Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (25 page)

“About the murders?”

“Yes, but you can't come along. This is coply business.”

Benton puffed up a little at that. He liked being a part of the coply business, which was why Rhodes had used the phrase in the first place.

“You'll let me know when you crack the case, won't you?” Jennifer asked.

“When
we
crack the case,” Benton said.

“Right,” Jennifer said.

“You'll be the first one to hear,” Rhodes told her.

Jennifer left, but Benton wasn't ready to go anywhere. He was leaning forward, looking at the computer.

“This is great, all right,” he said. “You're more like Sage Barton than I thought.”

“What are you talking about?” Rhodes asked.

“These pictures that Jennifer took. They're right here in high res and full color. You're going to be famous when these go viral.”

“Viral?”

“That means they'll be all over the Internet. Come look.”

Rhodes looked at the computer, where Benton had called up Jennifer's Web site.

“See?” Benton asked. “Look at you, punching that guy right in the gut.”

“Yeah,” Hack said. Rhodes hadn't even heard him leave his chair and join them. “That's a Sage Barton move if I ever saw one. Look at that one where Buddy's holding his gun on the fella. Buddy's gonna love that. What's that writin' under 'em say?”

Benton read it aloud. “Blacklin County Sheriff Dan Rhodes battles miscreant with bare hands.”

“Miscreant?” Rhodes asked.

“Means somebody who breaks the law,” Hack said.

“Thanks,” Rhodes said. “I just wondered why she'd use a word like that.”

“Kinda gussies things up,” Hack said. “Makes it more interestin'. I gotta bookmark that site.”

“Everybody in the county will bookmark it,” Benton said, “as soon as they find out about it.”

“Great,” Rhodes said. “Just great.”

*   *   *

“We could've just used the computer at the jail,” Benton said when he and Rhodes arrived at Lynn Ashton's house.

“For the Facebook stuff, sure,” Rhodes said, “but not for anything else. The personal things, remember? The things you were talking about last night. Besides, we spent too much time looking at nonwork-related stuff. We needed to get busy.”

Benton grinned. “I see what you mean.”

Rhodes didn't grin back.

“I'll look at the social networking things first,” Benton said, suddenly all business. “That will be easy to find.”

“If she used her real name and not a screen name,” Rhodes said.

“Nobody uses screen names for Facebook and Twitter,” Benton said. “Well, hardly anybody. Even if she did, I could find them on the computer.”

They went inside the house, and Rhodes showed Benton the computer.

“It's not a Mac,” Benton said.

“Does that make a difference?” Rhodes asked.

“Macs don't get viruses, Macs can run for weeks without rebooting, Macs have great customer support, Macs—”

Rhodes was sorry he'd asked. He held up a hand. “The computer in your office isn't a Mac.”

“That's the college's fault. I don't understand why so many educational institutions bought into the PC market. They'd have been so much better off with Macs that it's hard to explain. If I were in charge—”

“Well, you're not,” Rhodes said, “and this is a PC. Will that make a difference in what you can do with it?”

“No. I can work with any platform.”

“Then it's not a problem, so I'll let you get started. I'm going to poke around some while you do the technical stuff.”

Benton sighed, nodded, and sat down at the computer. Rhodes went on into the bedroom to take another look around. He didn't know what he thought he might find. A secret compartment in the closet? A wall safe hidden behind a mirror? If it were that simple, life would be sweet.

He wandered around, not seeing anything of interest, berating himself for not having thought of the social networking things earlier. That was a rookie mistake, or the mistake of someone who'd grown up in a different era. It was also a mistake he wouldn't make again. Benton would never let him live it down if he found something on a Facebook page or in a tweet.

If there was something in her e-mail, Rhodes would feel bad about that, too. He should have had Ruth check it immediately. It might have saved Jeff Tyler's life.

