“And that’s all there is to it?”
“Well, not exactly. We’ve made sort of a date to go out tomorrow night,” Rhodes said. He felt like a schoolboy.
Kathy’s grin turned into a smile. “I’m not sure that I’m ready to leave Clearview and Johnny just yet,” she said, “but when I go you’ll be in good hands.” She pushed away from the table and stood up. “Have a good night, Dad.”
Rhodes watched her walk away, not having much to say. He thought for a minute of Claire, but the memory did not jab him with a sharp pain under his heart as it would have only days before. If Kathy approved of Ivy Daniels, then his own feelings couldn’t be too far out of line. He just hoped he wasn’t reading too much into one date and the prospect of another.
Rhodes got up from the table and wiped the bread crumbs into his hand with the napkin. Then he dusted the crumbs into the trash basket and tossed the napkin in after them. There was one advantage to eating alone. The cleanup was easy. He still had plenty of time to drive over to Thurston and talk to Elmer Clinton.
Chapter 10
It was only seven o’clock when Rhodes got on the road, still plenty of daylight left. To the west, in the far distance, he could see a huge bank of black clouds building up. Ninety-five percent of the rainstorms came in from the west, and this looked to be a pretty good one. It was still a while off, though. In a minute the sun would sink behind the cloud bank and the evening would get cool and gray. It was the kind of weather Rhodes liked, and besides, if it rained, maybe some of Claymore’s cardboard signs would get drenched and fall apart. At the very least they would get awfully wrinkled when the sun dried them out the next day.
He drove up to Elmer’s house and parked in front. Elmer’s car was parked by the chinaberry tree as usual. A couple of branches from the tree actually extended out over the car, and Rhodes saw a couple of chickens gone to roost in them. That won’t be much good for the finish on Elmer’s car, Rhodes thought.
Yellow light spilled out of the screen door. Rhodes stepped up on the porch and knocked. Elmer walked into view. “Come in,” he said.
Elmer and the room were both changed since Rhodes’s last visit. The room had been thoroughly cleaned, the floors scrubbed, all the magazines and beer cans picked up. In fact, the room was immaculate. Rhodes found himself wondering for a second if Mrs. Barrett had been there.
Elmer reached out and shook the sheriff’s hand. “Have a seat,” he said. His voice and eyes were clear and steady. It was evident that he’d stopped drinking quite a while ago. His thinning hair was carefully combed.
Rhodes sat in a wooden rocker and glanced around the room. Nothing had been changed, except that there was now an eight-by-ten color picture of Jeanne in a gold frame atop the TV set.
“You found the man who killed my Jeanne yet, Sheriff?” Clinton asked.
“No, not yet, Elmer. I think it’s time you gave me a little more help, though,” Rhodes said, making himself comfortable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Clinton asked. He continued to stand, massaging his thick left arm with his right hand.
“It’s supposed to mean that the last time I talked to you, I didn’t want to take advantage of your grief,” Rhodes said. “But I think you lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to when I’m investigating a crime. Lying makes a fella look guilty, sometimes.”
Clinton drew himself up to his full five feet six with a deep breath. Rhodes pretended not to notice.
“I mean it, Elmer,” he said. “You went on and on about how there was just no chance that Jeanne had been seeing anybody while you were off at work. Well, she had. In fact, it begins to look like she’d been seeing about half the damn town, along with a few folks from Clearview. And don’t tell me you didn’t know it.”
“That goddamn Bill Tomkins!” Clinton spat the sentence out along with the breath he’d been holding. That sonuva bitch had a poison tongue. I know what he was saying, all right, but it was all lies! My Jeanne was an angel on earth! That girl was as pure as the snow!”
Elmer’s face was getting as red as a rooster’s comb. Rhodes hoped he didn’t have heart disease. He didn’t say anything for a minute, then looked at Elmer’s thinning hair. “How much older than Jeanne were you, Elmer?” he asked.
“Goddamn it, Sheriff! Goddamn it! What right you got to talk like that? What right you got to say those things?” Clinton waved his arms around, then sank to the couch.
“I didn’t say anything, Elmer,” Rhodes said mildly. “I just asked a simple question. Seems to me there’d be no harm in answering.”
“You know it anyway, goddamn you.”
“No, I don’t know it, but I can make a pretty good guess,” Rhodes said. “I’d guess nearly thirty years.”
“Close enough,” Clinton said. “Close enough. And now you’re wondering what’d make a girl that young, ‘specially one that looked as good as Jeanne, marry an old goat like me.”
“I might have wondered about that,”‘ Rhodes said.
“Well, I’ll tell you. She liked me.” Clinton shook his head. “It was as simple as that. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth. She’d been married once before, you know. Her husband got killed in some kind of accident up there on that Alaska pipeline, and she was livin’ by herself. We met a time or two and got to talkin’, you know. Lord, that girl loved to talk. Anyway, one thing led to another and we just got married. Never had an argument or a fight, and that’s a fact. She was the best girl in the world.”
Rhodes was afraid that Clinton might get maudlin again, so he changed the subject back to what Elmer was trying to avoid. “She liked to talk, all right. She liked to talk so much that when you went off to work she talked to anybody that came around.”
Clinton sprang off the couch. “Don’t say that, Sheriff. Don’t ever say that.”
“It’s true, Elmer, and you might as well face it. Bill Tomkins might have been a gossip, but he wasn’t a liar. I can give you the names of three men, including him, who dropped by on your wife. And I think you knew all about it.” Rhodes stood up.
Elmer Clinton shook his head. “You’re wrong, Sheriff. I didn’t know. I never even dreamed it.” His shoulders sagged. “I never even dreamed it,” he said again.
Looking at him there, Rhodes believed him. “I’m sorry, then, Elmer, but it’s true. I’ve been told by people who’d be better off if they hadn’t been here. They weren’t lying.”
Elmer Clinton just stood there, shaking his head. Rhodes let himself out the screen door and walked to his car. He could hear the thunder in the distance now, and he saw a faint streak of lightning behind a cloud. There was a tang of ozone in the air. He got in the Plymouth and drove away.
It was raining lightly by the time Rhodes got back to Clearview, and he stopped by the jail to check in. Hack and Lawton were sitting around talking as he came in the door.
“Thought you was going over to Thurston, Sheriff,” Hack said.
“I’m back,” Rhodes said. “Anything come up tonight?”
“Just the usual round of drunks and wrecks,” Hack said. “Nothing special. It’ll get worse, though, what with this rain.”
That was the one aspect of rain that Rhodes disliked. It slicked the highways and always increased the number of accidents. It was particularly bad on weekends. “Highway patrol will have its hands full, all right,” he said. “How’s Billy Joe?”
“Still nothing to say,” Lawton said. “I checked that door real good now, every time I go by.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rhodes said. “What’s been bothering me is how he got through this room without anybody seeing him.
Lawton and Hack looked at one another. They hadn’t thought of that, just as Rhodes hadn’t until driving back from Thurston. It was easy enough to imagine Billy Joe trying the door of his cell and finding it open, but it wasn’t easy to imagine him getting down from the block and out past Hack. It must have happened, but Rhodes couldn’t see how. He excused himself from not having thought of it earlier by recalling that he’d just gotten back from the candidates’ forum. Seeing Mrs. Wilkie and being confronted by Terry Wayne all in the same night would be enough to play havoc with anybody’s thought processes.