Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder (12 page)

“It has to do with gambling,” Rhodes said.  “I saw someone that looked a lot like Brady talking to Hayes Ford just before the game last night.  Do you know who Hayes Ford is?”

“I know who he is, all right, and I can tell you for sure Brady didn’t gamble,” Nancy said, but her voice weakened at the end, and Rhodes knew she was covering something up.

“Were you two in debt?  Did you need money?”

Nancy looked away, and Rhodes said, “You might as well tell me.  I can find out anyway.”

Nancy stood up and walked over to the TV set.  Then she turned to Rhodes.

“It’s Brady’s father,” she said.  “He’s got Alzheimer’s.”

For her, that seemed to explain everything, but it wasn’t enough for Rhodes.  He asked her to go on.

“Do you know how much nursing homes charge?  Nearly three thousand dollars a month, at least, and that doesn’t count medicine.”

Rhodes knew what she was getting at now.

“Brady’s mother is still alive,” he said.

“That’s right.  And that means she has to pay for his father’s care until she’s reduced to two thousand dollars in the bank.  The government will help out then.  Oh, and she gets to keep her house and her car.  Isn’t that nice?”

“So Brady was trying to help her?”

“He and his brother.  It’s quite a strain on our finances, even with both of us teaching.  We’ve been sending some money, but Brady wouldn’t talk about where he got it.  I don’t know what will happen to his mother now.  I guess she’ll lose everything.”

“So Brady gambled to get money.”

“I don’t know that,” Nancy Meredith said.

“But you suspect it.”

“I’m not sure.  Someone used to call here and ask for Brady.  He’d never give his name, but I thought I heard Brady call him ‘Ford’ once.”

Rhodes didn’t know much about the University Interscholastic League’s rules, but it seemed likely that Clearview would have to forfeit its games if it were proven that Brady had been gambling.  Rhodes hated to think what that might mean to the town.

“What about money changing hands?”

“I don’t know anything about that.  I know Brady was sending money home, but we never had much in the bank, that’s for sure.”

Which didn’t prove anything.  Brady could have been using cash.  Or, if he’d been winning, he could have been taking cash.  That’s the only way Hayes Ford worked, in fact.  No need in letting the IRS get its hands on your hard-earned money if it could be avoided.

“There’s still something else,” Rhodes said.

Nancy seemed to grow even smaller. 

“You’re not joking, are you?” she asked.  She looked at Rhodes and shook her head.  “No, you wouldn’t joke about something like that.  What else, then?”

“I’ve heard a rumor that some of the players are taking steroids,” he said.

Nancy giggled with relief.  “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about involving Brady in.  He hated drugs.  He didn’t even like to take aspirin when he had a headache.  He always said he didn’t like the idea of letting some drug have more control over his body and mind than he did.  He didn’t even like for the boys to drink caffeine.”

Rhodes was beginning to wonder just how reliable a source Goober Vance was.  Most of his suggestions were turning out to be nothing more than gossip, and gossip that didn’t have much of a basis in fact. 

If Nancy were telling the truth, and Rhodes believed that she was, Brady wasn’t chasing Terry Deedham; she was chasing him.  And unless Jasper Knowles, his wife, and Nancy were all lying, no one had heard the rumors about steroids.

But Rhodes still felt that Rapper was mixed up in things somehow, and to Rhodes that meant drugs of some kind or another.  He wasn’t going to give up that angle just yet.

“I notice that there aren’t any ashtrays in the house,” Rhodes said.  “I suppose that with your husband’s attitude toward drugs, he didn’t smoke.”

“He hated smoking,” Nancy said.  “That was the one thing he didn’t like about The County Line.  His clothes always smelled like smoke after he’d been there.”

Rhodes knew what she meant.  “And I guess he had strict rules for the players.”

“He sure did.  Smoking was one thing he and Jasper agreed on.”

“They didn’t always agree on what plays to call, did they?”

“Not always.  They got into a few arguments about it, because Brady was a little bull-headed about calling what he thought was right.  I guess that’s what happened last night.”

Rhodes wasn’t so sure about that.  He was practically convinced that Brady had been involved in shaving points, or trying to.  He didn’t know how he was going to prove it, though.

“There’s one thing I want you to know, Sheriff,” Nancy said, breaking in on Rhodes’ thoughts.

“What’s that?”

