Ghost of a Chance (18 page)

Runt’s real name was Samuel, and he hadn’t gotten his nickname because of his current size. In fact, as Rhodes recalled, Runt was about four inches over six feet tall and almost as wide. But he’d been born prematurely and had weighed around four pounds at birth. He’d been kept in the hospital for several weeks, and his family had called him Runt forever after. It might have been his Dodge Ram, but he hadn’t been one of the four in the cemetery. Rhodes
would have recognized him from his size alone.

“I guess I’ll have to pay the Packers a little visit, then,” Rhodes said.

“You better have some backup, considering what went down last night,” Hack said.

“Who told you about that?”

“I talked to Ruth. She said there was lots of shootin’ goin’ on.”

“Don’t spread that around. Ivy thinks there were one or two shots fired, but that’s it.”

“What about the paper? Ruth wrote up a report. Somebody’ll read it sooner or later.”

The Clearview
Herald
sent someone over about once a week to go through the records. Then the most colorful crimes would find their way into the paper.

“Maybe she won’t read it,” Rhodes said.

Hack snorted.

“I’ll tell her the paper exaggerated,” Rhodes said. “She knows that happens.”

Hack snorted louder. He was about to say something when the phone rang. He listened for a few seconds before saying, “You’re gonna have to go a little slower, Miz Tabor. I can’t get anything written down if you’re talkin’ so fast.” He found a pencil and started writing. “Okay, you can go ahead. Yes, that’s fine. I’m gettin’ it now.... She didn’t show up at all? All right. I got it. And you’ve called her three times this morning.... I got that.... Well, I don’t blame you, Miz Tabor. I’d be worried, too.... Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to tell the sheriff. He’s standin’ right here. I’ll send him right on over there. Don’t you worry. I’m sure there’s nothin’ wrong, but we’ll check on it.”

Hack hung up the phone and turned to Rhodes. “That was Ida Louise Tabor. Looks like there’s a little problem with Faye Knape.”

“What problem?” Rhodes asked.

“Seems like she didn’t show up for the Chickenfoot game last night,” Hack said. “Miz Tabor called her, but she didn’t get an answer. Called back twice this morning, too. Still didn’t get an answer. I told her you’d get on over there and check things out. Unless you want somebody else to do it.”

Rhodes needed to pay a visit to the Packers, but he could go by and see about Faye on his way.

“I’ll go,” he told Hack. “And while I’m gone, you check and see who owned those buildings.”

Hack gave him a hurt look. “I’m already workin’ on that,” he said.

24

W
HEN RHODES STOPPED HIS CAR IN FRONT OF FAYE
Knape’s house, nothing appeared to be wrong or out of place. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, there were big fluffy white clouds in the sky, and sparrows were flickering in and out of the trees in Faye’s yard.

Rhodes got out of the car and looked down the driveway at the garage. The door was up, and Rhodes could see the rear end of Faye’s car, a seven-year-old Pontiac.

“Sheriff Rhodes,” someone called. “Are you Sheriff Rhodes?”

Rhodes turned around and saw a woman coming across the street. She was wrapped up in a purple flannel housecoat and wore fuzzy pink slippers. She had a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“Are you Sheriff Rhodes?” she asked again when she reached him.

“That’s me,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve seen your picture in the paper. I thought I recognized
you, but I wanted to be sure. I’m Melva Keeler, and I live across the street there.”

She pointed with her cigarette, and Rhodes looked over at a dilapidated frame house that didn’t appear to have been painted since his Edsel was new.

And Melva Keeler appeared to have been living there at least that long and probably longer. She had untidy gray hair that she had carelessly pinned up on her head and wore no makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes.

She took a drag on her cigarette and said, “I should have called you yesterday, but I didn’t really think it was necessary. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?” Rhodes asked.

“Because every morning, Faye comes out and gets her newspaper about the same time I do. We always say something, you know, ‘Good morning,’ or whatever. But not today. Look.”

She pointed with her cigarette again, this time at the
Dallas Morning News
that lay on the sidewalk not far from where they were standing.

“You mentioned something about yesterday,” Rhodes said.

“It was awful,” Melva said. “I was sitting on the porch reading a book when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“It was really a coincidence, since the book I was reading was
Wild Texas Wind
. Do you believe in coincidences, Sheriff?”

“Not usually.”

“Neither do I, but I guess that’s what you’d have to call it. There I was, sitting on the porch and reading that book,
when who should drive up but Vernell Lindsey. Did you know she wrote a book?”

Rhodes said that he knew.

Melva took a sip of coffee and a drag from her cigarette. The cigarette was smoked down almost to the filter, and she dropped it to the sidewalk and stepped on it with one of the fuzzy slippers. Rhodes thought briefly about asking her if she was aware of the local littering laws but decided it wouldn’t do any good.

“I think it’s just wonderful that someone from Clearview has the talent to write a book,” Melva said. “Don’t you?”

“Sure. And you say Vernell was here yesterday?”

“That’s right, and I could tell as soon as she got out of the car that she was hopping mad. She slammed the door and practically ran up to Faye’s porch.”

Rhodes had a bad feeling about where this conversation was heading, and he wondered if he might have been responsible in some way. But he was sure he hadn’t mentioned any names to Vernell Lindsey.

