Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (6 page)

“So let's get this straight,” Rhodes said. “He carries Colt .45s, he sees like an eagle, he's single, he has a lot of hair, and he doesn't have a bald spot.”

“That's right,” Hack said, and Lawton echoed him.

“Yet you say he's like me.”

“To the life,” Hack said. “The very life. When they make the movie, they'll have to get you for the part. Couldn't nobody else possibly do it.”

“Less it was Tommy Lee Jones,” Lawton said. “Tommy Lee Jones can do just about anything.”

“Got a thin spot in back, though,” Hack said. “Wouldn't work.”

“Hold on,” Rhodes said. “I thought you said Sage Barton was just like me.”

“Well, sure,” Hack said, “except for the thin spot and some other little things like that, he's just like you.”

Rhodes gave up. He should have never gotten started. He turned back to the computer.

“Sheriff?” Hack said.

“Yes?”

“What about Lynn Ashton?”

“She's dead,” Rhodes said. “Murdered.”

“That's a shame,” Hack said. “Everybody liked her.”

“Not everybody,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

While he filled in the forms, Rhodes tried to make sense of things. One thing he knew for sure, besides the fact that Lynn was dead, was that her purse was missing. Was it robbery, or did someone hope Rhodes would think it was a robbery?

There were other reasons the purse might have been taken, of course. One of them would be to get rid of the cell phone that must have been inside it. Sandra had mentioned that Lynn had one, and a smart phone, at that.

Rhodes could get access to the phone records easily enough, but first he had to find out which company Lynn had her service with. While the records might be helpful, Sandra had also said something about Lynn's having planned to put her appointments in the phone rather than in the book Rhodes had been given. What if she'd kept some appointments on the phone, the ones she wanted to keep off the books, so to speak? The killer might not want the phone to fall into the hands of the law if that was the case.

Or maybe the phone held the names and addresses of some of Lynn's male friends. If it did, their numbers would be among those she called. Or maybe not. Maybe she'd been told not to call. Or not to call on that phone. Rhodes sure wished he had it to check.

He looked through Lynn's appointment book. Some names showed up more often than others, and Rhodes put them on a list. He made a second list of the ones who showed up less frequently. There were more women than men on both lists, but not many. Rhodes wasn't surprised. It must have been pleasant for some men to have their hair cut by someone like Lynn.

Ruth Grady came in and interrupted Rhodes's thoughts. She had a box of bags that she took to the evidence locker, and when she came back, she sat down in the chair by Rhodes's desk. Before she could say anything about Lynn's murder, Hack got her attention.

“Got somethin' for you,” he said. He took a padded envelope from his desk and held it up. “Came in the mail this mornin'.”

Ruth got up and took the envelope. She sat back down and opened it. Rhodes wasn't surprised that it was another copy of
Terrorist Terror.
He had to admit that the cover was eye-catching. It showed Sage Barton, both guns blazing as he raced across the top of a long concrete dam. He appeared to be chasing several heavily armed men.

“Is it any good?” Ruth asked Hack.

“You bet,” Hack said.

Lawton had gone to check on the cellblock, so Hack had the floor to himself. That was the way he liked it, Rhodes thought.

“You remember the last one?” Hack asked.

“The one about the terrorists attacking the nuclear plant?” Ruth asked.

“That's the one. This time they're after a big hydroelectric dam.”

“Hold on,” Rhodes said. “You're always saying how Sage Barton is like me, but there's no hydroelectric dam around here. I don't think I've ever seen one.”

“Well, you ought to have,” Hack said. “There's twenty-three of 'em in the state of Texas.” He patted his own copy of the book that lay on his desk. “These books are real educational.”

“I don't know about Sage Barton being so much like the sheriff,” Ruth said. “The way I remember it, old Sage has all kinds of personal troubles. His sister is dying of some strange lingering disease, his father's some kind of spy for a foreign government, and Sage is always thinking about how his only sweetheart took a bullet that was meant for him.”

