Authors: Bill Crider

A Knife in the Back (17 page)

BOOK: A Knife in the Back

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Kaul knew about the knife, too. Framing the one who'd caused him so much trouble would be an excellent way to keep anyone from suspecting him.

Now that she thought of it, Sally wondered if Hal hadn't been just a little too glib, if he hadn't come up with his story about Thomas and Bostic just a little too easily. It would explain a lot.

Sally thought it might be time to pay Hal another little visit. But this time she was going to be very careful.

She turned off the TV set and went into the bedroom to get her pistol. It wasn't as if she could go into Hal's house brandishing a weapon, but she could keep it in her purse, just in case.

Lola stretched, got up from her comfortable spot in front of the refrigerator, and followed Sally into the bedroom.

“You can't go, Lola,” Sally told her.

“Meow,” Lola said, not seeming to care one way or the other.

Sally loaded the pistol and tried to put it in her purse, a hopeless task.

“One of these days I'm really going to have to clean this thing out,” she said.

Lola meowed in agreement.

“Nobody asked you,” Sally said, and started to remove used tissues, empty gum wrappers, various painkillers (aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol), nail files, a small bottle of hair spray (as if it would ever help), a roll of Turns, a calculator, four tubes of lipstick of various colors, and her cell phone.

Can't leave without the phone
, she thought. She stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. It wasn't comfortable, but that didn't matter. She could take it out and put it somewhere in the car.

“That ought to do it,” she said, satisfied.

“Meow,” Lola said in agreement.

Sally fit the pistol into the bag and hefted it, looking at herself in the pier mirror.

Not bad
, she thought. Anyone seeing her carrying it might think that she just had a natural list to the right. Or to the left, if she switched hands.

“See you later, Lola,” she said. Then she added, in her best John Wayne voice, which was none too good, “A woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do.”

“Meow,” Lola said doubtfully.

“No, I'm not going to call Weems,” Sally said. “He wouldn't listen.”

“Meow,” Lola said in agreement.

“I'm right about this,” Sally said. “I know I am.”

“Meow,” Lola said.

J
ack wasn't hungry, but he told himself that he had to eat something. He was sure that he wasn't going to do well on prison food once he was locked up because he probably couldn't bring himself to eat it.

When he'd taught at the prison, which most of the HCC faculty had done at one time or another, he'd heard too many stories about the cooks spitting in the mashed potatoes, licking the meat after it was cooked, and a few considerably worse things that he didn't even like to think about, none of which contributed to a healthy appetite. Or to any appetite at all, for that matter.

He made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. Wouldn't be getting any of those when he was behind the twenty-foot fences topped with razor wire.

He ate the sandwich and went into his den. The house was cool, and he could hear the rain rushing off the roof. He wondered again about the air-conditioning in prison.

Of course the classrooms were air-conditioned. And he'd been to graduation several times in the chapel of one unit. The chapel wasn't exactly icy, like Talon's showroom, but it was acceptably cool.

Jack was pretty sure, however, that the cell blocks were cooled only by buzz fans, which didn't help at all in the summer when the temperature reached well into the nineties and sometimes into
the hundreds on the outside. In the cells it would be even hotter, and the fans would just make things worse, moving the hot air around and practically cooking the inmates as if they were in a convection oven. Jack wasn't going to like that at all.

He shook himself and tried to laugh. He couldn't afford to spend the rest of the day sunk in self-pity. He knew that if he did, he'd never be able to put his mind to the things he should be concentrating on, like grading papers and trying to figure out who was really guilty of killing Ralph Bostic. It wouldn't do to worry about spending his life in prison, or the fact that Sally Good wouldn't go out with him.

After all, if he was going to spend the rest of his life in the Graybar Hilton, what difference did it make if Sally wouldn't go out with him? He'd probably be able to find plenty of dates behind bars. On the other hand, maybe not. He wasn't as young as he'd once been.

Stop it
! he told himself.
That's not funny
!

To cheer himself up, Jack put Dolly Parton's bluegrass CD on the player. Sure, some of the songs on it were supposed to be sad, with titles like “Endless Stream of Tears,” but Jack just couldn't be unhappy when he was listening to Dolly's clear soprano soaring over the banjos, mandolins, and fiddles. In fact, after only a couple of songs, he found himself smiling and humming along.

He got himself a glass of Pepsi One, put his feet up on the coffee table, and settled back to savor the songs. After listening to “Silver Dagger,” he picked up his green pen and the student papers on the coffee table. He tried grading the one on top, but he couldn't get past the opening sentence: “I have read Flannery O'Connor's story in which I found it to be very interesting.”

