Half in Love with Artful Death (2 page)

Rhodes was already out of his chair and on his way to the door.

“I'll find out,” he said. “Call Andy and have him back me up.”

“You might already have backup,” Hack said.

“Andy's there?”

“Nope, but that was your friend Seepy Benton on the phone. He says not to worry. He has everything under control.”

“Uh-oh,” Rhodes said.

 

Chapter 2

Seepy Benton didn't have everything under control.

The crowd outside the former hardware store was too large to be made up of just the artists, and Rhodes realized that some of the people from the new senior center must have come out to watch the fun, and maybe some of the other people from the somewhat revitalized downtown besides.

Most of the people weren't being unruly. Rhodes judged that at least half of them, and maybe more, were taking video of the unruly ones with their cell phones. Some of the videos would soon arrive on YouTube or Facebook or both, and shortly after that someone would see them and call the mayor or one of the commissioners, who would then call Rhodes and want to know why he was letting people take videos that hurt the reputation of the city of Clearview and all of Blacklin County.

It didn't matter how many times Rhodes told them that people had a constitutional right to take video of anything that was happening. The commissioners and the mayor held him personally responsible for any bad publicity that was generated. Rhodes could have mentioned that just about a hundred percent of the population of the rest of Texas and the entire United States didn't care what happened in Clearview and Blacklin County and that really there was no reputation to harm. Nobody would have appreciated that, however, so Rhodes never brought it up.

He got out of the county car and leaned against it while he waited for Andy to arrive. He looked over the crowd to see if he recognized anyone and saw Don McClaren, who looked more like a football coach than an art teacher, and in fact he'd played football in college with moderate success. He hadn't been quite big enough or fast enough for the pros, but he'd kept himself in good shape. He wore dark shorts and an Athletic Department T-shirt, which was what he always seemed to be wearing when Rhodes saw him. The shorts were smeared with something that looked like clay, which it probably was since McClaren was a potter, among other things.

At the edge of the group, just watching, was a short woman with gray hair fixed in a bun. Nora Fischer, Rhodes thought, his high school history teacher. She must have come out of the senior center, unless she'd taken up painting, which was always a possibility.

Rhodes also saw the woman with the orange hair, though it didn't look like it was twisted into corkscrews to him. She was in the midst of the crowd, and from the looks of it she was berating someone.

Seepy Benton, who supposedly had everything under control, was nowhere to be seen.

Rhodes heard a siren in the distance. Andy Shelby was on the way. Andy was fairly new to the department and still enthusiastic about the job, maybe a bit too enthusiastic, but this time the siren was probably a good idea. Rhodes hadn't used it, but as Andy got closer, some of the people in the center of the crowd heard the sound and began moving back. When they did, Rhodes saw Seepy Benton, who was standing on one side of Burt Collins.

Seepy was actually Dr. C. P. Benton, mathematics professor at the community college branch. The initials had given him the name by which a lot of people knew him. He'd come to Clearview to leave behind a failed romance at a community college near Houston, and to occupy his time he'd gone through the Citizens' Sheriff's Academy. Somehow he'd gotten the idea that his attendance at the academy had given him semiofficial status with the sheriff's department, and he'd appointed himself Rhodes's civilian helper. Rhodes had to admit that Benton had been helpful now and then, though he didn't admit that to Benton.

If McClaren looked like a football coach, Benton looked more like a rabbi, though today he was wearing a Western-style straw hat that looked as if he might have found it on the street and decided to keep it. Rhodes had no idea what Benton had been doing with the artists, though if Nora Fischer had taken up art, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that Benton had done so, too.

Standing on the other side of Collins was Eric Stewart. Benton had a grip on Burt Collins's right arm, and Stewart had a grip on the left. Collins occasionally jerked on one arm or the other, but he couldn't pull away.

Andy Shelby parked beside Rhodes, across the street from the hardware store. He cut the siren when he got out of the car, and it made a dying whine. He left the light bar flashing, and everyone on the opposite side of the street stopped shoving and jostling and stood looking over at the sheriff and the deputy.

