Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 09 - Death by Accident (9 page)

O
ne reason Rhodes didn’t get home was that Hack got a call from a stranded motorist out on the highway about halfway to Thurston.  The motorist said that he’d had a flat and was changing his tire when someone stopped on the shoulder of the road behind him.  The motorist thought it was a Good Samaritan, stopping to help out.

“Only he didn’t help,” Hack reported straightforwardly.  He had to be straightforward, since Rhodes had been listening to one side of the conversation.  “He just grabbed up the guy’s spare, which was a practically new Michelin radial lyin’ there on the ground.  He threw it in the back of his truck, got in, and took off.”

“Did you get a description?” Rhodes asked.

“For a wonder,” Hack said.  “The guy that called is pretty bright.  He says it was a red Isuzu, and he even got the license number.”

“Run it,” Rhodes said. 

Hack did.  “Jerry Grubbs.  Well, we sure know him, don’t we?”

“We sure do.  He’s probably at home right now, thinking about selling the tire.” 

Ruth was off duty, having already put in some overtime, and Buddy, the night deputy, was on patrol.  Buddy could pick up the motorist.  That left it to Rhodes to see about Grubbs.

Rhodes knew where Grubbs lived, since, as Hack said, they knew him.  Grubbs had never worked for a living as far as Rhodes knew.  He had always lived with his parents, who supported him until he was nearly thirty.  Then his father died of a heart attack.  His mother died of cancer a year later.  Both of them had insurance, though not much, which seemed to be fine with Grubbs.  He didn’t need much, and what he couldn’t afford to buy with the insurance money, he stole.

He never stole much that Rhodes knew about — beer at a convenience store, a pair of jeans at Wal-Mart, a car battery at John West’s auto parts store, a package of Trojans from Billy Lee’s drug store.

What Rhodes sometimes worried about was what didn’t get reported.  Grubbs had a habit of picking up anything he took a fancy to, and there were bound to have been times when he got away with things.  People knew about him, and they were careful when he was around, but they couldn’t watch him every single minute.

The truth was that Grubbs didn’t really know better than to steal.  He wasn’t exactly the most intelligent resident of the county, and he had strange ideas about property.  He’d never served more than a few days in jail because he was always sorry about having taken something that wasn’t his.  That is, he was sorry when things were explained to him.  Sometimes it took a while for the message to get through.  And when it finally did, he immediately forgot it.

Grubbs lived just off an unpaved county road in the run-down house his parents had left him.  He hadn’t taken care of the place, and even in the dark Rhodes could see that in a few years the area around the house would look more like a dump than a front yard.

The red Isuzu looked good, though.  It was the only thing that Grubbs seemed to care about.  It was parked at least twenty feet from the chinaberry tree that four or five scraggly white leghorns were roosting in.

Rhodes parked the county car and turned off the lights.  By the time he got out, Grubbs had turned on the porch light and joined him in the yard.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Grubbs said.  “How ya doin’?”

He was short and wiry, and he wore jeans and a cowboy hat that pushed down on his ears because it was about one size too big.  Rhodes wondered where he’d picked it up.

“I’m doing fine, Jerry.  How are you?”

“Great.  Great.  Been watchin’ a little TV.  Sure some funny shows on these days, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rhodes said.  He never watched TV except when some old movie was on.

“Well, there are.  The one about that nanny cracks me up.  I love to hear her say ‘Ohhhhhh, Mr. Sheffield.’”

Rhodes supposed that Grubbs was trying some kind of accent, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“You haven’t been watching TV all night, have you?” he asked.

“Whacha mean, Sheriff?”

“I hear you’ve been helping out stranded motorists.”

“Oh, yeah.  That guy with the flat.  I gave him a hand out there on the road.”

“You didn’t exactly give him a hand, Jerry.  You took his spare tire.”

Jerry appeared to be completely amazed.  “Me?”

“You.”

Jerry looked all around the yard.  “I don’t see any tire.  Do you?”

“No,” Rhodes said.  “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The tire, Jerry.  I know you took it.”

“Think you can find it?”

Rhodes couldn’t see too much of the area around the house in the dim light from the porch.  Besides, he didn’t want to spend any time looking for something that Jerry could show him.

“I don’t want to look for it, Jerry.  Why don’t you tell me where it is?”

