The cigar box had once held Hay-A-Tampa Jewel cigars. Rhodes had been to a restaurant where the waiter brought all the male diners a Hay-A-Tampa Jewel after dinner. He remembered that the cigars were small, with a wooden tip. He wondered if they were still being made. As he closed the lid of the box, the telephone rang.
Chapter 8
Hack was on the line. “I’ve had a call about some motorsickles, Sheriff,” he said.
Rhodes had a feeling he’d just saved a few dollars. “You want to check it out yourself, or have somebody else do it?” Hack asked.
“I’ll check it,” Rhodes said. “Who made the call?”
“You sure you don’t want me to put Ruth on this one?” Hack asked. Rhodes noticed that he hadn’t called her “the new deputy,” and he wondered what was going on.
“No,” Rhodes said. “I want to take care of this myself. Now, who made the call?”
Hack didn’t exactly laugh. “Mrs. Wilkie,” he said.
“Oh,” Rhodes said. After a few seconds, he said, “I’ll take care of it anyway. I’ll be going out there now.”
“All right, Sheriff,” Hack said. “You’re the boss.” He hung up.
Rhodes held the phone for a minute, then set it down. He walked back to the dresser, opened the cigar box, and put the ten dollars back inside. He thought that he’d rather have paid out the money than visit Mrs. Wilkie, but there wasn’t really any choice.
It wasn’t that he exactly disliked Mrs. Wilkie; it was just that she had ideas that he didn’t agree with. One of the main ones was that he should marry her. His wife had been dead about a year when Mrs. Wilkie began making what Rhodes considered “advances.” She was at least ten years older than he, though she would never have admitted it, and she had a good ten pounds on him. She also had the most amazing red hair he’d ever seen, or to put it more accurately, the most amazing orange hair he’d ever seen. After Rhodes had become involved with Ivy, Mrs. Wilkie had more or less given up her pursuit, but the thought of having to meet with her made him slightly nervous. It wasn’t beyond her to have concocted some story just to get him out to Milsby, the tiny community where she lived. No wonder Hack had been nearly laughing.
Still, it didn’t seem likely that Mrs. Wilkie would have made up a story about motorcycles. Hardly anyone knew that Rhodes was looking for that sort of information. He’d have to check it out.
Rhodes drove by the old schoolhouse which was just about all that remained of what had once been the town of Milsby. He was fond of that schoolhouse, because that was where he’d first really become aware of Ivy Daniel.
He hadn’t really allowed himself to think of Ivy all day. After last night, he was sure that they had crossed a certain line in their relationship and that there would be no going back to where they had been before. He was going to have to give that some serious thought, but not until he had time to devote his full energy to it.
Mrs. Wilkie lived in a nondescript brick-veneer house that was a little newer than most of the homes around it. Not too many houses had been built in Milsby in the last few years.
Rhodes parked in the drive, got out, and knocked on the door.
Mrs. Wilkie was a little flustered to see him. “Oh, my,” she said. “I really didn’t expect. . I mean, I thought one of the deputies. .”
“I do a lot of the work myself,” Rhodes said. “We’re a pretty small county.” He smiled.
“Well, come in, come in,” Mrs. Wilkie said, opening the door wider.
Rhodes stepped inside. Mrs. Wilkie was wearing a flowered print dress of the same basic color as her hair, with bright yellow and white flowers on it. The yellow flowers had white centers; the white ones had yellow centers. It was quite a sight.
The living room in which they stood didn’t go with the house. It reminded Rhodes of something you might have seen fifty years before. On his left was a bookcase covered with a heavy black stain. It had glass doors that slid up to the top and protected a very old, green World Book Encyclopedia and a complete set of The Book of Knowledge. There was a set of the works of Mark Twain, and a set of the complete works of James Whitcomb Riley. The couch and chairs all had print covers, and there were doilies on the arms. Even the television set was old. It had a round picture tube.
“Sit down, Sheriff,” Mrs. Wilkie said.
Rhodes sat in one of the chairs. Its springs had held up well over the years. “I understand that you’ve had some trouble with motorcycles,” he said.
Mrs. Wilkie put her hand to her hair and patted it. “That’s right, Sheriff. It’s just disgraceful, the noise they make. And all hours of the night.”
“They come by the house, here?”
“Yes, right in front, rousing the whole neighborhood. Al James lives right down the road, and she says-”
Rhodes interrupted. “Have they ever come by during the day?”
“No, never, but Al says-”
“Has anybody seen who these motorcycle riders are?”
“Please, Sheriff, I’m trying to tell you something.” Mrs. Wilkie sounded exasperated, and Rhodes didn’t blame her. He’d been breaking in and not letting her tell her story the way she wanted. He knew better, but he was always defensive around her, and he was trying to get the information and get out as quickly as possible. He didn’t let things affect him that way, usually.
“I’m sorry,” Rhodes said. “What about Mrs. James?”
“Well, as I was trying to say, Al believes that they’re camping out down by the lake on the Gottschalk place. She hasn’t seen them, and as far as I know no one else has seen them. They don’t seem to be around during the day. But we hear them every night, and Al says they come up that road that runs by her house and on down by the Gottschalk land. So she thinks that’s where they are.”
“How long has this been going on?” Rhodes asked.
“Not long, I can assure you, or I would have called before now,” Mrs. Wilkie said. Her tone made it clear that she had suffered great aggravation. “I value my rest, Sheriff, and when I’m disturbed in the middle of the night I can seldom get back to sleep. The first time I heard them was last Thursday.”
And Bert Ramsey gets himself killed on Saturday night, Rhodes thought, after his mother hears motorcycles. “I think I’d better get on down to that lake,” he said. “I’ll see if anyone’s there, and I’ll find out if they have permission to be there. If they don’t, I’ll move them along and maybe you can begin getting a little rest again.”
“Oh, good,” Mrs. Wilkie said. “You just don’t know what it’s like to be disturbed like that.”
Rhodes wondered how many nights in the last year he’d been disturbed by telephone calls from people wanting him to locate wayward tomcats or quiet down noisy parties or settle a marital argument. Probably a lot more often than Mrs. Wilkie had. But he didn’t say anything. He got up to leave.
Mrs. Wilkie stepped to his side and plucked at his sleeve. “You don’t really need to rush off,” she said coyly. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee? I could perk some in just a minute.”
Rhodes, who didn’t drink coffee under any circumstances, felt depressed. He’d thought Mrs. Wilkie had given up on him, but evidently she hadn’t, quite. Probably since his relationship with Ivy Daniel hadn’t developed beyond the “good friends” stage, at least in its most public phase, Mrs. Wilkie was encouraged.
“Ah, no,” he said. “It’s getting late, and I’d like to get on down there before it gets dark.”
It was a good long time until dark, and Mrs. Wilkie knew it. Rhodes had to give her credit, though. She let him go with good grace. As he backed out of the drive, he saw her standing in the door in her flamboyant print dress.