Murder Among the OWLS Read online

  “I’ll drop by tomorrow and talk to them,” Rhodes said.

  The phone rang, and Ballinger answered it. He listened for only a second and hung up.

  “Dr. White’s ready for you.”

  “What did he find out?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  The rain had started, but it was only a sprinkle. Rhodes walked fast to the back door of the funeral home without getting more than a few drops of water on his shirt and pants.

  Ballinger stayed behind. He said he wanted to read some more of Fiddlers, and whatever had happened to Helen Harris wasn’t his business anyway.

  Rhodes entered the back door and brushed the raindrops off his shirtsleeves. Dr. White came into the little hallway through another door, one that Rhodes knew led into the room where White had been working. He was a kindly looking man with only a fringe of hair around his mostly bald head. He had watery blue eyes and big, competent hands.

  “Well?” Rhodes said.

  “She was murdered.”

  Chapter 13

  “HAVE A LOOK AT THIS,” DR. WHITE SAID. HE WAS SITTING ON A stool at a table holding a laptop computer. The computer screen displayed a picture of Helen Harris lying on her kitchen floor. Ruth Grady had taken digital photographs of the crime scene and transferred the pictures to a CD, which Dr. White had put into the computer. As Rhodes leaned over to look at the screen, he thought that maybe CSI: Blacklin County wasn’t quite as far-fetched as it had seemed.

  “See the way her head’s lying?”

  Rhodes said that he did.

  “Fine. Now if she’d twisted her ankle, say, and fallen from the stool, it should have hit her on this side of her head.” Dr. White touched the screen with the tip of a ballpoint pen, indicating the side of the head on the floor. “But the impact was here.” He touched the temple that was facing up. “Besides that, the impact should have moved the stool. It’s on its edge. It should be bottom-side up. I’m just guessing about that part, but I believe it. I think someone hit her with the stool.”

  Rhodes, who had suspected it all along, now began to have doubts.

  “It seems like an awfully elaborate setup. Who’d think to get out the lightbulb and all the rest of it?”

  “Why does it have to be a setup?” Dr. White said. “What if Helen was already changing the bulb when someone came in? Everything would be in place, just like you saw it. The stool would have been a handy opportunity, and the rest just happens to fit with the accident theory.”

  Rhodes was easy to convince. “It would have to be someone she knew.”

  “I’d say that was a good probability. Do you have any suspects?”

  “One, so far.” For the moment Rhodes was discounting Billy Joe Bryon. “Leonard Thorpe.”

  Dr. White nodded. “I know Leo. He’s a patient of mine. Not a very nice man.”

  “That seems to be the general opinion.”

  “Have you questioned him?”

  Rhodes gave White a quick summary of the day’s encounter with Thorpe and its result.

  “He was running a poker game out at the pool hall?”

  “It was the safest place,” Rhodes said. “We’d raided him a couple of times at the mobile-home park because we were tipped off. Nobody knew about the pool hall.”

  “Except the players.”

  “Right. Except them. And they weren’t going to tell anybody about it.”

  “I heard something about his leaving the hospital, but I didn’t realize he was a murder suspect. I just thought he’d been in a fight.”

  “He wasn’t a suspect at the time,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe you could arrest all the Browns. Charge them with aiding and abetting a fugitive or something along those lines.”

  Rhodes grinned. “We couldn’t afford to keep them in the jail. The county would go broke feeding them.”

  “True. Too bad.”

  “Are you willing to go on record about Mrs. Harris’s murder?”

  “Of course. There’s more to it than I told you, such as the way the neck is twisted and a couple of other little things. But I don’t have any doubt that someone hit her with the stool.”

  “I don’t know yet about prints,” Rhodes said. “Ruth will be working on that tomorrow.”

  “In the picture the legs of that stool look like unfinished wood. Might not take good prints. Might have been wiped, too. Everybody watches television these days.”

  “All too true,” Rhodes said.

  “I hope you catch whoever killed Helen. Everybody liked her.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “Almost everybody, then. Do you have any idea where Thorpe might be?”

