Half in Love with Artful Death Read online

  “Right,” Benton said, and Rhodes left it at that.

  * * *

  Andy Shelby was waiting at the jail when Rhodes got back.

  “I put the spray can in the evidence room,” Andy said. “I didn’t find anything else suspicious in the gallery, and I don’t think the can’s going to help.”

  “Why not?” Rhodes asked.

  “It had some smudges on it, but that’s all. My guess is that whoever used it either wiped it or wore gloves.”

  “We’ll have Ruth check it anyway,” Rhodes said. “What about that auto accident you got the call about?”

  “No biggie. Mrs. Calkins … you know her?”

  “He knows her,” Hack said from his desk. “Ever’body knows her and knows enough to watch out for her, too. Or should.”

  Mrs. Calkins was a retired teacher, like Nora Fischer, but Mrs. Calkins was more of a danger to the driving public. She had a tendency to drive slowly. Very slowly. It was a habit that sometimes led to complaints to the sheriff’s department.

  “Was she impeding traffic again?” Rhodes asked.

  “Not until she hit the other car,” Hack said.

  Hack didn’t like for anyone else to tell things when he was around. Even though he hadn’t been on the scene, he always thought he knew the story better than anybody else, even the deputies.

  “What car?” Rhodes asked.

  “The one pullin’ out of the parkin’ place in front of the post office,” Hack said.

  “Is that right, Andy?” Rhodes asked.

  “That’s right,” Hack said. “That driver doin’ the backin’ was at fault. You gotta look where you’re goin’ in this town. ’Specially with drivers like that Miz Calkins on the streets.”

  “Who got the ticket, Andy?” Rhodes asked, putting some emphasis on Andy’s name so Hack wouldn’t answer.

  “Somebody named Leroy Dalton,” Andy said.

  Rhodes knew Dalton. He sold insurance, so he didn’t have much to worry about if there was any damage to his car.

  “Hack’s right,” Andy continued. “Dalton should’ve looked. He was lucky it was Mrs. Calkins that hit him. She wasn’t going over ten miles an hour.”

  “Ain’t gone over ten miles an hour in the last twenty years,” Hack said, as if Rhodes didn’t know. “You got that art problem solved yet?”

  “Not yet,” Rhodes said.

  “You see that orange-haired woman Burt talked about?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Her hair really orange?”

  “I’d say so. Andy?”

  “It was,” Andy said. “She’s a nice-looking woman, though.”

  “Ginger, now, that’s okay,” Hack said. “Don’t know about orange. That ain’t natural.”

  “She has a tattoo,” Rhodes said.

  “Can’t trust a woman with a tattoo,” Hack said.

  “Voice of experience?” Andy said.

  “You implyin’ that Miz McGee has a tattoo?” Hack asked.

  “I wouldn’t imply a thing like that,” Andy said. “Does she?”

  “Now you look here, you young whippersnapper—”

  “The woman with the orange hair’s name is Marilyn Bradley,” Rhodes said. “No relation to anybody here in town. She’s from Derrick City.”

  “Can’t trust women from Derrick City,” Hack said.

  “Voice of experience?” Andy said.

  Rhodes wondered if Andy Shelby was about to become the new version of Lawton, not that they needed a new version. Lawton did just fine on his own, at least when he was around.

  “Let’s not worry about Hack’s love life,” Rhodes said. “Or about anybody’s hair color. Lonnie Wallace might have to go out of business if everybody stuck to their natural shade.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s so,” Hack said. “You ever hear about that chimpanzee that was a famous artist?”

  Rhodes was used to having odd conversations with Hack, so he wasn’t too surprised by the sudden change in subject. He said he hadn’t heard about the chimp.

  “Happened a long time ago,” Hack said, “so maybe you weren’t around. Andy for sure wasn’t around. Anyway, I saw somethin’ about it on the computer the other day. Some fella got a chimp to paint some pictures. I don’t know how. Just gave him a brush and some paint, I guess. Fella said later that the chimp ate more paint than he put on the paper. Anyway, he took the pictures and got ’em into an exhibition with a bunch of other artists. Didn’t tell anybody they’d been done by a chimp, of course. Looked like somethin’ kindergarteners might do with finger paints. All the art critics loved ’em.”

