Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 09 - Death by Accident (21 page)

“I’m not surprised.  Getting shot at can take your mind off the less important things.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Rhodes said.  “Maybe I just need to relax and forget about it for a few hours.”

“I can help,” Ivy said.  “But not until after I take Yancey for a walk.”

“I should never have given you that dog,” Rhodes said.  “He’s going to monopolize your time.”

“Jealous?”

“Maybe a little.”

“That’s good,” Ivy said.  “I like that in a man.”

L
ater that night Ivy asked Rhodes if he’d remembered what he’d been trying to recall when they were in the yard.

“No,” he said.  “It’s there, but it just won’t come to the front.”

“What are you thinking about then?”

“The Edsel,” he said.

She punched him lightly in the arm.  “That’s not very flattering.”

“Well, I was thinking about the accidents, too.  I was sure all along that they were more than just accidents, and the fact that someone took a few shots at me is pretty good evidence that I was right.”

“Or that somebody really doesn’t like you very much.”

“There’s that,” Rhodes said.  “We could haul in half the county for questioning if that was the case.”

“I was only kidding,” Ivy said.

“So was I.  Sort of.”

“Like you were kidding about thinking of the Edsel?”

“I wasn’t entirely kidding about that.  I still haven’t talked to Bull Lowery about Yeldell.  He worked for Bull, but from what Ruth Grady tells me, Bull didn’t like him.  And Bull had some dealings with Overton, too.  Overton took him pretty good.”

“I don’t see what all that has to do with the Edsel.”

“Bull runs a body shop.  I can go by there tomorrow morning and see what he’d charge me for fixing it up.”

“And while you’re there you can always get in a few subtle questions about whether he happened to kill Pep Yeldell and Randall Overton.”

“Not to mention whether he took a few shots at me today.”

“You’d better be pretty subtle when you get to that part,” Ivy said.  “Do you really think he might be the one?”

“That’s what I’m going to try to find out,” Rhodes told her.

R
hodes went by the jail first thing the next morning.  A Pacific front had followed the norther into town, and the beautiful weather of the previous day had deteriorated rapidly.  The sky was solid gray from horizon to horizon, and the air was filled with a cold mist.  Patchy ground fog swirled around Rhodes’s legs when he got out of the car, and the jail looked a little like one of the sets from
Castle of Frankenstein
.

Rhodes went inside and had a few words with Ruth Grady, who was about to go on patrol.

“Tell me again about Bull Lowery,” he said.

She repeated what she had told him earlier, and Rhodes listened closely, trying to determine if there was anything he’d missed the first time.  There wasn’t.

“And you’re sure he said Pep abused his wife?”

“I’m sure.  I’ve been thinking about that, too.  Since no charges were filed, do you think maybe Bull took it on himself to straighten Pep out?”

“I think it’s possible,” Rhodes said.  “And he might have had it in for Overton, too.  That could explain two of the victims, but it doesn’t explain West.”

“West sold auto parts.  Maybe there were some bad business dealings there that we don’t know about.”

“That could be.  I’ll see what I can find out.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Ruth said.  “Bull Lowery could have handled them easily.  And I don’t mean one at a time.  He could have handled all three of them at once.”

“He could handle all three of ’em and you could throw in a couple more their size to boot,” Hack said.  He’d been pretending not to listen to their conversation, but he obviously couldn’t resist breaking in.  “Bull’s got a neck that must go nineteen inches around, and that’s when he’s been on a diet. I hear he hammers out most of the fender dents with his bare fist.”

“Want me to go along for back-up?” Ruth asked Rhodes.

“Thanks for the offer,” Rhodes said.  “But I don’t think I’ll need any help.  If Bull did anything wrong, I’ll bring him in myself.”

“You’re gonna get in trouble with that lone wolf stuff one of these days,” Hack said.

Ruth turned to look at him.  “
Get
in trouble?  Where have you been for the last year or two?”

“I won’t get in trouble,” Rhodes said.

He didn’t think this would be a good time to bring up what had happened to him at the Old Settlers’ Grounds.  Ruth and Hack might try to make more of it than the situation warranted.  Bring Ivy in, and they could have a high old time telling him about his casual disregard for his own health and safety.