Rhodes looked back at them, doing his best narrow-eyed Clint Eastwood impression. He didn't know if it was effective, but he'd always wanted to try it out.

“What's the beef, Sheriff?” Andy asked.

“We're about to find out,” Rhodes said.

He started across the street, and Andy followed. When they got about halfway across, Seepy Benton called out, “I want to make a citizen's arrest, Sheriff.”

Every time he heard the phrase “citizen's arrest,” Rhodes thought of Gomer Pyle arresting Barney Fife.

“So do I, Sheriff,” Stewart said. He was a tall, thin man about sixty with thick gray hair that reminded Rhodes of how his own hair was thinning.

“They're crazy, Sheriff,” Collins said. “You make 'em let me go.”

Rhodes looked around the crowd again. Now that they'd stopped arguing and shoving, even more people had their cell phones out and were taking video of the scene.

Rhodes looked at Andy. “How do you feel about being an Internet star?”

Andy grinned. He removed his carefully creased hat and smoothed down his hair with one hand. “You think there's a chance of one of those videos going viral?”

Rhodes envied anybody who could wear a hat. Even Seepy looked okay in a hat, but Rhodes was probably the only sheriff in Texas who didn't wear one. In a photo in the
Texas Lawman,
taken on the day nearly every sheriff in the state had gathered in Austin to visit legislators, Rhodes was one of only two sheriffs not wearing a hat. Now that his hair was getting thin in the back, a hat would provide him with some protection from the sun. It wasn't in the cards, however. Western hats made Rhodes look more like a comedian trying to do a John Wayne impression than a cowboy. Baseball caps were even worse. There was no way he was going to wear a baseball cap.

A car pulled to a stop back across the street. Rhodes half turned and saw Jennifer Loam get out. Loam had been a reporter for the
Clearview Herald
until she'd been downsized out of a job. Now she had her own news Web site, which claimed to present
A Clear View of Clearview.
She had her own video camera, not much bigger than a cell phone, and probably not much better. She'd started using it as soon as she got out of the car.

“The videos might not go viral,” Rhodes told Andy with a nod toward Loam, “but that one will be on Ms. Loam's Web site within the hour.”

Andy shrugged and put his hat back on.

“You wouldn't want to try to talk her out of using it, would you?” Rhodes said.

This time Andy blushed a little. Rhodes knew that he'd had his eye on Loam for a while. Romance was in the air.

“I don't think so,” Andy said. “I don't want to use my authority to try to intimidate the press.”

“Good answer,” Rhodes said, and he turned to Seepy Benton. “What're you arresting Mr. Collins for?”

“Destruction of property,” Benton said. “Malicious mischief. Or maybe vandalism. I'm not sure of the difference. We didn't learn that in the academy.”

“I'm not a vandal,” Collins said, trying without success to jerk his arms free. “I didn't do anything.”

“It was vandalism, all right,” Eric Stewart said. He was considerably taller than either Benton or Collins, and younger than either, probably no more than thirty. “We all just got back here from the morning session and found him. He defaced a lot of paintings before we got to him.”

“Spray paint,” Benton said. “He put it on one of the sculptures, too.”

Collins looked shocked at the accusation. “Me? I didn't do that. Did anybody see me do that?”

It always helped when the culprit confessed, but that wasn't going to happen. Some witnesses wouldn't hurt.

“Anybody see Mr. Collins spray-paint on anything?” Rhodes asked.

Nobody spoke up. Rhodes waited. Finally Eric Stewart said, “No one else was inside when it happened. As I said, we were just getting back. We saw this man”—he jerked Collins's arm—“coming out of the building.”

“He must've done it,” Benton said. “He tossed the paint can in the trash, and it's still there. Should have his fingerprints all over it.”

“That paint'll clean right off whatever it's on,” Collins said. “Not that I had anything to do with it.”

“It won't clean off,” Stewart said. “The paintings are ruined.”

“I'd say what they are is
improved,
” Collins said, “and if I'd done the spraying, I'd sure take credit for it.”

He seemed to be enjoying himself. Maybe it was all the cameras. Everybody wanted to be an Internet star.