  Rhodes thought about the paintings he’d seen at the gallery. Some of them were odd, like the staircases in the sky, but they didn’t look like the work of a kindergarten finger painter.

  “What does that tell you?” Hack asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Rhodes said. “I haven’t seen the chimp’s work.”

  Andy laughed. “You maybe ought to run for higher office, Sheriff. You’d be a good politician.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes said. “Maybe I ought to be an art critic. Sounds like a job I could handle if people don’t hold being wrong against you.”

  “You want a job like that,” Hack said, “you oughta consider being a weatherman.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just stick with being a sheriff. For the time being anyhow, and if I’m going to be a sheriff, I’d better act like one. I think I’ll have a little talk with Burt Collins.”

  “You think he’ll confess?” Hack asked.

  “Not a chance,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  As it happened, neither Collins nor his wife was at home, so Rhodes drove on to his own house, figuring that the hullabaloo would die down soon enough and that the artists would get over the damage someone, maybe Collins, had done to the paintings and sculptures. They’d clean things up, and by the next day things would be back to normal.

  Maybe it would have worked out that way if someone hadn’t killed Burt Collins that night.

  Chapter 5

  The robbery at the Pak-a-Sak happened first. The little convenience store sat at the edge of town, and it had been robbed before. One of the problems was that it was too near several uncleared lots that had plenty of trees and low-growing bushes on them to provide cover for someone running from the store. It was all too easy for someone to hide a car somewhere nearby and escape through the trees.

  Rhodes had mentioned this fact to Oscar Henderson before, but Oscar always said the same thing: “It’s not my property, and I can’t just go in and clear it.”

  “You could talk to the owner,” Rhodes said. “Just look at that mess.”

  Rhodes and Oscar were in back of the store, looking out at the trees. The light back there was none too good, and there was no robber to be seen. Rhodes looked up at the sky. It seemed to him that there weren’t as many stars as there had been when he was young, but he’d never tried to count them, then or now.

  Rhodes wasn’t too happy about being called away from home about the robbery. He’d been watching an episode of Justified on DVD. The show was set in Harlan County, Kentucky, which sometimes seemed as dangerous as a war zone. Watching it made Rhodes feel pretty good about things in Blacklin County, Texas, which was practically Sunnybrook Farm by comparison.

  “I’ve tried to talk to the owner,” Oscar said. He was a short, skinny man with bandy legs. He had a little fuzz of gray hair fringing his head and somewhat more in his ears. “I can’t find him. Or her. The deeds are all messed up.”

  “So for all you know, you could clear the land and nobody would know.”

  “Or I could get sued when the owner suddenly shows up. You gonna pay my legal bills if that happens?”

  They’d been through this before, the last time the store was robbed, and Rhodes didn’t want to continue it.

  “How much did they get?” he asked.

  “Wasn’t a they. Was just one of ’em. You can ask Chris.”

&nb
sp; Chris Ferris was the clerk who’d been behind the counter when the store was robbed. Buddy Warren, one of the other deputies, was talking to him inside the store.

  “I’ll get Buddy’s report,” Rhodes said. “You have anything else to tell me?”

  “It’s like Chris said. Nothing unusual about the way it happened. Some guy with a stocking pulled over his face came in, showed Chris a gun, and said, ‘Give me the money.’”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “I don’t know, some funny-looking one, Chris said.”

  “How about the voice?”

  “Growl was more like it, according to Chris. Disguising his voice, I guess. Anyhow, I’ve told Chris if somebody comes in and sticks him up to give ’em the money if they ask for it, so that’s what he did. Then the guy ran out the door and around the side of the building. Off into the trees, like the other one did. That’s it.”

  When Oscar mentioned the other one, Rhodes wondered if it wasn’t just the same one, who’d found out that the Pak-a-Sak was easy pickings. Rhodes also remembered a few years back when someone had driven off from the store without paying for the gasoline he’d pumped into a little Ford Focus. That hadn’t worked out.

