Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 09 - Death by Accident (7 page)

When Mrs. West answered the door, she looked much happier than she had when Rhodes had last seen her several days after the funeral.  She had been wearing an old black dress then, still in mourning, and she had been crying quite a bit.

Now she was wearing a new dress, her hair was stylishly cut and several shades blonder, and she obviously hadn’t cried for quite a while.  Thinking of the funeral and of the change in Mrs. West reminded Rhodes of something else.

“You go to Brother Alton’s church, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” Mrs. West said.  “Is that what you came here to ask me?”

“No, but I was thinking today that someone had made some generous donations to Brother Alton.  That was a nice thing to do.”

“I’m not saying I gave any money to the church.  That’s between me and the Lord and the I. R. S.”

“I know,” Rhodes said.  “Could I come in for a minute?”

Mrs. West opened the door and Rhodes stepped through onto a newly-tiled floor.  Then he followed Mrs. West into a room with new carpet, a new couch, and two new wing chairs.  There was a huge projection TV set on one wall.

“You’ve done some remodeling,” Rhodes said.

“I had a little money for the first time in my life,” Mrs. West said, “and I’d lost my husband.  So I decided to change things around a little.”

Rhodes didn’t blame her, but for the first time he wondered about all that insurance money.  He supposed he should have been suspicious right from the first, but Mrs. West’s grief had seemed genuine at the time.  She had spent the whole funeral crying on Tuffy’s shoulder.

Mrs. West asked Rhodes to have a seat, so he took one of the wing chairs.  It was more comfortable than it looked.  Mrs. West sat on the couch, behind a new coffee table.

“Have you found something new about John?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” Rhodes said.  “But there’s been another accidental death.”

“A hit-and-run?”

“No.  A drowning.  A man named Pep Yeldell.  Did you know him?”

“No,” Mrs. West said, with no hesitation.  “I never heard of him.”

Rhodes wondered why she didn’t at least have to think about it for a second.  So he said, “Your husband knew him, I think.”

“I’ve found out a few things about John, myself,” Mrs. West said.  “He knew a lot of people that I didn’t know.  Most of them were women.”

So liking women was something else that West and Yeldell had in common.  Rhodes wondered if it meant anything.  Rhodes also wondered who Mrs. West had been talking to.  So he asked her.

She evaded the question.  “No one in particular.  Some of the people at the church have been kind enough to tell me a few things.  I wonder why you didn’t tell me, Sheriff.”

Rhodes hadn’t said anything to her because Tuffy West had told him that John didn’t run around on his wife, a case of a brother not wanting to sully the reputation of the deceased, Rhodes supposed.  Or maybe Mrs. West had been misinformed.

But he didn’t say that, either.  He said, “I didn’t have any evidence of it.”

“But you knew it?”

“No.  And I still don’t know that it’s true.”

“Oh, it was true, all right,” Mrs. West said.  “I’m certain of that.  I was a fool for a long time, but I’m not quite so foolish now.”

Rhodes looked around the room.  “Your husband must have loved you.  He left you well-provided for.”

“Guilt,” Mrs. West said.  “That’s all it was.  Love didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

Rhodes figured that if she were going to be bitter, he might as well take advantage of it.  “Did anyone give you specific names?”

Mrs. West’s blond hair shimmered when she shook her head.  “No. But I don’t need the names.  I don’t think I even want to know them.”

“They might help me find out something about the accident.”

“I don’t think so.  John was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It seems like he was in the wrong place a lot of the time, come to think of it.  Have you heard anything at all about the Cherokee?”

“Not a thing,” Rhodes said.  “But I’m still looking.”

“I don’t see how something that big can just disappear.”

Rhodes didn’t see how it could either, not unless Hack was right and the Russian Mafia, or whatever it was called, had hijacked it to the former Soviet Union.  But he didn’t see any need to mention that to Mrs. West.

So he said simply, “It might have been stolen.”

“But wouldn’t someone have found it by now?”

“Not necessarily.  Just change the license plates, and it could be awfully hard to locate.”

“I hope you can find it,” Mrs. West said.  “I really liked that car.”

“I’ll find it,” Rhodes said with more confidence that he actually felt.

