Ghost of a Chance (12 page)

“Humpf,” Barrett said, clearly not believing a word of it.

“Do you know your neighbor, Mr. Rascoe?” Rhodes asked.

“Not much. He’s a city fella, doesn’t live here and doesn’t buy anything from me. Prob’ly goes to one of those big HEB stores somewhere.”

Rhodes figured that, in Hob’s book, buying from a chain store like HEB would be a sizable crime. Rhodes could remember the days in Clearview when there had been little mom-and-pop groceries every two or three blocks. Now there wasn’t a single one. They’d all been replaced by a chain of convenience stores with headquarters in some city like Dallas or Houston. And of course there was an HEB supermarket.

Rhodes drank some more of the Dr Pepper, then said, “You ever go in Rascoe’s store?”

“Hell, no. Why would I want to do that? He won’t come in here, and he doesn’t have a damn thing I want over there. What about you? Need anything besides that Dr Pepper?”

Rhodes was about to say that he didn’t, but he changed his mind.

“How about a can of Vienna sausage and some crackers?” he said.

“I’ll get ‘em,” Hob said.

He went to the shelves and got a small can of sausages and a box of crackers.

“More crackers here than you’ll need,” he said, setting them on the counter.

“I don’t mind,” Rhodes said, paying him.

While Hob put the groceries in a sack, Rhodes stuck the Dr Pepper bottle in a wooden case sitting by the Coke box. Then he got his sack and left.

Richard Rascoe’s store had once been Thurston’s drugstore, though you couldn’t tell it now, not unless you recognized the tiled floor. There was no sign of the soda fountain or the red vinyl-covered round stools that spun around on their chrome poles.

That was too bad, Rhodes thought. The fountain would have been a nice touch for an antique store.

On the other hand, Rascoe had plenty of antiques without it. Or maybe they weren’t antiques, not by any strict definition of the term. Rhodes wondered what the right word would be.
Collectibles
, maybe.

There was one display case that held baseball cards and Dixie cup tops. There was one shelf full of soft drink bottles and several that held all kinds of glassware. There were churns and crocks. Several boxes of different kinds of barbed wire. Old costume jewelry. On an end table sat a tea set like the one described by Sharon Carlisle, decorated with colorful Easter bunnies. Or maybe they were just plain bunnies. Rhodes didn’t know the difference. In one corner there was a traffic light on a short pole, and sitting nearby was a barber chair. There was a shelf of dusty old books that didn’t look as if they’d been touched in years. There
were quilts on a quilt rack, and old rocking chairs, and even a rack of old clothes. The whole place had a musty, dusty smell that Rhodes liked.

He looked at the Dixie cup tops for a minute or so. He especially liked the one with the picture of Roy Rogers on it.

“See anything you need?” someone said behind him.

Rhodes turned around. “You must be Mr. Rascoe,” he said.

Rascoe stuck out a hand. “That’s me. And you are?”

“Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”

Rhodes shook Rascoe’s hand. The antique dealer had a firm grip that went with his lean, tanned features. He looked like a man who either spent some time out-of-doors or in a tanning booth. Forced to make a choice, Rhodes would have gone with the tanning booth. Aside from the tan, Rascoe didn’t seem to be the outdoors type.

“What brings you to my little store, Sheriff?” Rascoe asked, releasing Rhodes’s hand.

“Ty Berry,” Rhodes said, watching Rascoe closely.

“Ah, the good Mr. Berry. Has he told you about something here you’d like to see?”

“He mentioned an angel.”

“I have a couple of those,” Rascoe said. “There’s one right over there.”

He pointed to an angelic figure made of pieces of stained glass. The figure was probably Gabriel, Rhodes thought, since it was blowing a horn.

“That’s not the one,” he said. “The one I’m talking about is the kind you find in cemeteries.”

“Oh, that one,” Rascoe said. “It’s in the back room, but you’re welcome to look at it if you’d like.”

Rhodes said he’d like, and Rascoe led the way to a room in the back of the store. Just as Faye Knape had said, there was a sign on the door saying,
EMPLOYEES ONLY
.

Rascoe pushed open the door and said, “Here it is, right over there.”

He pointed to a stone angel that sat on top of a cedar chest that was mostly covered by a blue blanket.

“It just came in the other day,” Rascoe said, “and it’s already sold. That’s why it’s back here instead of out there with the rest of the stock. But if you want it, I can get you another one just like it.”

“Where?” Rhodes asked.

“I’d have to look for the catalog,” Rascoe said. “It’s somewhere down around Houston, I think. I can get it within a couple of days.”

Rhodes looked the angel over and touched its head.

“So this is brand new,” he said.

“Well, almost. I’ve had it for a week or so.”

“And Ty Berry saw it here.”

“That’s right. He thought it was a nice example of what people are doing these days, and I agree that the craftsmanship is excellent.”

“I’d like to see that catalog,” Rhodes said, not exactly sure that
craftsmanship
was the right word to use, since the angel seemed to be a mass-production item.

“Catalog?” Rascoe said. “Sure thing. It might take me a minute to find it. Just have a look around the store, and I’ll be right with you.”

Rhodes went back into the main part of the store and admired the Dixie cup tops for a few minutes while Rascoe rummaged around in a rolltop desk in the back. Before long, Rascoe came up to Rhodes with a catalog in his hand.

“Here it is,” Rascoe said. “Benson’s Concrete Works. They have birdbaths, statues, porch steps, you name it. If it’s made out of concrete, they have it.”

Rhodes flipped through the catalog and found the page with the angels on it.

“Mind if I keep this?” he said.

Rascoe looked puzzled. “I suppose not. I can get another one. Does this have something to do with a crime?”

Rhodes stuck the catalog in a back pocket.

“You never can tell,” he said.

