Shotgun Saturday Night

by Bill Crider

  “Nope,” Hack said. “I mean ‘nope’ he didn’t write her a ticket for theft, not that he doesn’t have a little sense. He gave her a ticket for criminal mischief. Maybe he threw in a little trespassin’. I’m not sure about that one. Anyway, the manager don’t want her back in there, least not for a while.”

  Rhodes wasn’t really surprised. People would do strange things to save a dollar, or even less. He was sorry that it had to be Mrs. Laughlin, though, and he knew that although the incident was funny to Lawton and Hack, it wasn’t funny to her. It was very probably the worst thing she’d ever done in her life. She would pay her fine and worry about it for years. Meanwhile, Rapper and Nellie were out scot-free. Some days really got a man down, and it looked as if this was going to be one of those days.

  Rhodes told Hack to take care of things, got in his pickup, and went home for lunch.

  Chapter 15

  Rhodes thought that his house had never seemed quite so empty. It was one of those times when he almost wished that Ralph Claymore had won the primary election, one of those times when being sheriff seemed to be a job that someone else could do better.

  It wasn’t just the empty house—Rhodes had gotten nearly used to that, though that was probably part of it. It was mainly the fact that he couldn’t quite get a handle on what was happening. Rapper had gotten away from him twice, and unless Jayse talked, the chances for finding Rapper again looked dim. There was a chance that Ruth Grady’s contact would get Rapper the word that Jayse had talked and thus smoke Rapper out, but Rhodes couldn’t count on that.

  To top it all off, there wasn’t even any bologna for a sandwich. Rhodes wondered briefly just how many bologna sandwiches he’d eaten since Claire’s death, but it wasn’t something that he wanted to think about for too long. He wondered if Ivy liked bologna. He needed to talk to her, having failed to call her last night. After his tussle with Rapper, he hadn’t felt like talking to anyone.

  At least he had something for Speedo to eat. He went outside and got the sack of Ol’ Roy out of the pickup and carried it into the back yard. Speedo was there, sleeping in the shade of a native pecan tree. He heard the crackling of the dog food sack, or maybe Rhodes’s footsteps, and raised his head.

  Rhodes put down the sack and went into the house to look for a bowl. He found an old Tupperware salad bowl in one of the cabinets and brought it out. Then he ripped the top off the bag of dog food. Speedo’s ears perked up at the ripping sound. He got to his feet, shook himself, and trotted over to Rhodes.

  Rhodes poured some of the food into the bowl. He had intended to carry it over to the shade, but Speedo immediately poked his nose in and started eating. Rhodes set the dog food bag in the garage and rummaged around until he found an old watering dish. He filled it at a faucet and set it by the food. Speedo stopped eating and slurped the water noisily.

  “Sorry I forgot about the water,” Rhodes said. “It’s been a while since I had a dog.”

  Speedo didn’t seem to mind. He finished drinking, then turned back to the food. Rhodes stood watching him eat. The day had gotten hot, and Rhodes could feel the heat soaking through his clothes. A droplet of sweat ran down his ribs.

  “You had the right idea, staying in the shade,” he said to the dog. “You go on and eat. I’m going back in.”

  Talking to Speedo had cheered Rhodes up some, but not enough. He didn’t even feel like watching the Million Dollar Movie, a Hammer gem called Prehistoric Women. Any other day he would have watched it with amazement, but he had too much on his mind to be amazed or amused by an inept movie.

  Who killed Bert Ramsey? Rapper? Why? The crop hadn’t been harvested, and Ramsey was growing more all the time. To kill him was to cut off the source. Cullens? Surely not. A government agent wanted information, not a man’s death. Wyneva Greer? She hadn’t even been living with Ramsey for months. Yet Rhodes felt that they were all somehow involved.

  As for Cullens, Rapper could easily have tortured him for information and killed him either by accident or design. Or he could have watched cheerfully while one of the others tortured him. Rapper was that kind of man. The best thing that Rhodes could say for Rapper was that he’d never seen either Rapper or one of the others with a gun.

