Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (14 page)

“M
ust’ve been some fight,” Hack said. “Wisht I could’ve seen it.”

“Me too,” Lawton said. What’d you hit him with, anyhow?  I heard Dr. White say Wally was lucky his ribs weren’t broke.”

Rhodes was more worried about his own ribs, not to mention his ankle. He was walking a little better now, though, and he thought he’d be all right.

“I hit him with a rake handle,” he said.

“Well, I just hope he don’t sue us for police brutality,” Hack said. “You’re gonna have to stop bein’ so rough on folks.”

“Yeah,” Lawton said. “I’m tired of bein’ sued.”

“We’re not going to be sued about this,” Rhodes said. “I guarantee it.”

“Maybe,” Hack said. “But there’s a way we could be sure about that if we wanted to.”

Lawton asked, “How’s that?”

“TV,” Hack said.

“We got us a TV already,” Lawton said.

“Not that kind of TV. What we need is video cameras in all the county cars. That way, whatever happens’ll be recorded on tape. If we get sued, we got the evidence of how we handled things right there for all the world to see.”

“What if I’m not standing in the right place when I get hit?” Rhodes wondered.

“Sure, go ahead,” Hack said. “You can pick holes in anything if you try hard enough. But lots of counties’ve already got cameras. City cops, too. There’s already been one case of a policeman that was shot and killed, but they got the killer ’cause of the tape in his camera.”

“I’m not planning to get killed,” Rhodes said.

Hack laughed grimly. “Neither was he, I bet. Anyhow, you could prove that Wally Henry started that fight, or that you didn’t really hurt him.”

Rhodes wasn’t worried about the state of Wally Henry’s health or the possibility of a lawsuit, and he didn’t think the county was going to spring for video cameras. He kept thinking about Henry’s response to the gaff, and about the bruise on Lige Ward’s chest.

“Get Ruth Grady on the radio,” he told Hack. “Ask her to check around and find out if anyone saw an old GMC with rusted front fenders anywhere near Obert early this morning.”

Hack got busy on the radio, and Rhodes turned to read the autopsy report on Rayjean Ward that Dr. White had left on his desk after he checked on Wally Henry. White hadn’t really pinpointed the time of death, but he was willing to say about seven o’clock, give or take an hour. Cause of death was a blow to the head.

Rhodes thought some more about Wally Henry. He thought Henry was a pretty good suspect in the deaths of both Rayjean and Lige. Now all he had to do was get him to admit it.

H
enry didn’t admit anything. He took the opportunity to engage in another spate of abusive language and a few more terroristic threats.

Rhodes took it all calmly. He’d heard worse.

“You might as well talk to me,” he said. “I can find out if you were at the cockfights, and I can find out if you made any threats against anybody there like the ones you’re making here against me.”

“You can’t find out a damn thing,” Henry said. “And you better have those stags of mine seen to while I’m in here, or I’ll sue this county for ever’ penny it’s got.”

“You can make a phone call,” Rhodes said. “Call somebody about your roosters.”

Henry didn’t say anything for at least a minute.

“The county will pay for the call if you don’t have a quarter,” Rhodes said.

“It ain’t that,” Henry said at last.

“Well, what is it then?”

“I ain’t got nobody to call.”

Rhodes had always known that he wasn’t really hardboiled enough to be a legendary lawman like, say, Dirty Harry Callahan. It was in situations like this one that he sometimes found himself feeling sorry for the malefactors.

“How about someone in Thurston?” he asked.

Henry was sitting on the bunk, his fingers laced together and his hands dangling between his legs. He didn’t look up at Rhodes.

“I said I ain’t got nobody.”

So, since Rhodes was determined to hold Henry for at least twenty-four hours, that was how he found himself in charge of a flock of stags.

I
vy didn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea of feeding and watering a bunch of roosters raised for fighting. Rhodes didn’t especially blame her, but he tried not to let it show.

“It might be educational,” he said. “You’ve probably never seen a flock of stags before.”

“I thought stags were deer.”

Rhodes explained how the term applied to roosters.

“Well,” Ivy said, “You’re right. I’ve never seen a flock of stags. And I’m not sure that I want to.”

