Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder (17 page)

Before Rhodes could ask Ruth about her talks with Bonny and Ron Tandy, Hack said, “We got us a big shot in jail, Sheriff.”

Rhodes looked at Ruth, who just grinned and rolled her eyes. Rhodes knew he was in for it then.

“What kind of big shot?” he asked.

“One of them bull fighters,” Lawton said.  “Buddy brought him in.”

“He was drunk,” Hack said, taking back the story.  “Buddy found him wanderin’ around out at the city park.  Prob’ly went there when he realized he couldn’t drive, and got out of his car for some reason or other —“

“Had to go to the bathroom, I bet,” Lawton said.  “His pants was unzipped when we locked him up.”

“— but we don’t know why,” Hack continued as if Lawton hadn’t spoken.  “Buddy was takin’ a short cut through the park and saw him wanderin’ around over by the band stand, couldn’t hardly stand up.  So Buddy went and tried to talk to him, and then he brought him in.”

Rhodes had a lot of questions, but he was almost afraid to ask them.

“You say Buddy
tried
to talk to him?”

“That’s right,” Lawton said.  “He tried, but he couldn’t.”

“Why not?  Was the man too drunk to talk?”

“He wasn’t too drunk,” Hack said.  “He just couldn’t talk English.  He’s a
bullfighter
.  They come from Mexico or maybe from Spain.”

“And you say he’s a big shot?”

“Sure he’s a big shot.  Famous, anyway.”

“If you can’t talk to him,” Rhodes said, “how do you know he’s famous?”

“He could tell us that much,” Lawton said.  “That’s about all the English he could talk.”

“But he said that he was a famous bullfighter?”

“That’s right,” Hack said.  “Famous bullfighter.  That’s what
matador
means, ain’t it?  Bullfighter?”

“He said he was a famous matador?”

Hack looked first at Ruth and then at Lawton.  “Ain’t that what we been tellin’ you all along?”

“That’s what we been tellin’ him,” Lawton agreed.

“Isn’t there a Mexican food restaurant in Garton called The Famous Matador?” Rhodes asked.

Hack thought for a second.  “By gosh, I believe you’re right.  Got a big sign out in front, a bullfighter with a neon cape that sorta waves back and forth.”

“That’s the place,” Rhodes said.  “I think I’d better have a talk with the prisoner.”

R
hodes spoke a little Spanish, enough to make himself understood most of the time, and he could understand more than he spoke.  It didn’t take him long to find out that the prisoner was from Garton and that he worked in the kitchen at the Famous Matador.  His name was Jaime Saenz.  He’d come to Clearview for the football game, met a young woman who spoke Spanish a lot better than either Rhodes or Buddy, and stayed in town for an extra couple of days.

He was desperate to get back to Garton, he said, because he was afraid he was going to lose his job at the restaurant.  He’d been drunk that afternoon when Buddy found him, though maybe not as drunk as Buddy thought.  The language barrier had no doubt compounded the problem.  At any rate, he seemed sober now.

Rhodes went back downstairs and told Ruth that he was going to release the prisoner.  She could take him back to the park for his car.

“What if he gets drunk again?” Ruth asked.

“Follow him until he leaves the county to make sure he doesn’t,” Rhodes told her.  “We don’t want him to lose his job, but we don’t want him to have an accident, either.”

“Can you hold him for a few more minutes?  It won’t take long for me to tell you about Bonny and Tandy.”

“All right.  What did you find out?”

She’d found out that both men had indeed bet with Ford and that both were eager to keep their involvement with the gambler a secret.

“It’s not public opinion that they’re worried about, though,” she said.  “Not in Bonny’s case, anyway.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s his wife.  He wouldn’t talk to me at his house.  I had to meet him at his office.  He’s lost a little more money than he’d like for his wife to know about.  In fact, I got the impression that
any
money he lost would be more than he’d like for her to know about.”

“Does he have an alibi for last night?”

“He was with his wife.  He says she can vouch for him, but he really doesn’t want to have to bring her into it.  If he does, she’ll find out about the gambling.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think he murdered Ford,” Ruth said.  “Anybody who’s that scared of his wife wouldn’t kill somebody.”