“Bull Lowery could break your neck with one hand,” Hack said.  “Less than that.  Two fingers, prob’ly.  Wouldn’t even work up a sweat while he was at it, either.”

“I won’t give him the chance,” Rhodes said, wondering if he was being foolish.

Hack gave him a gloomy look.  “It’s times like this I’m glad the county has good insurance on us.  They don’t have any burial policy, though.  You ever thought about getting one?”

“Not lately,” Rhodes said.  “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

Hack was shaking his head when Rhodes went out the door.

Chapter Thirty-Four

B
ull Lowery’s body shop was in an old sheet metal building on a side street not far from Clearview’s downtown area.  The body shop had been there ever since Rhodes could remember.  Chub Lowery had run it from the early 1950s until his death, and then his son Bull had taken over.

There was a blue and white sign in front, giving the name of the shop and letting everyone know that they could rely on Lowery Paint and Body to give “free estimates,” not to mention that the establishment would “pay $50 of the deductible on all windshield replacements.”  It still wasn’t raining, but the mist and fog had covered the sign with droplets of water that slid down its slick metal surface and dripped off the bottom edge.

Rhodes parked next to a dark green Camaro with a crumpled fender, got out, and went inside.  He smelled the sharp odor of fresh paint and saw a Chevy pickup with its glass and chrome protected by paper and tape.  It had a fresh coat of shiny blue metallic paint.  In the back of the shop someone was banging on metal with a rubber mallet.  The noise almost drowned out the chugging of the shop’s air compressor.

Lowery’s office was in a little room that had been added to the inside of the building.  There was a big window through which Rhodes saw Lowery sitting at a desk and talking on an old-fashioned black telephone.  Lowery was big, all right, wide and squat and powerful.  His neck was just as big as Hack had said it was.  He was wearing a black baseball cap turned backwards so that Rhodes couldn’t see the emblem on the front.

Lowery looked up and saw Rhodes through the window.  He put up a big hand and motioned for Rhodes to come inside the office, so Rhodes opened the door and stepped in.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lowery said into the phone.

In spite of Lowery’s size, Rhodes had always heard that his voice, not his physique, had given him his nickname.  It was a deep croak, and for most of his life he had been known as “Bullfrog.”  In recent years the “frog” part had been dropped off and the name shortened.  Rhodes didn’t know why.

“I can get to it tomorrow,” he told his caller.  “No, fixin’ a headliner’s no big deal.  I do it all the time.  The glue gives out in all those GM cars about that age, and the liner just falls right down on your head.  Yeah, I know it’s a pain.  You get it in here about eight o’clock tomorrow, and I’ll take care of it.  I’ll have it out for you by Wednesday.”

After the caller agreed to bring in the car, Lowery hung up and looked at Rhodes.  “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“I wanted to talk to you about your brother-in-law.”

“Which one?  I got two of them.”

“Pep Yeldell.”

“Yeldell?  He don’t count.  He’s my
ex
-brother-in-law.  And he’s dead.”

“You don’t seem very upset about it.”

On Lowery’s desk there were an electric adding machine, the telephone, a credit card reader, a thick pad of work-order forms, and an ashtray that held a dead cigar with a wet-looking, well-chewed end.  Lowery fished out the cigar and stuck it in his mouth.

“Upset?” he said around the cigar.  “Why would I be upset?  Hell, I’d dance on his grave if I could dance.”

“You told Deputy Grady that Pep abused your sister.”

“I didn’t say he
abused
her.  I said he hit her.”

“How often?”

“I can’t tell you that because I don’t know.  But he stopped after I found out about it.  I made damn sure he didn’t do it again.”

That sounded a little ominous to Rhodes.  He said, “You want to explain that?”

Lowery chewed his cigar for a second, took it out of his mouth, and set it carefully in the ashtray.  The wet end glistened.

“You wouldn’t be accusing me of killing the little weasel, would you, Sheriff?” Lowery said.

“You had a motive for it.  You had one for killing Randall Overton, too.”

“How’d you find out about that business?”

“He kept records.”

“Hard to believe he’d have that little sense, him being an out-and-out crook like he was.  Anyway what happened with him was my own damn fault.  I should’ve known better than to pay some jake-leg like him for a job.  I should’ve known he’d spend the money on women or beer and never do a lick of work.  But I took care of him.”

