Ghost of a Chance (8 page)

R
HODES DROVE INTO HIS DARK DRIVEWAY, CHECKED TO
make sure Ivy had fed Speedo, and went inside. The clothes dryer was humming, so Ivy must have put his wash in it.

Yancey bounded up to Rhodes, yipping excitedly, which was the way he always yipped.

“You’re thrilled to see me, right?” Rhodes said.

Yancey responded by trying to bite Rhodes’s ankles.

Ivy came through the door. “I’m thrilled to see you, too, but I’m not trying to bite you.”

Ivy had brown eyes and short, graying hair that hadn’t been touched up with Clairol Nice ’n Easy.

“You can do that later,” Rhodes said. “Unless there’s a really good movie on.”

Yancey stopped barking and looked alertly from one of them to the other.

“You shouldn’t talk like that in front of the dog,” Ivy said.

“He can move out if he’s embarrassed.”

“Do you think Speedo would be willing to share his igloo?”

Rhodes said he didn’t think so and asked about supper.

“I have a really good plan for that,” Ivy said.

“And what would that be?”

She smiled. “You’re taking me out.”

The Round-Up Restaurant was located about a half mile out of town, just down the highway from the Wal-Mart, which was no coincidence. Everything was migrating in that direction, Rhodes thought, including the town’s largest car dealership, which had set up a huge new lot and showroom nearby.

The Round-Up didn’t cater to people with elevated cholesterol levels or highly refined tastes. There was a portable sign out front, lit from within to proclaim that

ABSOLUTELY NO CHICKEN
FISH
OR VEGETARIAN DISHES
CAN BE FOUND
ON OUR MENU!

There was, however, a section of the restaurant reserved for nonsmokers, but only because the manager had been told that such an area was required by a city ordinance.

It wasn’t a place where Rhodes ate often. It didn’t fit in with the low-fat regime instituted by Ivy. In fact, he’d been there only once before, a day or so after the place had opened. But he’d been looking forward to a return trip.

He pulled his red and white 1959 Edsel Citation four-door
hardtop into a parking lot that was crowded with pickups and SUVs. He found a spot beside a Chevy Blazer with a bumper sticker that read

Jesus loves you!
(Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.)

“I wonder how whoever owns that car knew I was going to be here tonight?” Rhodes said.

“You shouldn’t take it so personally,” Ivy told him. “It could be just an expression of religious freedom.”

“Right,” Rhodes said, getting out of the Edsel.

Like Yancey and Speedo, the car had been acquired during the course of an investigation. Rhodes had never even thought about buying an Edsel until he saw it. Then he couldn’t resist. And besides, it was cheap.

Some people thought the Edsel was one of the ugliest cars ever built. Not Rhodes. He liked the squared-off roof, the horse-collar grille, and the sculptured sheet-metal body. He even liked the widely despised drum speedometer and the push-button transmission with the buttons in the center of the steering wheel.

Ivy was less enthusiastic, but at least she never complained about riding in it.

They went inside the restaurant, a sprawling building of rough wood with high ceilings and rafters lined with antlers of all sizes, hundreds of pairs of them. Rhodes wasn’t quite sure what the antlers had to do with anything, since venison wasn’t on the menu. He supposed they were part of the rustic decorations, which also consisted of old metal signs advertising things like Grapette soda, Sinclair gasoline, and Hadacol.

The large room was noisy with the sounds of talking and the music of the jukebox, which was stocked with country music from an era when the sound was actually “country.” Rhodes recognized the voice of Jim Reeves, singing something about pride going before a fall.

A waiter led Rhodes and Ivy to a table in the nonsmoking section. Several people greeted them as they made their way through the tables, shaking hands with Rhodes and asking how the sheriff business was. No one had the bad taste to ask about Ty Berry.

The waiter handed them menus when they were seated. Rhodes didn’t need the menu. He already knew what he wanted: the item billed as “The World’s Biggest Chicken-Fried Steak.”

