Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder (11 page)

That description, sketchy as it was, pretty well matched the one that Goober Vance had given Rhodes of Bob Deedham’s wife, but then about half the women in The County Line matched that description.

“Can you be a little more specific?” Rhodes asked.

Zach shook his head slightly.  “Nope.”

“What did he have to drink?  The coach, I mean.”

“He never had more than a couple of beers.  I don’t know why he didn’t just buy him some at the grocery store and drink ’em at home.”

“Maybe he couldn’t get the same kind of conversation at home,” Rhodes said.

“I know what you mean,” Zach said, looking out at the dance floor.  “You can sure find it here, though, if you want it.  I guess that’s why the coaches like it here.”

Rhodes had been about to ask something about Rapper, but he suddenly changed his mind.

“Coaches,” he said.  “More than one?”

“Did I say that?  I musta been thinking of something else.  I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I think you did,” Rhodes told him.  “How many coaches have been coming in here, anyway?”

“Just the one,” Zach said, looking over the top of Rhodes’ head.

“Is that a roach I see on the floor over there?” Rhodes asked.  “I think the county health inspector better come have a look at this place tomorrow.  And every day after that, for about a month.”

“That’s blackmail,” Zach said.

“Just genuine concern for the health of the voting public.  They’ll thank me for it later.”

“All right, all right.  I get it.  There was another one of the coaches in here.  The one that really looks like a football player, that Needham.”

“Deedham,” Rhodes said.

“That’s the one.  Played pro for a while.”

“Not really,” Rhodes said.  “When was he here?”

Zach had to think about that.  “Now that you mention it, he was here the last time that Meredith was, last Saturday night.”

“Did they have a drink together?”

“I don’t think they even saw each other.  Meredith was in there dancing and talking to that blonde.  Deedham was in here at the bar.”

“Did he have much to drink?”

“Just one beer.  Then he left.”

“What kind of mood was he in?” Rhodes asked.

“Hey, I can’t remember everything.  He looked OK, I guess.  I gotta go now.  I got some customers.”

Two men in jeans and a woman with hair so blonde that it was nearly white stood a little way down the bar.  The woman was laughing at something one of the men had said.

As Zach moved away, Rhodes said, “Come back when you’re through with them.”

While Zach was gone, Rhodes thought about what the bartender had told him.  Could it be that Deedham had followed his wife to The County Line and seen her with Meredith?  If he had, could that have led to Meredith’s murder?  And where did Rapper fit into all this?

The jukebox played two indistinguishable songs before Zach returned.

“Band’s gonna come on in about half an hour,” Zach said.  “Tommy and the Texans.  You ever hear ’em?”

“Does Tommy wear a big white hat?”

“That’s him.”

“Then I’ve heard him.  Or somebody just like him.”  Rhodes tapped Rapper’s photo.  “Now about this one.”

“Nothin’ to tell about that one.  He comes in, he leaves.  We get bikers here now and then.”  Zach looked back down the bar, but the two bikers had left.  “They usually don’t stay long, though.”

“When was he here?”

“Don’t remember.  But it wasn’t long ago.  Last week sometime, I guess.”

“Think about it.”

Zach thought.  It didn’t do any good.  “He didn’t do anything, just had a beer or two and left, like those guys did.”  He motioned to where the bikers had been.  “I just serve the beer.  I don’t keep up with ’em.”

“All right, Zach.  I appreciate the conversation.”

“Well, I don’t.  Nothing against you personally, Sheriff, but I’d just as soon not have you comin’ in here.  It’s not all that good for business.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhodes said.

A
thin sliver of moon hung in a clearing between two cloud banks, and a few stars twinkled in the black sky.  Rhodes took a breath of the rain-washed air, a real pleasure after the smoke-filled building.  He’d have to throw his clothes in the hamper when he got home.

As he moved to his left to avoid a puddle, the two bikers who had been at the bar stepped around a Ford Ranger and stood in front of him.  They seemed bigger than they had when they’d been fifteen feet away.

The one in the leather jacket smiled broadly, revealing an amazingly white and even set of teeth, which Rhodes realized must be false.  Rhodes didn’t even want to think about how he might have lost the originals.

“Evenin’, Sheriff,” he said.

“Evenin’,” Rhodes answered.  “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.  But you know a friend of ours.”

