Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder

by Bill Crider

  “Are you implying that maybe somebody we know bet money with Ford?” he asked.

  He was looking at Tandy when he said it, but Tandy was crumbling his cornbread into his beans and didn’t look up.

  “I’m not implying a thing,” Rhodes said. “I don’t have any ideas about that, and we’ll probably never know. Ford’s records are missing.”

  “Hack didn’t tell me that.”

  “He might not have known. I don’t think I mentioned it to him.”

  Vance took a little notebook and jotted a few lines in it with a retractable ballpoint pen. Then he set the notebook on the table and said, “Is there anything else I need to make my story more complete?”

  “How about the Brady Meredith’s funeral?” Rhodes asked. “When’s that going to be?”

  “Today,” Ballinger said. “Two o’clock.”

  Tandy looked at his watch. “Hour and a half from now.”

  Ballinger wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I’d better get on back to the funeral home, then. Have to make sure everything’s organized just right.”

  “Is the funeral going to be there?” Rhodes asked.

  “No. I don’t have a room big enough for the crowd. It’s going to be at the Methodist church.”

  Ballinger picked up his bowl and paper water glass and left. When he had gone, Vance asked, “Will you be at the funeral Sheriff?”

  “Most likely.”

  “What about you, Ron?”

  Tandy blinked rapidly. “I’ll be there. Right now, I have to get back to the office. I have someone coming in to look at a house at one.”

  He got up and carried his bowl to the trash can and dumped it in.

  “I wonder why he got so upset about when you mentioned that about people betting with Hayes Ford,” Vance said.

  Rhodes shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “I think you do,” Vance said, “but I won’t push it.”

  “Just as well that you don’t,” Rhodes told him.

  The sheriff looked around the Dairy Queen. No one was paying any attention to him and Goober Vance. Everyone seemed to have lost interest in Rhodes when he sat down, and there was so much chatter that Rhodes didn’t think there was much chance of anyone overhearing his conversation with Vance.

  So he said, “What about you, Goober? Did you ever put down a bet with Hayes Ford?”

  Vance pretended shock. “Are you kidding? I write about the games for the paper, but I don’t bet on them.”

  Rhodes took a bite of his cornbread. There was just enough jalapeno to flavor it and give it a little bite.

  “And you don’t know anyone who does?” he asked Vance.

  Vance picked his notebook up off the table, folded it, and put it back in his pocket.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Let me start over then,” Rhodes said. “I’ve been looking into all those things you told me about on Saturday at the newspaper. Most of them were either exaggerated or led me in the wrong direction. I wonder why.”

  Vance had eaten all his beans, and there was nothing left in his bowl but the pot liquor. He sopped up some of it with part of a slice of cornbread and ate it.

  “I still don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said when he was through chewing.

  “I’m getting at the fact that you might have a good reason not to like Terry Deedham.”

  “Who told you that?” Vance asked, reaching in his pocket for a toothpick.

  “You reporters,” Rhodes said, shaking his head. “Always asking questions when you should be answering them.”

  The toothpick wobbled from one side of Vance’s mouth to the other.

  “Ask me one, then,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just tell you something.”

  “Whatever,” Vance said.

  “All right. See what you think about this. You weren’t really interested in helping me find out who killed Brady Meredith at all. You were jealous of him because Terry Deedham seemed to like him, and you didn’t really much care what had happened to him. But at least you were different from everyone else I’ve talked to. You didn’t care about the football team. You saw it as a chance to get back at Terry. That’s why you told me about her and Meredith, and that’s why you told me about the steroids. You overestimated me, though. I went off in the wrong direction.”

  Vance took the toothpick out of his mouth and looked at it. It was thoroughly chewed, and he replaced it with a fresh one.

  “Do you think I killed Meredith because I was jealous of him?” he asked. “Because if you do, you’re crazy.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure how crazy that idea was, but he said, “Maybe you didn’t kill Meredith, but I think you know more than you’re telling me.”

  “About what?”

  “About Hayes Ford and about who bet with him.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I’m not sure. Call it a hunch. When I asked you about whether Brady had ever bet with Ford, you said no. I thought then that you were trying to give me the idea that if it were true, you’d know about it. Now I think you did know about it.”

  Vance chewed his toothpick for a while. Then he said, “Let’s say that I’d heard something. Would it have made any difference if I’d told you?”

  “Maybe not,” Rhodes admitted. “I found out soon enough from his wife that he’d very likely placed a few bets. But I’m still not sure why you didn’t tell me.”

  “Because no matter what you think, I do care about the team. Maybe I did want to get back at the Deedhams, but from what I’d heard, nobody on the team had actually taken any steroids. So that couldn’t be used against anyone. I just wanted to throw a little scare into Bob Deedham.”

  Rhodes thought that if scaring Deedham had really been Vance’s plan, it hadn’t worked very well. Deedham had been inconvenienced, but he hadn’t been scared.

  “But if Meredith had been gambling,” Vance continued, “that was a real problem. God knows what the UIL would do to the team if that got out, and I didn’t want to be the one to let the cat out of the bag.”

