“Sounds bad all right,” Rhodes said. He meant it. He hated game shows. He watched only comedy reruns and old movies.
“Anyway,” Claymore said, “Jeanne was easy to talk to. She liked people, and she had a sense of humor. I’d forgotten what it was like to laugh with a woman. So I started dropping by to see her when her husband wasn’t around. Not that there was anything wrong in what we did, you understand. Not a thing! But I just felt that her husband might not understand.”
You and three or four others, Rhodes thought. That Jeanne Clinton should have been charging by the hour, like a psychiatrist. She could have gotten rich.
“You ever see anyone else over there?” Rhodes asked.
“No, no one. I was always very care. . very discreet.”
“You were seen, of course,” Rhodes said. “You should have known that in a town the size of Thurston everyone knows everything that goes on.”
“Elmer?” said Claymore. “Is he the one. .”
“Not Elmer. Bill Tomkins.”
“Tomkins? I think I’ve met him at Barrett’s store. Is he the one with the breathing problem?”
“It won’t be bothering him anymore,” Rhodes said “Someone shot him with a.30-.30 this morning.”
Claymore came apart after that. He offered to get Dora to tell Rhodes that she and Claymore had been in the house all morning, offered to let him take in his.30-.30 to see if the firing pin matched the print of the one on the casings, begged Rhodes not to release the information that Claymore had been seeing Jeanne.
“I told you not to worry,” Rhodes said when Claymore ran down. “But you know I have to investigate this aspect of the murder. If you had anything to do with it, anything at all, God help you.”
“I didn’t,” Claymore said. “I swear it. I’ll pull out of the election campaign if you want me to.”
“I said I didn’t want to win that way, and I meant it,” Rhodes said. “You can continue your campaign exactly as you have.”
Claymore’s eyes reflected his gratitude. “I never said you weren’t a good sheriff,” he said. “About this Terry Wayne. .”
“I don’t think I want to hear it,” Rhodes said. “I’ll deal with him myself. It’s a matter for the department. If there’s anything to his accusations, I’ll find out. I’d just as soon not have any private citizens mixing in, if it’s all the same to you.”
“I understand,” Claymore said, rising from his chair. “I’d like to shake your hand, Sheriff.” He extended his right hand.
Rhodes took it. Maybe he’ll vote for me, he thought. But somehow he doubted it.
The blast of hot air that escaped from Rhodes’s car when he opened the door almost bowled him over. It seemed especially bad after the cool comfort of Claymore’s air-conditioned house. He steeled himself, but the touch of the vinyl seats caused him to shift about briskly nevertheless. Sticking the key into the ignition slot on the steering column was like touching the glowing tip of a welding rod.
Rhodes started the oar and turned the air conditioner on high. Hot air from the vents hit him in the face, but he drove around until the temperature was bearable. While he drove, he thought about what had just gone on. Just how badly did he want to win the election? How much did it really mean to him? Had he really meant what he said to Claymore? And how sure could he be that Claymore was telling him the truth?
The last thought led to an interesting complication. What if Claymore and Jeanne were actually quite involved? What if Jeanne had threatened to let their involvement be known? The question then became one of how badly Claymore wanted to win. Would he have killed to prevent Jeanne from spoiling his chances? Would he have killed Tomkins to keep Tomkins from talking?
Rhodes didn’t think so, and he was a man who trusted his hunches. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little checking on Claymore’s whereabouts on the night Jeanne Clinton had died.
Chapter 9
Rhodes drove out to Sally’s Truck Stop. He hadn’t asked anyone else to check Elmer’s story about eating breakfast there the morning of Jeanne’s death, and it was time somebody did so.
Sally’s was a small wooden frame building set nearly a block back off the highway. The block was taken up with a wide white-gravel parking lot, so white that it hurt Rhodes’s eyes in the glare of the sun. He knew that the lot was spotted with oil stains from the big trucks that stopped there, but he couldn’t see them from the road.
At this time of the day, Sally’s was quiet. There was only one eighteen wheeler parked in the lot, right up near the door. Rhodes drove his car over the uneven graveled surface, parked beside the truck, and got out.
The inside of Sally’s was cool and spotlessly clean, though maybe not as clean as Hod Barrett’s wife kept her house. There was a long Formica counter with stools, and a row of booths covered in red vinyl. The trucker was sitting on one of the stools drinking a cup of coffee and eating a piece of Sally’s justly renowned pecan pie.
Leaving a stool between himself and the trucker, Rhodes sat down. Sally came out of the kitchen. She was a bottle blonde of indeterminate age, though Rhodes had been around long enough in the same town to make a pretty accurate guess. He pegged her at fifty-five. She looked as if she enjoyed her own pecan pies.
“Afternoon, Sheriff,” she said. She had a deep voice, almost as deep as a man’s. “A Dr Pepper, right?”
“Right,” Rhodes said. He loved Dr Peppers and had drunk a lot of them in Sally’s.
She brought him the drink and he sipped it while the trucker finished his pie, paid up, and left. When Sally came back down to his part of the counter, they talked about the weather, about her business, and about her customers, not all of whom were as taciturn as the trucker who had just left.
When the opportunity came, Rhodes asked about Elmer Clinton. “He come in here often?”
“Often enough,” Sally said. “Course he ain’t been in since his wife got killed. He liked to come in for a little breakfast, shoot the breeze a little. He was in here the very morning y’all found her body, as a matter of fact. Lordy, that must’ve been a shock to him. He really loved that girl. Poor fella.”
“Poor fella?” Rhodes said.
“Yeah, I mean, you take a guy like him, he was lucky to get him a wife at all, much less one like Jeanne, young and pretty like she was. Course she was a little wild for a while there, but she settled down and made Elmer a fine wife. Why, he practically worshipped the ground that girl walked on. Many’s the morning he’d sit here and tell everybody what a lucky man he was. Lots of the fellas that come in here, well, they don’t always talk so nice about their wives, but not Elmer. I surely do feel sorry for that man.”
Rhodes thanked her for his drink and paid her thirty-five cents. Then he went out into the heat again, but not to his car. There was a public phone at the side of Sally’s, and he went over and dropped a quarter in the slot, then dialed Claymore’s number.
Mrs. Claymore answered. Rhodes could hear the frantic voice of an emcee in the background. He identified himself and then asked to speak to her husband.
“Why, I believe he’s out doing a little campaigning, Sheriff,” she said. “Can I have him call you when he gets back?”
Rhodes was glad to hear the news that Claymore wasn’t home. “No,” he said, “no need to bother him. I just wanted to ask him about that little rally the Clearview Breakfast Club sponsored last Tuesday night. I didn’t get to attend, and I thought I’d see if your husband could tell me about it. I meant to ask earlier, but it slipped my mind.”