His put the papers back down, and his mind wandered. He found himself thinking of the murders and who might have committed them. He wondered what Weems was doing, not that it mattered. Weems was looking at the wrong suspects. Jack had one big advantage over Weems: Jack knew that he wasn't guilty.

But who
was
guilty? That was the big question.

Sally seemed to think she had some kind of idea, but she wouldn't tell him. Probably because it had to do with Jorge. That was just fine with Jack. He hoped Jorge was the killer. That would take care of the competition for life, because if Jorge went into prison again, he wouldn't be coming out, especially if he was guilty of murder.

The more Jack thought about that, however, the less he liked it. Sally might prefer Jorge to him, but that was no reason to want a guy to be stuck in prison for the rest of his life or, even worse, executed. And to tell the truth, Jack didn't really believe that Jorge was guilty. He'd worked with Jorge, and he liked him. It didn't matter that Jorge had once killed someone. Jack was convinced that had been a matter of sudden rage, or maybe it had even been justifiable homicide. Jack didn't know. No one did except Jorge, as far as Jack could determine. But that didn't really matter. Somehow Jack just couldn't see Jorge as someone who would kill Bostic and Thomas.

He tried sorting through everything he knew, or thought he knew. He'd heard what Sally had heard, so he should be able to reach the same conclusions she'd reached even if he didn't have a Ph.D.

But the more he thought about things, the less clear they seemed to him. It was too bad his hunch about the initials hadn't worked out.

On the other hand, maybe Sally had brushed off that idea all too quickly. True, Weems could have easily gotten copies of the rolls for the knife-making class, but what if he hadn't known the knife was handmade?

That wasn't possible, though. As much as Jack had admired his own craftsmanship, he knew he was nowhere near good enough to have made a knife that looked professionally constructed. There was a difference in a knife that was put together in a class by a first-time hobbyist and one that had been custom-made by an expert craftsman.

Weems had probably checked with the registrar, just as Sally had said, and that was that.

Thinking about the knife, however, gave Jack another idea. It hit him like a ballpeen hammer right between the eyes. He considered it carefully and turned it over and over in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he was right.

When he looked at things in a certain way, everything fell into place. Oh, he didn't know the why of all the things that had happened, but he almost certainly knew who the killer was. It was so obvious that he wondered why it hadn't occurred to him sooner.

Jack went back over everything again. It still worked out the same way: One person he and Sally had talked to knew something he shouldn't have known.

People at the college knew what Jack had been accused of doing, or some of them did, but Jennie, who didn't work at the school, hadn't known anything at all about his involvement. Jack's name hadn't been in any of the newspaper articles, and it hadn't been mentioned on television. Sally had said something about that fact to him in the hall on the way to Talon's office. Even Talon hadn't known that Jack was a suspect, and Jack and Sally hadn't enlightened him. Talon was a board member. If anyone should have known, it was Talon.

So, Jack asked himself, how had Stanley Owens known?

Jack thought back over what Owens had said that morning. Something like, “I didn't teach you to make a knife just to stick it in someone's back.”

He'd known, all right, and there was really only one way he could have known. He'd been the one who'd framed Jack. It would have been easy for him to get the knife and use it, as easy as it would have been for him to get keys to all the cars that had been stolen. After all, he'd have access to the drivers' addresses, right on those repair forms the drivers filled out every day of the week.

The stolen cars were the key to the whole thing, Jack thought. Bostic, Thomas, and Owens were working together, and when the
cops closed in Owens had known about it just like everyone else at the dealership. He must have decided he didn't want to take the chance that either of his partners would give him up, so he'd taken care of them. He might even have tried to reason with Thomas, whose death could have been accidental. Maybe Owens had simply pushed him a little too hard and he'd stumbled backward into the grease pit. It didn't really matter how it had happened, though. Thomas was dead either way, and it was for sure that Bostic's death was no accident. Owens had put a knife in his back.

Jack was so excited by his discovery that he didn't know what to do next. He told himself to calm down and think things through. Easier said than done, but he finally got himself under control.

The logical thing to do would be to call Weems. Logical, but useless. Weems wouldn't listen. He'd accuse Jack of meddling, and then ignore him.

The most stupid thing to do would be to confront Owens personally.

“But I'm right about this,” Jack said aloud. “I know I am. So confronting him wouldn't really be stupid. He'd have to admit what he'd done.”

Jack looked at his watch. It was after one o'clock, and the so-called repair service at Talon's place shut down at noon. Owens might very well be at home already. Jack could look up his address and pay him a visit.