Although the steak was indeed enormous, Rhodes wasn’t sure the claim was true. He’d been in at least four different restaurants that all professed to sell “The World’s Biggest Chicken-Fried Steak.” He’d never measured them, and he didn’t know anyone who had. All he knew for sure was that the one served in the Round-Up was awfully big.

It was so large, in fact, that the edges dangled over the sides of the plate. The potatoes that came with it, mashed with the skins still on them, had to be served in a separate dish.

Both steak and potatoes were smothered in thick white gravy with flecks of black pepper scattered throughout. It was almost as good as a hot roast beef sandwich. Maybe better. He even ordered a Dr Pepper to go along with his meal.

Ivy was much more restrained than Rhodes. She ordered a small filet and a salad. Rhodes was a little surprised that the Round-Up deigned to serve salads, but he supposed that
there had to be some concessions made just in case there was someone who was so unenlightened as to want to order something other than meat.

While they waited for Ivy’s salad to arrive, they talked about their day. Ivy worked at an insurance office, where it just so happened that Ty Berry had a life insurance policy. Naturally the news of his death had been big news there.

“Any leads?” she asked.

Rhodes didn’t mind talking about it in a public place, at least not in the Round-Up, mainly because he was sure that no one could hear him more than six inches away, thanks to all the noise, part of which was being currently made by Hank Snow, who was on the jukebox explaining to a truck driver that he’d been everywhere.

“Not much,” Rhodes said, telling Ivy what he knew and ending with his visit to Faye Knape.

The salad arrived. Ivy took a bite and said, “Faye and her cats. I thought your eyes looked a little red.”

“I rubbed them,” Rhodes confessed. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“I like cats,” Ivy said. “It’s too bad you’re allergic to them. We could get us a couple if you weren’t.”

“I like cats, too. But I don’t think Speedo and Yancey would want to share the house with them.”

“Cats don’t share,” Ivy said. “They take over. But I’ve gotten you off the subject of your investigation. What did Faye have to tell you?”

Rhodes went on to explain Mrs. Knape’s theory of how Ty Berry had died.

Ivy’s eyes widened. “Suicide? Really?”

“That’s what she says.”

“I’ll have to get Mr. Tacker to talk to her,” Ivy said. Tacker was the owner of the insurance agency. “He can save the company money if that’s the case.”

“It’s not the case,” Rhodes said, and told her why.

“Oh,” Ivy said.

She finished her salad as Rhodes told her about the angel and about Mrs. Knape’s theory that Berry had arranged with Richard Rascoe for its sale.

Ivy wiped her mouth with her napkin. “That doesn’t sound very smart.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Rhodes said. “And there’s no proof at all of a connection between Berry and the angel.”

Their steaks arrived then, and Rhodes got ready for some serious eating. In addition to the steak and potatoes, there was a basket of large, soft whole wheat rolls and a dish of real butter. It was almost enough to make eating low-fat veggie bologna for lunch worthwhile.

When they were done, Rhodes was completely satisfied. There was even a bite or two of steak left on his plate, so he felt highly self-righteous. He was about to ask Ivy if she knew of any great historical events that had occurred in
A.D.
11, but he didn’t get a chance. The waiter came to their table and said that there was a phone call for him.

“It’s Mr. Jensen at the jail,” the waiter said.

Rhodes had let Hack know where he’d be going, as he always did. There was no way of knowing what emergencies might come up at any given moment.

He followed the waiter to the telephone at the checkout counter. After Hank Locklin had finished begging someone to send him the pillow that she dreamed on, Rhodes picked up the receiver.

“This is Rhodes,” he said.

“You gotta come to the jail,” Hack said. “The ghost’s got loose.”

“Loose?” Rhodes said.

“Loose, out on the town, runnin’ wild. Are you comin’ or not?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rhodes said.

11

I
VY WENT TO THE JAIL WITH RHODES. SHE SAID THAT
there wasn’t anything good on TV that evening and that whatever had Hack so excited would probably be more entertaining than TV anyway.