  “All right, then,” Rhodes said. “I’ll just check with Buddy, and he’ll stick around to investigate some more.”

  “Hmph,” Oscar said.

  “Buddy’s good at that kind of thing,” Rhodes said.

  “Don’t matter if he is. Whoever robbed me is long gone, and he didn’t leave any clues behind him. You’ll never catch him.”

  “Don’t count on that,” Rhodes said.

  “You never caught the last one, did you?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “Not yet.”

  * * *

  Buddy hadn’t gotten anything more out of Chris, or at least nothing more that was helpful.

  “He says it was just a guy,” Buddy told Rhodes as they stood by Buddy’s county car.

  Chris was inside behind the counter, talking to Oscar. They were waiting for someone to come and take Chris’s place, Chris being a little shaken by his experience and wanting to go home and recover.

  “Not too tall,” Buddy said, “not too short. Not fat, not skinny. Hair a little long, as best Chris could tell, what with the stocking mashing it. Made his voice all growly. Face was twisted out of shape by the stocking. Looked like something out of a horror movie. No beard or mustache. Gun was an automatic. That’s all Chris could tell me.”

  “Did he think it could’ve been the same one who robbed him before?”

  “That one had on a ski mask,” Buddy said. “Size was about the same, but that’s as much as I could get.”

  “You get Hack to have Duke Pearson come out and help you scour through the woods,” Rhodes said. “Don’t you go in there until Duke gets here, all right?”

  “Sure.” Buddy’s hand dropped to his sidearm. “You think anybody’s in there among the trees?”

  “No, but you never can tell. You wait for Duke, and try not to shoot anybody.”

  “I haven’t shot anybody yet,” Buddy said, and Rhodes thought he detected a note of regret in the deputy’s voice.

  “That’s a good record,” Rhodes said. “Try to keep it.”

  “Sure,” Buddy said. “You know me, Sheriff.”

  Rhodes did know him, and that was the trouble. Buddy had an itchy trigger finger if anybody ever did. So far, though, they’d been lucky.

  “Give me a call if you need me,” Rhodes said.

  “Sure,” Buddy said. “I’ll just go talk to Hack and get him to send Duke.”

  Rhodes left him to it and got into his own car to go home. It was almost eleven thirty by that time, and Clearview was shut down for the night. Had been shut down for an hour or two. Rhodes drove by the art gallery and antiques store. It was dark and quiet. He didn’t see Seepy Benton lurking about, for which he was glad.

  The Beauty Shack was quiet, too, as was the old abandoned building across the street that occasionally provided a refuge for homeless people. Rhodes remembered that Burt Collins lived not too far away, so he thought he’d check on him while he was out.

  Rhodes looked to his left and saw that the recycle center was dark. There hadn’t been any trouble there for a while, for which Rhodes was grateful. Copper thefts continued, but not at the same rate of a year earlier. It wasn’t that copper was less valuable so much as that the thieves were getting caught so often that they’d started to look in other counties for the metal. Or so Rhodes told himself.

  The Collins house was two blocks straight ahead. The street reached a dead end at its front yard. It was an old house, two stories high, sitting on a pair of lots. The railroad tracks were a couple of blocks to the east, and no houses sat on the empty lots. There were blocks of empty lots behind the house, too. The only other house nearby was to the west, with its back to the Collins place.

  Collins must have had a little bit of the artist in him, as his home was painted in three different colors. About a third of the house jutted out on the right side, and it was painted white. The first story of the other two-thirds was green, and the second story was pale yellow. A separate carport with a metal roof stood off to the right of the house. The wide brown lawn stretched right down to the street, and although there was no driveway, Collins’s vehicles had worn a packed-dirt path to the carport. Rhodes was a little surprised to see that some lights were on inside the house, but maybe Collins liked to stay up and watch late-night TV.

  Since he was out already, Rhodes figured it was as good a time as any to have a little talk with Collins about what had happened that day. The county car bumped up over what was left of the curb and onto the path to the carport. Rhodes stopped near the house and got out of the car. The night air was cool, as it should be only a month from Halloween. Rhodes noticed that a Chevy pickup and sedan were parked under the carport.