That's what he'd do, he thought. He wouldn't need any help, though it might have been a comfort to have Sally along for moral support. Well, moral support and firepower, since maybe he could have persuaded her to bring her pistol along.

Sally, however, had her own ideas about who was guilty, and she hadn't seen fit to share them with Jack. So why should he share his idea with her? After all, she didn't want to go out with him because she preferred Jorge, probably because she thought he was more of a man of action than Jack. Which he was. Or had been at one time.

But that was all in the past. This time, Jack was going to be the
man of action. He was going to roust a killer, and he was going to do it alone. He'd prove to Sally that he didn't need any help. When it came to handling the Bad Guys, he could do just fine on his own.

Just like John Wayne.

And if that doesn't impress her
, Jack thought,
nothing will.

S
ally took the cell phone out of her pocket, tossed it into the passenger seat, and pressed the garage-door opener. As the door rose, she looked into her rearview mirror and saw through the curtain of rain that someone seemed to have dropped a black mountain into her driveway, effectively blocking her exit from the garage.

On second glance, however, she saw that it wasn't a mountain at all. It was just Vera Vaughn's Navigator, which she'd probably bought at Roy Don Talon's dealership, unless she'd driven to Houston for the purchase. But she wouldn't have done that. All the college teachers bought their cars at Talon's. They didn't want a board member to think they were disloyal either to Talon or to the college district.

Sally wondered what Vera was doing there, and she wondered how Vera was going to let her know, since she had made no move to leave the Navigator, probably not wanting to get soaked by the rain.

The cell phone rang. Sally didn't have Caller ID on that phone, either, but she didn't need it. She knew who was making the call.

“Hello, Vera,” she said.

“Hi,” Vera said. “I was hoping we could talk. Are you about to leave?”

Sally resisted the urge to say that she hadn't been going anywhere
and that she just liked to sit in her car in the garage and look out at the rain.

“Yes,” she said. “But I can wait. What did you want to talk about?”

“In person,” Vera said. “Not over the phone. You never know who's listening.”

That was true, though Sally had no idea who would want to listen in on her cell-phone conversations, most of which were short, boring, and with her mother.

“We can go inside,” she said.

“Fine,” Vera agreed. “I'll just come in through the garage if it's all right with you. That way I won't get quite as wet.”

“Okay,” Sally said. “I'll leave the door up.”

She turned off the phone and started to get out of the car just as Vera emerged from the Navigator. Then she had a terrible thought: What if Vera was the killer?

Sally couldn't think of any motive that Vera might have, though perhaps jealousy would do. There was Mae, getting all the men, and there was Vera, all alone. But Vera didn't seem to care about men, especially the grimy ones that Mae liked, so that couldn't be it.

Vera entered the garage, dressed in a sleek black outfit that looked as if it might be made entirely of rubber. Perfect for the weather, Sally thought, though it probably wasn't really rubber at all. On the other hand, with Vera you could never be sure. And it would probably be very easy to wash the blood off a rubber suit after you'd brained someone with a ballpeen hammer. Vera was big enough to have been the person Sally and Jack had encountered in the auto shop, and it wouldn't have been at all unusual for her to be wearing black pants and shoes that looked like men's footwear. For that matter, most women's shoes these days seemed to Sally to look as if they'd been designed for men. It was hard to tell the difference at a glance, or even on close inspection.

Sally told herself that she was being silly. Vera wasn't going to murder her in her own garage, not with her giant SUV parked
outside for all the world to see. Though what with all the rain, no one was likely to notice it.

Sally reached in her purse, got out her pistol, and opened the car door.

“What's this all about?” she asked.

“It's Mae,” Vera said. “I wanted to talk to you about something she said yesterday.”

Now that Vera was practically next to the car, Sally could see that she wasn't holding a ballpeen hammer, or anything else. And the black suit, which was shedding water nicely, was just a Gore-Tex running outfit. Sally slipped the pistol back into her purse, hoping that Vera hadn't noticed it.

She got out of the car and said, “Let's go inside. We can have a cup of coffee or something.”

“Great,” Vera said.

They headed for the door, and Sally pulled a worn towel off a rack nearby. She liked to keep a few towels in the garage in case of emergencies.

“Dry yourself off if you'd like,” she told Vera, who started patting herself down with the towel.

When she was mostly dry, Vera followed Sally into the house. Lola looked askance at the visitor, hissed once, and disappeared into the bedroom, where Sally knew she would hide under the bed until Vera was gone. And maybe longer.

Sally told Vera to have a seat and went into the kitchen. She put her purse on the counter, trying not to let it klunk. She opened the freezer, got out some coffee that she'd ground a couple of days earlier, and dumped it into the coffeemaker. She poured in some water and went to join Vera.

