Dead, to Begin With, page 10
“You’ll think of one.”
Rhodes put the list in his pocket and stood up. “We’ll see.”
Seeing Rhodes stand up, Yancey dashed across the yard.
“He knows you’re about to leave,” Ivy said.
Rhodes held out a hand, and Ivy took it, using it to pull herself up. Yancey started to yip. Speedo lost interest in the chew toy. He got up and went into his igloo. When Yancey saw that, he rushed back across the lawn and snatched the toy. Speedo came out of the igloo and chased him.
“Leave Yancey out here for a while,” Rhodes said. “He needs the exercise.”
Ivy laughed. “Sure he does. What are you going to do with those names?”
“Look into them,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go inside.”
In the kitchen Rhodes asked Ivy if there’d been any problems between Jake and any of the people working on the theater restoration project.
“It’s been mostly very friendly,” Ivy said. “I told you he was happy.”
“No personality clashes, no disagreements?”
“Not really. If you’re looking for murder suspects, you’d better start with that list you have already.”
“That’s what I’ll do, then,” Rhodes said. “I wonder why he chose those particular people to be in the play. He can’t be friends with them. As far as anybody knows, he doesn’t have any friends in town.”
“They’re all about his age,” Ivy said. “Maybe he knew them a long time ago.”
“Old friends. That might be it. I’ll be sure to ask them.”
“There could be some other connection, though.”
“They’ll tell me if there is.”
“You really believe people are that honest when a murder is involved?”
“Nope,” Rhodes said, “but I keep hoping.”
Chapter 11
At the jail, Rhodes asked Hack what the crime report was, hoping that he’d get a straight answer.
“Ms. Tippet had her car stolen again last night,” Hack said. “Third time this year.”
“We know it wasn’t stolen, though, right?” Rhodes said.
“We do, but she don’t seem to be able to figure that out.”
“Did you explain to her again that if she’d make the payments, they wouldn’t keep repossessing it?”
“I gave it another try. I think she might’ve understood it this time, and if she gets the car out of hock again, maybe she’ll do right from now on.” Hack shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on it, though.”
Rhodes wouldn’t count on it, either. “What else is going on?”
“You know about Odell Kinchloe’s lawn mower?”
“The one he reported stolen last week?”
“Yeah, that’s the one, and we ain’t found it yet.”
“I know, but we’re working on it.”
“Odell says he knows where it is.”
Rhodes was glad to hear it. “Problem solved then. Where is it?”
“Tupelo, Mississippi.”
Rhodes hadn’t been expecting that. “Tupelo? Mississippi?”
“That’s what I said.”
“How does he know it’s in Tupelo?”
Hack grinned. “It’s a feelin’, he says.”
“A feeling? He doesn’t have any proof?”
“Not a stitch. Just a feelin’. It’s a powerful feelin’, though, Odell says. He wants you to call the police in Tupelo and tell them to look for it.”
“He have an address for us?”
“That ain’t part of the feelin’.”
“Then we’ll keep looking for it around here,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think the Tupelo police would want to be bothered unless we have an address.”
Hack picked up a piece of paper. “In case you change your mind, Odell gave me a complete description of the lawn mower. I wrote it down for you.”
“I appreciate that,” Rhodes said, tucking the paper away in a corner or the desk.
“I’ll tell you what I’d appreciate,” Hack said.
“What’s that?”
“I’d appreciate it if I was kept in the loop. I know I’m just the dispatcher, but I need to know what’s goin’ on around here ’stead of bein’ kept in the dark all the time.”
“You mean about the autopsy on Jake Marley?”
“You know that’s what I mean. You never tell me anything. If it wasn’t for that Web site of Jennifer Loam’s, I’d never find out what’s goin’ on in this place.”
Rhodes started to argue, but thought better of it. He wouldn’t be able to change Hack’s mind, no matter what. It wasn’t just Hack, either. Rhodes’s experience had been that he’d never changed anybody’s mind by arguing with them. He thought that when the rest of the world caught on to that important truth, things would change for the better.
“The autopsy shows that Jake’s death was suspicious,” Rhodes said.
“What’s that mean?” Hack asked.
“You’ve been working here longer than I have. You know what it means.”
Hack didn’t bother to admit it. “Who you think killed him?”
“All I have is a place to start, a list of four people that might or might not have anything to do with it.”
“You gonna tell me who they are?”
Rhodes told him.
“All of ’em are about Jake’s age,” Hack said.
“They were going to be in the play when the theater opened. So was Jake.”
“Wonder if they knew him?”
Hardly anybody knew Jake, but Hack’s question made sense. Rhodes had thought that Jake had picked people about his own age because they’d be appropriate for the parts, but maybe it was because he knew them. Rhodes would have to look for a connection.
“Who you gonna start with?” Hack asked.
“Jake.”
“He’s dead.”
“Always the best place to start,” Rhodes said, heading for the door.
“You’re startin’ to sound like—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—Seepy Benton,” Hack said, but Rhodes was already outside and pulling the door closed behind him.