  “You didn’t,” Rhodes said.

  For that matter, no one had. As things stood, it was likely that no one would ever be able to prove that Meredith had bet with Ford, so the team’s record was safe.

  “Good,” Vance said. “I may be petty, but I wouldn’t want to hurt the team.”

  Vance, Rhodes decided, wasn’t so different from everyone else in town after all.

  The church was full. Even the balcony, generally useful only at Christmas and Easter, was full. Rhodes wondered how many people would be at the funeral of Hayes Ford. He didn’t think Clyde Ballinger would have trouble finding a room large enough to hold them.

  The front pews of the church were filled on one side by the members of Brady Meredith’s family. On the opposite side the members of the Clearview Catamounts sat in front, most of them looking very uncomfortable in their dark suits, white shirts, and ties. The coaches, including Bob Deedham, sat with the team, and they didn’t look much more comfortable than their players.

  Rhodes, sitting at the rear of the church, listened while the organist played the familiar gospel hymns about gathering at the river, marching to Zion, standing on the promises, resting on the everlasting arms, and dwelling in Beulah Land.

  The body of Brady Meredith lay in the casket, which was surrounded by flowers and wreaths at the front of the church. The top half of the casket was open, but from where he sat Rhodes couldn’t see the body. He didn’t mind.

  He listened while the minister told everyone what a wonderful man Meredith had been, and how there was nothing finer than someone who devoted his life to teaching young people the values of sportsmanship and fair play. He didn’t mention gambling.

  Marynell Jones, who sang at a great many Clearview funerals, did her rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”

  Jerry Tabor, wearing his old letter
jacket, which Rhodes wasn’t sure was entirely appropriate to the situation, delivered a brief eulogy in which he repeated most of the ideas that the minister had already expressed, which were pretty much the same sentiments that Jerry had talked about to the football team the previous afternoon.

  But then Jerry went further. He exhorted the Catamounts to let Meredith’s life be an example to them. He told them that they had to put the troubles of the present aside and think of the future. They had to remember that from somewhere “up there” Meredith would be watching them from a seat on “that big fifty-yard line in the sky,” a phrase that was worthy of Goober Vance.

  Practically everyone in the church was crying by the time Tabor finished. Even Tabor was having difficulty choking back the tears.

  After that, everything was anti-climactic. The casket was closed and rolled out of the church. The pall bearers, including the coaches, lifted it into the back of the hearse, which sat with its engine idling while everyone told Nancy Meredith how sorry they were for her loss.

  Rhodes joined Buddy Reynolds to help direct the traffic for the procession that wound its way to the cemetery, where the minister read a scripture and committed Meredith’s body to the grave.

  Buddy and Rhodes were standing a little distance away from the gravesite, watching. When the brief service was over, Buddy said, “You got any ideas about who did it, Sheriff?”

  “Too many,” Rhodes said, and they watched the mourners get in their cars and drive away.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rhodes needed time to think things over, but he didn’t get it. Almost as soon as he got back to the jail, Hack took a call from the hospital.

  Rapper and Nellie had left.

  “Left?” Rhodes said, taking the telephone from Hack. “They just left?”

  “You didn’t leave any guards on their rooms,” the hospital administrator said. “I just found out about it, myself.”

  Rhodes didn’t bother to explain that he didn’t have any deputies to spare for guard duty.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t really know. When the nurse went to check on them a few minutes ago, they were just gone.”

  Rhodes had a sudden mental picture of the two bikers fleeing down the highway, straddling their bikes in their hospital gowns, the tails flapping in the breeze.

  But he knew that couldn’t happen. The bikes had been impounded.

  “You’d better have everyone on the staff check the parking lot,” he told the administrator. “There might be a car missing.”

  “OhmiGod.”

  The phone clattered in Rhodes’ ear, and then he heard the busy signal.

  “Call Buddy and have him get over there,” Rhodes told Hack. “Tell him to check with the administrator. If there’s a car missing, get out a bulletin on it.”

  Even as he said it, he knew it was too late. If they’d stolen a car, Rapper and Nellie would abandon it at the first opportunity and steal another one.

  When Hack finished his call to Buddy, he said, “I guess they won’t be comin’ back here for sure after this.”

  “Why not?” Rhodes asked. “What do they have to be afraid of?”

  “Car theft, for one thing.”

  “Even if there’s a car missing, how are we going to prove they stole it? Someone will have to see them in it, or we’ll have to catch them in it. Otherwise they’ll just wipe the prints and laugh at us if we accuse them.”

  “It ain’t right,” Hack said.

  “It’s just a game to people like Rapper,” Rhodes told him.

  “Well, we still got him on all those charges you wrote up on him this mornin’. If he ever comes back, we can stick him for those.”

  “It’s a thought,” Rhodes said.

  “Besides, maybe he’s the one killed Brady Meredith. That’d put him away for a while.”

  “Not long enough. And I don’t think he did it, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  Rhodes explained about Rapper’s curious lack of enthusiasm for leaving the county when he had the chance.