Mrs. West smiled, and Rhodes was surprised to see that she was wearing braces.  He knew that more and more adults were wearing them, but it wasn’t a common sight in Clearview.

“Call me when you do,” she said.

Chapter Eleven

R
andall Overton didn’t live in a house nearly as well-kept as Kara West’s, and his neighborhood wasn’t nearly as respectable, though long ago it had been.

Overton’s house was on a street of similar wood-frame houses, all of which had been built along about the time of the oil boom and none of which had been cared for particularly well in the years since.  Most of them needed paint, most of them had much more dirt in their yards than grass, and most showed signs of general neglect:  an old tire in the front yard, a car up on blocks in the oil-stained driveway, a wringer-equipped washing machine sitting on the sagging front porch, chickens scratching in the dirt behind a picket fence that was missing several pickets.

Rhodes parked the county car in front of Overton’s house.  It was the one with the car up on blocks in the driveway.   Rhodes couldn’t tell what kind of car it was because it was covered by a cream-colored tarp.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t Overton’s only vehicle.  There was a shiny new Toyota truck parked behind it.  The roofing business evidently paid pretty well.  At least the kind of roofing business that Overton conducted.

Rhodes was curious about the tarp-covered car.  It didn’t look as if it could be a Jeep Cherokee, but you never knew unless you looked.  He’d heard of a hit-and-run case in Houston in which the car had sat in an apartment parking lot for two years before somebody looked at it.

So when he walked past the covered car, he lifted the tarp at the front for a look at the grille.  He saw a vertical chrome fish-mouth, which could mean only one thing:  he was looking at a 1958 Edsel.  His curiosity got the better of him, and he lifted the side of the tarp.  The Edsel was a four-door hardtop, red and white, one of the ugliest cars ever made in the eyes of some beholders.

But not in the eyes of Rhodes.  He was instantly in love.  In Texas in 1958 fourteen year olds could get a “learner’s permit,” but Rhodes hadn’t been quite old enough even for that when Edsels appeared on the scene.  Not that it mattered; to him they represented the high point of a decade in which Detroit seemed determined to make the gaudiest cars possible.  He wondered whether Overton would sell the car or whether he was saving it for himself.

Rhodes lowered the tarp and walked to Overton’s covered porch, which wasn’t connected to the ground by any steps that Rhodes could see.  He put one foot on the porch, grabbed one of the roof supports — a two by four nailed to the floor of the porch and one of the roof beams — and pulled himself up.  He could hear muffled voices inside the house, but as he knocked on the rusty screen door he realized that the voices were coming from a TV set.  Either that, or Overton had invited Oprah to come over for a visit and she had accepted.

No one answered his knock.  He knocked harder, but there was still no response.

Rhodes stepped off the porch, which proved to be no easier than stepping up on it had been.  About the time the Edsel had been new, he would have jumped both up and down with no trouble at all, but those days were long gone.

He walked around to the back of the house.  There were three bundles of shingles and a stack of warped two-by-fours in the weeds near the steps leading to the back door.  Rhodes was glad to see the steps.  He mounted them and knocked on the door.  There was no screen this time.

And there was no answer to the knock.  Maybe Overton was out somewhere chiseling someone out of money for a worthless roofing job.  Or maybe he was just asleep.  Or the TV was too loud.  Rhodes really did want to ask him about the Edsel.  He hammered so hard on the door that it rattled loosely in the frame.

A dog started barking somewhere inside, and a man’s voice yelled, “Shut up, you mutt!”

So Overton, or someone, was there after all.  Rhodes knocked again.  The dog continued to bark, but no one tried to quiet it again.

“All right, all right,” the man’s voice called.  “Keep your britches on.  I’m coming.”

The back door opened and the barking got louder, though Rhodes couldn’t see the dog.

He could, however, see a man who was bigger than Rhodes had expected.  He must have weighed two hundred pounds, and he was solid and wide.

The roofer was wearing a threadbare Joe Camel t-shirt that didn’t quite reach the top of his faded jeans.  He wasn’t wearing a belt.  No shoes, either.  His head was completely bald, but there was hair coming out of every opening in the t-shirt, pushing up Overton’s neck and down his arms.  It made a furry fringe between the t-shirt and the jeans.  It was as if a cheap sofa had exploded inside the t-shirt.