Rhodes wished he’d brought a tape recorder.  Lowery was practically confessing to doing away with both men.

“What about John West?  Did you take care of him, too?”

“John?  I didn’t have anything against John.  We did a little business now and then, but that’s about it.  He always struck me as being pretty honest.”

Oh, well, Rhodes thought.  Three confessions in a row would have been too much to hope for.

“Tell me about how you took care of Pep,” he said.

“I took him out in back of the shop and beat the tar out of him,” Lowery said.  “You don’t really think I killed him, do you?”

“The thought had entered my mind.”

“Well you can get it out of there.  I never killed anybody.  But as soon as Cissy told me he’d hit her, I taught him a little lesson.  When I finished with him, I told him that Cissy would be filing for a divorce and that he’d be moving out.  He got out that very afternoon.”

“But you kept him on here at the shop?”

“He was good with his hands, and he knew about painting.  You didn’t have to worry about the paint running or dripping when Pep was doing the job.  Besides, we’d settled our differences, and he wasn’t going to be seeing Cissy again.”

“Where were you the night he was killed?”

“I’m glad you asked me that, Sheriff.  It just so happens that I was at home with my wife.”

Wives could usually be counted on to back up their husbands, and Lowery’s probably wasn’t any different.  Unless she was like Yvonne Bilson.

“Was anybody else with you?” Rhodes asked.

“Sure was.  Ken and Verna DuBose.  We played 42 till about midnight.”

Ken DuBose owned the Dairy Queen and had a reputation for honesty.  It was a pretty good alibi.

“What about Overton?”

“I asked him for my money back.  He got nasty.”  Lowery made a fist.  It was about the size of the old black telephone on his desk.  “I clocked him one.  He didn’t have much to say after that, and I just wrote the money off to experience.”

Rhodes was beginning to believe that Lowery was telling the truth.  He hadn’t been confessing before.  He’d just meant that he’d knocked Yeldell and Overton around a little bit.

Rhodes shifted gears.  “You told Deputy Grady that no one had brought a Jeep Cherokee in to see about getting any damage repaired.”

“Not lately.  There’s three or four Cherokees around town, but I haven’t ever had one of ’em in here.”  Lowery picked up his cigar, looked at the wet, unappetizing end and set it back down.  “I been thinking about that, though.”

“Thinking what?” Rhodes asked.

“Pep did a little free-lance work, you know?”

“He was a shade-tree mechanic,” Rhodes said.  “I heard about that.”

“Yeah.  Well, he did a little body work on the side, too.  I wasn’t supposed to know about it, since he was cutting me out, but I did.  Cissy told me.”

Rhodes wondered if that was why Pep had hit her, but he didn’t want to get into that.

He said, “She didn’t mention a Jeep Cherokee, did she?”

“Nope.  But that don’t mean there wasn’t one.  Just suppose old Pep worked on that Cherokee and then decided there might be some more money in it.”

“You mean blackmail?” Rhodes said.

“Yeah.  It’d be just like the little weasel.  You ever think about that?”

Rhodes had thought about it, all right, but not exactly this way.

“Did Pep have the equipment to do the work at home?”

“Nah, probably not.  But he had a key to this place.  He could’ve done the work on a Sunday and nobody the wiser unless I just happened to drive by.”

“Did you make it a habit to come by on Sunday?”

“I never come by.  Pep knew that.”

“If Pep worked on it here, what happened to the car?” Rhodes asked.

“Hey,” Lowery said.  “I can’t do all your work for you, can I?”

“I guess not.”  Rhodes said, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might already know the answer to his question.  However, he had something else to talk to Lowery about, so he said, “I might have a little body work for you, myself.”

“Yeah?  What kind?”

“I bought an Edsel,” Rhodes told him.

“Not that one in Overton’s driveway.”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, I won’t ask you what you paid for it, but you probably got a good deal.  The body was in pretty good shape.  You’ll be needing some upholstery, a paint job, maybe some chrome and a little body work.  I don’t know about the taillights.  Those get broken pretty often.  Parts are gonna be hard to come by, but you can get ’em.  You could check with Tuffy West about that.  He’s got a computer that’s in touch with junkyards all over the country.”