“Faye came to the door,” Melva went on, “and Vernell just started right in on her, yelling real loud. You can guess how much Faye liked that.”

Rhodes’s guess would have been that Faye didn’t like it at all, but Melva didn’t give him a chance to say so.

“Faye got red in the face and started yelling right back at her. I was afraid they were both going to have strokes right there on Faye’s front porch.”

Melva paused and looked into her coffee cup. It was nearly empty, and she turned it upside down to pour the last couple of drops out on the sidewalk.

“Could you hear what they were saying?” Rhodes asked.

Melva looked down at the two dark spots on the walk and said, “No. They were yelling, but they were too far away to hear. And then they went inside.”

“How long were they in there?”

“It must have been fifteen minutes. I managed to get quite a few pages of the book read, but I’m a very fast reader. When Vernell came out, I walked to the front of the porch and waved to her. I wanted to tell her how much I was enjoying her book. I thought that if she was a little out of sorts, a compliment might help. I’ve found that compliments often do.”

She looked at Rhodes as if expecting some kind of compliment from him. He didn’t know what to say, since he wasn’t all that fond of fuzzy pink slippers.

“Did it help?” he asked.

“I didn’t get a chance to say anything. She just jumped in her car and tore out of here like a bat. You know the kind of bat I mean?”

Rhodes said that he knew.

“And now Faye hasn’t come out for her newspaper. She’s never let it stay there that long, not even when she had the flu last fall. I should have called you yesterday.”

“Maybe she’s just sleeping late,” Rhodes said. “I’ll check.”

“All right,” Melva said.

Rhodes went up to the porch. Before he knocked on the door, he looked back, and Melva was still standing there in her robe and fuzzy slippers, watching him. He wished she’d go back to her own house, but he didn’t feel like telling her that.

He looked around the porch. It was very quiet, and there
were no cats in the windows. A sparrow fluttered in a nearby tree. Rhodes knocked.

There was no answer, but then he hadn’t really been expecting one. He tried the doorknob, which turned easily in his hand. The door wasn’t locked.

He opened it and went inside and called Faye’s name. His voice echoed off the hardwood floors and bounced down the walls of the hallway.

There was no sign of the cats, but Rhodes knew they were there somewhere. He could feel his eyes beginning to itch already.

He walked down the short hall to the living room. Faye Knape was lying on the floor, her knees drawn up, her mouth open as if in a scream. Her forehead had been crushed. The cut-glass vase lay not far away, and the dried flowers were scattered on the floor.

25

R
HODES FORGOT ABOUT HIS EYES AND LOOKED AROUND
the living room. Nothing other than the vase seemed to be out of place; aside from that, the room looked exactly as he’d left it.

He turned and went back outside, where Melva Keeler was still standing on the walk. She watched him coming toward her with wide eyes.

“Is Faye ... all right?” she asked.

“No,” Rhodes said. “She’s not. Do you know what time it was when Vernell Lindsey came by yesterday?”

Melva’s eyes went vague. Then they cleared and she said, “There was still enough light to read by, but it was already getting late. It must have been around four-thirty. Maybe a little later. Should I go call an ambulance?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Rhodes said. “There’s no hurry.”

“You mean that Faye is . . . dead?”

“That’s right. Do you remember whether anyone else came by after Vernell left?”

“I went inside right after she left. It was getting a little chilly. And then I watched the news and ate supper. After that I watched a rerun of
Murder, She Wrote
. I just love Jessica Fletcher. Faye does, too. Sometimes we’d talk about the show when we picked up our newspapers.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she brushed them with the sleeve of her robe.

“I guess I won’t be talking to her about anything anymore.” She paused. “Did she have a stroke?”

“I don’t think so,” Rhodes said, wishing it was as simple as that.

“What was it, then?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Did Vernell... do something?”

“I’m not sure about that, either.”

“Oh, dear,” Melva said, and then her face changed as another thought struck her. “Who’s going to take care of Faye’s boys?”

“The boys?” Rhodes said, but then he remembered. “You mean the cats?”

“Yes. Someone will have to take care of them. Faye treated them just like members of her family. And someone has to feed them right now. They’re probably starving, and I’m sure they wonder what’s happened to her.”

“I’ll feed them,” Rhodes said.

“But who’s going to take care of them after that?”

Not me
, Rhodes thought. He said, “I don’t know.”

Rhodes called Hack and said that he wouldn’t be going out to see the Packers for a while. He asked him to send Buddy Reynolds to Vernell Lindsey’s house.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Hack asked.

“You could say that,” Rhodes told him. “Faye’s dead. Looks like somebody killed her.”

“That’s bad, all right. Faye was a little gripey, but she was okay. I’ll get Buddy out to Vernell’s. What’s he supposed to do there?”

Rhodes thought it over. “Send him by here instead. I’ll talk to Vernell myself.”

“All right. ‘Fore I let you go, though, there’s somethin’ you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“You remember those buildings you wanted me to check on?”

Rhodes had to admit that the buildings had slipped his mind. Finding Faye like that had pushed everything else right out of his head.

“What about them?” he asked.

“Well, I guess you could say it’s a kind of a coincidence, you wantin’ me to find out who owned ‘em and all.”

There were getting to be too many coincidences, Rhodes thought.

“What kind of coincidence?” he asked.

“The kind where it turns out that they were owned by Faye Knape,” Hack said.