Of All Sad Words (23 page)

The problem with that theory was that Rapper hadn’t been seen at the restaurant. Only the Crawfords had. So if Kergan had been doing business with anyone, it was more likely to have been Larry and Terry than Rapper.

In a way, that would be all right with Rhodes. He wanted to get Larry almost as much as he wanted to get Rapper.

Or maybe it was really Lawless he wanted to get. Lawless had recently represented a woman Rhodes had arrested for murder, and he’d almost gotten her off. In the process, Lawless had tried to cast Rhodes in a bad light, a villainous sheriff persecuting an innocent woman who couldn’t possibly have done what he claimed she had.

After the trial, Rhodes told himself that Lawless had only been doing his job, and he’d told Lawless that he didn’t hold any grudges. He’d been thinking almost the same thing when he’d talked to Judge Parry about Lawless and the academy.

It was easy to say that all was forgiven, and Rhodes believed he’d meant it. But maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was harboring a little resentment that he wasn’t even aware of. At any rate, he’d like to beat Lawless again, and if Larry had been selling whiskey through Dooley’s, it might be possible.

Benton’s little Saturn was already at Dooley’s, parked near the front door, when Rhodes and Mel arrived. The door had a strip of yellow-and-black crime-scene tape across it. Benton was standing beside his car, strumming a guitar.

“Who’s that?” Mel asked.

“That’s Dr. C. P. Benton. He teaches math at the college.”

Mel looked skeptical. “He doesn’t look like a math teacher.”

“Don’t let the guitar fool you. He’s a math teacher all right, and a computer whiz besides.”

Mel’s skeptical expression didn’t change as they got out of the car. Even hearing Benton’s playing didn’t change it.

Benton grinned at her and did his best to make her smile, running through a few chords and singing a couple of lines of some song Rhodes didn’t recognize.

Benton stopped playing and said, “Not a music lover?”

“Do you know ‘Witch Doctor’ ?” Rhodes asked after he’d introduced them.

“No, but I know ‘The Merry Minuet.’”

Benton plucked a few notes and sang something about rioting in Africa.

Mel smiled then. “That song’s fifty years old,” she said, “and nothing’s changed.”

Benton finished the song and put his guitar in a case in the backseat of his car. Mel stood by him, asking him computer questions that were more or less incomprehensible to Rhodes, who was feeling like a rival for Dr. Phil again.

“Let’s go in and take a look at Kergan’s computer,” he said.

He went to the door and took down the crime-scene tape. He had a key, and he opened the door. They all entered the dark restaurant. Rhodes didn’t know where the lights were located, but Benton did. He turned them on, and they went to Kergan’s office.

“He needed a new computer,” Benton said, looking at the box that sat on the floor by the workstation.

“He just used it for simple things,” Mel said. “Nothing more complicated than a spreadsheet. He could have been using a Commodore sixty-four and he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

She and Benton had a little laugh at her comment. Rhodes didn’t get the joke.

“Can you find his accounts?” he asked.

“I’m sure I can,” Mel said.

“And if she can’t find what you’re looking for, I can,” Benton said. “If it’s there, I mean.”

Mel looked at him. “Are you really any good?”

“I know quite a bit about computers. I even build Web sites. Check out docbenton dot com if you want to be impressed.”

Rhodes had to admit that Benton didn’t lack confidence in his abilities, whether he was talking about computers or musicianship.

Mel didn’t say whether she wanted to be impressed by the Web site. She turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up.

“He didn’t even use a password,” she said after the computer had booted up.

She clicked on the mouse a few times, running through menus so fast that Rhodes didn’t have a chance to get much of a look at them, not that he’d have known what they were even if he’d stared at them for a long time.

Benton watched, too. Rhodes detected a hint of admiration in his eyes. Ruth Grady might not be so interesting to him now, and Rhodes felt a little guilty about that. It was possible that Benton was just the guy for her. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t.

“Here’s what you’re looking for,” Mel said, saving him from worry about his Dr. Phil-like maneuverings.

Rhodes looked at the computer monitor. Even he could tell that he was looking at the restaurant’s regular accounts.

“What I want is something that would have been off the books,” he said. “A record of dealing in something illegal. Whiskey sales.”

“There’s nothing like that here.”