  “He could be in Mexico for all I know.”

  “Knowing you, that won’t stop you from looking for him.”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “That won’t stop me.”

  Rhodes spent several hours driving around town and looking for Thorpe. He went by the Royal Rack, which was closed and dark, rain running down its sides and kicking up more dirt to stick to the concrete blocks at the bottom.

  Thorpe’s trailer was dark as well, so Rhodes stopped to ask Gid Sherman if he’d seen anything of Thorpe. The rain was coming down hard, and Rhodes got soaked in the short distance between the car and Sherman’s trailer.

  “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him,” Sherman said after he’d opened his door and invited Rhodes inside. “You’d best believe I’ve been watching that trailer of his mighty close, too. If he was in there, he’d have to show a light, and there hasn’t been a sign of one. He didn’t come back before dark, either. I sat out in his yard till after sundown, just in case he showed up.”

  Rhodes thanked Sherman for the help and the information. “Do you have any idea where else he might’ve gone?”

  Sherman shook his head. “Never talked to him about any place he might hide out in. Didn’t talk to him much at all. Didn’t like him enough to talk to him. Even if I had, it wouldn’t make much difference. He wasn’t around much.”

  That was interesting, Rhodes thought, wondering where Thorpe had spent his time.

  “Maybe someone else around here could tell you,” Sherman said, “but I doubt it. Didn’t anybody socialize with Thorpe. Didn’t anybody like him any better’n I did.”

  Rhodes thanked him again and dashed back to his car through the rain. Sometimes in the spring the rain would last all night. In the morning, water would be running in ditches along the sides of all the county roads and the fields would be full of mud. It was just such a rain that had rushed along the banks of Pittman Creek the previous year and uncovered the bones of a Columbian mammoth. Rhodes wouldn’t have thought that a few bones from a prehistoric animal could cause so much trouble, but that was another time he’d been wrong. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

  The lights of the county car made a bright path through the raindrops. Rhodes saw that water was already beginning to pool in the yards in front of the trailers. If Thorpe wasn’t somewhere safe and dry, he’d catch a cold.

  Rhodes grinned as the idea occurred to him. Now he was thinking like Ivy. When he started doing that, it was time to go home for a hot bath and a cold supper.

  He got the cold supper first. Ivy had made a meat loaf that had actual meat in it, for which Rhodes was grateful. She’d recently tried a meatless meat loaf that she’d made with some veggie burgers she’d bought at the grocery store. While Ivy considered the dish a big success, Rhodes had been a lot less enthusiastic. He’d thought he’d concealed his lack of excitement well, but evidently he hadn’t succeeded. Which was fine with him as long as it resulted in a real meat loaf.

  “I can put a slice in the microwave if you want me to,” Ivy told him.

  Rhodes said he’d prefer to have a cold meat-loaf sandwich with a slice of American cheese on it. He knew Ivy wouldn’t approve of the cheese, but he couldn’t resist cheese on a cold meat-loaf sandwich. He put salad dressing on it, too, which was a further sin, but he tried to make up for it by
using 100 percent whole-wheat bread. Not that there was any choice. Ivy never bought any other kind.

  Rhodes sat at the table in the kitchen and put his sandwich together from the things that Ivy set on the table. Rhodes tried to ignore the cat, which lay over by the refrigerator and watched.

  Yancey was in the room, too, sitting quietly by Rhodes’s chair. Rhodes looked down at him. “Has he been this quiet all day?”

  Ivy smiled. “I can’t say about that, but he’s been quiet ever since I got home.”

  “Maybe the cat is a good influence on him.”

  “Sam,” Ivy said to remind him of the cat’s name yet again. “So you think we should keep him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Rhodes took a bite of his sandwich to avoid further conversation about the cat, but Ivy didn’t give up that easily.

  “Sam’s behaved himself perfectly. He’s used the litterbox, and he hasn’t attacked Yancey. I don’t think it would be a good idea to give him away to strangers. He might be unhappy. Cats are easily upset.”

