Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder (22 page)

By the time the motorcycle hit the ground, Nellie was no longer on it.  He landed six feet away, right beside J. D. Spence, who had followed Ruth on his riding mower.

Spence looked down into Nellie’s face and said, “Who the hell are you?”

Nellie didn’t even open his eyes.  He just groaned.  It was the only answer he could give.

B
oth Rapper and Nellie wound up in the Clearview General Hospital.  Nellie had a couple of broken ribs, and the hay hook had done something to one of the major muscles in Rapper’s thigh.  The doctor wasn’t sure just what without doing a more complete examination, though he thought it was a serious tear, and he was afraid that Rapper would have a little trouble walking for a while.  Maybe permanently.

“Reckon he’s gonna sue us for police brutality?” Hack wondered.  “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve got sued.”

“I don’t think he’ll bother,” Rhodes said.  “But maybe this time he’s learned his lesson.”

Rhodes had gone by the jail after leaving his prisoners at the hospital.  He needed to check on what other things might be going on in town.  It appeared that nothing much was happening.  Monday was usually a quiet day, and Ruth and Buddy had things under control.

“If he ain’t learned his lesson this time, he never will,” Lawton said.  “Lost some fingers the first time, gonna be walkin’ with a limp this time.  Only way it could’ve been better is if there was a barb on that hook.  They would’ve had a heck of a time gettin’ it out of him, messed up the muscle even worse than it did.  If he ever comes back here, Lord knows what’ll happen to him.  He’ll prob’ly get killed.”

“I doubt it,” Rhodes said.  “People like Rapper never die.  They just keep on causing trouble.”

“Do you think he’s the one killed Brady Meredith?” Hack asked.

“There’s no evidence pointing that way,” Rhodes said.

After the ambulance came to take Nellie and Rapper to town, Rhodes and Ruth had searched the barn.  They had found no trace of the drugs that Bob Deedham was supposed to pay for, and Rhodes was sure that Rapper had sent them out of the county with the other two bikers.

A pistol had been stuck deep in one of the bedrolls, but it was a Glock 9mm, certainly not the weapon used to kill Meredith.  Rhodes was just as glad he hadn’t found it when he was looking for something to use against Rapper and Nellie.  He might have been tempted to shoot one or both of them, and their injuries might have been even worse than they were.

Unlike their last experience in Blacklin County, this time both Nellie and Rapper were guaranteed to spend some time in jail.  Rhodes was still adding up the charges against them, but there would be enough to ensure that neither man would get away with serving his entire sentence in the hospital. 

The bad news was that actual sentences didn’t have much to do with the time served.  Because of the crowded prisons, inmates in Texas were currently serving about a month for each year of their sentence before being released.  Unless Rapper and Nellie were guilty of one or both of the murders that Rhodes was trying to solve, they would be back in the saddles of their motorcycles in months rather than years.  If they were the ones who had murdered Brady Meredith, they’d still get out in a much shorter time than they deserved.

Rhodes didn’t let things like that bother him, however.  His job was to enforce the law to the best of his ability.  What happened to the bad guys after they passed through his hands wasn’t up to him, and a few months of jail time were better than no jail time at all.

“Where you gonna be for the rest of the day?” Hack asked.  “In case I get any more people makin’ irate calls about you ruinin’ the football season for ever’body, I might wanta sic ’em onto you.”

“You didn’t mention any irate calls,” Rhodes said.

“Well, that don’t mean there ain’t been any.”

“Folks think it’s all your fault,” Lawton said.  “ ’Specially since the word’s got out about Hayes Ford.  What they’re sayin’ is that —”

“Wait a minute,” Rhodes said, interrupting him.  “What’s all my fault?”

“Gettin’ the team all in an uproar,” Lawton said.  “See, folks think that —”

This time, Hack interrupted him.  “I’m the one that’s been takin’ the calls.  Seems like I oughta be the one to tell the sheriff about ’em.”

“Go ahead then,” Lawton said, crossing his arms on his chest.  “I’m just the one that saved the whole team from gettin’ kicked out of the play-offs by drivin’ that ambulance on the field and stoppin’ the riot.  But that’s all right.  Never mind about me.”

“We won’t,” Hack said, not even looking at him.  “Anyhow, the talk is that Hayes Ford gettin’ killed like that must have somethin’ to do with Brady Meredith.  And if the team was upset before, they’re really gonna be worried now.  If you’d done somethin’ about Brady before now, Hayes would still be alive, and then things would all be just fine.”

“So what’re you gonna do about it?” Lawton said when Hack paused for breath.  He got a quick glare from Hack, but that was all.

“I guess I’ll go talk to Goober Vance,” Rhodes said.  “Maybe he knows something.  Maybe he’ll even confess.”