  And that was another thing that really bothered Rhodes. He hadn’t found his own pistol the night before, and neither had anyone else. Rhodes had another pistol, and he was wearing it, but now he was pretty sure that Rapper had a pistol, too. That didn’t cheer Rhodes up at all.

  He stepped outside and looked in the flat, black mailbox, remembering that he hadn’t checked the day before.

  There was a circular advertising a sale at Wal-Mart, and another circular offering him siding for his house ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!! if he would consent to being a “Showcase Home.” He decided to decline. There was also an envelope with a cartoon drawing of Ed McMahon on the outside, promising to Mr. Dan Rhodes that he had (if he was lucky) a prize of TEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!! awaiting him. Rhodes put that envelope carefully aside. He always responded to sweepstakes letters, even though he never bought any of the products and figured that his chances of winning were nil. He also figured that the twenty-two cents he spent on the stamp was a small price to pay for the ten or fifteen minutes of pleasure he got from thinking about what he would do with TEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

  The last item was a letter from Kathy, written on some kind of card that folded into its own envelope and sealed with a gold foil circle. He peeled off the circle and read the neatly penned letter.

  Kathy had settled in to her new apartment, and while she hadn’t really met anyone yet, she was sure she was going to like it. She missed her father, of course, and she hoped that he was eating something besides bologna sandwiches for lunch. Rhodes laughed. So far he hadn’t eaten anything.

  Kathy went on to say that she hoped Ivy was doing well, and she wondered if he had any news for her about himself and Ivy. Rhodes knew that she strongly approved of the idea of his getting married again, and he knew that he should write her and let her know of the recent developments. He wasn’t much on writing. Maybe he could call.

  Then he thought about the “recent developments,” something he hadn’t really allowed himself to do. He still wasn’t able to devote his full attention to the matter, but he decided to think about it anyway.

  Except that he still didn’t know what to think.

  On the one hand, there was obviously strong feelings between himself and Ivy Daniel. He liked to be with her, and he could tell that she enjoyed herself in his company. And, of course, there was something more than that, as he’d discovered a couple of nights ago. Not that things had gotten out of hand. Far from it. But still, they had kissed, and there was certainly an electricity in it that he’d been pretty sure that he’d never feel again. He was too old for that sort of thing. But there it was. To tell the truth, it scared him a little.

  On the other hand, there was his job, which Ivy had at least once expressed a concern about. It could certainly be dangerous, though it usually wasn’t. It usually wasn’t even as physically taxing as it had been for the last few days. It did demand that he be on call twenty-four hours a day, just like a doctor. If something came up that required the presence of the chief law officer of the county, he had to appear, no matter if it was three o’clock in the morning or the middle of Sunday afternoon.

  And on the other hand—if I had another hand, Rhodes thought—there was Ivy herself. She had run for justice of the peace once and might want to again. But if she married Rhodes, that would be impossible. Definite conflict of interest, there.

  Of course, Rhodes thought, he had more or less proposed to Ivy, and she had more or less accepted. He wished he could remember the exact words, but he couldn’t. Not that he was trying to weasel out of it. In fact, sitting there in the empty house, nobody there but him and the dog, the idea of Ivy being around pleased him quite a bit. She wouldn’t be there during the day, naturally, since she would want to keep her job, but just the thou
ght of her presence would cheer him up.

  He wondered if Bert Ramsey had felt that way about Wyneva Greer, or if Buster Cullens had. The more he thought about Buster Cullens, the more he wondered about Wyneva Greer. There really wasn’t much doubt in his mind that Wyneva had been the third person in the woods at Rapper’s tent, though he hadn’t mentioned that to Malvin and Cox. Could it be that they knew something that they hadn’t mentioned to him?

  Maybe he was getting cynical. Surely two federal agents, who had decided to be so frank with him about how they hadn’t quite trusted him, were going to level now, weren’t they? Probably not.

  They had said that they wanted to know why Wyneva was with Buster, but maybe they knew. Maybe they just didn’t want Rhodes to know that they knew. Maybe they didn’t want Rhodes to know.

  When you looked at it, Rhodes thought, it was really pretty obvious. Buster Cullens knew about Bert Ramsey. He didn’t know everything, though. He didn’t know where the dope was going after it was harvested. So he stole Ramsey’s girl and found out from her. Or he tried to find out.