  What about me? Rhodes thought. “We’re strangers.”

  “Not exactly. Sam remembers me from the times I’ve seen him at Helen’s house, and you’re a notorious soft touch when it comes to animals.”

  “Not all animals. Dogs.”

  “If you really don’t want Sam, maybe Leonard Thorpe would. Something to remember his cousin by.”

  If she thought that idea would perk Rhodes up, she was wrong. He set the sandwich in the plate in front of him and finished chewing his current bite. He said, “We don’t allow cats in the jail, and I don’t think they allow them in the prisons, either.”

  “You don’t know for sure that he’s guilty of anything.”

  “I know several things he’s guilty of.” Rhodes told Ivy about some of the day’s events while he ate the rest of his sandwich.

  “You’re right,” she said when he finished. “He won’t be wanting Sam.”

  As if he’d heard his name, the cat stood up and stretched carefully, walked over to Rhodes’s chair, and lay down beside Yancey.

  To Rhodes’s surprise, Yancey didn’t object. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t run, either.

  “See?” Ivy said. “They’ve getting to be friends. It would be wrong to separate them.”

  Rhodes sneezed.

  “Don’t start that again,” Ivy said. “You and I both know you aren’t allergic to cats.”

  “Maybe I have a cold from being out in the rain.”

  “You know better than that, too. You tell me all the time that a little rain can’t give somebody a cold.”

  “But you tell me that it can.”

  “You never listen, though, do you. You go take your bath, and I’ll clean up in here.”

  “What about after that?”

  “After that,” Ivy said, “we’ll see what develops.”

  That was good enough for Rhodes.

  Rhodes dreamed that he was trapped inside a burning building. The flames danced all around him, and the heat was intense. He couldn’t escape from it, no matter which way he turned because the walls were closing in on him and there was no doorway in any of them.

  As he stumbled around in the heat, he tripped, landing on the floor. A burning timber dropped from somewhere above. Rhodes tried to squirm out of the way, but for some reason he could no longer move. He seemed to be tied to the floor somehow, and the timber landed right beside him, pressing into his back, growing hotter and hotter until Rhodes thought his clothes would burst into flame.

  Rhodes came awake, clawing at the covers and throwing them off. He struggled out of the bed and stood up.

  Ivy turned over. “What’s the matter?”

  “I was having a bad dream.” Rhodes looked at the bed and saw some kind of dark lump in the middle, right about where his back had been. “Is that cat in our bed?”

  Ivy sat up and turned on her reading light. The cat was indeed in the bed, curled into a ball, sound asleep. The movement, the talking, and the light didn’t seem to have bothered him in the least.

  “That’s it,” Rhodes said. “I’m going to feed him to Speedo.”

  “You’re not going to do anything to him. He probably slept in Helen’s bed, and now you’re taking her place.”

  “I don’t want to take her place. I want to get a good night’s rest, without a cat sticking to my back.”

  Ivy picked up the cat. Rhodes heard it purring as she set it on the floor on her side of the bed. It walked out of the room, its tail high, and Rhodes shut the door.

  “That’s mean,” Ivy said.

  Rhodes didn’t think it was mean. He thought it was something more like self-preservation. “He can sleep with Yancey. I don’t want to be Helen. Let Yancey do it.”

  “Yancey might not want to.”

  “That’s too bad for Yancey. He’ll have to do the job until we find a home for the cat.”

  “I think Sam has already found a home.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to argue, so he kept quiet and lay back down. The bed was still warm where the cat had been lying, and Rhodes scrooched over to get to a cool spot. He didn’t find one, however.

  Outside, wind and rain lashed the house. It was a long time before Rhodes could go back to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  THE NEXT MORNING THE CAT WATCHED WHILE RHODES WAS GOING out to feed Speedo, but it made no attempt to leave the house. Rhodes had heard that cats didn’t like water, and the backyard was full of puddles. Some of them were hidden by the grass, but the cat probably sensed them. It was dry and comfortable, and Rhodes had already fed it. It seemed perfectly content.