“I loved Brady, and I want you to find out who killed him.  I can accept that he’s dead, but he was a good man, no matter what you’ve been thinking.  He had a few drinks, but that was just one night a week.  He didn’t chase that Deedham woman, and he didn’t let his players take steroids.  He might have gambled, or he might not.  I can’t say for sure about that.  I don’t like to think that he did, but he might have.  He needed money, all right.  Anyway, none of that matters to me.  What matters is that he was a good husband and I loved him.  Somebody has to pay for killing him.  I want you to promise me that you’ll find out who it was and make sure they suffer for it.”

It was a promise that Rhodes would have liked to make, but he knew that he couldn’t.  He’d do what he could to find the killer.  That was his job.  Making the killer suffer wasn’t.  But he didn’t have to tell Nancy Meredith that.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, and that was the truth.

L
awton and Hack were waiting for Rhodes when he got to the jail.  He knew that spelled trouble, but he didn’t know what kind.  He also knew that it wouldn’t do any good to ask, but he did it anyway.

“Has there been anything going on tonight?”

Lawton cut a glance at Hack.  Hack, being the dispatcher, claimed first right to tell all the stories, though Lawton often tried to jump in first.  If he did, that just made things worse, and Rhodes hoped he’d keep his mouth shut.

But he didn’t.  He said, “Been a criminal assault.”

Rhodes had been feeling tired, but he got a sudden jolt of adrenaline that perked him right up.  An assault was trouble, right enough.

He was afraid there’d be another assault, too, when Hack jumped on Lawton for taking over the story.  Much to Rhodes’ surprise, it didn’t happen.

He didn’t ask why.  He could come back to that later.  Right now he had to find out about the assault and who’d handled it.  “Where did it happen?” he asked.

“At Wal-Mart’s,” Lawton said.

“Wal-Mart?” 

Another surprise.  Wal-Mart wasn’t the kind of place where assaults generally occurred, though of course Lige Ward had been known to chain himself to the doors there on more than one occasion before his unfortunate demise.

“That’s right, Wal-Mart’s, right there just inside the front door.”

“Who investigated?” Rhodes asked.

“Ruth,” Hack said, finally getting in a word.  “Henry pulled her car out of the ditch and brought it in, so I thought she might as well go.”

Rhodes knew that Ruth could handle herself, but he would have thought Buddy a more likely candidate to check out an assault case.

“Who got assaulted?” he asked.

“Didn’t say it was a who,” Lawton told him.

“What?”

“That’s right,” Lawton said.

“What’s right?”

“That’s what I said.”

Rhodes sank down in the chair at his desk.  It had finally happened, just as he’d always been afraid that it would.  His conversation with Lawton and Hack had finally turned into an Abbott and Costello routine.

He took a deep breath, and said, “Let me get this straight.  There’s been an assault at Wal-Mart.  Is that right?”

“Right,” Hack and Lawton said together.

“So far, so good.  Now.  Who got assaulted?”

“Not
who
,” Lawton said.  “What.”

“What?”

“That’s right.”

And I-Don’t-Know’s on third
, Rhodes thought.  He wished he had a Dr Pepper.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.  “From the beginning.  Very slowly.”

“I told you,” Lawton said.

“Go over it again.  But do a better job of it.”

Lawton looked insulted.  “Well, like I said, there was this assault at Wal-Mart’s.”

“I got that much of it.”

“On the crane machine,” Hack said.

Rhodes finally figured it out.  The assault hadn’t been on a person, a
who
.  It had been on a machine.  A
what
.

“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” he asked.

“I thought I did,” Lawton said.  “What I said was, — “

Rhodes held up his hand.  “Never mind.  Just go on with the story.  Who assaulted the machine?”

“The Methodist preacher’s kid,” Lawton said.  “You know how that machine works?”

“You put in a quarter or two quarters or whatever and turn the crank.  The crane is supposed to drop down and pick up a prize.  If you turn just right, it drops the prize in the slot, and the prize falls out.  Not too many people can do it right, though.”

“That’s what the preacher’s kid found out,” Hack said.

“He shoulda known,” Lawton said.  “But maybe preachers’ kids don’t fool with those kinds of machines very much.  Anyway, he took it pretty hard when he didn’t get the prize he wanted.  The witnesses that called it in said the kid kicked the machine and said a few words a preacher’s kid ought not even to know.”

