Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (4 page)

Rhodes pulled the handle and the door fell open, slapping into the wet earth of the bank.

There was something inside, all right.

Or to be more accurate, there was some
one
inside.

It was a big man wearing faded jeans and a blue work shirt. Between his feet there was a Houston Astros cap, the same one he’d been wearing at Wal-Mart.

 It was Lige Ward, and he was dead as a hammer.

Chapter Three

T
he dead man changed things. Suddenly Michael Ferrin, Kyle Foster, and Lawrence Galloway were practically sober.

“What — who’s that?” Galloway said. His face had turned slightly green. “Is he … ?”

“He’s dead, all right,” Rhodes said.

Galloway walked a few paces away in the grass and threw up. Rhodes didn’t much blame him. It was hot, and Lige didn’t smell very good. The stink was much worse now that the door had been opened. That, along with the usual chemical odor of a portable outhouse, was what Rhodes had smelled.

“I think you three should just come along with me up to the county car,” Rhodes said. “I’ll have to get on the radio and get a little help out here.”

“We didn’t kill him,” Kyle Foster said. His face was green. “We didn’t even know he was in there.”

“That’s right,” Ferrin said. “We didn’t know he was in there. We were just havin’ a little fun.”

Rhodes looked back at the open door. “It wasn’t much fun for him, was it?”

Ferrin just looked at him.

R
uth Grady was back from Thurston by the time Rhodes got Hack on the radio, so he told Hack to have her come out and take the three prisoners into town. He also told Hack to call the ambulance and the Justice of the Peace.

“And see if Lawton can remember what he heard about Lige Ward,” he said before he signed off.

After Ruth had loaded up the prisoners but before the ambulance arrived, Rhodes took some Polaroids of Lige and the outhouse, and then he looked it over as carefully as he could. He didn’t find a thing out of the ordinary, but he did dig out a couple of slugs from the walls for identification purposes.

The only unusual thing, if you could call it that, was the fact that Ward’s clothing wasn’t in the position Rhodes would have expected if Ward had been in the outhouse to use it for its intended purpose. Ward’s pants were securely belted at the waist, which meant to Rhodes that Ward had probably not been shot in the silver building. Besides, the seat was down.  Ward had been shot somewhere else and placed in the outhouse later.

Rhodes continued his examination. He’d have Ruth come back out and go over the portable toilet for fingerprints, but he didn’t have much faith in that process providing anything useful. He’d never been involved with a single case that was solved by fingerprints. He believed in talking to people and listening to what they said.  It was a technique he had a lot more faith in than fingerprints, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t collect all the evidence he could find.

Lige had been dead for quite a while. Rigor mortis had come and gone, and Lige’s body was not pleasant to handle, not that Rhodes handled it much.

Lige had been struck at least twice by bullets, in the neck and head, but it would be up to the doctor to say whether the bullets had hit him before or after he was already dead. Rhodes didn’t know yet what caliber the bullets were, and he’d have to find that out, too, to see if they came from the pistol that he assumed belonged to Michael Ferrin.

The wounds didn’t look as if they’d bled any, which probably meant that they were inflicted after death, but that wasn’t for Rhodes to decide.

There was blood on the shirt, so there might be an additional wound, one that Rhodes couldn’t see. That one would have to wait for the autopsy.

After the JP arrived and pronounced Lige dead, which wasn’t a difficult conclusion to reach, Rhodes watched while the body was loaded in the ambulance. Then he walked back through the field to Ferrin’s pickup and went over it as carefully as he had examined the portable toilet.

Once again, he found nothing unusual. There was a box of shells for the .38, and there were two more beers in a cooler in the floorboards. There was the usual junk in the glove compartment—a map of Texas, a roll of toilet paper, an old stick of Big Red gum, an oil-stained red rag—but nothing that was incriminating.

Rhodes went back to his car for some yellow Crime Scene ribbon and staked off the outhouse with it. He hoped no one would bother it, and he didn’t think anyone would.

Now came the hard part. Now he had to go tell Rayjean Ward what had happened to her husband.

It wasn’t going to be pleasant, and while Rhodes had handled similar jobs before, he thought it might be a good idea to take along some help.

“A
ll right,” Ivy said. “I’ll go. But you owe me one.”