  Maybe he made a mistake, slipped up, was too obvious, and Wyneva had caught on. And instead of reporting to Ramsey—after all, she’d left him already—she’d reported to Rapper. Rapper had done the rest, after first trying to find out how much Cullens knew, and after killing Bert Ramsey to shut his mouth permanently. Now there was no one left to tie Rapper and Los Muertos into the dope. It was just there in Ramsey’s backyard, so to speak, with no one to blame except a dead man. And if the federal boys hadn’t come by, Rapper could have harvested it with no one the wiser.

  All in all, Rhodes thought, it wasn’t a bad theory. There were a few holes in it, though. For one thing, it seemed to Rhodes that Rapper, though obviously a lunatic, was fairly clever. He would certainly realize that it was much better to be brought in on a dope rap than on a double homicide.

  But connecting Rapper to Ramsey’s death would not be easy, and it was only an accident that Rhodes had walked in on Rapper at Cullens’s house. It wasn’t Rapper’s fault that Rhodes had been able to walk out of the latter situation. So maybe it was the way Rhodes had it figured. He thought he would play it that way and see what happened, anyway.

  He walked over to the phone and called the Trail’s End motel. “Hey, Gerald,” he said when the desk clerk answered. “You got two guys named Cox and Malvin registered?”

  “Sure do, Sheriff,” Gerald answered.

  Rhodes was a little surprised that they’d used their real names, but since Cullens was dead and probably exposed anyway, he guessed it didn’t really matter. Besides, he didn’t know how the federal boys preferred to operate, anyway. “Connect me with their room, will you?” he asked.

  “Sure thing, Sheriff.” Rhodes heard clicking sounds and then the ringing of the telephone.

  Cox answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s Dan Rhodes. I’ve got one little question for you.”

  “Shoot,” Cox said. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  “It’s about Wyneva Greer.”

  “What about her?” Cox said. No hesitation. No wariness.

  “I just have this feeling you know more than you’re telling,” Rhodes said.

  The line hummed for a second or two while Cox said nothing. Then there was a sigh. “What makes you think that?”

  “It’s just a feeling I have,” Rhodes said. “Plus the fact that I just don’t really believe that an agent of yours could live with someone for months without you knowing quite a bit about what was going on.”

  “Is this telephone secure?”

  Rhodes laughed. Cox had asked in all seriousness, but Rhodes found it hard to take the question in the spirit in which it had been intended. The idea of a bugged telephone in Blacklin County was almost ridiculous. “It’s secure,” he said.

  “I guess it may seem pretty funny that I’d even ask,” Cox said. “Just a habit. Anyway, you’re right. Another little habit we have is holding back a little something. No reflection on you.”

  “Of course not,” Rhodes said, not believing a word of it.

  “We did have a little information on the Greer woman,” Cox said. “Cullens had evidently met her at some kind of nightclub while she was with Ramsey. So he decided to get to know her a little better, hoping for some inside information. He got to know her a little better than he intended.” There was a note of disapproval in the voice now. “Cullens had been in a little trouble for things like that in the past.”

  “Did he learn anything?”

  “Not enough,” Cox said. “She was tied in with Los Muertos, that’s definite. She apparently came to the area to find out where Bert Ramsey was and what he was doing. We believe Los Muertos, or at least Rapper, planned to use him in the dope business, which seems to be what happened.”

  “Once a dead man, always a dead man,” Rhodes said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. That’s pretty much the way I had it figured,” Rhodes said. “Is it possible at all that Cullens made a mistake in dealing with her? That he maybe gave too much away?”

  “It’s possible,” Cox said, the disapproval strong in his voice now. “I was against his being assigned to this job. I didn’t like to work with him. He was undependable.”

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore,” Rhodes said.

  “True,” Cox said with no apparent regret. “Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment,” Rhodes said. “If I think of something, I’ll give you a call.” He hung up the phone. He wished he knew more about Wyneva Greer, and he thought back to the only two times he had seen her. Both times, she had looked afraid. Not that he blamed her for looking that way at the funeral. Mrs. Ramsey was a formidable woman, and even Rhodes might have given way had she been advancing on him. But not Wyneva. She might have looked a bit frightened, but she left only to avoid a scene.