  Hack thought it over. “You may be right. A guy like Rapper, you give him a chance to leave, he’d take off like a scalded dog if he thought there was a chance of goin’ down for murder.”

  “He wanted to wait until he got his money from Bob Deedham,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think he knew about the murder.”

  “Yeah. Even Rapper ain’t crazy enough to risk a murder charge for a few hundred dollars.”

  “Maybe not. But Nellie didn’t mind taking a few shots at me this morning.”

  “They was just mad,” Hack said. “I expect they got to thinkin’ about the consequences, and that’s why they left the hospital. They thought about what could happen to ’em when you added attempted murder to the charges you already had against ’em, and they decided it was time to take off. Anyway, from what you said about ’em, they must’ve walked out of there. They sure couldn’t run.”

  There was some comfort in that thought, but not much. It was just another thing that Rhodes didn’t have time to worry about, however. He had to sort through his suspects and try to find out who had murdered Meredith and Ford before anyone else got killed.

  There were plenty of people in the courthouse on a Monday. Some were there to get their license plate renewal stickers, some were there to serve on juries, some were there to file deeds, some were there to pay taxes, and some were just there to loaf around and see what gossip they could pick up.

  Everyone Rhodes passed on the way to his office stopped him to ask about his progress on the murders. It was worse than the Dairy Queen.

  There was one bit of good news, and that came from Gerald Bonny. The lawyer was wearing a dark suit and carrying a soft leather briefcase. He was there on behalf of a client who was accused of violating the terms of his probation, but Bonny had time to pull Rhodes aside and tell him that the Garton coaches had decided not to pursue the idea of taking their case against the referees to court.

  “They knew they didn’t have a chance,” he said. “I think they just wanted to get everyone all stirred up about it. I don’t think they ever intended to go through with it.”

  Rhodes told him he was relieved to hear it.

  “Everyone is. But what about those murders? Have you arrested anybody yet?”

  Rhodes admitted that he hadn’t.

  “Damn. It’s going to tear this town apart if we don’t win this week. Getting into the play-offs is the biggest thing to happen here since … well, I can’t think of anything this big except the oil boom, and I’m not old enough to remember that. People are going to spend more money in the stores, they’re going to feel closer as a community, they’re going to get behind the schools … it would be great if it weren’t for those two murders.”

  Rhodes nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. Then he got a Dr Pepper from the machine in the hall and went on to the office, where he closed and locked the door behind him. He didn’t turn on the light because he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. He sat at his desk and drank the Dr Pepper and thought about all the people who might have a motive for killing Brady Meredith.

  Would Jasper Knowles have killed his assistant coach because Meredith threw a punch at him?

  Rhodes didn’t think so. A real hot-head might do something like that, but Knowles seemed like the kind of man who didn’t let stress and pressure affect him.

  Bob Deedham? He didn’t show any signs of jealousy at all. Football would always be first in his affections, with his wife a very distant second. He might not have liked Meredith, but he had no real reason to kill him.

  Goober Vance? As far as Rhodes could tell, he had practically no connection with Meredith at all outside of his duties as a reporter.

  Rhodes had already virtually eliminated Rapper and Nellie. They were interested in selling drugs to Deedham, and they might have killed someone who got in their way, but there was no evidence that Meredith had interfered at all except to sermonize about
the evils of drugs to the football team.

  Which brought Rhodes back to Deedham. Would he have killed Meredith because of what Meredith might have said or done had he known that Deedham was considering feeding steroids to the Catamounts? Not very likely. There might have been a scene, maybe even a fist fight, but not murder.

  Terry Deedham? She didn’t have a motive.

  Nancy Deedham? Same answer.

  Rhodes drained the Dr Pepper bottle and set it on the desk. He knew he was overlooking something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Was he looking for the wrong things? Could it be that Hayes Ford had killed Meredith and then been murdered himself?

  That made at least a little bit of sense. If Ford had lost a lot of money on the Garton game, he might have blamed Meredith. And he might have been angry enough to kill him. But if that was the way it had happened, who had killed Ford?

  Rhodes shifted his mental gears. Who had the most to lose if it came out that Meredith had been gambling and shaving points?

  The answer to that one was easy: The Clearview Catamounts. Everyone in town had been telling that to Rhodes for the last couple of days.

  Rhodes considered the idea. Had he made a mistake by not investigating the members of the football team more closely?

  The entire case, from beginning to end, had been about winning football games. The whole town seemed convinced of the importance of victory in the play-offs; that was what mattered, not the fact that two people had died.

  Bob Deedham had believed, at least until very recently, that winning was all that mattered, even if you had to cheat by using drugs to do it.

  Brady Meredith had believed, or so Rhodes thought, that as long as you won, it didn’t matter if you shaved a few points off the final score.

  Even Judge Parry had come by Rhodes’ house to talk to him about how important it was for the town to have a winning team.

  So how did the team feel? Would one of the Catamount players have killed Meredith if the coach’s gambling had been a threat to the team?