“Whatever you say,” Rhodes agreed. “How about dinner at the Jolly Tamale?”

Actually, Rhodes was hoping that Ivy would go for the dinner. He didn’t get to eat Mexican food often.

Ivy knew what he was up to. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

Rhodes smiled ruefully. “I was afraid you’d say that. What then?”

Ivy considered it. “I’ll think of something. Do you think I look OK?”

Rhodes looked her up and down and liked what he saw, her short graying hair, her trim figure in jeans and a plaid shirt, her half-smile as she waited for him to say something.

“You look fine to me,” he said.

“I meant my clothes. Am I dressed all right?  It’s Sunday, after all.”

“I don’t think it matters,” Rhodes said. “Not for what we’re going to do.”

They were heading out the door when the telephone rang. Rhodes answered it.

It was Hack. “Just got a call from Press Yardley,” he said. “You’d better stop there after you talk to Miz Ward.”

“What’s the problem?” Rhodes asked.

“Somebody’s stole a couple of his emus. He’s mighty unhappy about it.”

“I’ll bet he is,” Rhodes said. “All right. I’ll stop by. Anything else?”

“Nope. Things’re pretty quiet.”

“Good. I’ll come by the jail later. Did Lawton ever think of what he’d heard about Lige?”

“Not yet. But he still thinks it has somethin’ to do with chickens.”

“Not emus?”

“You want me to ask him?”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said, and hung up the phone.

L
ige Ward had lived on what had been his father’s farm. He had never done any farming, however. Hardly anyone in Blacklin County farmed anymore. That was another way that things had changed. Now people were raising emus instead of cotton.

The Wards’ house was located near the small town of Obert, a place where Rhodes had been spending a good bit of time lately. For a town with a population of less than two hundred, it was becoming something of the crime capital of Blacklin County.

What there was of the town sat on top of the highest hill in that part of the state. Beginning at the bottom of the hill, there was a wide curve in the road, but there was a gravel road that went straight, by-passing the curve. Lige’s house was about a quarter of a mile down the gravel road, a couple of hundred yards past Press Yardley’s emu farm.

“I never thought I’d see the day when Blacklin County would be overrun by emus,” Ivy said, looking out the car window as they drove by Yardley’s place.

In back of the house there were pens surrounded by high wire fences where several of the big, ungainly birds were shifting around. One of them was drinking from a white plastic bucket that sat on the ground near the fence.

“How many people would you say have emus around here?” Ivy asked.

“Too many,” Rhodes said. He wasn’t fond of emus.

It actually wasn’t the birds themselves that he disliked. What he didn’t like was the trouble they caused. They were very expensive, with a breeding pair going for somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000, which meant that within the last year or so emu rustling had become the fastest-growing crime in Texas, not just in Blacklin County.

And emu rustling wasn’t like cattle rustling. It was easy. You didn’t need a goose-neck trailer and a pickup truck to pull it. You could cram a couple of emus in the back seat of a mid-sized car, drive away with them, and sell them to anyone eager to get in on the newest craze, which seemed like just about everyone that had a little land and could afford to build some pens.

Emus weren’t as easy to identify as cattle, either. They weren’t branded, and they all looked pretty much alike.

“What good are emus, anyway?” Ivy wanted to know.

“I don’t have any idea,” Rhodes said. “You can ask Press Yardley when we stop by there.”

“All right,” Ivy said. “I think I will.”

R
hodes drove into the Wards’ yard, scattering a flock of guinea fowl. The birds were a little like smooth-feathered gray footballs with legs, bald heads, and red wattles. They raised quite a racket as they scurried out of Rhodes’ way.

“
Pot
-track! 
Pot
-track! 
Pot
-track!” they squalled.

“Good watch-birds,” Ivy said. “You think we ought to get a few?”

“No thanks,” Rhodes said. “But you’re right. They are good watch-birds. As good as geese, but not as violent.”

He stopped the car and they got out. The guineas ran behind the house, still pot-tracking. Rhodes and Ivy went to the door and Rhodes knocked.

Rayjean Ward looked the same as always when she answered Rhodes’ knock, except that Rhodes thought he detected more than a hint of anxiety in her narrow eyes.