  The night was quiet, like most nights in Clearview. Even on a Friday there wasn’t a lot to do after dark, not in that part of town. The parking lot at Walmart would probably still be partially full, though, even at that hour.

  Rhodes heard something from inside the house, maybe a TV set. The house didn’t have a porch, just a couple of prefab concrete steps. Rhodes mounted them and knocked on a screen door that rattled in its frame. The noise from inside continued. It sounded like someone wailing, and Rhodes decided it wasn’t coming from a TV set. He opened the screen and banged on the door. The sound inside got louder, a good enough reason to enter the premises, if the door was unlocked. It was, and Rhodes pushed it open.

  The sound was more distinct now, and it was definitely wailing, along with some crying. It seemed to be coming from a room at the end of the dark narrow hallway where Rhodes found himself.

  For years Rhodes had tried different ways of carrying a sidearm. As the sheriff, he almost always went around in plainclothes, and he’d always tried to conceal his weapon. Nothing he’d done had proved to be satisfactory, but lately he’d reverted to using an ankle holster with a little Kel-Tec PF-9. He’d used a Kel-Tec .32 for a while, but he’d begun to think that he might need a little more firepower. The PF-9 had a polymer body, so it was light and easy to carry. The seven 9 mm cartridges were powerful enough to stop someone even bigger than the .32s would, though Rhodes hoped he wasn’t going to have to use the pistol for stopping anyone. The only problem was the awkwardness involved in getting to the pistol in the ankle holster. He was never going to get to it in a hurry, but he didn’t plan to enter any quick-draw contests.

  Speed wasn’t the issue here. Rhodes bent over and got the pistol, just in case something else was the issue. He walked toward the sound, which had grown quieter. It was a muffled sobbing now.

  The door to the room was open, and Rhodes took a quick look inside. Burt Collins lay on his stomach on the hardwood floor, not far from a coffee table. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Rhodes was sure he was dead. A stocky woman wearing jeans and a man’s shirt sat on a sofa, crying, her head in her
hands.

  “Ella?” Rhodes said.

  The woman looked up. “Sheriff?”

  Ella Collins was Burt’s wife. Rhodes lowered the pistol, slipped it into his back pocket, and stepped into the room. “What happened?”

  Ella brushed her hands across her face. Rhodes saw that it was creased with red lines.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I came to see Burt,” Rhodes said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” A sob caught in Ella’s throat. “I came home and found Burt like this. I think he had a heart attack.”

  Rhodes had seen a lot of dead people, too many, and it always made him sad, even when the person was someone like Burt Collins, a cantankerous man nobody had really liked and whom very few would miss. Whatever kind of man he was, though, he’d been alive, seeing, breathing, smelling, tasting, maybe even smiling now and then. Now all that was gone.

  Rhodes knelt down and looked at the back of Burt’s head. The hair was matted with blood, and some bone showed through. Rhodes felt Burt’s carotid artery. No pulse, but then Rhodes hadn’t expected one. The flesh wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm, either. Burt had been dead for a little while, and Rhodes was pretty sure that Burt’s heart had nothing to do with his condition.

  “Were you here when it happened?” Rhodes asked, standing up.

  “No. I was at Frances Bennett’s.” Ella’s voice was a little steadier. “She’s been recovering from surgery, and some of us have been staying with her, doing some housework and cooking. You know, just to help out. I’d come home and walked in here, and there was Burt on the floor. I haven’t even called the doctor.”

  “I’ll do it,” Rhodes said. “Is there somewhere else you can sit? How about the kitchen?”

  “All right.” Ella stood up. Rhodes noticed that her knees were a little wobbly, and she had to put a hand down on the arm of the sofa to steady herself. “It’s right across the hall.”

  Rhodes walked her to the kitchen and got her seated at the square oak table. Some water glasses stood upside down in a dish drainer beside the sink. Rhodes got one, filled it from the tap, and handed it to Ella. She took a swallow and sighed.