“Jerry didn’t sell whiskey in the bar,” Benton said. “I was here often enough. I would have known if he’d been doing something like that.”

“He wouldn’t do anything illegal,” Mel agreed. “He wouldn’t take that kind of chance.”

“Just keep looking,” Rhodes said.

Mel worked the mouse awhile longer. “Nothing,” she said. “Jerry wasn’t good enough at accounting to keep two sets of books anyway.”

“Let me try,” Benton said.

Mel got up, and Benton sat in the chair at the workstation.

“You won’t find anything,” Mel said.

“If it’s here, I will.”

And in only a couple of minutes, he did.

Chapter 27

“HE PUT IT IN A FILE CALLED ‘LETTERS’?” MEL SAID. “WHO’D ever look there?”

“Me,” Benton said.

“Never mind,” Rhodes said. “What does it tell you?”

“Not much,” Benton said. “I’m not even sure it’s what you think it is. It does seem to show that he took in some money, but it doesn’t show that he paid any out. Wouldn’t he have had to pay for whiskey if he bought it?”

“Of course,” Mel said. “I knew he wasn’t selling whiskey.”

“I did, too,” Benton said. “I told you that just a few minutes ago. Remember?”

Rhodes remembered, and he wished Kergan had made things a little more clear. According to what Rhodes could make out on the monitor screen, Kergan had recorded dates and amounts, but he hadn’t said what the money was for. The amounts were for a hundred dollars or so at a time, but the times were pretty well separated. Maybe the money would have been enough to keep the restaurant going until business built up, or maybe not. Rhodes would have to go through the other accounts, or have someone do it for him, to be sure.

Unfortunately, there was no record of who’d given Kergan the money. For all Rhodes could prove, it might have fallen out of the sky.

“I’m going to leave you two with the computer,” he said. “I have to see a man about a still. If you can find out anything else about where that money came from, I’d appreciate it.”

“We could take turns,” Benton said to Mel. “Like a treasure hunt.”

“I’ll go first,” she said.

“Can you give Mel a ride home?” Rhodes asked Benton.

“I’d be glad to.”

Rhodes left them there, happy as a pair of scratch-off lotto winners.

Jack Mellon arrived at the jail shortly after Rhodes got there, saving Rhodes from the grilling Hack and Lawton would have put him through about the morning’s activities.

Rhodes drove Mellon down to the Big Woods. On the way, he told him about Rapper and Nellie.

“Sounds like they’ve been a real problem around here. Too bad they got away.”

“We’ll find them eventually,” Rhodes said.

His side twinged, and he ran a hand over his chest. When he did that, his shoulder hurt. He owed Rapper a lot this time.

“If you don’t find him, we will,” Mellon said.

“Right,” Rhodes replied.

Rhodes parked at the edge of the woods, and they walked to the still. It was exactly as Rhodes and Ruth had left it. Rhodes had been sure Rapper wouldn’t return for it. It was too big to dismantle easily, and Rapper wouldn’t have been in any condition to do much work.

“Now that’s what I call a still,” Mellon said, looking it over with evident admiration. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one to equal it. How’s it tie in with the little one you took me to see? The one that got lost?”

“I found that one again, too,” Rhodes said. “It’s in a barn not too far from here. I’ll show it to you on the way back to town. The two fellas who were running this one stole it and hid it on someone’s property.”

Mellon walked around the still to get a good look at it.

“They must have been making enough whiskey to keep half the population of Dallas in illegal booze. I wonder who their contact was.”

As soon as Mellon said those words, it came to Rhodes that he might know the contact’s name.

“I think it was a man named Jerry Kergan. He was in the restaurant business here. He’d have known people in the same business in Dallas or Houston, maybe some places that would sell a little ’shine on the side. Kergan must have been helping Rapper and Nellie move the whiskey.”

If Rhodes was right, that would explain the small amounts of money Kergan had received. He’d just been a go-between.

“We’ll need proof of that before we can arrest him,” Mellon said.

Mellon always wanted proof, but in this case, it didn’t matter.

“His name was Jerry Kergan,” Rhodes said. “He’s dead.”

