Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 09 - Death by Accident (6 page)

“It didn’t have to be
his
car that ran out of gas,” Ruth said.

Chapter Nine

“I
already told you,” Tuffy West said.  “I was with John at The County Line that night.  We had a couple of beers, maybe three, and that was it.  John left.  I thought he was headed home.”

“And you didn’t see Pep Yeldell that night?”

“Don’t remember,” Tuffy said.

They were inside the multi-purpose building that sat near the front of Tuffy’s wrecking yard.  It smelled of oil and the old tires that were stacked high along one wall.  Tuffy was behind a high wooden counter that looked as if it had been built about the time F. D. R. was getting fooled by Hack’s Russians at Yalta.  Behind him, wooden shelves reached all the way to the ceiling.  They were crammed with all sorts of used auto parts:  generators, distributors, carburetors, thermostats, radios, tape players, and hundreds of other grease-and-oil-covered items that Rhodes couldn’t identify.  There was a wooden step ladder leaning against the shelves.

There was a Pontiac Firebird sitting nearby on the concrete floor.  The fenders were accordioned, and the front bumper was pushed up almost to the passenger compartment.  Rhodes hadn’t worked the wreck, but Ruth had told him about it.  Drinking and driving don’t mix.

On past the Firebird there was another car with its hood raised high, its engine held above the empty engine compartment on a chain hoist.

“But you did know Yeldell?” Rhodes said.

Tuffy shrugged.  “Everybody knew Pep.  He was around out there a lot of the time.”

“Who was he with?”

“Different people.”

“Women?” Rhodes asked.

“Most of the time.  He was a pretty good-lookin’ guy, you know?  And there are a lot of ladies out there tryin’ to find somebody to have fun with.”

“He won’t be out there anymore,” Rhodes said.

Tuffy said, “Why not?”

“He drowned last night.  Out at the Old Settlers’ Grounds.”

“What the hell was he doin’ out there?”

“Swimming.  At least that’s what it looks like he was doing.”

Tuffy moved a scratch pad out of his way and leaned his forearms on the counter.

“That’s a damn shame.  Pep was a good ol’ boy.  Knew how to have a good time,” he said.  He looked over at the Firebird, then back at Rhodes.  “Was he by himself out there?”

“Looks that way,” Rhodes said.

“You wouldn’t think old Pep’d go out there for a swim by himself.  You sure there wasn’t some woman with him?”

“I’m not sure of anything at this point,” Rhodes said.  “I’m just trying to find out what I can.”

That was basically the way Rhodes got things done.  Hack could talk all he wanted to about modern crime detection methods and computers, but Rhodes still believed that talking, listening, and thinking were more likely to get him to a solution than all the computers in the world.  He knew he might be fooling himself, but usually he got results.

He hadn’t gotten very far with locating John West’s killer, however, as Tuffy reminded him.

“I don’t see how this is helpin’ you find out who ran over John,” Tuffy said.

“If he and Yeldell knew each other, there might be some connection between their deaths,” Rhodes said.

“Hell, they knew each other.  I told you that.  I said that everybody knew Pep, and everybody included John.  They weren’t what you’d call best friends, but they’d drink a beer now and then.”

“But not the night John got killed.”

“Not that I remember.  But they could’ve met somewhere else that night.  If John got killed when you say he did, he didn’t go home.  He might’ve gone to some other club, had some more to drink.  Maybe Pep was there.  Why, you think somebody killed Pep?”

“It could have been an accident,” Rhodes said.

“I expect so.  Pep wasn’t what you’d call a careful man.  I’ve seen him get in fights, take on two or three guys at a time if he had a drink or two in him.”

Rhodes didn’t often get called out to The County Line when there was a fight.  The management liked to settle things without resorting to calling the law.  But he’d been there a time or two, when things got out of hand.  He didn’t recall that Pep had been involved, however.

“Did Pep fool around with other men’s wives?” Rhodes asked.

Tuffy straightened and crossed his arms over his chest.  “I wouldn’t know about that.  You don’t see a whole lot of weddin’ rings out at The County Line.”

“What about Gary Heckethorn?  You know him?” 

“Seen him couple of times.  I know him to talk to.  Why?”

