Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (20 page)

“Mr. Keene’s on the floor,” she said. “Is there something the matter, Sheriff?”

“Not a thing,” Rhodes assured her. “I just need to talk to Mr. Keene for a second.”

“I’ll call him,” she said.

She went into Keene’s office and paged him on the store’s intercom system. He showed up in under a minute.

“I’ll handle this, Mary,” he said, dismissing the woman who had paged him.

She went back over to the break table and sat down, plainly disappointed. Rhodes could see that she was very interested in what was going on, but she was too well-trained to ask.

“Well, Sheriff?” Keene said.

“We’d better go in your office,” Rhodes told him.

Keene’s shoulders slumped just a little, but he went inside without saying another word. Rhodes followed him in and closed the door behind him.

“I hope this isn’t about what I think it is,” Keene said, sitting behind his desk.

“It is,” Rhodes said.

“I guess I should’ve expected it. I tell you, Sheriff, I wish to God I’d never seen a rooster. Does my wife have to know?”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” Rhodes said. “All I want you to do is look at some pictures.”

Keene cheered up. “Pictures?  Why?”

“I want to see if you recognize anyone in them.”

Keene didn’t mind that at all. He was almost smiling as Rhodes spread the photographs on the desk.

“Look at them carefully,” he said. “Take your time. Then point out anyone you recognize.”

“Where am I supposed to have seen these people?” Keene asked.

“I’d just as soon leave that up to you, if you don’t mind,” Rhodes said. “You just look and see who you recognize, and maybe you can say where you saw them.”

Keene stared at the pictures for at least a minute. He pushed a couple of them around with his index finger. Rhodes was beginning to wonder if his hunch was going to pay off.

Then Keene picked up one of the photographs to look at it more carefully. He held it close to his face and squinted his eyes. Then he pushed it out almost to arm’s length.

“I might know this one,” he said.

“What’s his name?”

“I wouldn’t know that. I only saw him once, if he’s the one I think he is.”

“Where did you see him, then?”

“At the cockfight,” Keene said. “At Lige Ward’s.”

That was the answer Rhodes had been hoping for, but he didn’t let it get him too excited. Now he wanted some more confirmation.

“Would you mind letting me talk to the Appleby boys in here?” he asked. “Privately?”

“Not at all. Are they in some kind of trouble?”

“No,” Rhodes said. “I just have to ask them a few questions, just like I had to ask you a few. I wouldn’t want you to think they’d done anything wrong. They haven’t.”

“I’ll get them for you then. Is there anything else you want from me?”

“That’s all. You did fine.”

“And you’re not going to tell my wife?”

“Not yet, anyway,” Rhodes said.

Might as well let Keene sweat a little, he thought. Maybe Keene would think twice before he got mixed up in activities that he knew perfectly well were illegal.

He might have known that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but Keene nevertheless got up and went out of the office with a lighter step than he had entered. In a few seconds Clyde and Claude were at the door.

“You want us?” Claude asked.

Rhodes was pretty sure it was Claude, at any rate. The twins were wearing jeans and identical blue shirts, along with their Wal-Mart vests. They looked more alike than ever to Rhodes.

“I’ll take you first,” Rhodes said. “Clyde, you can wait outside.”

The twin who had spoken came inside the office.
Right again
, Rhodes thought. Either that, or the twins were just humoring him. He didn’t care. He didn’t think it mattered much one way or the other.

“You can close the door,” Rhodes told him.

When he had done so, Claude asked, “Is this gonna get us in any trouble with Mr. Keene?  You didn’t tell him what Clyde said about him being at the cockfight did you?”

Rhodes answered the second question first. “I didn’t tell him who saw him there, and he didn’t ask. And you don’t have to worry about getting into trouble. I’ve taken care of that already.”

Claude nodded. “Okay.”

Rhodes showed him the photos on the desk. “I’d like for you to take a look at those. See if there’s anyone there you’ve seen before.”

It didn’t take Claude as long as it had taken Keene. He picked up the same picture that the manager had chosen.

“I’ve seen this one.”

“Do you remember where?”

“He was at that cockfight where we saw Mr. Keene.”

“All right,” Rhodes said. He took the photo from Claude and laid it on the desk. “Did you see anything else that day, anything you haven’t mentioned to me?”

