Of All Sad Words (13 page)

She reached for a tissue, pulled it out of the box, and crumpled it in her hand.

“I didn’t go out with anyone for a while,” she continued. “Then Jerry Kergan started looking around for a property where he could open a restaurant. Naturally, he needed somebody to install his computer system, and he thought a local person would be best.”

“You, for instance,” Rhodes said.

“Yes, me. He hired me, and after he renovated the building, I went to work for him. We got to be friends.”

It seemed to Rhodes that she got to be friends with a lot of her clients, but so far she’d only mentioned two. He decided that he was too judgmental.

“I don’t see how all this fits together,” he said.

“It’s like this. As soon as I started seeing Jerry, Mikey got interested again. Some men are like that.”

Rhodes wouldn’t know. He didn’t think he was like that.

“Burns didn’t like it that you were dating Kergan?”

“That’s right, but it was too late. I wasn’t going back to Mikey, not after the way he’d treated me. He talked to Jerry about it. Jerry just laughed at him. That’s it. That’s all there was to it.”

“Why did Burns hire you to do the Web site for my department, then?”

“Oh, that was his way of trying to bribe me. Or maybe he hired me because he knows I’m good at what I do. That might be out of character for him, but it could happen. Anyway, he never threatened me or Jerry. It was no big deal.”

Rhodes wondered if that was really all there was to it. He also wondered just how jealous Mikey Burns might have been. Mel might not be giving him the whole story.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mel said. “You’re thinking that Mikey killed Jerry because of me.”

She sounded almost pleased that someone would come up with the idea, but not as if she believed it was possible.

“Do you think he did?” Rhodes asked.

“Not really. If Mikey had treated me right, he’d have dated me and maybe even more than that. But all he wanted to do was keep me on the string. If he’d cared enough about me to kill for me, he’d never have dumped me twice.”

Rhodes thought she was right. Maybe there was nothing suspicious at all about her relationship with Kergan and Burns, though he still wasn’t sure.

“Did you know the Crawfords?” he asked. “Larry and Terry. Twins.”

“I don’t think so. Do they have anything to do with computers?”

Rhodes doubted it. “They knew Kergan. Did you know much about his business at Dooley’s?”

“All I know is that he was hoping to make a go of it. The restaurant business runs on a pretty narrow profit margin, so it’s hard to get started and even harder to keep going. He was making it, but just barely.”

“Do you know if he was doing anything to make a little extra money?”

“Like what? Something illegal?”

“Like selling moonshine whiskey,” Rhodes said.

For the first time since he’d met her, Mel smiled. “You’re joking, right? Moonshine whiskey? That sounds like something out of the thirties.”

“It’s still around,” Rhodes said. “No pun intended.”

“Pun?”

“Never mind. The Crawfords were making illegal whiskey on their property. I’ve heard they might have been selling it to Jerry Kergan.”

Mel laughed. Rhodes was glad he was making her feel better. It was too bad he wasn’t joking.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’d have known about it. I taught him how to do his accounts on the computer, showed him how to use spreadsheets. He didn’t have anything set up for selling whiskey.”

“He wouldn’t,” Rhodes said. “He’d know enough to keep that off the books.”

“I guess he would. I still think I’d have known.”

Maybe, maybe not, Rhodes thought. He thanked her for her help. Next, he’d go have a talk with Mikey Burns and see how the stories matched up.

He left Muller’s manufactured home and got in the county car. Before he started for the precinct barn, he gave Hack a call to see if he was needed for anything else.

“You sure are,” Hack said. “You need to drop by the Lawj Mahal. Randy Lawless wants to talk to you.”

“What about?” Rhodes said.

“It ain’t just him. It’s him and another two guys.”

“What two guys?”

“Larry Crawford,” Hack said. “And Jamey Hamilton. You gonna go by there?”

“Call Lawless and tell him I’m on my way,” Rhodes said.

Chapter 15

THERE WAS PLENTY OF ROOM IN THE BIG PARKING LOT IN FRONT of Lawless’s large white office building. Rhodes parked right by the door.

He got out of the car and felt the heat reflected off the white walls. He stood for a second and looked over what remained of Clearview’s downtown. There wasn’t much. Only a few years ago, just about where the county car was parked, an old furniture store had stood, with a mural painted on its wall. Part of the town’s Christmas celebration had been held on what was now the parking lot. Rhodes recalled the theft of the Baby Jesus that had occurred one year, and the death that had followed. It hadn’t been one of the town’s best celebrations, so maybe it was just as well that all the reminders had disappeared.

