Of All Sad Words (18 page)

“No air-conditioning, either,” he said. “Mighty damn hot in here.”

Rhodes had to agree that it was. “You’ve been running that AC day and night, I guess.”

“Damn right. Too hot not to. Got it cranked right down to seventy-four, too. I say to hell with that ‘keep it on seventy-eight’ crap they keep preaching. A man wants to be cool in this weather.”

Rhodes went back into the garage. It must be about 120 in here, he thought. He looked across the top of the Escort to the opposite wall and saw the gray metal door of the circuit-breaker box.

He went around the back of the Escort and slipped sideways along the side of the car so he could get to the breaker box. He pulled on the silver ring and opened the door.

Sure enough, the main breaker had been tripped. Ellendorf had strained his electrical system.

Rhodes flipped the breaker back on. He heard an air-conditioner compressor kick in somewhere behind the house, and the garage light came on.

Ellendorf came into the garage. “They brought it back! How’d you make ’em do it?”

Rhodes explained about the breaker and told Ellendorf to turn up the thermostat. “And you’d better call the electric company. Have them come out and check your electrics. You might want to call an air-conditioner repair place, too. Get your whole system checked.”

“Costs money,” Ellendorf said. “Those E.T.s’d just come back and steal my electricity again.”

“I have something that might keep them away,” Rhodes said. “An E.T. repeller.”

“You shoulda brought that before.”

“I just got it. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”

“You think it’ll help?”

“It’s guaranteed,” Rhode assured him.

“All right, then. I’ll try to stand it with the AC temp turned up a little.”

“You do that,” Rhodes said.

He left Ellendorf standing there looking up at the hot blue sky.

Thurston was a town that had fallen on hard times. It had always been small. Now it was almost nonexistent: one grocery store, and not much else.

The owner of the store was Hod Barrett, a short, stout, solid man with red hair stiff as brush bristles. And a temper. He’d never been one of Rhodes’s supporters, and he didn’t much like seeing the sheriff in his store.

“You oughta be out solvin’ crimes,” Barrett said. “Not stoppin’ by here for a Dr Pepper.”

Rhodes sat on the wooden bench in the front of the store. The boards had been worn smooth by generations of customers who’d sat there, just as Rhodes was now, drinking Dr Pepper in glass bottles and eating MoonPies.

Rhodes had the Dr Pepper, and he wished he had a MoonPie, but even missing lunch didn’t mean he could splurge like that, or so he told himself.

“I’m here on business,” he said. “In fact, that’s why I stopped here.” He held up the Dr Pepper for Barrett to admire. “The drink’s just a bonus for me.”

The interior of the store was dim and cool. The high ceilings helped, and Rhodes liked to look at the pattern of the stamped tin. He wondered how old that ceiling was. Older than either he or Barrett, for sure.

“What’d you want to ask me?” Barrett said. “I got customers to wait on.”

Rhodes looked around the store. He didn’t see any customers. He doubted that any would come in. Thurston was just about dead.

“I make deliveries,” Barrett said, as if he could tell what Rhodes was thinking. “Lots of folks here can’t get out and shop for themselves, so they call in their orders. They’ve got old, need somebody to help them out. I don’t charge ’em anything for the deliveries.”

“I won’t bother you long,” Rhodes said, a little surprised, though he shouldn’t have been, that Barrett was willing to help people. Things like that still happened in small towns, maybe even in cities, but you never heard about them. “I want to ask you about Jerry Kergan.”

“Him,” Barrett said in a tone that indicated a low opinion of the man. “He moved off to Clearview to get rich. Couldn’t make it here. Not enough business. I guess you can figure out why.”

“Not many people left in town,” Rhodes said. “There are still some out in the country and down by the lake, though.”

“Yeah,” Barrett said. “But not many.”

Rhodes noticed the scant stock on the store shelves and wondered how much longer Barrett would be able to keep his store open. What would happen to those people who needed deliveries when it closed?

“Kergan still had a house here, didn’t he?” Rhodes asked.

“Yeah,” Barrett said. “I think maybe he rented it out to somebody.”

Rhodes hadn’t heard that. “You know he was killed last night?”