Claude shrugged. “Like what?”

“Like a fight between two of the men. A fight that Lige Ward had to break up.”

Claude looked up at the low ceiling of the little office. Then he looked off to the side.

“Well?” Rhodes asked.

Claude turned his head but not enough so that he was looking directly at Rhodes. It was as if he were looking at a point just to the left of the sheriff’s shoulder.

“Okay,” he said. “There was this fight. But me and Clyde don’t know what it was about. We were too far off to hear. The guy you asked about, you know, the one with the pigtail?”

“What about him?”

“He was in on it, him and the guy in the picture.”  Claude pointed to the photo Rhodes had taken from him. “They went at it pretty good, and the guy in the pigtail was gettin’ the best of it before Mr. Ward broke it up. There was a lot of yellin’ after that, and there weren’t any more cockfights. Ever’body got in their cars and went home. Me and Clyde hung around awhile, and then we went home too.”

“What about Mr. Keene?”

“He was there, too. Just like Clyde told you.”

“During the fight?”

“No, not then. He left pretty quick after he got there. I think he was afraid somebody’d see him. He kept to the back of the crowd, and he kept lookin’ around like he was worried about somethin’.”

“You’d swear to all that in court?” Rhodes asked.

“I don’t know about that. I don’t much like courts.”

“Maybe you won’t have to. You can go on back to work now. I’ll see what Clyde has to say.”

“He’ll say the same as I did.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Rhodes told him.

I
t turned out pretty much the way Claude had predicted. Clyde told almost the same story, but he did add that most of the yelling that had gone on had been between the two men involved in the fight rather than anyone else who was there.

And he had heard a little bit more than Claude had been willing to admit to.

“The guy with the pigtail said he was going to kill the other fella,” Clyde said. “He said the other fella was a sorry son of —”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said. “I get the idea. Did he have a weapon?  A knife or a gun?”

“Not that I saw,” Clyde said. “But if he wanted to, he was big enough to do it barehanded.”

“He didn’t, though.”

“Nope.”  Clyde sounded almost disappointed. “He didn’t do anything. Mr. Ward was holdin’ him back by that time. Then he sorta got calmed down, and the other guy and his buddies left. Ever’body else did, too. They all walked back through the woods and drove off.”

“Why did they walk through the woods?”

“All their cars were parked out on that little road that runs along in back of the property there.”

Claude was talking about the same road Brother Alton had been parked on when Rhodes spotted his Cadillac pulling away from the fence.

“I guess Mr. Ward didn’t like the idea of ever’body comin’ in through his front gate,” Clyde went on. “Somebody might wonder what they were doin’ there.”

“Wouldn’t people see the cars along the side of that back road?” Rhodes asked.

Clyde shook his head. “Nobody ever goes along there. Maybe one car a day. Hardly anybody lives along back that way. Anybody did go by there would know what was goin’ on and keep their mouth shut.”

Rhodes figured that was true. If he hadn’t seen the Cadillac pulling away, no one would ever have reported its being there. Either no one would have been suspicious or no one would have cared.

“It seems like everybody in the county knew about that cockfight but me,” Rhodes said.

“Yes, sir,” Clyde said. He was experienced in such matters. “That sounds about right. Sheriff’s not supposed to know about stuff like that.”

“I’ll know if it happens again,” Rhodes said

“Maybe so, but it won’t happen in this county now that they know you’re onto ’em. They’ll just move somewhere across the line. I bet they fight ever’ week in the country ’round Stassen.”

Stassen was the county seat of the neighboring county. Rhodes knew the sheriff there pretty well.

“Do you know something you should be telling me?” he asked.

“Not a thing,” Clyde said.

Rhodes looked at the boy’s bland face. If he hadn’t known better, he might even have believed him.

R
hodes sat in Keene’s office and looked over the photographs before putting them in his pocket. He was now certain that he was right about who had killed the Wards, but proving his presence at the cockfight didn’t mean a thing. It was certainly nothing that would hold up in a law court. What Rhodes needed was some hard evidence, some kind of proof that a good defense lawyer couldn’t get a jury to disregard.

And Rhodes didn’t have that kind of proof.

He wondered where he could find some.