* * *
Rhodes wasn’t really starting with Jake Marley. He was starting with Jake’s house. First, however, he dropped by Bradley West’s office to tell him about the suspicious nature of Jake’s death. West wasn’t surprised to learn that Jake had most likely been murdered.
“I knew there was something fishy about the play and the casting,” Bradley told Rhodes. “I wish Jake had been more forthcoming about it, but when I asked him, he didn’t want to say anything. I let it slide. He was the client, it was his will, and it was none of my business.”
“If you think of anything that might help me, let me know,” Rhodes said. “I’m going to check out Jake’s house. Do you have a key?”
Jake, being dead, had no expectation of privacy, but Rhodes knew it was always best to keep everyone involved in an investigation apprised of what was going on, especially lawyers.
“No key,” Bradley said. “Jake didn’t expect me to need one. I’m sure you can find a way in.”
“It won’t be a problem,” Rhodes said. “I know where I can get a key. Now about Jake’s car—”
“It’s still parked downtown,” Bradley said. “I checked on it last night. It’s fine, but it needs to be moved.”
“I know where that key is, too,” Rhodes said. “I’ll have someone pick up the car and have a look at it.”
“It’s a Buick LaCrosse. Maroon. You can return it to Jake’s house when you’re finished.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t break anything in the house.”
“I’ll be careful,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Rhodes called Hack and told him to have Ruth Grady pick up the car key at Ballinger’s, get the car, and give it a going-over. Then he drove to the funeral home himself and got the house key.
“You can call Bradley West and have him come by for the rest of Jake’s possessions,” Rhodes told Ballinger.
“You have any clues yet?” Ballinger asked.
Rhodes laughed. “Ask me that in a few days.”
* * *
Jake Marley’s house was outside the city limits of Clearview on the southeast side. For years there hadn’t been any development in that direction, and the house had been all alone, surrounded by fields that had lain fallow and pastures that hadn’t been grazed in years. There had once been woods along the roads, but the Marleys had cleared a lot of trees after the accident, not wanting to be reminded of the way their daughter had died, Rhodes supposed, or maybe they wanted revenge on the tree. Mesquite bushes had almost taken over the fields, but they’d been cleared away from some of them now that a bit of building had started along the narrow county road and new houses were creeping in the direction of the old Marley mansion. The houses were still a quarter of a mile away, but they’d eventually get closer.
Rhodes didn’t know why the Marley family had decided to build outside the town. Maybe it had something to do with taxes, or maybe they’d thought a home of that size wouldn’t fit into a small town. Rhodes had never been inside, but like everyone who’d lived in Clearview for any length of time, he’d seen the house from the outside.
Rhodes had been told that it resembled an English manor house, and he had no reason not to believe it. It was built of white stone and had two stories. Three wide windows on the ground floor took up most of its front. Three peaked dormer windows sat atop the second story. The garage was a semiattached building big enough for four cars. The wide lawn, still green even this late in the year, was perfectly trimmed, as were the hedges and bushes near the front door and the trees that grew near the house. Jake might have been a solitary sort, but he cared about appearances. He could afford to have a lawn service and landscapers who kept the place looking good.
Rhodes drove the Tahoe up the semicircular concrete driveway and parked in front of the door. The house itself looked immaculate, the white stone as spotless as if it had been power-washed only hours before. The key Rhodes had gotten at Ballinger’s fit into the lock easily, and he turned it with hardly any effort.
Rhodes stepped into a stone-floored hallway and closed the door behind him. The house had the feeling that empty houses always have, a stillness and a quietness impossible when anyone is inside.
It had another feeling, too, a far creepier feeling. Seepy Benton might’ve called it a ghost, but that wasn’t it. It was as if someone else had been in the place not so very long ago, maybe only minutes before. Rhodes didn’t hesitate. He ran down the hall, past the stairway to the second floor, and into the kitchen. The back door was partially open, the frame shattered where someone had broken into the house. Rhodes opened the door and looked out.
The backyard was kept as neatly as the front. There was a lot of it, but within about a hundred yards there was a thick line of trees. Rhodes saw someone moving at a slow jog, about to enter the trees.
Rhodes didn’t have time to call for backup. He ran past the swimming pool, now covered for the winter, and onto the clipped grass, his shadow running beside him. Neither he nor his shadow could catch up with the housebreaker, however. Before he’d gone thirty yards, the other runner had already moved into the trees.
A jackrabbit ran across the area just to Rhodes’s left. He hadn’t seen a jackrabbit in a while, just a few cottontails now and then. If he could run like the jackrabbit, he could catch his suspect, but there was no chance of that.
Rhodes didn’t know how far the trees extended, and as he ran, he tried to remember the geography of that part of the county. If he was right, the woods didn’t reach very far, maybe only a quarter of a mile, and they ended at an unpaved county road. However, the woods ran along the side of the county road for half a mile or so in both directions, so someone could easily hide in there and evade a search by one person. Or someone could have a car parked just about anywhere on the road and get away before Rhodes could get there.
