothing. The fourth man still hadn’t moved.
Rapper controlled himself with a visible effort and turned back to Rhodes. “We’ll be good little boys, Sheriff. You can tell the widows and orphans that they can sleep well tonight. We’ll tippytoe down the roads from now on.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
Rhodes accepted the meaning and not the intent. “Fine. I’m sure you’re as good as your word. Enjoy your camping trip.” He walked to his car and got in. As he drove away, he could see Rapper starting for Jayse with balled fists. The fourth man still hadn’t moved. Nellie was watching calmly.
Chapter 9
Rhodes believed that he was pretty good at reading people, and he read Rapper as a sadistic bully, just exactly the type who might blow away a man with a shotgun, even if the man was standing in his own front door. The fact that Rhodes hadn’t seen a shotgun didn’t mean much. If he’d tried to look into the tent, Rapper would no doubt have caused trouble.
It bothered Rhodes that Rapper had agreed so readily to keep down the noise. Despite his sarcasm, Rapper had meant what he said, or so Rhodes believed. Rapper wouldn’t have given in so easily on that point under ordinary circumstances. Which probably meant that he had something else to hide, something that he didn’t want to jeopardize because of petty hassles. Murder was something to hide, all right.
As the car’s tires rapped across the cattle guard, the radio crackled and Hack came on. Hack didn’t believe much in radio discipline. “You out there, Sheriff?” he asked.
Rhodes picked up the mike. “I’m here. What’s up?”
“Thought you might want to come on by the jail when you get a chance. The new deputy’s here, and she has somethin’ to tell you.” They were back to “the new deputy,” Rhodes thought. At least when Ruth was around. “Clyde Ballinger called, too. Says to tell you that Bert Ramsey’s funeral will be tomorrow at ten o’clock, in the funeral chapel.”
“Got it. That all?” Rhodes said.
“Ther
e’s a couple of other little things,” Hack said. “They’ll keep till you get here.”
“Ten minutes,” Rhodes said, and hung up the mike.
It was getting late when Rhodes got back to the jail, though it was still well over an hour until dark. He parked the car and went inside.
Lawton was nowhere to be seen. Ruth Grady was talking to Hack about the radio. “It’s amazing to me that you can operate something as complex as that,” she said. “And to stay here all hours doing it! That must take real dedication.”
Hack grinned. “I guess it does, at that,” he said. “ ‘Course, I don’t take too much money for it, either, being retired and all. I guess I’m just full of the public spirit.”
Rhodes smiled. He knew that Ruth Grady could operate any radio ever made, or could learn to in about ten seconds, but she also knew the importance of a good working relationship within the department. And she would obviously do whatever she had to do to get it. Not that it hurt Hack to be praised. Rhodes himself probably didn’t do it often enough. He reminded himself to try to improve.
“Well,” Rhodes said, “what’s the big news that didn’t need to go out over the radio?”
“You’d better give him your news first, Hack,” Ruth said.
“Aw, mine’s not so important,” Hack said. “I . . . uh . . . I’ll wait till later.”
“No, go ahead,” Ruth told him. “A crime ought to be reported as soon as possible.”
“Well, you couldn’t exactly call it a crime,” Hack said. “I mean, it seemed like a crime at first, but it weren’t one after all.”
Rhodes noticed to his surprise that Hack seemed to be blushing. He was suddenly very curious. “Ruth’s right, Hack. Let’s have it.”
“Well . . . uh . . . we got this call from Mrs. Wheelis over on Stem Street.” Hack stopped. “It was really all just a mistake,” he said at last.
