Dead, to Begin With, page 19
The arrival of a server cut off the mayor’s little tirade as she set a glass of water on the table.
“I know you said you weren’t going to eat, Sheriff,” she said, “but I thought you might like to have a glass of water.”
Rhodes thanked her and decided he’d have a chip after all. Resistance was futile. He took a chip out of the bowl and held it up for Clement to see. “Do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind. Take all you want. What I want to know is—”
Rhodes bit into the chip. It made a satisfactory crackle and momentarily halted the mayor again. Rhodes chewed slowly.
“Are you through yet?” Clement asked after Rhodes had taken a sip of water.
“How’s the salsa?” Rhodes asked.
Clement sighed. “It’s good, always is. Have some.”
Rhodes got another chip, dipped it in the salsa, and ate it.
“You’re right,” he said. “Very good.” He took another swallow of water.
“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously, Sheriff,” Clement said.
“I am, though,” Rhodes said. “You weren’t informed about Jake Marley because it’s not my job to inform you about anything. You have to inform yourself. I investigate, but I don’t inform.”
“Well, I don’t like finding things out so long after they’ve happened.”
“It’s hard to keep up when you’re out of town,” Rhodes said, “but you could check A Clear View of Clearview on the Internet. Everybody else does.”
“My father-in-law doesn’t have a computer, much less Wi-Fi, but never mind that. Tell me about Jake Marley.”
Rhodes told him, not going into much detail.
“So the theater restoration will continue?” Clement said.
Rhodes finally understood why Clement had called him. He hadn’t been concerned about Jake’s death. He’d been worried that the theater project would fall through and that people might blame him.
“Jake fixed his will that way,” Rhodes said. “You don’t have to worry about the theater project. You might need to find someone to take charge of it, though, unless Jake mentioned that in the will, too.”
Clement sat up a little straighter on his side of the booth, and Rhodes thought he knew who the mayor might have in mind to take over the supervision of the work on the theater.
“What’s really important,” Clement said, “is that you find the killer. The murder of a prominent citizen can give the town a black eye.”
Jake’s promotion to prominent citizen was probably justified. He hadn’t been involved in the community for fifty years, but when he’d emerged from his self-imposed exile, he’d gotten involved in a big way. It appeared that Clement was more worried about the town’s reputation than about Jake’s death, and Rhodes supposed that was natural, too. Nobody knew Jake, except those who’d gone to school with him.
“We wouldn’t want the town to have a black eye,” Rhodes said.
“No, indeed. Have another chip, Sheriff.”
Rhodes didn’t want another chip. He was ready to get out of there, so he asked if Clement wanted anything else.
“No, not a thing,” the mayor said. “I’ll trust you to get the job done in your usual efficient manner.”
Rhodes had no difficulty in detecting the slight sarcasm in the remark, but it didn’t bother him.
“You can count on me, Mr. Mayor,” Rhodes said, and if there was any sarcasm intended it went right over Clements’s head.
“I’m sure I can,” Clements said.
Chapter 21
On his way back to the jail, Rhodes drove through what remained of downtown Clearview and tried to imagine it when it had been not just a busy small town but had been booming with the influx of thousands of people because oil had been discovered. That had been nearly a hundred years ago, and the town had gone from a sleepy little backwater to a city of thousands almost overnight. Rhodes had heard the stories from his grandparents, who had been alive but too young to remember for themselves. They were repeating what they’d heard from their parents and others who had been there.
Within days of the discovery of oil, con men and gangsters, cardsharps and criminals, hustlers and entrepreneurs, had all arrived together, along with roughnecks and preachers and doctors and prostitutes. Bootleggers thrived. Hundreds of people swarmed every block of the muddy streets. A tent city sprang up, and buildings followed quickly. Within only a few weeks certain sections of the city had such bad reputations that people avoided them at night. Gunfights weren’t uncommon, and more than one man had been shot down in the street for reasons now long forgotten.
It had been an exciting and lawless time, and although nobody currently alive remembered it, people still referred to the boom days now and then, almost as if they hoped the good times would come again. Or the bad times, depending on your point of view. More exciting times, for sure.
A stranger seeing the downtown now, or what was left of it, would have a hard time believing that it had once been so full of life and licentiousness. On a Sunday afternoon, it was completely dead. Not a soul walked the streets. Not a car was parked anywhere. There was no traffic moving through the area except for Rhodes’s Tahoe. Rhodes thought that if he stopped and got out, he wouldn’t hear a sound, unless a freight train happened to pass through on the tracks a few blocks away.
He wondered what life had been like for the lawmen in those days. If the stories he’d heard were true, more than a few of them were happy to look away from any wrongdoing as long as they got a substantial payment in return. Rhodes didn’t think he’d have fared too well. It was too hard for him to look the other way.
He drove on to the jail and went inside. Hack and Lawton were talking about the Houston Texans and how everybody thought they’d be playing better than they were, so Rhodes didn’t interrupt them. He sat at his desk and did some paperwork until they decided to notice him.
“Mayor give you any trouble?” Hack asked after a while.
“No more than usual,” Rhodes said, swiveling his chair around to face Hack. “I told him what I knew about Jake Marley’s death, and he was satisfied.”