“Rapper?”

“That’s the one.  You shouldn’t be hasslin’ him, Sheriff.  He’s a good ol’ boy, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Rhodes had to smile at that.  It was about as far from describing Rapper as you could get.

“Have you seen him tonight?” he asked.

The one in the T-shirt didn’t smile.  He didn’t look as if he knew how.

He said, “Nope, we ain’t seen him tonight.  And we won’t see him, either.  You scared him so bad, he’s left the county.”

Rhodes smiled again.  If these two got any funnier, they could get their own sitcom.

“I didn’t know he scared so easily.  And I’m surprised he’d run off and leave his buddy in jail.”

“Don’t you worry about Nellie.  He’ll be out in the mornin’, soon as he pays his fine.”

“I wasn’t worrying about him.  I’m going to have to ask him a few questions before he leaves, though.  And I’d like to talk to Rapper again.”

“Look, Sheriff,” the one with the teeth said, “all we want is to be left alone.  We didn’t come here to make any trouble for you, and we’ll be leavin’ quietly.”

Rhodes didn’t believe a word of it. 
Quietly
wasn’t in Rapper’s vocabulary.

“You tell Rapper I want to talk to him,” Rhodes said.  “Tell him that I don’t think it would be a good idea for him to leave the county without coming by to see me.  I’d have to see to it that he was arrested and brought back.

The two men glanced at one another, then looked back at Rhodes.  T-shirt took a step closer to the sheriff.  He was close enough to touch now, if Rhodes had wanted to touch him, which of course he didn’t, because he could also smell him.  He smelled as if he hadn’t had a bath in quite a while.  Within, say, the last couple of years.

“People don’t tell Rapper what to do and what not to do,” T-shirt said.

“I do,” Rhodes said.  “Maybe you’re forgetting that I’m the sheriff.”

“We’re not forgettin’.  We’re just wonderin’ how come you think you can talk so big without any deputies to back you up.”

Rhodes hadn’t thought he’d need any backup at The County Line.  He hadn’t counted on any trouble.

“I don’t need any deputies.  If you two make trouble, I’ll have to take you in.  Ask Rapper.  Or ask Nellie.  They can tell you.”

T-shirt had apparently already spoken to Rapper, or, if not, he seemed to know that Rhodes meant what he said.  He stepped back.

“We ain’t gonna cause any trouble.  We’re just tellin’ you to lay off Rapper.  He’s not mixed up in any murder.  And you could be sorry if you keep on hasslin’ him.”

“Maybe Nellie can tell me what I want to know,” Rhodes said.  “Since I already have him, I’ll ask him.  That way, Rapper won’t be bothered so much.”

“Nellie won’t tell you a thing.  That’s not the way Nellie operates.”

“Maybe not, but it won’t hurt to try.”

Rhodes was tired of the conversation.  It wasn’t going anywhere.  He walked between the two men, brushing his shoulder against the leather jacket.  The man stepped aside, putting his foot into a puddle of rainwater.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he said.

Rhodes stopped and turned around.  The two men looked at him; Rhodes looked back.  After a few seconds, they dropped their eyes. 

Leather Jacket looked down at his foot.  He was wearing a heavy motorcycle boot, made darker by the water that had soaked into it.

“That water’s
cold
,” he said.  He shook his foot as if hoping to dry it.

Rhodes said, “Better go put on some dry socks.  You could catch a cold if you don’t take care of yourself, and dry that boot at room temperature.  That way the leather won’t crack.”  He turned to walk away.  “You fellas drive carefully now.”

“You’re the one that better be careful,” T-shirt called after him.  “You never know what kind of mess you might get into.”

Rhodes didn’t bother to turn around and answer him, but the truth was that Rhodes had a pretty good idea.  He’d been in too many messes before.

Chapter Ten

I
t was not quite nine o’clock, so Rhodes thought it wouldn’t be too late to drive by and have his talk with Nancy Meredith.  Maybe she would be a little more forthcoming than Rapper’s two friends.

There were several cars parked in front of the Meredith house when he got there.  The relatives had begun to arrive.  Rhodes was met at the door by Nancy’s mother, a short, bird-like woman who told him that her daughter was too distraught to talk to him.

Rhodes was about to leave when Nancy came up behind her mother and said, “If it’s about Brady, I can talk to him.  Maybe he knows who did it.”

