“The rosé, please,” she said.
“I’ll have the same,” Rhodes said.
The waitress left them with menus, and Rhodes glanced covertly at Ivy while choosing his meal. He had to admit that he liked what he saw: a good, strong face, not exactly pretty, but certainly handsome. Her hair was short and seemed to accent her features in just the right way, softening them slightly. Her eyes were blue, and her teeth were even and straight.
But what does it matter? Rhodes thought. I’m not really interested. “What looks good to you?” he asked.
“The small tenderloin, I think. Well done,” she added.
“Sounds good to me too. I’m glad I won’t have to watch the blood when you cut.”
I’ve got to do better than that, Rhodes thought, even if I’m not interested.
But Ivy seemed not to notice anything crude in his statement. “I’ll have the salad, not the soup, and a baked potato instead of the French fries,” she said.
“So far, so good,” Rhodes said. “I’ll have the same thing.”
The waitress came with the wine and took their orders. After she had gone, Rhodes decided that it was time to find out why Ivy Daniels had wanted to talk to him. He took a sip of the wine, which wasn’t too bad, although he didn’t really like wine, and said, “I was a little surprised to get your call. Were you that impressed with me last night?”
Ivy smiled. “It does have to do with last night,” she said, “but not necessarily with my impression of you.”
“You weren’t impressed, then?”
“Oh, I was impressed, all right, but I was more impressed with that stunt of Ralph Claymore’s. I thought it was quite unfair.”
The waitress came back in with the salads and a basket of breadsticks and crackers, along with a revolving stand holding various kinds of dressing. Ivy helped herself to the Thousand Island, as did Rhodes. Then he took a breadstick and unwrapped it. “I don’t think that what happened was entirely Claymore’s fault,” he said. “I’ve done a little checking, and I’m pretty sure that he and Terry Wayne-the guy who made the big scene-don’t know one another.”
“Oh,” Ivy said. “I was so sure that it was a setup.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a setup. I agree with you that it was. I’m just saying that I don’t think it was Claymore’s idea. I think that Wayne probably went to him with it.”
“But he went along with Wayne.”
“Well, you can’t blame him, really. It was a ready-made piece of sensation.”
“Yes, and it made the front page of this afternoon’s paper.”
Rhodes usually read the paper after eating supper, and in his rush to pick up Ivy he had forgotten all about it. “Is that so?” he said.
‘‘It’s so. The paper didn’t really take sides, but it didn’t look so good for you.”
They ate in silence for a minute. They both knew that the Clearview paper rarely took sides in any election.
Finally, after mastering a particularly large piece of lettuce, Rhodes said, “I’ll bet you didn’t call just to offer me your sympathy.”
“That’s right, I didn’t. I don’t really know how to go into this. It’s just that I didn’t like what happened, and I know something that probably you should know. But it may not be important at all, and I don’t like to think that I’m being vindictive by telling you. Besides. .”
“Hold on, hold on,”‘ Rhodes said. “The best thing to do is just to tell me. Then we’ll work on the morality of it. It’s too late to hold back now.”
“Couldn’t we just have a nice dinner and talk about something else?”
Rhodes suddenly realized how much he was enjoying talking to this woman, and he knew that he really didn’t care if she had anything of importance to tell him or not. But he said, “I think that you should go ahead and tell me. You wanted to, or you wouldn’t have called. We can have another dinner later and talk about something else at it.”
Ivy looked at him. “That would be very nice. The other dinner, I mean. I think I’d like that.” She paused and took a sip of wine. “Now. What I wanted to tell you was this. I have an aunt who lives in Thurston. She told me yesterday afternoon that Ralph Claymore has been visiting Jeanne Clinton.”
So that’s why he avoided that topic last night, Rhodes thought. He didn’t want to be tied to it in any way. “How does she know?” he said.
“Someone told her, she said.”
“Did she say who it was?”
“Yes. Someone named Bill Tomkins.”
Chapter 7
It was Friday morning, the morning that most residents of Blacklin County looked forward to each week. But that was not the case in the sheriff’s department. Friday meant that the weekend was coming, the weekend when ordinary citizens would be getting ready to go to the lake and do a little fishing, go to the local clubs and do a little drinking, go out on the highway and blow the carbon out of their car’s engine. For some other citizens, not so ordinary, it meant a chance to sneak in a not-so-carefully guarded store or get up a friendly little game of poker in an abandoned warehouse or maybe just drive off from a convenient self-service gas station without paying.
The latter types the sheriff’s department would always have with them, and to tell the truth Rhodes and his deputies didn’t even spend very much time worrying about them. They had to worry about the ordinary folks, the ones whose boats hit a snag in the lake and disappeared under the brownish water; the ones who got a little too excited when their girlfriends won a wet T-shirt contest and strangers, who had to be disciplined, looked at them too long and hard; the ones who were out endangering everyone else’s lives by zooming down the county roads at ninety miles an hour.
Thursday night, however, had been quiet; Hack had little to report when Rhodes came in. “Just a couple of drunks, and one little domestic fight. Billy Joe’s doing fine. Him and that Polish fella have hit it off right well.”
“Just how do you mean that?” Rhodes said
“I mean they don’t bother one another none. Billy Joe still ain’t talking, and the Polish fella can’t talk so any of us can understand him. Except that Bob says he ain’t Polish. He’s gonna check up on him today.”
“Well, keep me posted,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
“Thurston again?”
“That’s right. Thurston again.”
Rhodes left the office.
April was Rhodes’s favorite month, even in election years. It might have seemed a cruel one to that poet Kathy had once told Rhodes about. T. S. Eliot, that was his name. Old T. S. hadn’t been from Texas, though, to see the way the grass and wildflowers just seemed to spread all over the place almost overnight if the rains were right. It was a pleasure to drive along and look at things growing.
Unfortunately, the pleasure was marred considerably by the thoughts that kept crowding themselves into Rhodes’s mind, thoughts not connected in any way with the freshness of the season. There was Ralph Claymore, for one thing. It was beginning to seem as if everyone in Blacklin County had been slipping around to see Jeanne Clinton on the sly, even Claymore, who therefore almost certainly had to be considered a suspect in her murder.
And there was Billy Joe, with what was probably Jeanne’s blood on his shirt. Not to mention Hod Barrett, who certainly had the physical equipment to do the job, not to mention the temperament. Of course, if you wanted a motive, you couldn’t forget Elmer.
But it was Bill Tomkins who was worrying Rhodes the most right now. Tomkins hadn’t minded at all mentioning the fact that Hod Barrett was seeing Jeanne, or if he’d minded, it hadn’t taken much to get him to mention it. But he’d held back about Claymore. Why? That was the main thing Rhodes wanted to ask him. Besides, if he’d held out one bit of information, he might have held out more. What if he’d been stopping in at Elmer’s himself? He seemed to be about the only one who hadn’t been, if what Rhodes had found out about Claymore was true.