Ghost of a Chance (19 page)

Hack went on to explain that Faye hadn’t bought them or anything like that. They’d been left to her by her husband at his death. He’d owned them under a corporate name, the Wendigo Corporation, of which Faye had been the vice president and treasurer.

“It was easy to check on,” Hack had said. “Since there’d already been somebody going through the records. Mary Cate works with that stuff in the courthouse, and she knew
all about it. And guess who was the one that’d been checking it all out?”

Rhodes knew the answer to that one. Vernell Lindsey had told him.

“Ty Berry,” he said.

“Right the first time. What d’you think it all means?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Rhodes said.

He thought about it while he leaned against the county car and waited for Buddy Reynolds to arrive. Ty had been mighty upset about the buildings, and, according to Vernell, he might even have been considering a lawsuit against the owners for negligence or whatever other charges a good lawyer could come up with. Rhodes was sure there were any number of things even a mediocre lawyer could think of if there was a chance of getting some money out of the deal.

Had Ty told Faye that he knew she owned the buildings? If he had, that was plenty of motive for her to kill him right there. The lawsuit would have ruined her personally even if it hadn’t affected her financially. It would have destroyed her credibility with the Historical Society, and that would have been far worse from Faye’s point of view than losing every penny she had in the bank.

But if Faye had killed Ty, who had killed Faye? Vernell Lindsey?

Right now it looked as if Vernell were the culprit, all right, which was too bad. Rhodes liked Vernell in spite of her bad temper, and he thought it would be a shame for her to go to prison just as she’d finally achieved her life’s ambition and published a novel. On the other hand, maybe
she could use jail time to write a book about women in prison. Rhodes thought about a bad movie he’d seen once.
Chained Heat
. Somehow he couldn’t see Vernell in it. She wasn’t the Sybil Danning type.

He couldn’t see Vernell as a killer, either, no matter how much it appeared that she might be. Rhodes knew better than to rule someone out merely because of his own feelings, however. He’d been wrong before.

At that point, Buddy Reynolds pulled up and got out of the county car. Buddy was thin, with a narrow face, narrow shoulders, and a narrow mind. He didn’t approve of smoking, drinking, or public displays of affection. If it had been up to him, all three would have been classified as felony crimes. But the thing Rhodes liked best about him was that he didn’t let his narrowness interfere with the way he did his job.

“Hack tells me you got a problem,” Buddy said, squinting in the morning sun. He squinted in the evenings, too.

“It’s Faye Knape,” Rhodes told him. “Somebody’s killed her.”

Buddy’s eyes narrowed even further. “You know who it was yet?”

“Nope. That’s where you come in. I want you to talk to all the neighbors, except for Melva Keeler. She lives right across the street, and I’ve already talked to her. I want you to find out if they saw anybody visit Faye’s house yesterday afternoon or evening, from around four o’clock on. After you’ve done that, you go see Ida Louise Tabor and ask about last night’s Chickenfoot game. Faye was supposed to be there, but she wasn’t. Ida Louise says she called her. Find out when she called and how many times she called.
Ask if anybody in the group drove by to check on Faye. If somebody did, find out who it was.”

Rhodes paused to give Buddy a chance to ask questions, but Buddy only looked at him.

“When you’ve got all that taken care of, go back to the jail and write up a report for me. I’ll get by there and read it later. Or if I’m still here, you can just tell me.”

“What’re you gonna do here?” Buddy asked.

“Search the house,” Rhodes said.

Before he searched, Rhodes fed the cats. The house had a small enclosed back porch, just large enough for a washing machine, a dryer, and six cat bowls, three of which held water and three of which were for dry cat food. There was a bag of the dry food in a cabinet over the washer, so Rhodes got it down and put some in each of the bowls.