Rhodes was still trying to figure out Tyler's place in the whole thing when he thought about something that should have occurred to him much earlier. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all, but it was something that would bear looking into. He filed it away for the moment and got down on his knees to look under Lynn's bed, the only place in the room he hadn't looked on his previous visit. He didn't see anything other than a few dust bunnies.

There was a chair over by the dresser, and when Rhodes was through looking under the bed, he got up and went to sit in it. Looking around the room, he thought about Lynn Ashton. All that was left of her was here in this house, in the closet, under the bed, on the computer. Well, there was her little red car, but there hadn't been much of her left there, either. Someone had killed her, and before long all traces of her would be gone.

Jeff Tyler had owned his store, but soon enough the people who had put things there on consignment would come and get them and take them away. Tyler's own things would remain until either his heirs took them or someone broke in and stole them or they just mouldered away inside the old building.

Lonnie was likely to be Jeff's heir, and Rhodes wondered what Lonnie would do with the store. Sell it if he could, maybe, or go into business for himself. That thought reminded Rhodes of something else he needed to consider. Things were starting to come together in his head, the way they sometimes did. He didn't necessarily like everything he was thinking, but at least he had the illusion that he was making progress. That was something, he supposed.

Chapter 25

Rhodes went back to the room where Benton was working at the computer. Benton turned around in the chair and said, “She didn't have a Twitter account. She must not have had time for that since she worked all day. I didn't really expect to find one since it wasn't on her phone.”

“What about Facebook?” Rhodes asked. “Wouldn't that have been on her phone, too?”

“Not if she couldn't get to it at work. She'd have had it here, where she could update it in the evening.”

“So did she have it here?”

“Yes,” Benton said, but he didn't look happy about it.

“What's the matter?” Rhodes asked.

“She didn't ever update it. She just had the account. Now and then someone would post on her wall, but she never responded. She must not have had much interest in social media.”

Rhodes thought about it. “No wonder. She worked all day most days, and she had a pretty active social life. What about e-mails?”

“She didn't do much e-mailing, either,” Benton said. “She had an account that's not even password protected. She got a lot of spam, like everybody does, but she doesn't have much personal e-mail, just an occasional joke from Lonnie Wallace. She didn't even bother to respond to most of them.”

“Who else e-mailed her besides Lonnie?”

“Nobody. She must not have given out her address to any of her clients or boyfriends.”

“What about an address book?” Rhodes asked.

“Nothing,” Benton said. “No diary. No YouTube channel. No blog that I can locate.”

“You have a YouTube channel?” Rhodes asked.

“I showed you in my office. Seepybenton. All one word. I have a few videos of my singing on it. You should check it out.”

“I'll do that the next time I'm on YouTube,” Rhodes said, which wasn't a lie since he didn't expect he'd ever be on YouTube.

“I don't think Lynn ever even looked at YouTube,” Benton said.

He shook his head as if he couldn't understand how anybody could live a life that was so unplugged. Rhodes could understand, though. He wasn't any more plugged-in than Lynn had been. It was easy enough to live like that if you didn't ever get into computers in the first place. For his part, Rhodes couldn't imagine what it must be like to tweet or to have a Facebook page.

Rhodes believed that most people in Blacklin County, at least the ones over forty, were like him. They watched television, and they might use computers in their work, but that was the extent of their electronic experiences. Rhodes thought that was enough. Sometimes it was more than enough.

“Did you find anything at all?” he asked. “Anything out of the ordinary, anything that might give me some help?”

“No,” Benton said. “I looked for things that might be connected to the reclamation center, but if there's something there, I couldn't find it.”

The implication was that he'd have found it if it had been there.

“I'm not surprised there's nothing about that,” Rhodes said. “There's no connection between the murders and the center.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

Look who's talking,
Rhodes thought.

“I'm sure,” he said. “I could be wrong, but I don't think so.”

“You still don't know who killed Lynn and Tyler, though.”

“I'm getting closer,” Rhodes said, but he didn't explain what he meant. “Did you find anything else?”