“Well, sure, he has a lot of anxiety and stuff,” Hack said. “That's why people like to read about him. A hero with no troubles ain't much of a hero at all.”

“I don't have any troubles,” Rhodes said.

“That's what you think. You might act like you don't, but you got plenty.”

“Name one.”

“You got an unsolved murder on your hands, for one thing,” Hack said.

“You got that right, and I'd better get busy solving it,” Rhodes told him.

Hack looked as if he had a response ready, but the phone rang and distracted him. He answered it, and Rhodes turned to Ruth.

“I'm going to talk to some of the people involved with Lynn,” he said. “I need for you and Buddy to talk to a few of them, too. I've made some lists. I'll need you to get the phone records, and then we'll probably have a lot more names.”

He gave Ruth the list with the more frequent customers. He'd withheld one name, but Ruth didn't need to know that.

“Phone records won't be easy,” he said. “I don't know which carrier she used.”

“I'll keep calling until I find out,” Ruth said.

“You know what to ask when you talk to people.”

“I know,” Ruth said.

“People will lie to you.”

“I'm used to that, and I'm getting better at knowing when they do.”

“All right. You can get started anytime.”

“Now is good,” Ruth said. She picked up her book to take it with her.

“No reading on the job,” Rhodes said.

She laughed and left. As she went through the door, Hack hung up the phone.

“Call Duke Pearson and tell him to drive by the old hotel building across from the Beauty Shack a few times tonight,” Rhodes said. “Tell him we're looking for two men who were staying there. They might have seen something that'll help us with the Ashton case.”

“How's Duke's mama?” Hack asked.

Pearson had worked in law enforcement in West Texas for more than ten years. He'd moved to Blacklin County to help his wife take care of her mother, who was in the early stages of dementia. He'd been hired as a deputy only days after he'd applied for the job.

“She's no better,” Rhodes said. “No worse, either.”

“I guess that's a good thing,” Hack said. “What happened to the men who were staying in that old building?”

“You'll have to ask Buddy about that,” Rhodes said.

He waited to see if Hack would ask for details. If he did, Rhodes planned to make him suffer. Hack and Lawton spent far too much time talking around anything Rhodes needed to know. It was another way they had of getting his goat. They'd finally tell him, but in their own time. Rhodes liked to deal them a similar hand when he could.

Hack, however, didn't cooperate. He said, “Don't you want to know about that phone call?”

Rhodes knew then who the dealer was going to be, but he might as well get it over with. “Do I need to?”

“Sure,” Hack said.

“All right. Tell me.”

“Now you got another case to work on.”

Rhodes waited.

Hack didn't say anything. Rhodes knew there was no use trying to outwait him.

“Well?” Rhodes asked.

“Well, you're gonna love this one.”

“Why?”

Hack didn't answer that. He said, “It's just a good thing Milton Munday's left town, that's for sure.”

Milton Munday was a muckraking talk-show host who'd made a brief stop in Clearview on his way up the radio ladder to a better-paying job in a much bigger city. He was on the air in Waco now, and he was likely to go higher. He'd given Rhodes a hard time for a while, but Rhodes had won him over after a personal appearance on a remote broadcast of his show.

“Jennifer Loam's still around, though,” Hack said. “This is right up her alley.”

Loam was a reporter for the
Clearview Herald.
She was a good one, too, and Rhodes had thought she was destined for bigger things. Given the current state of the newspaper industry, however, she was probably lucky to have a job on even a small-town paper. The
Herald
had recently undergone a number of cutbacks. It was also no longer a daily as it had been for something like a hundred years. It was now a weekly, and Jennifer was one of the few employees left.

“She'll be interested in the murder, I'm sure,” Rhodes said.

“This is different,” Hack said, “but it'll get a lot of play in the paper. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Rhodes asked. “I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“Wild hogs,” Hack said.

Chapter 6

Now that the cat, or the hogs in this case, was out of the bag, Hack broke down and gave Rhodes the story.