“That man’s never satisfied,” Lawton said from the doorway to the cellblock. “Not that I’ve ever heard about.”
“He’s all right,” Rhodes said. “You just have to understand him.”
“Which you do,” Hack said.
“I like to think so.”
“Well, you just keep thinkin’ that,” Hack said. “You gonna tell us what you know about Jake’s death?”
“I’d put you in the loop if I could, but I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you. Fact is, I was going to ask you for some help. You and Lawton, both.”
Lawton walked over to stand by Hack’s desk. “You want us to help you find out who killed Jake?”
“That’d be a first,” Hack said, not looking at Lawton, “considerin’ we ain’t usually even in the loop. Nobody even tells us what’s goin’ on, much less asks us to do any crime-bustin’.”
“Crime-bustin’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Rhodes said.
“Well, what is it you did have in mind, then?”
“You two have lived in Clearview all your lives. You probably remember the days when Jake Marley was a youngster and his sister was killed in a car wreck. Rolled the car and got thrown out. Died on the spot.”
“Sure, I remember that,” Hack said. “Lawton prob’ly remembers better’n I do, seein’ how he’s a good bit older.”
“Six weeks,” Lawton said. “I wouldn’t call that a good bit.”
“More like seven,” Hack said, “but who’s countin’?”
“Sounds to me like you’re countin’.”
“Nope. Not sure I can even count that high. Just makin’ a remark about you bein’ a good bit older’n me.”
“Six weeks. You know it’s just six weeks. That ain’t nothin’.”
Rhodes wondered if there’d ever been a sheriff who had to break up a fistfight between a jailer and a dispatcher or if he was going to be the first. One of these days it was bound to happen. Not today, though. He wanted the two men to help him out, not beat each other senseless.
“It doesn’t matter who’s the oldest,” Rhodes said. “I just need somebody with a good memory.”
“Well, that’d be me,” Hack said. “We younger fellas got a lot better recall than some old geezers I could name.”
“You better not be callin’ me a geezer,” Lawton said, “’cause I ain’t one. I’ll match my mem’ry up against yours any day of the week.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Rhodes said, “because now’s your chance. This was fifty years ago, though, so you’ll have to be sharp.”
“I’m sharp as a Gillette Blue Blade,” Hack said.
“Ain’t been such a thing as Gillette Blue Blades in so long, the sheriff don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“You do, though, you old geezer.”
Lawton looked over at Rhodes. “I know a little bit about the law, Sheriff. There’s such a thing as a justifiable homicide, ain’t there?”
“Not in this case, and as happy as I’d be to testify on your behalf, I don’t think you’d get off without a sentence. Maybe just manslaughter, but I’d a whole lot rather you’d tell me what you know or heard about that car wreck.”
“Okay,” Lawton said, with a glare at Hack. “I’ll tell you how it was, since I got such a clear mem’ry of it and some others might not have.”
“‘It was a dark an’ stormy night,’” Hack said.
“All right,” Rhodes said, “that’s enough of that. Let Lawton tell it. If he gets anything wrong, you can let me know. Not until after he’s finished, though. Until then, you keep quiet.”
Instead of looking cowed or ashamed, Hack looked pleased with himself, and once again Rhodes wondered if the byplay between him and Lawton was really a well-orchestrated plot to drive him crazy. He’d have to worry about that another time. He told Lawton to get on with his story.
“It wasn’t a dark an’ stormy night,” Lawton said. “It was a pretty nice night, as I remember, what with it bein’ about this time of year. Big harvest moon at night, a little cool, but not bad, kinda like the nights around here lately. You wouldn’t think about anybody gettin’ killed on that kinda night, but that’s what happened.”
“Thanks for the weather report,” Hack said.
Lawton ignored him. “The way I heard it, Gwen Marley was going too fast as she come to that curve out near the Marley place. Lost control of the car. It went into the bar ditch, flipped, rolled, and hit a tree. Threw her out, and she hit another tree. Killed her dead as a hammer.”
It occurred to Rhodes that maybe he’d been overthinking things in looking for a motive for Jake’s murder. A driver who was bouncing around in an old car that was rolling over might wind up on the passenger side. He still didn’t regard it as likely. He thought anybody in that situation would’ve been hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands.
“What about later on?” Rhodes asked. “Was there any gossip about the accident? Did anybody have any doubts about how it happened?”
“I guess there’s always some talk after somethin’ like that. I heard she was seen around town with some of her friends, but they all said they weren’t with her. The talk died down after a while. The Marleys likely put the kibosh on it.”
“How?” Rhodes asked.
“Well, I remember there was just one little article in the paper about the wreck. Nothin’ like you’d expect when somebody from a big rich family dies. Wasn’t a lot of talk about it, either. Maybe word got out that the Marleys didn’t want any big article or any talk about the wreck. They wanted to forget all about it. Cut down all the trees where it happened.”
“What about drinking? Any of that going on that night?”