“That’s not much of an assault,” Rhodes said.

“That ain’t all,” Hack told him.  “The kid —“

“I’m tellin’ this story,” Lawton said, and to Rhodes’ surprise, Hack didn’t dispute him.  “Anyway the kid, his name’s Fisher, for Fisher of Men, prob’ly —“

“He was fishin’ around in that slot,” Hack said.  “Maybe they named him
Fisher
for that.”

 Lawton glared at Hack, who shrugged and began inspecting the fingernails on his left hand.

“What happened then,” Lawton said, “is that Fisher stood on some kind of a box and stuck his arm up in the slot, tryin’ to grab the prize.”

“And he couldn’t get it out,” Hack said.  “His arm, that is.  The prize, either.  The box slipped out from under his feet, and he was sorta hangin’ there —“

“And that’s when he really started assaultin’ the machine,” Lawton said.  “He was screamin’ and kickin’ and hammerin’ on the plastic around all the prizes with the hand that wasn’t stuck in the machine.”

“But he was trapped by the machine,” Rhodes said.  “So it wasn’t so much of an assault as an attempt to escape.”

“You could call it that, I guess,” Lawton said.  “If you wanted to.”

“Did they get his arm out?” Rhodes asked.

“Yeah,” Lawton said.  “Ruth called in and said that someone got some oil from the popcorn machine and they used that to grease his arm up.  They finally got it out.  He wasn’t hurt much.  Just a scraped arm.”

“Maybe he’s learned his lesson.  Where’s Ruth now?”

“She’s on her way in,” Hack said.  “She’ll be here in a minute.”

“Good.  Who took the call about the Wal-Mart thing, anyway?”

“Well, that was Lawton,” Hack said.  “He was sittin’ in for me for a few minutes.”

That explained why Hack had let Lawton tell most of the story.  He hadn’t been there when the call came in.

“Had to see his sweetie,” Lawton said.  “Had to go out to the cafe and have a little time together.”

Hack had been keeping company with Mrs. McGee, a woman of his own age whom he’d met in the course of one of Rhodes’ investigations.

“You’re just jealous,” Hack said.  “Couldn’t get a woman to look at you even if you won the Lotto.”

“I’m better lookin’ than some people I could name.  I could get me a woman in a minute if I wanted one.  It’s just that I’d rather spend my time doin’ my job than sparkin’ some old lady.”

“Don’t you call Miz McGee an old lady,” Hack said, starting to rise from his chair.

Rhodes said, “I think you’d better go check on the prisoner, Lawton.  We want to be sure Nellie’s comfortable during his stay here.”

Lawton scowled at Hack for a minute and then turned toward the door leading to the cells.

“Did you check on the computer about gun sales?” Rhodes asked Hack.

“You asked me to, didn’t you?  But it didn’t do any good, just like I told you.  Nobody involved with the coaches bought any guns.  Here’s a print-out just in case, though.”

He handed Rhodes a piece of paper, and the sheriff glanced down the list of names and weapons.  Hack was right.  No one connected with the case had bought a pistol, and no one owned a .32.  Everyone preferred a larger caliber.

He put the list aside as Ruth Grady came in the door.  There was a dark stain on the front of her uniform.

“Popcorn oil,” she said when she saw Rhodes looking at it.  “Did Hack tell you about the little incident at Wal-Mart?”

“Hack and Lawton,” Rhodes said.  “Is the boy all right?”

“He’s fine, and maybe he’s learned a lesson.”

“You can’t count on it,” Hack said.  “Those preachers’ kids are hard to deal with.”

“We’ll see about that later on, when he gets to be a teenager,” Rhodes said.

“He won’t be in town by then,” Hack said.  “Those Methodists move their preachers around a lot.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to Bob Deedham and his wife?” Rhodes asked Ruth.

“I talked to him.  She wasn’t around.”

“Did he say where she was?”

“No.  Does it matter?”

“Not really,” Rhodes said, though it might.  Especially if she was out at The County Line.  But that could wait until later.  Right now, he wanted to hear what Deedham had to say.

He asked Ruth to tell him.

Chapter Eleven

I
t wasn’t what Deedham had to say so much as the way he acted that interested Rhodes when Ruth gave her account.

Naturally Deedham had said there was no trouble between him and Brady Meredith.  Rhodes wouldn’t have expected anything different.