“Ever’body in town knows about that.” Barrett gave Rhodes a crooked grin. “Heard you were right there when it happened and didn’t do a thing to stop it.”

Rhodes thought that Barrett would have been a happy man if the sheriff had been crushed instead of Kergan.

“I wasn’t in much of a position to stop it,” Rhodes said.

“Yeah.”

Barrett’s tone implied that he didn’t believe a word of it. Rhodes didn’t challenge him.

“Who rented Kergan’s house?” he asked, taking a sip of the Dr Pepper.

“Now that’s kind of funny,” Barrett said. He rubbed a hand across his bristly head. “Not ha-ha funny. You know. The other kind.”

“What’s funny about it?”

“I pass by there now and then making deliveries, and I see signs that somebody’s around, but I never see who it might be. Maybe it’s not rented out after all. People been messing around there, though.”

“You should have called my office if you were suspicious that something like that was going on.”

“Huh.”

Barrett was able to put a lot of meaning into a single sound. Rhodes interpreted it as “Fat lot of good that would do.”

“Where’s the house located?” Rhodes asked.

“On the road going to the Plunkett Cemetery,” Barrett said. “You know where that is?”

“Not far from the old Gin Tank,” Rhodes said.

Once, Thurston had been a cotton town, with two or three cotton gins running day and night at cotton-picking time. That had been a long time ago. There were no cotton fields around Thurston anymore, and hardly a trace of the gins remained. A big pond, called the Gin Tank, had been near one of them, and though the gin was gone, the pond still had the same name. Probably only a few people in the town even remembered how it had gotten it.

“That’s right,” Barrett said. “Go around the curve by the tank, and it’s the first house you see on the right.”

Rhodes thanked him, finished the Dr Pepper, and left.

Chapter 21

THE AIR FELT A LITTLE COOLER TO RHODES WHEN HE GOT OUT OF the car in front of Kergan’s house, but that was likely because it was late in the afternoon and the sun was coming at him from a slant instead of bearing down from directly overhead. The actual temperature hadn’t changed much.

The Gin Tank wasn’t far from the house. Willow trees grew all around it, and Rhodes couldn’t see the water. He hoped that the tank hadn’t gone dry. He liked to think that the water shielded by the willows was still and green and cool, that lunker bass swam in the weeds near the banks, waiting for someone to toss in a lure.

He knew better than that, however. He’d talked to more than one rancher who’d had to shoot a cow that had bogged down in the mud while trying to reach the small pool of water that was in the middle of the tank.

There’d been a time when the tank was full, though, and Rhodes would have tossed in a lure if he’d gotten the chance. He wished he had more opportunities to go fishing. It seemed as if he had none at all lately, and unless there was a gully-washing rain, he wouldn’t have any for a long time to come.

He looked at Kergan’s little white frame house. It was deserted, and Rhodes thought no one had been there for a while. The grass was brown and dry. A couple of dead rosebushes grew in what had once been a flower bed.

There were no near neighbors, and not another house was in sight. Fields and pastures covered the land to the left and right, with only the Gin Tank and a few small wooded areas to break the monotony of brown weeds and grass. An occasional sprig of green stuck up, a weed that didn’t know enough to die. If it doesn’t rain soon, Rhodes thought, some of the old-timers will start talking about the Dust Bowl days.

Rhodes wondered about the renters that Barrett had mentioned. He didn’t see any sign of them. If they’d ever been there, they were gone now.

A big sheet-metal shed sat about fifty yards behind the house. Rust stained the sides and top. It might have been used to store farm machinery at one time, maybe back when there were cotton fields. Rhodes wondered what might be inside it now.

He reached into his pocket and touched the Indian Head penny. He’d almost forgotten he had it with him. He didn’t really believe in luck, but he did believe in the whimsical nature of things. He decided to let a flip of the coin decide whether he’d have a look inside the house first or walk back to the shed.

“Heads, it’s the shed,” Rhodes said aloud. He flipped the coin, and as it turned over and over, he said, “Tails, it’s the house.”

He snatched the coin out of the air with his right hand and slapped it down on top of his left wrist.

“Heads it is,” he said.