“I wish I could tell you that I did,” Benton said, “but I didn't, so I can't.”

“Don't feel bad,” Rhodes said. “It was something we had to try. I should have thought of it sooner. In this case it didn't matter, but it might the next time. I need to think more like the people who are wired into things. People like you.”

“Nobody's like me,” Benton said.

“Truer words were never spoken,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

Rhodes dropped Benton off at the jail, where he'd left his car, and drove by the Beauty Shack. It was still closed, so Rhodes decided to pay a visit to Lonnie Wallace.

Lonnie's neighborhood was noisier than it had been the last time Rhodes had been there. Saturday morning was the time for working in the yard. The noise of lawn mowers and leaf blowers filled the air, and Rhodes enjoyed the smell of freshly cut grass that he hadn't had to mow.

Lonnie was kneeling at a flower bed, looking for weeds to pull. Rhodes didn't think he was going to find any.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Lonnie said, looking up from his work. “What's going on?”

“Nothing much,” Rhodes said. “I just wanted to talk to you some more.”

Lonnie stood up. It was easier for him than it would have been for Rhodes. He wore khaki shorts, a blue polo shirt, and a straw hat with a wide brim.

“I've been trying to keep busy,” he said. “Since … you know. I can't seem to concentrate on anything. Working in the yard takes my mind off … you know.”

“I know,” Rhodes said. “You want to talk out here?”

“Let's go around back,” he said, and Rhodes followed him around the house.

In back, Lonnie had a covered patio. A pitcher of lemonade sat on a small table between two flimsy-looking green plastic lawn chairs. Condensation ran down the side of the pitcher and pooled on the table. There had been ice in the pitcher, but most of it had melted. The lemonade would be watery. A glass stood by the pitcher. Rhodes thought about Jeff Tyler and how he'd sit outside and drink lemonade in front of his store. Something he and Lonnie had in common.

“You sit down,” Lonnie said to Rhodes. “I'll run in and get you a glass.”

“No, thanks,” Rhodes said. “You go ahead and have a drink. I don't need one.”

“You're sure?”

Rhodes said he was sure and sat down, hoping the chair would hold him. It sagged under his weight, but it didn't crumble. Lonnie poured himself some lemonade and sat in the other chair.

“I can't stop thinking about Jeff,” Lonnie said after he'd taken a sip of lemonade. “I don't know what it's going to be like here without him. You probably think this is selfish, but there's nobody else like me in town, nobody I can talk to now that he and Lynn are both gone.”

“You might be surprised,” Rhodes said. “There are plenty of people around here who'd talk to you.”

“Name one,” Lonnie said, setting his glass on the table.

Rhodes looked out across the perfect lawn at the board fence enclosing the yard. A sparrow lit on the fence, then flew away.

“Well,” he said, “there's Nora Fischer.”

Lonnie smiled a sad smile. “She's a friend, and I enjoy her company, but she's so much older than I am. It's not quite the same.”

“And there's me,” Rhodes said.

“You're only here because I'm a suspect in Jeff and Lynn's deaths.” Rhodes started to interrupt, but Lonnie didn't let him. “No use to deny it, Sheriff. How often did you drop by before they died?”

That was an easy one to answer. “Never,” Rhodes said.

“That's okay,” Lonnie said. “I didn't ever drop by your house, either.”

“You need to get out more,” Rhodes said. “You should go to Max's place for dinner some Friday night and see what you think of Seepy Benton's performance. He's a guy you might like to talk to.”

“I've heard about him. He teaches math at the college. I was never very good at math.” Lonnie's voice quavered. “Jeff was. He was good at lots of things, but people didn't know because they didn't know him like I did. They thought he was some lazy goober with an antique store.”

“Nobody thought that.”

“You're just being nice. They did think it, but he wasn't like that at all. He read books. He liked ghost stories. His favorite TV show was
Firefly
. I'll bet you didn't know that.”