“He’s Yeldell’s cousin.  He was with him at The County Line now and then.”

“You’re tryin’ too hard, Sheriff,” Tuffy said.  “I don’t think John knew Heckethorn any better’n I did, and we didn’t know Pep Yeldell very well, either.  I don’t think John’s killin’ has anything to do with Yeldell.”

Rhodes was pretty sure he agreed with West, but he still didn’t like the idea of two accidental deaths so close together, and he didn’t like the fact that he was no closer to finding West’s killer than he’d been when the accident happened.

“You let me know when you find out somethin’ you can get your teeth into, hear?” Tuffy said.

Rhodes promised that he would.

C
lyde Ballinger’s funeral home had once been one of Clearview’s finest homes, a family mansion with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and landscaped grounds that covered an entire block.  But times had changed.  The last member of the family that owned the house and property had died, and Clyde had bought the old estate for his business.  He had his office in back of the funeral home, in a little brick building that had been the servants’ quarters.

Rhodes didn’t know about the rest of the building, but the room where Clyde had his office was cluttered with the old paperback books that Clyde bought at garage sales.  They generally didn’t cost him more than a quarter, and he argued that they gave him a lot more entertainment than some fat new novel that he’d have to pay six-ninety-nine for.

He was sitting at his desk reading something called
China Coast
by Don Smith when Rhodes came in.

“Is that a good one?” Rhodes asked.

“Darn right,” Ballinger said, putting a thin slip of paper in the book to mark his place.  He closed the book and looked at the back cover.  “It says here, ‘a real nose-busting adventure.’  Now is that the kind of thing that makes you want to read a book or not?”

“I’m not sure,” Rhodes said.

“Well, it makes
me
want to read it.”  Ballinger put down
China Coast
and picked up another book that lay on his desk.  “I found this one today, too.”

He held it up so Rhodes could see the cover. 
A Fiend in Need
by someone named Milton K. Ozaki.

“They don’t write ’em like this anymore,” Ballinger said, giving the book a little shake for emphasis.

“I’ll bet they don’t,” Rhodes said.

Ballinger put the book down.  “You probably didn’t come by to talk about great literature, though, did you?”

“Not today,” Rhodes said.

Ballinger looked at the ceiling.  “Or football?”

“Especially not football.”

“Guess you must want to talk about Dr. White’s report on Pep Yeldell, then.”

“You guess right.”

Ballinger opened a desk drawer and took out a small stack of papers.

“Got it right here.  He finished a little while ago.”

He handed the papers to Rhodes, who started reading.  Ballinger watched for a second, then picked up
China Coast
and opened it to his place.

After a while, Rhodes said, “So Yeldell drowned.”

Ballinger marked his spot in the book again.  “That’s what Dr. White said.  Water in his lungs.”

“What about the bump on his head?”

“Looks like he was hit by a tree limb.  It’s all in there about the little pieces of tree bark in the scalp.”

“I saw it.  Dr. White saved the bark, I’m sure.”

“He’s got it all bagged and tagged.  Took blood samples, too.  Those are ready to go to the lab.”

“I’ve got a tree limb in the evidence locker at the jail that I want to try to match up to the bark from Yeldell’s scalp,” Rhodes said.  “Anything I missed in this?”

“Nope.  Dr. White says Yeldell was most likely drunk and drowned when he got hit by that limb.  You know who hit him with it?”

“It fell out of a tree,” Rhodes said.

“Oh.  Well, in that case, what you’ve got is an accident.”  Ballinger thought about that for a second.  “Seems like we’re having a lot of those around here lately.”

“Accidents happen,” Rhodes said.

“You have to wonder about that hit-and-run, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, it looks like if it was an accident, whoever did it would come forward, tell the truth, and get it over with.”

“Not if whoever did it was drunk or driving recklessly at the time.”

“You find any sign of that at the scene?”

“No,” Rhodes said.  “But that road’s not the kind that takes tracks.”

“You never know about accidents like that, I guess,” Ballinger said.

“Eventually you do,” Rhodes told him.  “If you keep after it.”

“And you’re going to keep after it, am I right?”  He picked up
China Coast
.  “That’s what the tough guys always do.”