“It'll be ready in a minute,” she said. “I hope you like hazelnut flavoring.”

“That's fine,” Vera said. “Do you believe in the social conventions, or may I be abrupt?”

Asking someone who was making coffee for a visitor whether she believed in social conventions was a little redundant, Sally
thought, but she just said, “Be as abrupt as you care to.”

“Good. I know people think I come on a little strong at times, but I can't help it. It's just my manner.”

Sally thought about saying that no one thought that Vera came on a little strong. On the contrary, everyone thought she came on more powerfully than a locomotive. But Sally didn't think it would be wise to point that out.

So she said, “I don't mind.”

“Then let's talk about Jorge Rodriguez.”

Sally was sorry she'd said she didn't mind. The last person she wanted to talk about with Vera was Jorge.

“I think the coffee's done,” she said, standing up and heading for the kitchen.

Vera followed her. Sally got two saucers down from the cabinet and set two cups in them. The coffee was ready, so she poured Vera a cup.

“Cream or sugar?”

Vera shook her head, so Sally poured her own coffee. She liked it black, too.

“Now, about Jorge,” Vera said.

“Why don't we go back in the living room,” Sally said, and she left the kitchen with Vera trailing along behind.

When they were seated again, Sally took a deep breath and said, “Now, tell me about Jorge.”

“Mae thinks you like him,” Vera said.

Sally took a sip of the coffee. It was still hotter than she liked it, but she pretended that it was just right. She swallowed and said, “I do. Everyone does.”

“She thinks you like him in a sexual way.”

“Oh,” Sally said. “I see.”

“No, you probably don't. You're not like Mae. She's the kind of woman who has to have a man around her, if you can believe that.”

Sally could believe it.

“I've always admired you because you didn't seem to need
men,” Vera said. “You seemed to be above that sort of thing. Then I heard about you and Jack, so I guess I was wrong.”

“What about me and Jack?” Sally asked.

Vera sipped her coffee, then said, “That you were dating.”

“That's not exactly true,” Sally said.

“It's not? Everyone thinks it is.”

“You know how gossip gets around a school. People repeat things just because they want them to be true.”

“So,” Vera said, “you're not going out with Jack?”

Sally wondered why her relationship with Jack was so interesting to Vera. She said, “We'd made some tentative plans. I'm sure that's how the rumor got started. Things didn't quite work out the way we thought they would, though.”

“Because of Jorge?”

“I didn't say that.”

“No, but Mae is very suspicious of you. She thinks you're scheming to take Jorge away from her.”

“Nothing could be further from my mind,” Sally said, knowing that she wasn't being exactly truthful.

Or maybe she was. Whatever her feelings for Jorge were, they didn't involve scheming.

“You want to know something?” she said.

“What?” Vera asked.

“This is as bad as eighth grade, huddling in the restroom and talking about boys. You'd think we'd have gotten beyond this sort of thing.”

Vera blushed. Sally wouldn't have thought it possible if she hadn't seen it for herself.

“I know,” Vera said. She stood up. “I'm sorry I bothered you. I think I'd better go.”

She started for the door, and Sally had an inspiration. She didn't think Vera had come to talk about Jorge at all.

“Vera,” she said, “have you got a crush on Jack Neville?”

Vera stiffened, stopped, and turned around.

“I wouldn't call it a crush,” she said. “I don't know what it is,
exactly. I don't know what's gotten into me. That's why I'm acting like a schoolgirl.” She waved her hand as if brushing something away. “I feel like an idiot.”

“It happens,” Sally said, grinning. “You and Jack Neville, huh? I never would've guessed.”

“It's not funny,” Vera said.

“I didn't mean to imply that it was. And I'm glad you came by. Now you know you don't have to worry about any competition from me. I like Jack very much, and I'm trying to help him a little with a problem, but we're just friends. I'm sure that's all we'll ever be.”

“I don't have any men friends,” Vera said. “Women, either. I think I come on too strong.”

“Mae's your friend,” Sally said.

“She puts up with me.”

“Hey, it's a start.”

“This thing you're helping Jack with,” Vera said. “Could I help, too? Maybe he'd like me more if I did something for him.”

Sally thought Jack would probably pass out if he knew that Vera Vaughn had designs on him. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn't.

“The police think Jack killed Ralph Bostic,” Sally said.

Vera snorted. “Ridiculous. He'd never do that.”

“I know. It was someone else, and I think I know who.”

Vera looked interested. “Are you going to tell me?”

Why not
? Sally thought.

“Come on back and let me warm up your coffee,” she said. “I'll tell you all about it.”