“Coulda been if Gwen was out with her friends. Those were some wild kids back then, got in a good bit of trouble, but you wouldn’t know it now. They’re all sober and quiet as far as I know. Good citizens, all got good jobs, except Ron Gleason, and he had one till he retired. Come to think of it, ever’body’s a little wild when they’re kids. That’s the best time for it.” Lawton looked at Hack. “Too late for some of us now.”
“Yeah, you,” Hack said. “Let me tell you, Sheriff, those kids had a reputation. They might all be respectable now, like Lawton says, but back in those days, they’d hell around the town in their cars on Saturday nights, and more’n once they’d be having somethin’ to drink while they was doin’ it. You oughta look into the old arrest records. I bet you’d find somethin’ on that bunch.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Anything else you can remember?”
“Nope,” Lawton said. “Not me.”
“Not me, either,” Hack said, surprising Rhodes by not trying to top Lawton. “Seems like all that was just a little while ago, not fifty years or more, though.”
“Time goes faster for folks as old as you are,” Lawton said.
“Goes fast for me, too,” Rhodes said, standing up and getting ready for a fast exit, “and I’m not half as old as you two.”
They were still sputtering when he got out the door.
* * *
Rhodes hadn’t been to the courthouse on Sunday in years. It was closed, locked, and completely deserted. He had a key to a basement door and let himself inside, locking the door behind him. His rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the floor as he walked along the marble-floored hallway. He ignored the Dr Pepper machine again and went straight to his office, thinking that for once Jennifer Loam wasn’t going to be able to track him down, not unless she had a key to the courthouse. Come to think of it, he wouldn’t be surprised if she did.
One reason Rhodes hadn’t looked into the old records for Gwen’s friends was that fifty years ago they might not have been eighteen. If they’d been juveniles, they probably wouldn’t have been arrested, and if they had been there would be no record.
Driving was different, however, and teenagers could get in even more trouble than adults for reckless driving or for driving under the influence. If Gwen’s friends had been helling around in cars, as Hack had put it, they might have had an accident themselves or they might’ve been stopped for DUI. It was worth a look.
Since Rhodes had already found the box from the year of Gwen’s death, he didn’t have to search for it. He located it again easily, carried it out into his office, set it on the desk, and started to go through it.
It took Rhodes a while to find what he was looking for, but when he did, he wasn’t shocked at his discovery. One of Gwen’s friends had been cited, all right. The one who’d received the citation was Al Graham, who’d been driving over a hundred miles an hour just outside the city limits after a short chase that had begun in town. Al had been seventeen at the time, and since it was a second offense, he’d had his license suspended. Two other passengers in the car were Ed Hopkins and Ron Gleason, both of whom showed signs of intoxication. Al, however, did not, which was lucky for him. Glenda Tallent and Gwen Marley were also in the car, but there was no mention of their being under the influence.
Five passengers, probably all seated comfortably. Cars had more room in those days. Rhodes checked the date of the incident. It had been one week before Gwen’s death.
None of the old records had been computerized, and Rhodes wasn’t going to go through the boxes year by year to find out any more about Al Graham. What he had was enough to convince him that he was on the right track. Since Al had at least two citations for reckless driving, and since he was a friend of Gwen’s, wasn’t it possible that he’d been driving the car on the night she died? His friends would cover for him, then and now. Rhodes wondered how he could get them to talk. So far he hadn’t been very successful, but it was worth another try. He didn’t need all of them to talk. Just one of them would do the trick. Today wasn’t the day to try, however.
Rhodes returned the records to the box and put the box back in the storage room. He’d check with Hack to see if he was needed for anything, and if not he’d go home. He wanted to check on his pecan tree.
* * *
Rhodes called Hack from the old-fashioned landline phone on his desk. Although Rhodes could tell that it pained Hack to admit it, there were no lawbreakers running loose in the county and wreaking havoc on the citizens. So Rhodes told the dispatcher that he’d be at home if he was needed.
“I’d prefer not to be needed,” he added.
“That’ll depend on what happens,” Hack said.
“I know that, but make sure it’s a real emergency if you call me.”
“Like if somebody kidnaps the mayor.”
“That might qualify, but let somebody else handle it. Call me if World War III starts, though.”
“Got it,” Hack said. “World War III.”
“Right,” Rhodes said, and he hung up and went home.
* * *
Rhodes parked the Tahoe in the driveway and went to look at the pecan tree. It would survive, he decided, but it looked bad. A large chunk of the trunk was badly damaged, and the whole tree looked as if it had been knocked a little off plumb. While he stood there looking at the tree, Rhodes thought about Gwen Marley. If cars had been required to have airbags fifty years ago, she might have survived the crash that killed her, but in those days very few cars even had seat belts. And the ones that did have belts had only the kind that locked across the driver’s lap. Those might’ve saved some lives, but they’d also cut a few people almost in two. The harnesses being used now, along with the airbags, were a lot safer. Or they were supposed to be. The recent scandal involving a recall of over forty million vehicles with possibly defective airbags, airbags that could be more dangerous than any accident, had shaken a lot of people’s faith in the devices.
Rhodes was still a believer, however, in the airbags and the seat belt harnesses. Latham was able to get out of his car and run away after he hit the pecan tree thanks to his airbag. He might have gone through the windshield otherwise.