  When Rhodes opened the door, Yancey came bounding and yipping into the kitchen. He was his old self again, and Rhodes wondered if the dog and the cat had entered into some sort of agreement. Rhodes let Yancey out and followed him into the yard. Yancey ran over to Speedo, splashing through the grass, and the two dogs stood nose to nose and looked at each other silently. As if, thought Rhodes, some kind of telepathic communication were going on and Yancey were telling the bigger dog about his new pal. After a few seconds, the dogs broke apart and started running around the yard, paying no attention at all to their getting wet.

  While the dogs were playing, Rhodes put out food and water for Speedo. Then he stood on the back steps and watched Yancey chase Speedo around as if he were the big dog and Speedo the tiny one. They tired each other out after a few minutes, and Speedo shook himself, flinging water drops all around. Yancey did the same, though not as effectively. When he was satisfactorily dry, Speedo went to his food dish and started to eat. Yancey and Rhodes went back inside.

  Ivy was in the kitchen talking to the cat. Yancey bounced around making wet pawprints on the floor while Rhodes poured some orange juice.

  “Just one big happy family,” he said after he’d drunk a couple of swallows.

  “Absolutely,” Ivy said. “Sam is fitting right in.”

  Rhodes felt something tickling the inside of his nose and knew he was about to sneeze. He made an effort to control it, but that proved impossible.

  “You’re just trying to make Sam feel bad,” Ivy told him when he sneezed.

  “No, he’s making me feel bad.”

  “Then you’d better get used to it. He seems perfectly at home here, and I think we should let him stay.”

  “We’ll talk about it later. I need to get to the jail.”

  “I got a call while you were out in the yard,” Ivy said before he could leave. “The OWLS will be meeting today at two o’clock in the library. I can’t go, but I told Thelma Rice that you might like to talk to them. I told her I’d call her back and let her know.”

  “Thanks. Tell her I’ll be there.”

  “She’s also in the Red Hats. They’re meeting at noon at the Round-Up.”

  The Round-Up was a local restaurant with a limited menu: most items were guaranteed to clog your arteries. Naturally it was popular.

  “I guess I could make bo
th meetings,” Rhodes said, though he’d been hoping to put one or both of those groups off on Ruth Grady. This way, however, would be easier than going through the membership lists and calling everybody on the phone and setting up a time to talk to each of them.

  “I’ll let Thelma know you’ll be there,” Ivy said, and Rhodes thought she might be enjoying this a little too much.

  “Women like me,” he said. “I’ll be just fine.”

  “I know. I never doubted it.”

  Rhodes didn’t reply to that. He looked at the cat and Yancey. They were lying side by side on the floor near the refrigerator. Yancey was still wet, so the cat was keeping a safe distance from him. Rhodes took that as a good sign and left to go to the jail.

  Not much had gone on in Clearview overnight, a couple of kids drag racing on a residential street after midnight, an attempted burglary at the hardware store, a report of a dead animal on the road, a fight in the Dairy Queen parking lot. Even Hack and Lawton couldn’t make anything from any of that, or not enough to tease Rhodes with.

  Rhodes asked if there’d been any calls related to something that might lead them to Leonard Thorpe.

  “Not a thing,” Hack said. “You can sift through the reports for yourself, but you won’t find anything. It’s like he just vanished off the face of the earth.”

  “He didn’t, though,” Lawton said. “He’s hiding out somewhere.”

  “How’d he get wherever he is, then?” Rhodes said. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “He had to have some help,” Hack said. “But who’d help him?”

  “Somebody would,” Lawton said. “That’s how he got away.”

  Rhodes thought the circular reasoning was coming into play again, and it wasn’t helping.

  “I’m going to see Francine Oates about Helen Harris’s will,” he said. “Call me if anything comes up.”

  “I always do,” Hack said.

  “If Jennifer Loam calls or comes by, tell her I’m on the way to Canada.”