“Try to make him do it in time to get it in today’s paper,” Hack said.  “Maybe Goober could write it up himself.”

“That’d be a first,” Lawton said.  “Reporter admits he’s guilty of murder and writes up his confession for the paper.  Might make a good Movie of the Week.”

“If he confesses, it might,” Hack said.  “If he don’t, what’re we gonna do for an endin’?”

“Big fight in the pressroom,” Lawton said.  “Sheriff knocks him around for a while and then it winds up with Goober fallin’ into the press run and gettin’ run through them big rollers where they print the paper up.  He slides out on page one, flat as a flitter, and they have to scrape him up off the floor with a spatch’la.”

“I don’t think they print papers up like that anymore,” Hack said.  “Not with them big rollers.”

“What do you know about how they print up newspapers?” Lawton asked.

“I know as much as you do, that’s how much.”

“Who says?”

“I say.  What is it makes you think you know anything about it anyway?”

When Rhodes slipped out the door, they were still arguing about it.

Chapter Nineteen

G
oober wasn’t at the newspaper offices.  He was “on assignment.”

“That’s what he always tells us to say,” the secretary told Rhodes.  “What it means is that he’s gone to eat at the Dairy Queen.  This is Bean Day.  Goober never misses Bean Day.”

For reasons that Rhodes had yet to determine, since beans seemed to have very little to do with soft ice cream, the manager of the Clearview Dairy Queen had declared that every Monday would be Bean Day. 

The manager, Gene Jackson, went in early, before sun-up, and started a huge pot of pinto beans cooking on the stove.  When the cook came in, she made cornbread instead of hamburgers, and most everyone who ate lunch at the Dairy Queen that day had the special:  all the pinto beans and cornbread you could eat for a dollar and a half.

Rhodes had to admit that it was a good deal.  It was cheap, it was filling, and it was low in fat, especially if you could resist getting a Heath Bar Blizzard afterward.

Considering how many lunches he’d missed lately, Rhodes thought it would be a good idea to have some beans and then talk to Vance at the Dairy Queen if they could find a booth with a little privacy.

Rhodes should have known better.  Bean Day was something of a phenomenon, fast on its way to becoming a cherished local tradition.  The parking lot was jammed, and there was hardly a vacant seat in the place.

Goober Vance was sitting in a booth back near the restrooms.  Ron Tandy and Clyde Ballinger were with him.  Rhodes helped himself to a bowl of beans and got a slice of cornbread.  There were two kinds, regular and jalapeno.  Rhodes took a piece of the jalapeno and went toward the rear booth.

Several people stopped him to say hello and to ask what progress he was making on his investigations.  None of them seemed irate, for which Rhodes was grateful.

He gave all of them the same answer to their question:  “We’re doing what we can.”

And they all told him practically the same thing:  “I sure hope you can get it taken care of before it affects the team too much.”

When Rhodes arrived at the back booth, Ron Tandy moved over to make room for him.

“I didn’t know you were a bean man,” Tandy said.

“Only on Mondays,” Rhodes said, sitting down.

“Want some black pepper?” Ballinger asked, offering Rhodes a couple of white paper packets.  “Gene never uses enough black pepper.”

Rhodes waved the packets aside.  He didn’t need black pepper; he had the jalapeno cornbread.

“What about this Hayes Ford deal?” Vance said.  “Do you have anything you can say on the record for me?”

“You probably know more than I do,” Rhodes told him, wondering if Vance would see a double meaning in the statement.

If he did, he didn’t show it.  “I don’t know a thing other than what I was able to get out of your dispatcher when I called.  I thought I might hear something about a big loser in some card game, but there’s no word out on the streets about what happened.”

Rhodes took a spoonful of beans to keep from smiling.  Talking about the “word on the streets” in Clearview was just short of ludicrous.  Vance seemed constitutionally unable to avoid a cliché when he had a chance to use one.

“I’ve heard a few things,” Tandy said.  “I’ve heard that Ford’s murder has something to do with Brady’s.  If that’s true, it’s going to have a bad effect on the team.”

There it was again.  The message was clear, just as it had been in the phone calls that Hack had gotten, just as it had been from practically everyone Rhodes had talked to.  No one really seemed to care about Ford, any more than they seemed to care about Brady Meredith.  What they cared about was the effect on the team.

“I’d say it would have a worse effect on the people who bet money with Ford,” Rhodes said, looking straight at Tandy.  “Especially if they thought they had something to lose if Ford’s records were ever made public.”

Tandy swallowed hard and spooned up some beans.  Ballinger stirred his spoon around in his bowl.  Goober Vance perked up.  He had been looking a little gloomy, but now he was looking positively cheerful.

“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.”