Rhodes shrugged off his thoughts and went inside the Lawj Mahal. The light was subdued, but the air was cool, almost cold after the heat in the parking lot. Rhodes wondered what Lawless’s electric bill was, not that it mattered. Whatever it was, the lawyer could afford it.

Lawless’s secretary said that Mr. Lawless was waiting, and she showed Rhodes into the inner sanctum. It was even nicer than Judge Parry’s office. The law books lining the shelves were all bound in red leather, and the plush chairs were upholstered in leather of the same color. The pile of the rug was high enough to tickle Rhodes’s ankles.

“Morning, Sheriff,” Lawless said. He was sitting behind a desk big enough to serve as a softball field in a pinch. “I think you know my clients.”

Sitting in two of the big red chairs were Jamey Hamilton and Larry Crawford. Crawford was dressed pretty much as he’d been when Rhodes had last seen him, but the T-shirt was different. It said I’M ON DEBT ROW in red letters.

No doubt Crawford didn’t have much of a wardrobe left after the explosion of the trailer, Rhodes thought, so he must have bought some more clothes. Except that the ones he was wearing didn’t look new.

Hamilton was much younger than Crawford. He had black hair, blue eyes, and a smooth face. Rhodes wondered who was running the barbershop. Maybe Hamilton didn’t have many customers and didn’t have to stay open for long hours. But that couldn’t be right, not according to what Michal Schafer had said.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Crawford said. “You found the man who killed my brother yet?”

“How did you know he’d been killed?”

“Mr. Lawless told me. How do you think? So did you find who killed him?”

“Not yet,” Rhodes said. “But I will.”

“I bet. I told Jamey you would.”

“Hey, Sheriff,” Hamilton said. “That’s what he was telling me all right.”

“I want that son of a bitch,” Crawford said. “Whoever he was, you better find him before I do. Nobody’s gonna kill my brother and get away with it.”

“Have a seat, Sheriff,” Lawless said, ignoring Crawford’s comment. “We have a few things to discuss.”

“We do at that,” Rhodes said. “Jerry Kergan would be one of them.”

“What?” Lawless said. He’d been leaning back in his chair, relaxed and at ease, but at the mention of Kergan’s name, he sat forward. “What about Jerry Kergan?”

“He’s dead,” Rhodes said. “And then there’s the whiskey still.”

“I know about Mr. Kergan,” Lawless said. “I was sorry to hear it, but I don’t see what his death has to do with my clients.”

“Maybe nothing,” Rhodes said. “The whiskey still does, though.” He looked at Larry, who avoided his eyes. “With one of them anyway.”

“That’s what we need to talk about,” Lawless said. He tapped a fingernail on his desk. “My clients have nothing to do with the still, either.”

Rhodes smiled. “It’s on Larry’s property.”

“That might be true,” Lawless said. He smiled, too, but he didn’t mean it any more than Rhodes had. “That doesn’t mean it’s his still. It belonged to Terry.”

There were times when Rhodes just wanted to laugh and say “Nice try.” This was one of them. However, being a professional lawman, he always managed to restrain himself, even though it wasn’t easy.

Lawless must have seen the amusement in Rhodes’s eyes, but that didn’t keep him from going on with his story.

“We think that’s why Terry wasn’t in the house when it exploded,” the lawyer said. “He must have been going down to the creek to check on his still. We think someone was waiting for him there and shot him.”

Rhodes wondered who had told Lawless where Terry’s body had been found. Rhodes hadn’t told him, but it didn’t matter. The whole story would all be in the report that Rhodes had written, and Lawless would get a copy of it sooner or later. The report, however, would say that Terry had been shot at the house, not down by the creek. Rhodes could have mentioned that, but he didn’t.

Rhodes wondered about the “we” Lawless had mentioned. Did Lawless really expect Rhodes to believe that Crawford had come up with that idea on his own? Probably not. It was all part of the game to Lawless.

“You might want to save the story about the still for the TABC rep when he gets here,” Rhodes said. “I’m not going to arrest Larry for the still. I’ll let the TABC handle that.”