“Why were you in the building?” Rhodes asked him.

“I was looking for somebody to complain to. You wouldn't listen to me. I thought maybe I could talk sense into these people. Instead, they grabbed me.”

“We went in and saw what he'd done,” Stewart said. “We were lucky to catch him before he got away.”

“Now just a minute,” Collins said. “I wasn't trying to get away. I was right here on the sidewalk when you came back out.”

“Is that right?” Rhodes asked.

Benton nodded. He looked a little sheepish, as well he should, Rhodes thought. Both Benton and Stewart released Collins's arms, and Collins shook himself before stepping away from them.

“Let me see your hands, Burt,” Rhodes said.

“Huh?”

“Your hands. Palms out.”

Collins put out his hands. Rhodes took each one and looked it over. No paint traces were visible. A test might reveal paint traces, but not if Burt had been wearing gloves. Where were the gloves? That was a good question. There were plenty of places to hide them in the building.

“That's all,” Rhodes said. “You can go.”

“It's about time,” Collins said. “I'm an innocent man, and you're harassing me.”

At that moment, Lonnie Wallace came running up. Lonnie had on a Western shirt, jeans, and boots, which some people might have thought of as being odd for the owner/operator of a beauty shop, but it was Lonnie's preferred attire. Rhodes could never wear boots, any more than he could wear a hat, and he envied Lonnie for being able to run in them.

“What's happened?” Lonnie asked, panting a little from his run.

“Somebody fixed up some of your artwork for you,” Collins said. “Improved it, you might say.” He grinned. “Wasn't me, though, and I didn't see who did it.”

What happened next was a matter of some dispute later on, but in describing the video that she posted on her news site, Jennifer Loam used the words “donnybrook” and “melee.” Those seemed like heavy literary terms to Rhodes, who would have just called it a scuffle, and even though the whole thing was caught on video, it was still impossible to say exactly how it had started.

Lonnie Wallace claimed that he slipped, but Collins claimed that he'd been attacked. It was true that Collins was smirking, which might have been an instigation for a fight, but it did appear that Lonnie's foot might have caught on the curb, causing him to stumble forward. No video that Rhodes saw later showed Lonnie's feet.

Rhodes tended to think that Lonnie was telling the truth, since he knew it wasn't easy to run in boots, but several people from the senior center swore that Lonnie had deliberately jumped on Collins. The fact that they were friends of Collins might have swayed their testimony, however. Others said it was clear that Lonnie had stubbed his toe on the curb. Those witnesses were all women who had their hair done at the Beauty Shack, Lonnie's establishment, so that could have had something to do with what they claimed.

It didn't really matter which set of witnesses was correct. The result was that Lonnie fell against Collins. Or attacked him. Lonnie said he merely grabbed Collins to keep from falling down, but the next thing Rhodes knew they were rolling on the sidewalk and there was definitely some slugging and kicking going on. And shouting. Lots of shouting.

Collins's friends jumped to help him, and some of the artists tried to stop them. That was when the donnybrook or melee or brawl began, complete with pushing, chest bumping, fist swinging, and shouting. Lots of shouting.

Andy looked at Rhodes and said, “How do we stop it?”

Rhodes shrugged. It looked worse than it was, but there were already some bloody noses, and there'd be some bruises and black eyes eventually. Those who weren't involved were taking video or watching with considerable interest. Some seemed to be cheering for one side or the other.

“I'll get the bullhorn,” Rhodes said.

He went across the street, fetched the bullhorn from the county car, and used it to announce the presence of law officers. No one paid him the least attention. Rhodes put the bullhorn back in the car and turned on the siren and light bar. That slowed things down for a moment, and what happened next was the biggest surprise of the day for Rhodes.

Seepy Benton emerged from the heart of the brawl and started picking off the angriest and most aggressive fighters one by one. Rhodes didn't know what Seepy was doing, exactly, but he appeared to be touching people up around their necks somehow or other. The people would then drop right where they were. They'd have hit the sidewalk if Don McClaren hadn't been right there to catch them and lower them gently down.