Rhodes wasn’t sure that the theory made sense, but he’d known Bonny a long time.  He didn’t think Bonny was a killer, either.

“What about Tandy?” he asked.

“He says he’s never made a bet over ten dollars in his life.  He doesn’t believe in it.  He even went to Las Vegas last year just to see the shows.”

Rhodes had known Tandy for a long time, too.  There was a rumor around Clearview that he still had the first nickel he’d ever made, which was an exaggeration, but not too much of one.  If he said he didn’t bet excessively, Rhodes believed him.

“Of course, he’s a deacon at First Baptist,” Ruth said.  “Nothing would happen to him if the congregation found out he’d bet with Ford, and probably nobody would even say anything about it to him.  But they’d talk about it when he wasn’t around, as he well knows, so he’d hate for the word to get out.”

“We won’t tell anyone unless we have to,” Rhodes said.  “Let me tell you about another angle on this mess.”

 He told Ruth about his talk with Jay Kelton and his theory about the steroids.

“It sounds like it might lead somewhere,” she said.  “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to call Ivy to let her know I’ll be late,” he said.  “And then I’m going to talk to Bob Deedham.”

W
hen he left the jail, Rhodes didn’t go straight to the Deedhams’ house.  He stopped at the H.E.B. and bought a can of Vienna sausages, a quarter pound of mild cheddar cheese, and a box of whole wheat crackers.  A man could go only so long without food.

He opened the sausages in the parking lot and felt a mild twinge of guilt when he saw the congealed grease collected around the tops.  The guilt passed when he ate one, however.  He sliced through the plastic wrap of the cheese with his pocket knife and cut off a chunk.  He put it on a cracker and ate it, hardly thinking of the fat grams.  The crackers were whole wheat, he told himself.  That had to count for something.

He ate all the sausages, but not all the cheese.  And of course there were plenty of crackers left.  He got a Dr Pepper from the machine in front of the store and drank it as he drove to the Deedhams’.

He tried not to let the fact that he didn’t like Bob Deedham influence his thoughts on the case, but it was hard not to.  If he could prove a connection between Deedham and Rapper, he thought he would have a pretty good reason to suspect the two of them in Meredith’s death.  The problem was that he wouldn’t have anything more than suspicion.  There was no proof, and proof was what he had to have.

He was almost to the Deedhams’ house when Hack called on the radio.

“Miz Wilkie just phoned,” he said.  “She said she heard motorsickles again and thought you’d want to know.”

“When?” Rhodes asked.

“Just then,” Hack said.  “I called you soon as she hung up.”

“I don’t mean when did she phone.  When did she hear the motorcycles?”

“Right before she phoned me.  They were headin’ toward town, she said.”

“All right.  I’ll drive over toward Milsby and see what I can see.”

“You be careful,” Hack said.

“I always am.  Has Ruth already gone to escort that famous bullfighter of yours home to Garton?”

“She just left.  If you want some back-up, I can call Buddy.”

“I’m not going to do anything except look around.  If I need help, I’ll call you back.”

“You won’t have time.  You’re always gettin’ in some kinda mess and then —“

“Let’s not talk about that on the air,” Rhodes said, and signed off.  He turned right at the next cross street and headed toward Milsby.

T
he motorcycles shot across an intersection a few blocks from where Rhodes was stopped at a stop sign.  There were four of them.  They had already turned off the Milsby road and were on the highway that led out of Clearview toward the southeast.  It was also the highway that led to The County Line, so Rhodes thought he might as well tag along and see if that was where they were going.

He was too far away to see who was riding the motorcycles, but it was reasonable to assume that Rapper and Nellie were on two of them.  There were very few motorcycles in Blacklin County.

Rhodes stayed far enough behind not to alarm the bikers.  If they were going to The County Line, he wanted them to get there so he could find out why.  He thought they might be meeting someone.

If they were just leaving Blacklin County for some reason or other, that was all right, too.  He could locate them eventually if he needed them later on.  He let them pull even farther ahead of him, and soon they were out of sight.

W
hen he reached The County Line, the parking lot was not nearly as crowded as it had been the night before.  Sunday night wasn’t prime honky-tonking time in Blacklin County.