Chapter Fifteen

B
ack at the jail Hack and Lawton were watching the last few minutes of
Geraldo
. Rhodes gathered it was a show about mothers who stole their daughters’ husbands.

“Watching that stuff will rot your brains,” Rhodes warned them.

“We know that,” Lawton said. “But you gotta admit, it’s kinda fascinatin’.”

“Educational is what it is,” Hack said. “You think we got any of that kind of thing goin’ on around here?”

“There was that Miz Hawkins,” Lawton said. “Lived on Plum Street.”

“I remember her,” Hack said. “Musta been sixty if she was a day.”

“Not as old as some women I could name,” Lawton said.

“You better not be talkin’ about Miz McGee,” Hack warned him. “I told you ’bout that.”

“I was just talkin’ in general,” Lawton said. “I just meant to say that sixty ain’t all that old.”

“That better be it.”

“That’s it. I didn’t mean a thing. Anyway, she run off with her oldest daughter’s husband. You remember that, don’t you, Sheriff?”

Rhodes remembered, all right. “The daughter turned in a missing persons report on them,” he said.

“That’s right,” Hack chimed in. “But it turned out they weren’t missin’ at all, just gone off on a little lovers’ honeymoon.”

“Little?” Lawton said. “Didn’t they go to Hawaii?”  He pronounced it “High-wah-yah.”

“Honolulu,” Rhodes said. “We traced them through the travel agency.”

“See how good those computers are?” Hack asked. “Make all those records real easy to get at. Now a TV camera in the county cars —”

“Never mind that,” Rhodes said. “Get Deputy Grady on the radio. I need to talk to her.”

“On the radio or in person?” Hack asked.

“In person,” Rhodes said. “Have her come in.”

“I’ll do that,” Hack said. He turned to the radio. Then he turned back. “You know, I bet there was a sheriff or two back in the old days that when the radio came in, they said, ‘No thanks, boys. No radio for me. I’d just as soon do things the old way, send out somebody to find whoever it is I want. We don’t need none of those newfangled gadgets around here at
my
jail.’”

“Are you going to call her or not?” Rhodes asked.

“I’ll call her,” Hack said. “It’s just that I was thinkin’ how hard it is to hold back progress. Like those TV cameras ever’body’s gettin’ these days.”

“Hack,” Rhodes said.

“Yes, sir,” Hack said. “I’m callin’ her right now, Mr. Sheriff.”

Rhodes sighed and said nothing.

R
uth brought out the casts she’d made at Press Yardley’s emu pens and explained to Rhodes what she had.

“Press Yardley wears a pair of old Nike waffle-soled jogging shoes most of the time,” she said. “They’re easy to spot.”  She showed Rhodes the cast and held up another one. “This one’s you, and you’ve already seen Mr. Ward’s.”

“And that was all?” Rhodes asked. “Didn’t you mention something about boots?”

“Well, there’s this one.”  Ruth held up a casting that Rhodes could see was incomplete. “It doesn’t match anybody.”

“It wouldn’t be much good in court, then,” Rhodes said.

“It would be all right if we could find a perfect match for it. There’s nothing like there was on Mr. Ward’s shoe, but you can see that there’s a little mark in the sole, where a rock cut it, maybe.”

“We could prove it was the same size as someone’s foot, too, couldn’t we?”

“Sure. But that wouldn’t be enough.”

“I didn’t think so. What about the fingerprints on the portable outhouse?”

“That was a hopeless job,” Ruth said. “There were fingerprints all over the place, most of them smudged. But even if there were some good prints, what could you take to court?  There’d been workmen using it for weeks, it had been put in that truck by three men, and even you touched it. No good lawyer would let something like that get by.”

That didn’t leave them much. They were going to have to find a boot to match the print, and even that wouldn’t prove that the owner of the boot had shot Lige Ward.

“So what are we going to do?” Ruth asked.

“Bluff,” Rhodes said. “That’s about all we’ve got left.”

“What if that doesn’t work?”

“We’ll try lying,” Rhodes said. “Everybody else does it. But first I’ll have a little talk with Curtis Fisher.”

F
isher was a mechanic at a small auto repair shop that didn’t close until the day’s work was done. Although it was after five by the time Rhodes got there, the shop was still open.