“It’s a nice drive in the country,” he said. “And we could eat at the Jolly Tamale.”

“You’ve tried that one on me already this week. But why not?  You’ve been pretty good lately. You deserve it.”

Rhodes hadn’t told her about the sandwich he’d had for lunch, and he hadn’t mentioned his fight with Henry. He was walking all right, and she hadn’t noticed anything wrong. He didn’t think this would be a good time to say anything about either the fight or the sandwich.

“You’re right,” he said. “I deserve it.”

He didn’t say why.

I
t was on the drive to Thurston that Ivy brought up something that Rhodes hadn’t thought about.

“You remember when we were talking to Press Yardley about the emus?” she asked.

It wasn’t really a question, but Rhodes said that he did.

“He said that he went into Obert for some groceries the night his emus were stolen, didn’t he?”

Rhodes remembered the remark. “I think so. Why?”

“Where can you buy groceries in Obert at night?  As far as that goes, where can you buy groceries in Obert in the daytime?”

Obert was even smaller than Thurston, and there was no real grocery store there.

“There’s that little service station on the far side of town,” Rhodes said. “They sell bread and milk and things like that.”

“How late do they stay open?”

“Probably until just a little while after dark,” Rhodes said.

“So Press didn’t go into Obert to buy groceries when his emus were stolen,” Ivy said. “Did he?”

“I don’t guess he did,” Rhodes said.

“So where was he, then?”

Rhodes took his eyes off the highway for a second to look at his wife. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to ask him.”

R
hodes and Ivy had no trouble feeding Henry’s stags. The feed was located in the tin barn. It was hot and dusty inside, and Rhodes would have preferred not to spend any time there, but he looked around until he saw a water bucket hanging on a nail.

He left the barn, went to the well, and filled the bucket while Ivy put feed out. The stags were well-behaved. It appeared that they were aggressive only with other trained fighters.

“Can you imagine what it must be like around here in the morning?” Ivy asked.

Rhodes had always liked the sound of a rooster crowing in the early morning, but he didn’t think he’d like the sound of thirty or so of them crowing.

“Noisy,” he said.

“What kinds of roosters are these?” Ivy asked, putting out feed for a reddish-colored stag.

Rhodes didn’t know enough about fighting roosters to distinguish one kind from another, though he did know the names of some of the different breeds.

“Some of them might be Commodore Grays, and there might be a few Valley Roundheads or Wyatt Hackle Cocks. Or there might not be.”

Some of the roosters were definitely gray-colored, but that didn’t mean that any of the names Rhodes had called were correct, and he admitted as much.

“What kind of chickens lay eggs?” Ivy asked.

Rhodes knew the answer to that one. “Hens lay eggs.”

Ivy threw a handful of feed at him. “You know what I mean.”

Rhodes knew. She meant the kind of hens that Henry had been talking about earlier, the kind that lived in cages. Rhodes wondered if it might be better to find somewhere that sold eggs from free-range chickens. That is, if Ivy would ever let him eat another egg.

“Laying hens are usually white leghorns, I think,” he said.

“And leghorn roosters don’t fight?”

“Only Foghorn Leghorn,” Rhodes said. “And he usually fights a dog.”

“Who’s Foghorn Leghorn?” Ivy asked.

“Never mind,” Rhodes said.

I
t was getting dark when Rhodes and Ivy finished their meal at the Jolly Tamale and left the restaurant. Rhodes was feeling stuffed after eating a Combination Platter, which included a tamale, two enchiladas, beans, rice, tortillas, guacamole, chile con queso, and chips.

“Do you think Red Rogers would approve of your going to dinner in the county car?” Ivy asked.

“Probably not unless it was official business,” Rhodes said. “Which it is.”

Ivy poked him in the stomach with her index finger. “You call eating official business?”

“I didn’t mean the meal,” Rhodes told her. “We were tending to business at Wally Henry’s place, and I have another stop to make. We just happened to take time out to eat between destinations.”

Ivy nodded. “I see. And what’s our next stop?”

“Mine,” Rhodes said. “I’ll take you home first.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think you need to visit the Palm Club.”