One of the cats came out of hiding when he heard the sound and poked his head around the edge of the doorframe. It was a big gray tabby, and when he saw Rhodes, he disappeared. Neither of the others showed up. Rhodes figured they were still under a bed somewhere. He put the food sack back in the cabinet and looked at the water bowls. They were all about half full, but Rhodes decided that the cats would like it better if it was fresh, so he refilled the bowls in the kitchen. When he was finished, he sneezed twice. His eyes were itching furiously, but he didn’t rub them. Resisting the urge, he went to look at the rest of the house.

First, he took another look at the living room and Faye’s body. He’d brought the Polaroid camera from the county
car, and he took some photos to show the position of the body relative to the vase, though he didn’t think they’d prove useful, especially the two he’d taken when he was sneezing. The vase, if it had been smooth, might have provided some fingerprints, but it was cut glass, all pointy rough edges that wouldn’t be any help at all.

When he was finished taking pictures and looking over the room, Rhodes called Clyde Ballinger and told him what had happened. Ballinger said that he’d be there shortly, and Rhodes went to get some tissues from the box on the end table. He sneezed a couple of times and moved on to the rest of the house to see what he could find.

He located two of the cats, one of whom was in a closet with a half-open door. He came streaking out when Rhodes opened the door all the way, and Rhodes didn’t see him again.

There was nothing out of the ordinary in any of the rooms except for the back bedroom that Faye Knape was using for an office. In one corner of the room there was an unlocked gun cabinet. Rhodes remembered that Faye had mentioned selling her late husband’s guns, and when he opened the doors on the cabinet, it was empty. There were places where pistols had been mounted and where rifles and a double-barreled shotgun had stood. The inside was free of dust, as if Faye had recently cleaned it.

There was a computer on a desk in the middle of the room, but Rhodes didn’t find anything helpful on the computer’s hard drive or on any of the disks that Faye had filed neatly away in a plastic box.

What he did find was in a drawer in the computer desk, one that slid open easily when he pulled it, as if it had been recently oiled.

Looking inside, Rhodes saw a new ink cartridge for the printer, an instruction manual for the scanner, and a couple of blank disks. Rhodes wasn’t surprised to see them.

What he was surprised to see was the small two-shot .22 derringer that lay half hidden under a blank white memo pad.

26

R
HODES PICKED UP THE GUN WITH HIS FINGERTIPS AND
sniffed it. It had been fired fairly recently, probably within the last couple of days. So what did that mean? One answer, certainly the most obvious, was that Faye had killed Ty Berry and that Rhodes was holding the murder weapon in his hand. He put it in an evidence bag and marked the bag carefully. He didn’t want any mistakes.

He was putting the bag in his car when Clyde Ballinger arrived, along with his two helpers.

“This is pretty bad, Sheriff,” Ballinger said. “Two outstanding citizens dead within a couple of days. What’s Clearview coming to?”

Rhodes said that he didn’t know.

“Was she shot, like Ty?”

“No. Somebody hit her with something, probably a flower vase.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“You know better than to ask me that,” Rhodes said.

“Sure, but you never know when I’ll sneak one by you. This is going to have the county commissioners in an uproar, you know.”

Rhodes nodded. He wasn’t worried about the commissioners. They liked to have everything solved neatly and quickly, but things didn’t always work out that way.

“The paper’s going to be all over it, too,” Ballinger said. “I mean, we’ve lost the president of both the county’s historical associations. This is big news, like there’s some kind of weird serial killer on the loose. If Ed McBain were telling the story, the Deaf Man would be behind it.”

Ballinger liked to read paperback books about cops and killers, and he always seemed to enjoy comparing Rhodes’s cases to something he’d read about. McBain was one of his particular favorites.

“You mean the ‘hearing impaired’ man,” Rhodes said.

“No, I mean the Deaf Man. He’s a character that turns up now and then to try to outwit the guys in the EightySeventh Precinct. Killing off the presidents of the historical associations, that’s something he’d do, since it doesn’t seem like it makes any sense. But in the end, it does.”

“I would hope so,” Rhodes said.