“If you can’t find it, I get to keep it, don’t I?”

“That’s not the way it works,” Rhodes said.

“Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.”

“That’s not exactly the way the law reads,” Rhodes said.  “And you didn’t find the tire.”

Jerry jammed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and looked stubborn.

“Did so find it,” he said.  “It was layin’ right there in the road.”

“The man who owns it was about to put it on his car.”

“Well, he shoulda said so.  Shouldn’t have left it layin’ there where somebody could just run over it.”

“He didn’t leave it lying there, Jerry.  He took it out of his trunk so he could put it on his car.”

“Well, it’s mine now.  Finders, keepers.”

“No, Jerry.  It still belongs to the man who was changing the tire.  Where is it?”

“I’m not tellin’.  If you find it, you can have it, though.  That’s fair.  Finders, keepers.”

Rhodes knew how to be patient, but he wasn’t going to spend the night arguing with Jerry Grubbs.

“If you don’t tell me where the tire is, I’m going to have to take you in to the jail, Jerry.  I don’t have time to look for it tonight.”

Jerry stuck his hands deeper into his back pockets.  “Finders, keepers.”

“You won’t change your mind?”

“Finders, keepers.  Losers, weepers.”

“All right, then.  Let’s go to the jail.”

“Can I go turn off my TV?”

“Let’s get you in the car,” Rhodes said.  “I’ll turn off the TV for you.”

“No, no!”  Jerry shook his head violently and turned to the house, breaking into a run before Rhodes could grab him.  “No, no!”

Rhodes followed as fast as he could, stumbling on the hard, churned ground.  He caught up with Jerry just inside the front door and saw at once why Jerry hadn’t wanted him to turn off the TV.  The tire was sitting there in the living room, right up on the couch as if it were watching
The Nanny
.

Jerry made a dive for it.  “Finders, keepers!”

“Not this time, Jerry,” Rhodes said, grabbing Grubbs’ arm.  “I’ll just take that now.”

Holding onto Grubbs, he walked over to the couch.  “I’m going to let you go.  Will you stand right there?”

“I guess so,” Grubbs said.  “I sure do like that tire, though.  It’s a Michelin.”

“I think I’d better take it back to the owner,” Rhodes said, letting go of Grubbs’ arm.  “He’s not going to be too happy with you, but he might not press charges.  If he does, I’ll have to come back to see you tomorrow.”

Grubbs was rubbing his arm.  “I always like to have you come by for a visit, Sheriff.”

Rhodes took the tire off the couch, bounced it on the floor, and rolled it to the door.

“Try to stay out of trouble, Jerry,” he said.

“I always try to stay out of trouble.  People just act crazy sometimes.”

“I guess they do at that,” Rhodes said.

R
hodes drove back to the jail and picked up the motorist, whose name was Pat Grove.  Then they drove to the stranded car, a Honda Accord.

Rhodes parked and put on his flashers, then helped Grove put on the spare.  It didn’t take long.

“Thanks for the help, Sheriff,” Grove said when he’d put his tools back in the trunk and closed it.  “That was pretty fast work.”

“You gave a good description,” Rhodes said.

“It was still fast.  If I lived in this county, you’d get my vote for sure.”

Rhodes smiled.  “I could use it,” he said.

Chapter Fourteen

T
he other reason that Rhodes missed his supper was that after helping Pat Grove change the tire he decided to drive out to the Old Settlers’ Grounds just to see if there was any truth in the rumor that Mack Riley had started.

As it turned out, there was.

Even before Rhodes arrived at the Grounds, he could see lights.  They weren’t moving, but it was obvious that they were headlights.  When Rhodes drove under the arches over the gateway, he could see the cars and pickups parked all around the Burleson Cabin.

And when he got closer, he could see trouble.

Ty Berry was on the porch of cabin, frozen in the glare of the headlights and holding what looked like an old over-and-under twelve-gauge shotgun.  Members of the Clearview Historical Society and Sons and Daughters of Texas surrounded the cabin and were pushing and shoving and yelling at one another.  Rhodes picked out Faye Knape, Grat Bilson, and Grat’s wife, Yvonne.  Mack Riley was there, too, along with quite a few others that Rhodes didn’t know.