16

T
HERE WAS STILL PLENTY OF TIME BEFORE NOON, AND
Rhodes had accomplished both of the things he’d set out to do. He wasn’t sure he was any wiser than before, but he was in motion if not making progress. Since he had time, he thought it might be a good idea to stop by the library and do a little research.

The library’s official name was the Clarence P. Mullin Memorial Library, though no one called it that. Everyone in Clearview referred to it simply as “the library,” since, after all, it was the only one in town. For that matter, it was the only one in the county.

Clarence P. Mullin had been a farmer before oil was struck on his land during the early part of the century. The story was told that after coming into more money than he’d ever dreamed of, Mullin had told his friends that he wanted to do something for the town of Clearview, where he’d grown up and gone to school. The friends had asked what he thought the town needed more than anything, and he’d
said that it needed a library. “So why don’t you build one?” they asked, and he had. Not only that, but he’d endowed it, which Rhodes thought was a good thing, the way the county commissioners were always worrying over their budget. They couldn’t touch the library money, so there was always something in the budget for books, upkeep of the building, and even improvements.

Rhodes parked the county car and went inside. Millicent Conway was working at the desk, just as she had been ever since Rhodes could remember. She had faded blue eyes, faded red hair, and hands that were beginning to tremble a little because of her age. But her mind was just as sharp as it had always been.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” she said as Rhodes walked up to the desk. “What can we do for you today? Do you need a good book to read?”

Rhodes was tempted to ask if she had a copy of
Wild Texas Wind
, but he didn’t. He said, “I need to find out something about history.”

“Well, we certainly have plenty of history books. We have books on world history, United States history, Texas history, and even the history of Blacklin County. Which one would you be interested in?”

“The one that would tell me what happened in A.D. 11,” Rhodes said.

“You probably don’t know the Library of Congress classification system, do you?” she said.

“You’re right,” Rhodes said. “I don’t.”

“Well, I’ll show you, then.”

She took him to the shelves where the world history books were lined up.

“If I were you, I’d begin with Rome,” she said, and left him on his own.

He pulled several books off the shelves and took them over to a table to look through them. He spent thirty minutes or so flipping the pages, but he didn’t find anything helpful. It appeared that nothing of importance to the world had happened in
A.D.
11, or if it had, Rhodes couldn’t locate it.

He learned that Ovid had been banished by the Roman emperor Augustus at around that time, though not during that year, and that the Hsin Dynasty had been in power in China. Rhodes didn’t see how any of that was going to help him.

There was a sign that asked browsers not to reshelve books, so Rhodes left them on the table and went to the desk to thank Miss Conway for her help.

“You didn’t find anything, did you?” she said.

“No. It must have been a pretty dull year.”

“That’s what I thought. Why were you looking?”

“I thought it might be a clue,” Rhodes said.

“Well, I hope you figure it out.”

“Me, too,” Rhodes said.

After leaving the library, Rhodes drove to the City Park and sat on a bench under a shade tree to have lunch. He stuck a finger in the ring-tab and pulled back the top of the can of sausages, which appeared to be packed in pure fat. He got one out of the can and ate it and a couple of crackers with genuine satisfaction. It didn’t take him long to finish the whole can, which he disposed of in a nearby trash container.
He dusted off his hands and leaned back on the bench.

There was no one in the park to disturb him, though there was a squirrel running around looking for something or other in the grass. It was a warm day, and Rhodes let his mind wander, trying to think of all the things he knew about Ty Berry and who might have a motive to kill him.

For some reason, Rhodes kept circling back to Rapper and Nellie. Whenever they turned up in the county, there was trouble, and they were always connected to it. It might be that they had something to do with things, but for the life of him, Rhodes couldn’t figure out what they were up to. He was going to have to do a little nosing around, see if he could find out what they were doing.

On both of their previous visits, there’d been a drug connection, first marijuana and then steroids. He wondered if they’d discovered a new kind of illegal substance to peddle. It sounded just like them. They seemed to think that they could get away with just about anything in Blacklin County, and so far they’d been proved right, not counting a few broken ribs, a few missing fingers, and a slight limp. Sooner or later, though, Rhodes knew he’d get them and send them where they belonged, which was to one of the stricter units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. One of the maximum-security prisons down around Houston would be a good place, he thought. Rapper and Nellie would do fine there.

And then there was Faye Knape.

He realized that he’d made a big mistake, thanks to his easygoing nature. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Instead of taking charge of the conversation, he’d let Mrs. Knape lead it where she wanted it to go. When she’d asked if he’d come to talk to her about Ty Berry, he should have taken the initiative and begun questioning her about her whereabouts the previous evening. But he’d let her take things in an entirely different direction. She’d neatly deflected any suspicion from herself and onto Richard Rascoe and even onto Berry. Besides that, she had Rhodes following up on her leads and ignoring her completely.

Well, he couldn’t let her get away with that. He got up, stretched, and walked over to the county car. It was time to go to the jail.

Ruth Grady said there hadn’t been any difficulty with the goats.

“Shirley hadn’t gone far,” she said. “And she wasn’t hard to catch. I roped her.”

Hack was impressed. He’d been opposed to Ruth’s hiring when Rhodes brought her into the department, but she’d quickly won him over.

“You carry a rope with you?” he said. “How long you been doin’ that?”

“Ever since Ms. Lindsey’s goats started jumping that low fence of hers,” Ruth said.

“Who taught you how to rope?”

“I learned it from my daddy when I was a little girl. He used to watch me practice out in the back yard.”

“Can you do any tricks?”

“I can twirl a loop, but that’s about it. I’m no Will Rogers.”

“About the goat,” Rhodes said.

Ruth smiled. She was as prone to being distracted by Hack and Lawton as Rhodes was.