“Yeah,” Ballinger agreed. “And it’s the sort of thing the media love. I’ll be surprised if some of the Dallas TV channels don’t send their reporters down.”

“Let’s hope not,” Rhodes said.

“Well, you never know. What about Dr. White?”

“Give him a call,” Rhodes said.

“All right.” Ballinger turned to his helpers, who had been standing silently by. “Let’s go see about Mrs. Knape.”

Rhodes watched them go inside. He had the uneasy feeling that there was something in the house that he’d overlooked,
but he couldn’t imagine what it was. He forgot about it when Buddy Reynolds came sauntering up.

“What did you find out?” Rhodes asked him.

Buddy shook his head disgustedly. “Nobody saw a thing. I thought this was supposed to be a small town, with everybody minding everybody else’s business, didn’t you?”

Rhodes nodded.

“Well, it’s not that way around this neighborhood. According to all Miz Knape’s neighbors, they were either gone or inside their houses minding nobody’s business but their own. I don’t think we’re gonna get any help around here.”

“Probably not. You go on and talk to Ida Louise Tabor. You can leave me a report at the jail.”

Buddy left, and Rhodes saw Ballinger coming out of Faye’s house, walking in front of a gurney that held Faye’s draped body.

Rhodes got in his car. It was time to visit Vernell Lindsey.

Vernell’s house hadn’t improved since Rhodes had seen it last. As he walked up to the door, he could hear the goats bleating in the back yard. He hoped they’d stay there.

Vernell came to the door wearing very tight jeans and a Tweety Bird T-shirt. She still wasn’t wearing any shoes. Rhodes wondered if she’d been barefoot when she visited Faye Knape.

“What is it this time, Sheriff?” she asked. “I’m right in the middle of a crucial scene.”

“It’s about Faye Knape,” Rhodes said. “Can I come in?”

“That old bat,” Vernell said, but she stepped back from the door and held it open for Rhodes.

He went inside, and Vernell closed the door. Then she led him to the den, which was still in disarray.

“I understand you went to see Faye yesterday afternoon,” Rhodes said when he was seated.

“Yes, I did. Why are you asking? Did she file some kind of complaint?”

“Not exactly,” Rhodes said.

“Well, it’s a good thing. She said just as many bad things to me as I did to her.”

“What did you say them for?” Rhodes asked.

“You should know the answer to that. She’s the one who sent you over here yesterday. She accused me of killing Ty Berry.”

Rhodes didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have to look at me that way,” Vernell said. She lit a cigarette. “I know you didn’t tell me, but you didn’t have to. That meddlesome Faye has never liked me, just because I know as much about history as she does. Probably more. And she was jealous of me because I was going out with Ty. Personally, I think she wanted him for herself.”

“I didn’t get that impression,” Rhodes said.

“Of course not.” Vernell exhaled smoke. “She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know. But I think that’s why she complained about him so much. If he’d done what she wanted and asked her out, she’d have liked him just fine.”

Rhodes thought about that. Could Faye have killed Ty because he rejected her? Add that to the fact that Ty knew she owned the collapsed buildings, and you had a pretty good motive.

“I take it that the two of you argued yesterday,” he said.

Vernell knocked some ash off the end of her cigarette into the Texas-shaped ashtray.

“You could say that. I told her she’d better keep her nose out of my business, and she said she didn’t know what I was talking about. I really let her have it then.”

“Let her have it?” Rhodes said.

“I called her a meddlesome bitch,” Vernell said apologetically. “I was a little excited. I don’t usually say things like that.”

“What did she do when you said it?”

“She told me to get out of her house.” Vernell inhaled deeply and let the smoke out in a sigh. “I guess I don’t much blame her.”

“And did you get out when she asked you to?”

“Yes. Why? Did she say I didn’t? I wouldn’t put it past her to lie about me.”

“She didn’t say anything,” Rhodes said truthfully. “I don’t suppose you got carried away with more than words, did you?”