A modified flatbed truck with a motorized winch up near the rear of the cab was backed up to the cabin.  A ramp from the truck bed was shoved just under the front porch.  The winch wasn’t hooked to anything yet.  The cable was still wrapped around the drum, and Ty Berry looked determined to make sure it stayed there.

Tuffy West stood in front of the truck away from the pushing and shoving.  He was smoking a cigarette, completely unconcerned with what was happening.

Rhodes parked a good distance from the unruly crowd, got out of the county car, and walked over to where Tuffy was standing.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Tuffy said.

No one else was paying any attention to Rhodes.  Probably no one had even noticed him drive up.  Everyone was too busy yelling at everyone else.  Mack Riley was yelling louder than anyone, but no one seemed to be listening to him or to anyone else.

“What are you doing here, Tuffy?” Rhodes asked, speaking louder than he usually did so that Tuffy could hear.

Tuffy tossed his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe of his work boot.

“This here’s my truck,” he said, jerking his head backward as if to point it out.  “I got paid to do a moving job, so here I am.”

“You think that cabin would hold together if you tried winching it up on the truck bed with that cable?” Rhodes asked.

Tuffy shrugged.  “Not my problem.  Miz Knape asked me to move something, so I told her I’d try.  I’m working by the hour, so the way I figure it, I get paid whether the cabin stays or goes.”

“Did it ever occur to you that moving this cabin might be illegal?”

“Didn’t figure it was any of my business one way or the other.  I’m just the hired help here, tryin’ to earn an honest dollar.”

“And you say Mrs. Knape hired you?”

“That’s right, but she said the Historical Society would pay me.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get paid,” Rhodes said.  “This cabin’s not going anywhere.”

Tuffy shrugged again.  “Like I said, I’m on the clock.  I’m earnin’ money right now, while they all holler at each other.  If they don’t want me to move the cabin, that’s fine with me.  I’ll just take my truck and go home.”

“Why don’t you do that right now,” Rhodes said.  “You’ve probably made a good night’s pay already.”

Tuffy nodded, and went around to the side of truck.  Rhodes heard the door open, and Tuffy climbed inside.  The door slammed shut.

The sound didn’t register on the arguing crowd.  Nobody noticed a thing until Tuffy started the truck, and even then only a couple of people were curious enough to turn around to see what the noise was all about.

Everyone noticed when Tuffy put the truck in gear and started to pull away, however.  There were a few energetic cheers from the Sons and Daughters, and one or two outbursts of another kind from the members of the Historical Society as the truck rumbled away.

Then they all turned to each other and started yelling again.  Grat Bilson was standing toe to toe with Mack Riley, and Faye Knape was yelling at both of them.  Rhodes couldn’t distinguish the words, but he started in their direction because he was afraid someone, most likely Mack, was going to get hurt if he didn’t intercede.

He was too late, though.  Mack threw a punch that surprised Bilson and glanced off his cheekbone.

Bilson didn’t like getting hit.  He had thirty years and at least fifty pounds on Riley, but that didn’t prevent him from striking back.  He hit Riley on the left shoulder with a short right, and aimed a roundhouse left for his head.

Riley might have been old, but he wasn’t slow.  He ducked to the right and kicked out at Bilson’s knee with an old street-fighter’s move.

He couldn’t kick as high as when he was a young man, so he missed the knee and connected with Bilson’s shin, which probably hurt just as much.  Maybe more because Bilson bent over and grabbed at his leg, at which point Riley slammed a fist into the back of his head and laid him on the ground.

Suddenly it got very quiet, except for the high-pitched scream from Yvonne Bilson as she jumped on Riley’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist.  She started to pull his thin white hair with her left hand and pound his chest with her right, all the time keeping up a thin, wavery howl.

Faye Knape was trying to peel her off when Rhodes got there, and the sheriff let her finish the job.  It would be better that way, and Faye looked up to it.

Riley fell to his hands and knees before Faye could get a good hold on Yvonne, but finally Faye was able to separate them.  By then, there was no more arguing or yelling.  Everyone was watching to see who would be attacked next, or whether Grat Bilson would be able to get up before Mack Riley, who was still down after Faye had dragged Yvonne to the cabin porch.

Ty Berry, noticing Rhodes’s arrival, yelled, “It’s about time you got here, Sheriff.”