Overton looked at Rhodes without expression.  It was possible that his face wasn’t capable of much expression.  It was almost flat, like the face of a cartoon character who’s been hit by an iron.  Even the nose was flat.

“Randall Overton?” Rhodes said.

“Yeah,” Overton said.  His voice was even flatter than his face.  “So?”

Rhodes hated to have to show Overton his badge.  It would probably mean the car deal was off.  But there was nothing else to do.

“Sheriff Dan Rhodes,” he said, producing the badge.  “I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Overton didn’t appear to be unduly impressed by the badge or Rhodes’s name.

“Talk about what?” he said.

“A roofing job.”

“You got a bad roof you need fixed?  A leak?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well why do you want to talk about a roofing job, then?”

The dog was still barking, but it was quieter now.  Rhodes could hear the TV again.

“Can I come inside?” he asked.

Overton didn’t move.  He just shifted his weight so that his feet were planted a little more firmly on the floor.

“We can talk just fine right here,” he said.

Rhodes didn’t push it.  “All right.  It’s about the roofing job you did at the Free Will Church.”

“What about it?”  Overton sounded bored.

“It’s a pretty sorry job.  The roof still leaks and Brother Alton tells me that you won’t do anything about it.”

Overton leaned against the door frame.  “Can’t.  They won’t pay me.”

“They’ve already paid you.”

“I did what I was paid for, and then some.  I spent most of the money on materials.  Didn’t get hardly a thing for all my labor.”

“Brother Alton says you won’t show him the receipts for the materials.”

Overton shrugged.  “Lost ’em.  He’ll have to take my word for it.  He’s a Christian man, right?  Why would I lie to him?”

“Because you’re a con man and a swindler,” Rhodes said.

Overton straightened up and looked at Rhodes with surprise.

“What are you sayin’?”

“Which word didn’t you understand?”

Overton took a quick step forward, thrusting his chest out without bringing up his hands.  He bumped into Rhodes, who almost lost his balance on the top step.

But not quite.  He wasn’t as agile as he had been when he was a kid, but he was still steady enough when he had to be.

When Overton tried to bump him again, Rhodes grabbed the front of Overton’s t-shirt with one hand and the door frame with the other.  Using Overton’s momentum, Rhodes helped the roofer keep right on moving, past the steps and into the back yard.

Overton hit the ground with his legs churning, but he lost his equilibrium and stumbled to his knees.  Before he could get to his feet, Rhodes was standing over him with his hand pushing down on his back.

“Think about it before you try anything,” Rhodes said.  “You wouldn’t want to get arrested for assaulting a peace officer.”

“You’re the one that assaulted
me
,” Overton said, but he didn’t try to get up.

“We could let a judge decide that,” Rhodes said, keeping his hand pressed against the small of Overton’s back.  He could feel the thick hair through the t-shirt.  “If you really want to, that is.”

“You called me a name,” Overton said.

Rhodes nodded, though he was aware that Overton couldn’t see it.  He was a little surprised that Overton was so sensitive.

“That’s right.  I called you a con man.  And a swindler, too, I think.  I could have said you were a crook and a cheat and a few other things, but I didn’t.”

“I didn’t cheat nobody.”

“Sure you did.  You cheated Brother Alton and his church.  For all I know you’ve cheated other people around here, too, but they haven’t told me about it yet.  I’m going to ask around and find out.  If you have, I’m going to see if I can get some of them to press charges.”

“For what?  Ever’ time I hire on to do a job for people, I do it.”

“But do you do it well?  Or do you take the money, do a halfway job, and then claim you spent all the money on materials before you run out on the people who paid you?”

“I do the job right, dammit.”

“I hope so,” Rhodes said.  “I don’t want to have to arrest you for deceptive business practices.”

“You won’t be arrestin’ me.  I didn’t deceive nobody.”

“We’ll see about that.  I want you to finish the job on Brother Alton’s roof, too.  And I want you to do it right.”

“I’ll have to have a little something for my labor if I do.”

“No you won’t,” Rhodes said.  “You’ve already taken all the money you’re going to take.  Unless you can find those receipts and show them to me.”