  What was it that Mrs. Ramsey had said to her? Rhodes tried to remember. Something like, “Bert wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” He wondered if Mrs. Ramsey blamed Wyneva for the death, or if she even thought that Wyneva had something to do with it. Maybe Mrs. Ramsey knew more than he thought. He would have to talk to her again.

  Wyneva hadn’t spoken on Cullens’s porch. Rhodes had thought at the time that she was afraid of Cullens, but it could have been that she was afraid of Rhodes, afraid that he was onto the game. Maybe even afraid that he had come to arrest her for the murder.

  All of Rhodes’s speculations, however, had led him nowhere. Oh, well, he thought, at least I’ve cleared the air. At least I have some idea of where I stand.

  It was strange, but the quiet time of sitting and thinking through what he knew and didn’t know had made him feel much better. If he still hadn’t figured anything out, he at least knew where he stood. And what he didn’t know, he’d thought about. There was the pretense of action, even if no action had been taken, even if no decisions had been made.

  He looked at the clock. The whole afternoon had slipped by. Time had a way of doing that to him now, a sign of age, he guessed. It seemed as if the years went by like bullets. No wonder the young seemed to get more done. They had more time. When he was younger, the afternoon would have seemed to him like a week seemed now. There was a certain amount of unfairness there, but he didn’t dwell on it.

  He went back outside. Speedo was still under the tree, but he looked much more content. Rhodes picked up the water dish, and the sun-heated water sloshed out over his hand. “Sorry I forgot to put this in the shade,” he said. He carried it and the food bowl over to the tree where Speedo lay. He got the dog food and poured a little more in the bowl, then refilled the water bowl. Speedo watched with a bit of interest, but he didn’t stir himself to get up and eat or drink. There were times when Rhodes envied dogs. Speedo obviously didn’t mind that Cullens was dead. He was getting food and water. He had a shady place to lie down. He had, in fact, just about everything he needed. If he couldn’t be young again, Rhodes
thought, he might like to be a dog.

  Rhodes went back in the house and walked to the telephone, this time to call Ivy. She would be home from work now.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Rhodes said. “Want to go to a funeral?”

  Chapter 16

  The Clearview Cemetery had been located in the same spot ever since the first settler was buried there a little over a hundred years before. It had grown considerably since that first grave, but probably none of those who lay at rest there had ever been to a funeral quite like the one to which Rhodes was taking Ivy.

  The cemetery was on the western edge of the town, surrounded by a low fence of iron spikes. There was a wrought iron arch over the main entrance, which was never closed. Every now and then Rhodes would send a patrol through late at night to run out the high school kids who had found it a quiet place to park.

  There was not a lot of green grass on the graves; the recent rain hadn’t been enough to help much. Rhodes drove through the entrance and down the winding gravel roads to the north end. There was no one else there yet.

  Rhodes and Ivy got out of the pickup. Though it didn’t appear to be so on the approaching drive, the cemetery was located on a hilltop. They could see the pasture land around them, down the slope. At the bottom of the slope and partway across a little valley there was a railroad track heading north and south.

  The day had cooled off a little, and Rhodes liked standing there on the hill. There was a late afternoon breeze, and it was very quiet.

  “I wonder if they can hear the trains,” Ivy said, looking down at the tracks. “They have to whistle for the crossing, don’t they?”

  The nearest crossing was about a half mile away. “Sure they do,” Rhodes said. “Did you ever hear a real train whistle?”

  “You mean from a steam engine? I don’t remember. I guess I must have, but if I did it was a long time ago,” Ivy said.

  “I heard lots of ‘em,” Rhodes said. “The house I grew up in was less than a mile from the tracks, nothing between the house and them but some mesquite trees. When I was a kid, I’d go to sleep at night listening for the whistle.” He paused. “They can’t hear it, I guess. If they could, the ones that’ve been here long enough would miss the real thing. Diesel’s just not the same. Not very many of those even come through now, anyway.” He shook his head and grinned. “I’m beginning to sound like the old-timer in a B western. How’d we get off on that?”