“Why not?” Ivy wanted to know. “It might be fun.”

“Or then again,” Rhodes said, “it might not.”

W
hile he was at home, Rhodes fed his dog, Speedo, and gave him a short romp. Because of the heat, neither of them felt like romping for long, and Rhodes’ ankle wasn’t up to a great deal of strenuous activity. After a few minutes, he went back into the house and called Dr. Slick.

“Emu feathers for sure,” Slick said. “That camper was full of them.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rhodes said.

“But you had to make certain, right?”

“That’s right. Thanks for your help.” Rhodes started to hang up, and then he had another thought. “You haven’t treated any roosters lately, have you?”

He heard Slick’s laugh at the other end of the line. “You mean for injuries sustained in the course of a cockfight?”

“Well, I was just wondering.”

“Sheriff, the men who fight roosters don’t bring them in to a vet for treatment. If their injuries aren’t too serious, they treat them themselves with whatever kind of home remedy they’ve cooked up. And if the injuries are severe, they put the birds out of their misery. In my entire career, I’ve never treated a fighting cock.”

“It was just a thought,” Rhodes said.

“Believe me, I’d help you if I could,” the vet said. “I don’t like the idea of using birds for blood sport any more than you do.”

Rhodes thanked him and hung up. At least he knew that Lige Ward had been hauling emus around in the back of his truck.

T
he Palm Club was on the outskirts of Clearview on the road to Milsby, a tiny community that was barely hanging onto its existence. Milsby was the home of Mrs. Wilkie, who had once set her cap for Rhodes, without success.

The Palm Club had been a Clearview fixture since most people could remember, though Rhodes couldn’t see what its appeal was. Its only claim to fame was that once in the latter part of the 1960s, Jerry Lee Lewis, having lost his huge rock and roll following and attempting to make a comeback in the country field, had played a couple of sets there one night.

The ill-lighted parking lot of the club was covered with crushed white gravel, and there were pickups and cars parked all over it, with no attempt at being orderly. Country music came from two speakers located under the overhang of the roof near the entrance.

Rhodes parked on the edge of the lot and got out of his car just as Garth Brooks finished singing about his friends in low places. There was only a brief pause before Brooks and Dunn started in on “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”

Rhodes wound his way through the cars toward the door. The Palm Club was a low, square building with no windows and no distinguishing features. Rhodes had no idea why it was called the Palm Club. There was nothing tropical or exotic about it, just a fading sign over the entrance with the words “PALM CLUB” flanked by two drooping trees with what looked like either coconuts or bowling balls almost hidden among the leaves.

When Rhodes opened the door, the music increased in volume so suddenly that he blinked. The lighting wasn’t much better inside than it was outside, and a lot of it came from the various red and blue neon signs advertising beer. Rhodes could see a great many couples boot scootin’ on the big square of hardwood that made up the middle of the club.

There were also a lot of people sitting at tables, talking, Rhodes supposed. Their mouths were moving, but he didn’t see how they could hear one another. Nearly all the men and quite a few of the women were wearing jeans, western shirts, and big white or black cowboy hats, though some of the women were wearing full skirts that flounced while they danced.

There was a long wooden bar running down the side of the club opposite the door, and the mirror behind it reflected the dancers and the few singles sitting on the barstools. The Palm Club didn’t have a “no smoking” policy, and a grayish cloud hovered near the low ceiling.

No one paid much attention to Rhodes as he twisted his way through the maze of tables around the edge of the dance floor. They’d seen lawmen in the Palm Club often enough when one of the occasional fights got out of hand.

“Boot Scootin’ Boogie” ended. “Achy Breaky Heart” came on, and more couples joined the dancing. Rhodes felt very old. Not only could he remember Charlie Pride, he could remember Hank Williams, Sr. Probably he was the only one in the club who could. For that matter, he was probably one of only a few who knew who Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings was.

When Rhodes got to the bar he saw that Burl Griffin was behind it. Griffin owned a small share of the club and was the regular bartender; he had dealt with Rhodes before. He was dressed exactly like the customers, except that he had on a sparkling white apron. He nodded to Rhodes and came over to where Rhodes was standing, well away from the nearest customer.