“Hello, Sheriff,” she said. “Miz Rhodes. What can I do for you?”

“We’re here about Lige,” Rhodes said.

“Oh.”  Rayjean’s shoulders sagged. “Did you find him?”

“You could say that,” Rhodes told her. “Can we come in?”

Rayjean stood aside and held the door wide. “Sure. I didn’t mean to forget my manners.”

Rhodes and Ivy went inside, and Rayjean closed the door behind them. “Come on in the livin’ room. I was watchin’ some old Randolph Scott movie on TV.”

They followed her into a small room where a twenty-seven-inch Emerson stereo TV was flickering in black and white. Rhodes caught a quick glimpse of Randolph Scott and wondered if the movies he’d taped were being run for a second time. He’d never gotten to see the ending of
Decision at Sundown
.

Rayjean noticed that Rhodes was looking at the TV. “Lige brought that TV home from the hardware store right before we closed it. He could’ve bought one at Wal-Mart cheaper than he could order it wholesale at the store, but he wouldn’t do that. He’s never set foot in that store, not past the Exit door, anyhow. Why don’t you two have a seat?”

Since Rayjean took her own seat in a cane-bottom rocker by the TV set, Rhodes and Ivy sat on the couch. It was covered in gray cloth, and Rhodes thought it was too soft.

“When’s the last time you saw Lige?” Rhodes asked when he had sunk into the couch as far as he thought he would sink.

“It was yesterday afternoon,” Rayjean said. “He had something to do, and he said he’d be back by dark. But he never came.”

“You didn’t call us,” Rhodes said.

Rayjean didn’t say anything. She just sat there, her back stiff, the rocker unmoving. Her feet were flat on the floor, and her hands rested on her knees.

Ivy spoke up. “It wasn’t the first time he’s stayed away, was it?”

“No,” Rayjean said. “It wasn’t the first time.”

There was a pause. Rhodes didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Ivy seemed to be waiting for Rayjean to say more, and Rhodes was content to wait as well.

Finally Rayjean said, “He drinks a little bit.”  She looked at Ivy. “It’s only since the store closed. He never did before.”

There was another pause.

“But he always came home before,” Rayjean said. “Maybe he’d stay out all night now and then, but he was always home by mornin’.”

“Not this morning, though,” Ivy said.

Rayjean shook her head. “No, ma’am, not this mornin’. But I wasn’t too worried till this afternoon. I started to get worried about dinner time. Lige isn’t one to miss his dinner. I expect he’ll be wanting supper mighty bad. Where’d you say he was?”

“We didn’t say,” Ivy told her. “He won’t be coming home, Rayjean.”

Rayjean leaned forward in the chair. “Why not?  Is he in the jail?”

“No,” Rhodes said. “He’s dead, Mrs. Ward.”

Rayjean slumped back in the chair, wrapped her arms around her thin body and started rocking. Her eyes were closed, and she was making a sound that sounded like “huhn, huhn, huhn.”

Ivy stood up and went to put her arm around Rayjean. “Why don’t you go get her a drink of water, Dan,” she said.

Rhodes got up and went into the kitchen, which was right next to the living room. It took him two tries to find the cabinet with the glasses in it. He held the glass under the sink faucet and turned on the water. When the glass was nearly full, he went back into the living room.

Rayjean’s tightly controlled hair had come partially undone; a thin tendril hung down on her right cheek. Her eyes were open, and she was no longer sobbing.

Rhodes handed her the glass of water. She took it and drank two quick sips, like a mechanical bird.

“How did it happen?” she said.

“We don’t know that yet,” Rhodes told her. “Are you sure you don’t know where he went yesterday?”

“I told you he didn’t say.”

“Did he mention the Palm Club?” Rhodes asked. That was where Lige had gotten into a little trouble in the past.

Rayjean shook her head savagely. “No. I told you. He never said anything about where he was goin’. Why can’t you tell me what happened to him?”

“He’s at Ballinger’s right now,” Rhodes said. Clyde Ballinger was a Clearview funeral director. “You can see him later tonight.”

“Is there someone we can call?” Ivy asked. “Someone who can stay with you?”

“My sister,” Rayjean said. She gave them the number, and Rhodes went into the kitchen to make the call.