He put the coin back in his pocket and walked toward the shed. As he did, he noticed that the grass around it had been flattened. Someone had been driving on it. Someone had been using the shed, possibly the renters that Barrett had mentioned.

The shed had a big metal door that slid along a track. There was a hasp at one end, but it wasn’t fastened with a padlock through the staple. Rhodes didn’t see any windows on the front of the shed, so he walked around to the side. He found a window all right, but it was too high for him to see through. A couple of panes were missing. Those that remained were covered with dust and dirt.

He went back to the front of the shed. He could either bang on the door and ask if anyone was inside or he could pull the door open and take his chances. He didn’t like either idea, but he couldn’t come up with a better alternative.

All three times when he’d dealt with Rapper and Nellie in the past, they’d found out-of-the-way places to stay: an abandoned house in one instance, tents in another. A shed like this would be a fine accommodation for them. It would be hot and all but suffocating. Rhodes wondered if anyone could stay inside for long.

In the shed’s favor was its location. It was out of town, in a deserted part of the county. That was the kind of place Rapper and Nellie looked for every time.

Bending down, Rhodes took his .38 from the ankle holster. Then he banged on the door.

“Anybody home?” he called.

Nobody answered. Rhodes wasn’t surprised. Using his left hand, he slid the door open.

It didn’t slide easily. It squealed along the track, which dug into the ground beneath it. After it had slid a couple of feet, it stuck.

Rhodes looked at the hard dirt under the door and saw a long gouge. Someone had opened the door, probably recently. Rhodes could have forced it open farther, but he would have needed both hands to do it, and he didn’t want to put away his pistol. So he stood outside, looking into the dim interior of the shed. A little light filtered in through the dirty windows and through the openings where the panes were missing, but not enough for Rhodes to see well.

He stood there for a couple of seconds, letting the heat from the inside stream over him while straining to hear any noise and waiting for any movement. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Rapper and Nellie had suddenly appeared to open fire on him with automatic pistols, but the inside of the shed was quiet and still.

Rhodes was investigating property that belonged to a murdered man and therefore had ample cause to enter the shed without a warrant.

Nothing moved inside the shed except a few dust motes that floated through the sunlight coming in through the space where the panes were missing. If Nellie and Rapper had been there, they were gone now. Rhodes put his pistol back in the holster and forced the door all the way open, letting more light into the building.

The shed had no floor other than the dirt its four walls sat on. The hulk of an old tractor sat near the back on one side. A wooden workbench was closer to the front. There might have been some old tools on it. Rhodes couldn’t quite make them out. He walked over to have a look.

The workbench was old and had been there a long time. Its surface was pitted, rough, and dust-covered. A couple of rusty wrenches lay on it, along with a piece of a screwdriver. Rhodes thought they must have been left there years ago, not by Kergan, but by some previous owner of the property.

More interesting to him were the two cots that butted up against the wall under the broken window. Not far from them, a portable generator sat on the dirt floor. A fan was plugged into it. The fan was pointed toward the cots. It wouldn’t keep anyone very cool, but it might make the place bearable at night, when the temperature would drop into the seventies.

Between the fan and the cots were three stacks of unmarked cardboard boxes. Rhodes didn’t know what was in them, but he was going to look.

But the prize discovery was the still. It sat near the tractor, and, from where Rhodes stood, it appeared to be in good shape. Whoever took it hadn’t demolished it. It had just been moved from one place to another.

Leaning against the hot metal wall near the still was a stack of bulging burlap bags. Rhodes could smell the corn chops from where he stood. He walked over and kicked the bottom bag with his toe. Dust rose from it, along with the strong smell of the corn chops.

Rhodes took a look at the tractor, which was at least as old as the tools on the workbench. The battery had been removed and the tires were flat. A film of dust covered every part of it.

The cots, fan, and generator were a different story. The generator wasn’t new, but it appeared to be in good working order. Rhodes opened the gas tank. It wasn’t full, but he could smell the gasoline inside it. The cots weren’t new, either, but they’d been slept on recently. The fan looked as if it had come out of the box only a day or so ago; in fact, the empty blue-and-white box lay a few feet away, leaning against the cardboard boxes Rhodes had noticed earlier.