“I’m not a tough guy,” Rhodes said.  “But I’m not going to quit.”

Ballinger smiled.  “I didn’t think you would.”

Chapter Ten

W
hen Rhodes wanted to think things over, he usually went to his office in the county courthouse, a building that he thought vaguely resembled the Kremlin but that the few tourists that came to Blacklin County seemed to think was well worth photographing. The building was old, Rhodes had to admit that, but he didn’t see the beauty of it.

What he liked about it was the fact that it was quiet, especially on the floor where his office was located, away from the courtrooms and the noise of the really busy offices, like that of the tax assessor-collector, which was down in the basement.  He liked the wide marble halls and the high ceilings, too.  There had been some talk about modernizing the building, lowering the ceilings and blocking the windows to reduce the cost of heating and cooling, but so far nothing had come of it.  Rhodes hoped that nothing would.  He figured it was worth a few dollars to preserve a little of the dignity of the past.

Another thing Rhodes liked about the courthouse was the Dr Pepper machine, where he could actually get a Dr Pepper in a glass bottle.  Of course he’d already had one Dr Pepper that day, but it hadn’t been a very good one, so he figured it didn’t count.  He’d skip the cheese crackers with peanut butter this time, though.

He put his two quarters in the old green Dr Pepper machine, pushed the button, and took the glass bottle when it slid out.  He opened it and went to his office to drink it.

He closed the door behind him, sat in the swivel chair, and put his feet up on his desk.

What he had was two accidents with not very much connecting them other than the fact that the two dead men might have known one another slightly.  That wasn’t exactly strange in Blacklin County.  Though Rhodes and Ivy hadn’t known anyone in the Dairy Queen, it wasn’t unusual at all for either of them to run into quite a few people they knew nearly any day of the week.  Blacklin County didn’t have the population of metropolitan Houston, after all.

So why did Rhodes think the two accidents might be connected?  There was no real reason at all.  It was just a feeling he had, a hunch.  It was almost like a physical itch that he could feel right between his shoulder blades in that place that was just out of reach when you tried to scratch it.

Hack would tell him that a hunch didn’t mean a thing and that the modern lawman should rely on the kind of information he could call up from his computer or get analyzed in the crime lab.  But Rhodes had played hunches before and gotten good results.  There were some things you couldn’t analyze in a lab.

Rhodes drank the Dr Pepper and thought about West and Yeldell.  West sold auto parts, and Yeldell worked in a body shop.  Another tenuous connection, hardly worth thinking about, and it probably didn’t mean a thing.

But it did, somehow.  Rhodes wasn’t sure how, but he could feel that itch again.  It had to mean something.  All he had to do was find out what.

He got up and left his office, putting the empty Dr Pepper bottle in the rack by the side of the machine as he passed by.

M
rs. John West, whose first name was Kara, lived in a modest house in one of the newer areas of Clearview, a section of the town that had been developed about twenty years previously when it appeared that there might be some renewed interest in drilling for oil and gas in the area.

In the early part of the century, Clearview had gone through an oil boom that the older members of the community still remembered with both fondness and regret, and the tall drilling rigs that remained behind had been a constant reminder of the boom to everyone else until fairly recently.  The wells had been drilled so quickly that no one bothered to take down the rigs, which had rusted in the old fields until someone finally got the idea of selling them for scrap.

The new boom hadn’t happened, of course.  A few gas wells were successfully drilled, but there wasn’t much oil, and gas wasn’t selling for anything that would make a man rich, not unless he was lucky enough to get several wells in the same unit.  Rhodes didn’t know of anyone who’d been that lucky.

The houses that had been built in anticipation of the town’s growth had been kept up pretty well by the people who bought them, though a few of them were obviously abandoned, probably owned now by mortgage holders in some place like California.  Yellowing newspapers lay in yards that hadn’t been mowed very often the previous summer and were now covered in tall dead or dying grass.

Kara West lived in a house that had once been in pretty bad shape, but her husband had fixed it up after they bought it, and it had gotten even nicer since his death.  He might have been playing around on her, but he had believed in heavy life insurance, a quarter of a million dollars’ worth.