When they got there, they found four Clearview teenagers, two boys and two girls, who were in a highly agitated state, to put it mildly. They were all gathered around Hack, and they were talking at once.

Hack looked up when Rhodes and Ivy came through the door. The relief on his face was obvious.

“Here’s the sheriff,” he said. “You can tell him all about it.”

The four young people turned from Hack and started for Rhodes. Ivy grinned and went over to talk to Hack while Rhodes dealt with the situation.

He sat at his desk and held up his hands. “First of all,” he said, “let me get your names.”

He got out a report form and took down the names:
Jennifer Colton, Lisa Wetmore, Jason Crites, and Larry Lake. Then he elected Jason the spokesman. Jason was thin and blond and had several dots of something that looked suspiciously like Clearasil on his chin.

“Now,” Rhodes said. “Tell me what happened.”

“Well, we were riding around,” Jason said, “and Jennifer’s, like, ‘Let’s go to the graveyard,’ but I go, ‘Isn’t it against the law to drive around there at night?’ and she goes, ‘I don’t think so,’ and then Lisa goes—”

Jennifer, a small brunette who probably didn’t weigh more than ninety pounds, interrupted him. “I didn’t say it wasn’t against the law, Sheriff.”

Lisa, who wasn’t much bigger but who had very blond hair and big, wide eyes said, “You did so say it wasn’t against the law, and anyway, it’s all Jason’s fault because that old car of his has a loose battery cable, and if he hadn’t been driving so fast it wouldn’t have come off when we hit that bump and then we wouldn’t be here in the first place and—”

Rhodes held up a hand to stop her. “Just hold on a minute. Jason’s telling this. I’ll get your side of the story when he’s finished.”

“That’s not fair, Sheriff,” Larry Lake said. He was short and had a determined look. “You ought to listen to Lisa because she’s the one that nearly got killed by the ghost before it got after all of us and she’s the one that tried to tell Jason that somebody’d been buried out there today, which if Jason had listened to her, he never would’ve—”

Rhodes held up his hand again. He was beginning to see why there had been a note of near-panic in Hack’s voice during the phone call he’d made to the Round-Up. When Rhodes had been a youngster, he and most of his friends
would have been paralyzed into speechlessness in the presence of a sheriff or any other representative of the power of the law. Now kids felt no need to defer to anyone. He was sure the four in front of him would have been just as voluble if he’d been the governor or the president. He couldn’t make up his mind about whether that was good or bad.

He glanced over in the dispatcher’s direction. Both Ivy and Hack were watching him and grinning broadly.

“Look,” Rhodes said to the teenagers. “You’re going to have to let one person tell the story. Then, when it’s done, the rest of you can tell me anything that’s been left out. Until then, just keep quiet.”

They looked at him as if he were some kind of relic of the Stone Age, which he probably was. But at least they let Jason get on with it and tell his tale.

It seemed that, over Lisa’s objections, they had decided to take a drive through the cemetery. Sure, there had been a funeral there that afternoon, but they weren’t planning to do anything disrespectful.

Rhodes was pretty sure they’d been planning to park for a while in the peaceful darkness, but Jason didn’t say so, and Rhodes let it go.

They’d driven around for a few minutes, and Lisa had seen something that scared her. It hadn’t been too far from the mound of dirt that covered Mr. McCoy. She’d screamed, Jason had sped up, and the car had hit a bump.

“That’s when the bad stuff started,” Jason said. “The battery cable came off, and the car died, and we’re all, like, ‘What’re we gonna do now?’ ”

“Open the hood and connect the battery cable,” Rhodes suggested.

Jason looked at him with disgust. “Oh, sure, like we didn’t think of that. But the little dealy-bopper that pops the hood is broken and we couldn’t get the hood open to get to the battery. So Lisa’s in the back seat, freaking out and going, ‘It’s a ghost! It’s a ghost! Get us out of here! Get us out of here!’ and I’m, like, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ So Larry and I decided we’d have to walk to my house and get some tools, like maybe a screwdriver or a pair of pliers, and open the hood that way if we could.”