He thought he knew now why Rapper had killed Kergan. Rapper must have known that Kergan went out for a smoke at about the same time every night, and seeing Rhodes in the parking lot, he might well have thought that Kergan had talked to him or considered talking to him. So he’d taken care of the perceived problem the way Rapper naturally would—by killing him.

“Can’t arrest a dead man,” Mellon said. “He must have made a ton of money before he died.”

“Not really.” Rhodes didn’t mention that he’d seen the amounts. “I’m guessing, but I think he just set things up and didn’t take part in any of the actual dealing.”

“It would be hard to make a case against him, then, unless somebody ratted him out.”

Rhodes didn’t think Rapper and Nellie would ever inform on anybody. Not out of loyalty. They’d keep quiet just to be contrary, and Kergan was dead anyway.

Mellon banged a hand on the side of the still. “This baby would be able to put out a lot of liquor. It hasn’t been used much, though.”

“How can you tell?”

“Tell by looking. It hasn’t been here long. I doubt more than three or four batches have been run through it.”

The still did look new. Rhodes hadn’t thought about that. The figures he’d seen of Kergan’s accounts went back several months. Rapper hadn’t been here that long. So Kergan hadn’t been dealing with him. He must have been dealing with the Crawfords.

Then why had Rapper killed Kergan? Rhodes didn’t have the answer after all.

“What do you want to do about the still?” he said.

“I want to get some pictures of it. Then we’ll have our men come up here and dismantle it. We might as well pick up that other one you mentioned, too. What about the man who was running that one?”

“I haven’t arrested him. It’s like you said. I don’t have any proof against him. He claims it was his brother’s still, not his, and now he doesn’t even have the still.”

Mellon laughed. “Your job isn’t any easier than mine. They don’t pay us enough.”

“Sad but true,” Rhodes said.

Back in Clearview, Rhodes and Mellon stopped at McDonald’s for a late lunch. Rhodes knew he shouldn’t eat a Quarter Pounder, but he couldn’t resist.

“You ever see that movie about the man who ate at McDonald’s for a year or so?” Mellon said as they sat in the cruiser and unwrapped their burgers.

“No,” Rhodes said, “and I don’t want to.”

“He didn’t eat anything the whole time except for McDonald’s food. He gained a lot of weight. Just about ruined his health.”

“Don’t tell me any more,” Rhodes said, taking a satisfying bite of his burger.

It was as if Rapper and Nellie had disappeared into some alternate universe. No reports came in about the black Dodge, and there were no reports from any hospitals about treating a man with a gunshot wound to his hand.

“Those two gotta be somewhere,” Hack said when he told Rhodes the news. “They can’t just disappear like Houdini.”

“Looks like they can,” Lawton said. “Looks like they have. They’ve sure done it before. Might’s well write this one off and put it in the
unsolved
file.”

Rhodes wasn’t going to do that. “I want a deputy to drive by that spot of woods where Rapper had the still every half hour tonight. Rapper might sneak back if his hand’s better.”

“That’s gonna leave a lot of the county unpatrolled,” Hack said.

“Can’t be helped. Besides, if the deputy cruises through Thurston often enough, it’ll make Hod Barrett happy.”

“Wouldn’t anything make Hod happy,” Lawton said.

Rhodes thought Lawton was right. “Well, whatever happens, it’s just for one night. Mellon’s crew will get the still tomorrow. They’ll take the little one, too.”

“You want the deputy to watch Kergan’s barn tonight?”

“That can be part of the route.”

Rhodes didn’t believe Rapper would come after the smaller still, but it was a possibility.

“Some fella named Schwartz called,” Hack said. “He wanted you to know he’s got that flyin’ saucer gadget ready to take to Mr. Ellendorf. Said he’d get it to him tomorrow.”

“Why not this afternoon?”

“He wanted that Benton fella to go with him. Said Benton could explain it better’n he could.”

Rhodes wasn’t sure what needed an explanation. Just turn it on and the saucers would stay away. It seemed simple enough, but maybe there was some secret to it.

“Some woman named Schafer called, too,” Hack said. “The one that owns that antiques store in Obert. She wanted to talk to you about Jamey Hamilton. Something’s been bothering her about him and his shop.”

“That’s all she said?”

“Yep. You want to call her or go to Obert?”

Rhodes remembered that Buddy was supposed to be checking on Hamilton. He asked Hack if Buddy had found anything new.