Rhodes didn’t have much choice, though. He had to keep going and try to catch up to whoever had broken into the house. Breaking and entering was a crime all by itself, and if something had been taken, burglary was part of the picture. Yet Rhodes wasn’t as interested in the crime as he was in the reason for it. He’d like to know what anyone would want in Jake Marley’s house. Was it an attempt to steal something valuable, or was it to remove something that might point to the person who’d killed Jake? Rhodes thought the latter possibility was more likely. It would be too bad if the break-in had been a success.
The air in among the trees was cooler and damper than out in the sun, and the ground was wet and springy underfoot. Rhodes had to be careful not to fall down as he dodged tree limbs and watched for holes. He was a little winded from his run and thought it best to slow down. In fact, it was best to stop completely for a second and listen in an attempt to pick up any sounds that the fleeing burglar might make.
Rhodes stopped. He heard his own breathing and the usual noises of the woods: birds calling, limbs moving in a slight breeze, a couple of squirrels scuffling through the tree branches. Nothing else.
A few half-dead leaves drifted down from the trees. Rhodes looked around to see if anyone was crouching nearby, ready to pounce on him, but he didn’t see anything suspicious, just elm trees and a pecan tree or two and a persimmon tree with reddish orange fruit on it. Some of the fruit was on the ground, and Rhodes remembered a song his grandmother had sung when he was a boy:
Raccoon up the ’simmon tree
Possum on the ground,
Possum said to the raccoon,
“Throw them ’simmons down.”
Rhodes wondered if a raccoon had tossed the persimmons down or if they’d simply fallen. He didn’t see any raccoons or possums around to ask. He wasn’t fond of persimmons himself, but he knew people who were. He’d heard a story about one of them, and a woman who might even have been too fond of the fruit. When she was in her early eighties, she’d had digestive problems, and a large mass had been found in her stomach. Ordinarily that would be very bad news, but not in this case. The mass had turned out to be undigested persimmon skins. It had been removed, and the woman had lived for a good many more years. Rhodes didn’t know if she’d continued to eat persimmons.
After looking to the left and right and seeing no one, Rhodes decided that he might as well go straight ahead. It seemed reasonable that the burglar would have taken the most direct route to the house from the road.
Rhodes moved at a deliberate pace, stopping now and then to listen. The third time he stopped, he heard a car start. He sped up, still being careful. By the time he got to the road, the burglar was already gone. Rhodes got a glimpse of some kind of vehicle headed down the county road in the direction of town, but he couldn’t tell enough about it even to know if it was a car or a pickup.
Across the road from the trees was a cleared pasture, fenced for cattle, and not far away was a turnoff from the road that allowed access to a gate. Rhodes walked down to the gate. That was where the burglar’s vehicle had been parked, but the ground was too hard to have taken any impression from the tires. The road wasn’t much used, and it was unlikely that anyone had passed by and noticed the vehicle. It wouldn’t have aroused any suspicion if anyone had seen it anyway.
Rhodes called Hack on his cell phone and told him to send Ruth to the Marley house.
“She’s lookin’ into a report of a panhandler in the Walmart parkin’ lot,” Hack said. “Same guy’s been reported two or three times.”
“Tell her I need her worse than Walmart does right now. Somebody’s broken into the Marley house, and we need to see what’s missing.”
“I’ll get her out there,” Hack said, “but the Walmart shoppers ain’t gonna be happy if she don’t run that fella off. We’ve had three calls about him already.”
“We’ll get to him later if he hasn’t already left,” Rhodes said. “I need her here.”
“You’re the boss,” Hack said.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 12
What Rhodes and Ruth learned from their search of Jake Marley’s house was that Jake was a good housekeeper who didn’t leave clothes on the floor or dishes in the sink. He dusted regularly. He didn’t have a lot of possessions, but he did have a library, an entire room of his house devoted to books, as well as an office, which was where he kept a desktop computer, a printer, and a scanner. And more books.
Rhodes didn’t know much about rare books, but after looking through the library, he decided that one thing Jake had spent money on was books that were worth more than a few dollars. He had a great many volumes by Charles Dickens, which came as no surprise, and he even had a shelf devoted to magazines with Dickens’s serials in them. There were some volumes of Shakespeare, but they didn’t look old, and a lot of books by writers whose names Rhodes didn’t recognize. Rhodes could check with someone about the value of those things if it became necessary. Maybe Harry Harris would know, or if he didn’t, Willie Scott would. Rhodes had discussed rare books with Scott on an earlier case.
The books in the office were different and didn’t appear valuable. Most of them looked fairly new, and they included a lot of crime novels by people like Harlan Coben and Alafair Burke and Joe R. Lansdale. Rhodes wondered if that was the same man Seepy Benton claimed to have studied martial arts with.
“If there was a burglar,” Ruth Grady said after they’d searched the house thoroughly, “what did he take?”
Rhodes didn’t have an answer. The bookshelves didn’t look disturbed. The computer was still on the desk, and the two television sets in the house hadn’t been touched.
Rhodes looked in the drawers of the computer desk. Papers relating to business dealings, bills, and a few other odds and ends that didn’t look important. What might be more important was that the computer was on.
“Lots of people leave their computers on all the time,” Ruth said when he mentioned it. “Some people think they should be turned off every night, but others say to leave them on.”