“Jackie Bradley was riding his four-wheeler out in his pasture, right along the edge of the woods, when a bunch of hogs charged out of the trees at him,” Hack said. “Somethin' must've spooked 'em. They ran right into his four-wheeler and knocked him off on the ground. He was lucky he didn't get trampled.”

Feral hogs were a serious problem all over Texas. Their numbers had tripled in the past few years, and they were multiplying faster than rabbits. They destroyed crops, tore down fences, and rooted up fields. Recently they'd even started coming into town on occasion. The county commissioners had talked about various ways of getting rid of them, but nobody had come up with a solution.

Not so long ago, Rhodes had been involved with some hog hunters. Shooting the hogs wouldn't control the population. There were too many hogs for that. Trapping didn't work, either. Rhodes wished he had an answer, but he didn't.

“What does Jackie want me to do?” Rhodes asked.

“Natcherly he wants you to come out there and kill all them hogs.”

“He should know better than that. We can send Alton Boyd and have him set some traps, but that's it.”

Boyd was the county's animal control officer. The traps wouldn't do much good, but they might catch a few of the hogs. That is, they might if the hogs didn't tear up the traps first.

“I'll get him on the radio right now,” Hack said.

While he was doing that, Jennifer Loam came in. She was young, blond, and entirely too smart to suit Rhodes. She seemed to know more about what was going on in Clearview than he did.

“Hello, Sheriff,” she said. She glanced at Hack's desk. “I see you have the new book. I got mine this morning, too. I can't wait to see what Sage Barton's up to now.”

“Terrorists at hydroelectric dams,” Rhodes said. “There are twenty-three of those dams in Texas, in case you were wondering, but I don't think there are any quite as big as the one on the cover of that book.”

“I wonder if dealing with terrorists is harder than dealing with murderers,” Jennifer said.

“I'm sure it is,” Rhodes said. “You know about Lynn Ashton?”

“I do.” Jennifer sat in the chair by Rhodes's desk. “I don't know enough, though. Why don't you fill me in.”

“You probably know more than I do. Do you have your hair done at the Beauty Shack?”

“Yes, but Lonnie does mine. I don't … didn't know Lynn very well.”

“You know her reputation?”

Jennifer nodded. “Let's just say there are things I won't be putting in my article.”

“I'll have more for you after the autopsy,” Rhodes said. “We don't have a time of death, a motive, or any suspects, but you can always say that we're expecting to make an arrest any day now.”

He thought he was pretty safe in saying that, at least as far as the newspaper was concerned. It was published on Sunday and delivered on Monday so the sports section could have up-to-date information on the Clearview Catamounts during football season. Since today was Thursday, people wouldn't read the article for a few days. Then they wouldn't see anything again for another week. If Rhodes hadn't caught the killer by then, he probably never would.

“What about Lynn's family?” Jennifer asked.

“She didn't have any that I know of,” Rhodes said.

“So you don't know about services?”

“Maybe she'd made arrangements. If she hadn't, Sandra might do something. I don't know any more than that.”

“All right, then,” Jennifer said. “You'll let me know if you find anything out?”

“Sure,” Rhodes said, but they both knew he was lying.

*   *   *

Buddy came in not long after Jennifer left. Hack didn't even let him sit down before he gave him his copy of the new Sage Barton thriller.

“The sheriff's jealous 'cause he didn't get a copy,” Hack said, “but he's tryin' not to let on.”

“I'll bet it's a humdinger,” Buddy said, sitting in the chair Jennifer had vacated.

“You bet it is,” Hack said.

“Never mind that,” Rhodes said to Buddy. “What did you find out?”

“From those people you sent me to interview? Just about what you'd expect. Nobody saw a thing or heard anything. They all thought that old hotel was deserted as Death Valley. They had a few words to say about that junkyard, though.”

That was about what Rhodes had expected.

“They complained about trucks tearing up the street,” Buddy went on. “I guess some of the ones hauling scrap metal are pretty heavy, and that street's sure a mess.”