Rhodes said that he didn’t know but that she might be able to help him if she answered a few questions.

“We can talk in the TV room, then,” Nancy said, ignoring her mother’s obvious disapproval.  “Everybody else is in the kitchen.”

The TV room was a small bedroom that had been converted into an entertainment area.  There was a couch against one wall and a television set with a 27-inch screen was against the opposite wall.  The only other furniture in the room was a small end table by the arm of the couch.  A copy of the latest
Reader’s Digest
lay on the table.

Nancy Meredith sat on the couch, and since there wasn’t any other choice, Rhodes sat beside her.  He looked around and saw her mother hovering in the doorway.

“It’s all right, Mother,” Nancy said.  “I’ll be fine.  You go on in with the others.  I’ll be there when we’re done.”

Her mother stood indecisively for a few seconds and then turned and walked away without a word.

“Now, then,” Nancy said.  “What did you want to ask me, Sheriff?”

“In cases like this we have to deal with some pretty delicate matters,” Rhodes said.  “I hope you won’t think I’m trying to discredit your husband’s memory by anything I have to say.”

“You’re talking about that Deedham bitch, aren’t you?”

Rhodes was a little shocked at her choice of words.  He was a little old-fashioned, and it seemed strange to him to hear a coach’s wife use language like that.

“Uh, maybe,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be so embarrassed,” Nancy said.  “I knew about her, all right.  She’d been after Brady for more than a year.  He’d sneak off to that honky tonk, thinking I didn’t know that she’d be there.  He should have known you can’t fool a wife about those things.”

“Who told you she’d be there?”

“Nobody had to tell me.  I could see the way she’d look at him when she didn’t think Bob and I were watching.  She had to meet him somewhere.”

“Bob knew, too?”

“Of course he did.  Brady wasn’t the first one she’d made a run at.”

“Who else?”

“Roy Kenner, for one.  But his wife’s like me.  She knew that Roy had better sense than to get hooked up with someone like Terry.”

Rhodes was beginning to wish that he’d taken on the questioning of the Deedhams personally.  Purely academic curiosity, he told himself.  Nothing to do with getting a look at Terry.

“How did Bob take all this?”

“That’s hard to say.  He’s really wrapped up in his job, you know?  I think that’s part of Terry’s problem, really, and I’m sorry I called her a bitch, even if she is one.  She probably doesn’t have much of a home life.  But Brady does.”  She caught herself.  “Did, I mean.  So does Roy Kenner.  They didn’t need her.”

Rhodes thought that it might be a good idea to have a talk with Roy Kenner anyway.

“Brady needed to go to The County Line,” he said.  “Or he thought he did.  Home life or not.”

“There was nothing wrong with him going out there.  I knew he went, and I didn’t mind.  He needed some way to blow off a little steam after a week of building up to the game.  There’s a lot of pressure on a coach, and it doesn’t get any better when you start winning.  He thought it was a good idea to go where there was a little music and some bright lights, and somewhere that was a long way from town so no one would see him and comment on it.”

“What about the people who saw him there?  There must have been a lot of them.”

“They weren’t in any position to criticize, you know? Anyway, he never drank much, and he never stayed out there very long.”

She didn’t seem upset at all by her husband’s having had a few beers each weekend, though the fact that Terry Deedham had met him at the honky tonk bothered her a little.  Rhodes thought it might be a good idea to probe that some more.

“Did he ever dance with Terry?  There’s a lot of dancing at The County Line.”

Nancy Meredith sat up a little straighter.  “I never asked him.  I knew she went out there, but I trusted Brady, and that was enough for me.”

“How did you know about her going out there?”

“You hear things.  She went all the time.  I’ll bet she was very popular with some people.”

“And you don’t know how Bob reacted to that?”

“He didn’t like it, I’m sure.  Would you, if it were your wife?  But if you’re wondering whether he was jealous enough to kill Brady, I’m sure I don’t know.  If he was, and if he did, I hope you put him so far back in that jail of yours that he never sees the light of day again.”

The jail wasn’t quite that big, but Rhodes didn’t see any need to mention it.

“There are a couple of other things,” he said.

Nancy looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap.  She rubbed her thumbs together and said, “All right.  Go ahead.”