That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of customers.  It just meant that it was easier to park, and that the early arrivals didn’t have to worry about having their cars blocked in by the latecomers.  Rhodes was able to park much closer to the entrance than he had done on Saturday.  The motorcycles, as usual, were close to the front.  It was a lot easier to maneuver one of them through the parking lot than it was to maneuver a car.

Now Rhodes had to make a decision.  He could go inside and see who Rapper was talking to, if he was talking to anyone besides his pals, or he could wait and see what developed.  He decided that he was too impatient to wait, but remembering his comment to Hack about being careful, he thought he’d better call for back-up before going inside.

“Buddy’s out on a call,” Hack said when Rhodes got him.  “We got us a 415 at the Dairy Queen.”

“Let’s switch frequencies,” Rhodes said.

Hack agreed, and they changed to a frequency that couldn’t be picked up on citizens’ scanners.

“Now, what kind of disturbance are they having at the Dairy Queen?” Rhodes asked.

“Fishin’,” Hack said.

“Hack …”

“All right.  I was just joshin’ you a little.  But it’s the truth.  The Methodist preacher’s wife took some kids out there to get a Pick-Nic Kid’s meal after church.  You seen the set up they got for those?”

Rhodes had seen it.  The kids got to “pick” a prize with their meal, and the local DQ had a display of the prizes in something resembling vending machines.

“You mean Fisher’s stuck again?” he said.

“That’s right.  He didn’t learn his lesson like you thought he might.  Tried to pick his prize right out of the display.  Ran his arm in one of those slots, and it’s in there tight as Dick’s hat band.  I told Buddy to use some of that oil they cook the French fries with on him this time.”

“Good idea.  What about Ruth?”

“She just checked in.  That bullfighter fella is across the line and on his way home.”

That meant that Ruth was practically on the other side of the county, but even at that it wouldn’t take her long to get to where Rhodes was.

“Send her along for back-up,” Rhodes said.  “You never know what Rapper might do.”

“OK.  You wait for her to get there before you go in.”

“I can’t do that.  Rapper may be gone by then.”

“You never learn, do you?” Hack said.

“Don’t worry.  I told you I’d be careful.”

“Yeah,” Hack said.  “That’s what you always tell me.”

T
he music inside The County Line was just as loud as it had been on Saturday, but the crowd on the dance floor was much smaller.  There were three bikers drinking beer at the bar, and Rhodes was acquainted with all three of them, though Nellie was the only one whose name he knew.  Rapper wasn’t there.

Since the three at the bar weren’t looking in his direction, Rhodes thought he might as well go have a look at the dancers.  Maybe he’d find Rapper dancing with Terry Deedham.  That would put an interesting twist on things.

That wasn’t what he found.  As far as he could tell, Terry wasn’t there.  There were plenty of blondes, but she wasn’t one of them.

Terry’s husband was there, however.  He was sitting at one of the tables that partially surrounded the dance floor.

And he was talking to Rapper.

Rhodes had seen enough.  He knew better than to confront Rapper while his buddies were with him, at least not without back-up.

He was about to leave when Rapper looked up and saw him.

Chapter Fifteen

R
apper was an old hand at dealing with the law, and the sight of the sheriff didn’t visibly affect him.  He sat calmly, looking at Rhodes as if they were two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Everything would have been fine if Rhodes had been dealing only with Rapper.  But he wasn’t.  There was also Deedham to consider, and Deedham, while he might have had nerves of iron when he stalked the sideline of a football field plotting out defenses and revising strategies, had never before been caught in any situation quite as shady as talking to a man like Rapper about whatever it was that they were discussing.

So he panicked.

That wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, but in his haste to distance himself from Rapper, Deedham upset the table between them, knocking the two bottles of beer that sat on it into Rapper’s lap.

Even that wouldn’t have been much of an annoyance in the course of a normal evening at The County Line.  Similar things probably happened fairly often, and Rapper took it coolly enough, bending over to pick up the bottles as they slipped from his lap to the floor, the beer puddling around their necks.

What
was
an annoyance, at least to one particular patron of The County Line, was the fact that when Deedham jumped up, he pushed his chair backward, hard, into the chair of the man at a nearby table.