Rhodes could have arrested Crawford, because local officials often cooperated with the TABC, and Rhodes planned to do so this time. But he didn’t want to make an arrest without having the TABC agent take a look at the evidence.

“Nobody’s going to arrest Larry,” Lawless said. “After all, it wasn’t his still.”

“Terry’d tell you the same, if he was here to do it,” Larry said. “I tried a hundred times to convince him to get rid of it, but he never listened to me.”

“There’d been some trouble about the still,” Lawless said. “Not between the brothers. This was something else.”

While Rhodes usually got impatient with the same old spiel, he was always glad to hear something new, or even a variation on a theme.

“What kind of trouble?” he asked.

“I’ll let Larry tell you about it,” Lawless said. “Go ahead, Larry.”

Rhodes had already suspected that there had been some coaching going on. Now he was absolutely convinced of it.

“Well, Sheriff,” Larry began, “like I said, I tried to tell Terry that still of his was gonna get him in trouble. There’s some folks don’t like stills.”

“The folks in the sheriff’s department and at the TABC sure don’t like them,” Rhodes said, though he was pretty sure Larry wasn’t talking about those people.

“I don’t mean the law,” Larry said, confirming Rhodes’s suspicions.

“Who are you talking about, then?”

Larry looked at Lawless, who gave him a little nod. You can’t beat a good coach, Rhodes thought. Larry looked back at the sheriff.

“Vigilantes,” he said.

According to the story Larry told, he and Terry had been getting “anonymous threats.”

“We got these notes,” he said. “Printed on white paper, like by a computer. They said stuff like ‘If you don’t stop what you’re doing, we’ll stop you ourselves.’ That’s why I was telling Larry he had to quit making whiskey. Besides it being against the law, I mean.”

“I’d like to see the notes,” Rhodes said.

“Well, see, they all got burned up when the trailer exploded,” Larry said. “Otherwise, I’d be happy to show ’em to you.”

Rhodes wondered if Larry had ever told a teacher that his dog had eaten his homework, but he had to give Larry credit. Or maybe Lawless should get the credit. At any rate, it was easy enough to claim that the notes had existed and that the explosion had destroyed them. Nobody could prove otherwise.

“If you want to know what I think,” Larry continued, “I think it was that Benton fella and some of his friends. He’s been spying on me and Terry, I can tell you that. He’s said a few things around town about how he’d like to get rid of us. Like he’s the king of the world or something.”

Larry had called Benton a “nosy asshole,” Rhodes recalled. He wondered just how far Benton’s nosiness had gone. He also wondered about the pickup that had tried to run him down. Could it have been driven by vigilantes who’d come to take out the still?

The problem was that Rhodes didn’t want to believe in the vigilante idea. It was like something out of the Old West, from some old black-and-white movie with Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea. Judge Parry would believe it, though. He’d even come up with the same idea. As much as Rhodes hated to admit it, maybe there was some truth to the possibility.

“It’s an interesting thought,” he said, “but I’m not the one you should be telling it to. Somebody from the TABC will be here later today. You can talk to him.”

“I don’t want to talk to him.” Larry looked to his lawyer. “Will I have to?”

“Not for a while,” Lawless said. “If ever.”

“Maybe I’d just better arrest you right now,” Rhodes said. “To be sure you talk to him. We found some whiskey at that still, and you made it.”

“No, he didn’t make it,” Lawless said.

He sounded confident, and Rhodes wondered why. Then he remembered: no fingerprints.

“You don’t have to worry about Larry running off, Sheriff,” Lawless continued. “And you don’t have to worry about the TABC, Larry. You’re completely innocent. Your late brother will have to shoulder the blame.”

That’s going to be pretty hard for Terry to do, Rhodes thought, considering where he is. Rhodes had to admit that it was a good ploy, about the only one Larry had. Blame the dead man. Lawless could probably drag it out in the courts for years. That is, he could if Larry had the money to pay him, which seemed pretty unlikely.

Unlikely, that is, unless there was a big settlement for the explosion that had taken out the manufactured home. Terry hadn’t died in it, so wrongful death was out of the picture, at least for the propane company. That didn’t mean that Larry couldn’t collect the value of his home, plus some damages, however. Lawless must have thought that was a good possibility, or he wouldn’t have Larry for a client. Rhodes needed to talk to Chief Parker to see if he’d finished his investigation into what caused the explosion. If he had, Rhodes wanted to know what he’d found out.