Rhodes walked over to a sagging leather office chair behind a completely bare oak desk. He sank into the chair, leaned back, and put his feet up on the desk top, which was inlaid with scratched and scarred black leather. Probably scarred by a lot of feet propped on it rather than a lot of hard work, Rhodes thought.
He wondered briefly how Ralph Claymore would be at investigating a crime like the murder of Jeanne Clinton. Whereas Rhodes had done most of the work himself, questioning everyone who looked as if he might be involved, Claymore would probably have laid all that kind of thing off on the deputies, preferring to talk to the judge and the commissioners, clapping them on the backs and assuring them that everything was being taken care of. Claymore could be very convincing, with his confident voice and manner. Even if he never caught the killer, he’d have the commissioners believing he had, and the whole thing would blow over in a week or two. By then, everyone would have forgotten all about it. It wasn’t the first time Rhodes had wished he could have a little of Claymore in himself, but he didn’t, and that was that.
Johnny Sherman was another problem. He’d offered to resign, of course, and of course Rhodes had turned him down. One of Rhodes’s many faults was his loyalty to the men who worked for him. If he could take the heat instead of passing it along to them, he took the heat. If he could put himself in as a buffer between them and public opinion, he put himself in. He’d never been sorry in the past, but things were beginning to look different to him this time. There were a number of troubling signs, none of them big enough in themselves to call for Rhodes to change his mind about his policies, but taken together they were certainly beginning to look bothersome.
Rhodes got up from the desk and went back out into the hall. He took some change out of his pocket and headed for the Dr Pepper machine. It was the only machine in town, as far as Rhodes knew, that still held bottled drinks in returnable bottles. There was a rack beside it which held two wooden soft-drink cases partially filled with empties. He put in his change, pushed the button, and picked up his bottle. It was somehow much more satisfying to hold a cool, moisture-beaded bottle than an aluminum can. He opened the bottle and went back to his office.
It was very quiet in the old building, even for a Saturday. Rhodes thought that he might be the only person there. From his office he couldn’t hear the old men loafing around the front door. He took a drink from his Dr Pepper and sat back down in his chair.
Rhodes sat for quite a while, drinking his drink and enjoying the silence. He hardly thought about the various problems that confronted him, at least he hardly thought about them consciously. He thought about his daughter, and he thought about Ivy Daniels, both of whom were much more pleasant to contemplate than murder and assault. Finally he called Hack. There were no problems at the jail, nothing that required the immediate attention of the High Sheriff of Blacklin County.
Rhodes removed his feet from his desk and went home.
Clearview was one of the few towns of any size at all that still had no franchise hamburger stands. No MacDonald’s. No Burger King. No Wendy’s. This was just fine with Rhodes, who did not want something that you had to order by a number or by some funny name. When he went out for a hamburger, he wanted a hamburger-a bun, a meat patty, pickles, mustard, onions, and lettuce-and he wanted to order a hamburger. You could get a hamburger nearly anywhere in Clearview, but Rhodes took Ivy Daniels to the Bluebonnet Cafe because the owner was a friend of his.
“Cafe” was probably too fancy a name for the Bluebonnet, to tell the truth. It was nothing more than a ramshackle wooden building that contained one big room to eat in and a kitchen separated from the room by a high counter. There were no fancy plants, and probably none could have survived the atmosphere of the Bluebonnet, which had a high grease content. Rhodes didn’t mind that, either. A real hamburger was, by definition, a little greasy. There were a lot of old wooden tables and benches-no chairs-scattered around the room. Several men in working clothes sat at the tables drinking beer from long-necked bottles. They hadn’t bothered to remove their gimme caps.
Everyone looked up when Rhodes and Ivy Daniels entered. One man waved a hand idly, then went back to his beer. “It’s not exactly Jeoff’s, is it?” Rhodes said.
“Not exactly,” Ivy said, but she clearly didn’t care. She walked over to one of the benches. “Let’s sit here. I’ll have a hamburger all the way. Do you want to split an order of fries?”
“Sure,” Rhodes said. He was feeling slightly giddy. He’d decided to bring Ivy to the Bluebonnet as a sort of a test. He didn’t know exactly what he’d been trying to prove, but whatever it was, Ivy had passed without question. She hadn’t even asked him to get salad dressing on her hamburger. She hadn’t even asked him to cut the onions. She was almost too good to be true.
Rhodes walked over to the high counter, which came almost up to his shoulders. “Hey, Sheriff, how you doin’?” the cafe’s owner asked. Lonnie Eslick was a short man with a crew cut. If there hadn’t been a raised platform behind the counter, only his crew cut would have been visible.
“Fine, Lonnie, just fine. Give me two hamburgers all the way and an order of fries.”
“Comin’ right up, Sheriff. I’ll call you,” Eslick said. He disappeared from view as he stepped down off the platform and went back into the kitchen.
Rhodes walked back to the table and sat on the bench across from Ivy Daniels. She grinned at him. “Come here often, Sheriff?” she asked.
He smiled back. “Often enough to know this is the place with the best burgers in Clearview. You said the other night that a hamburger would be fine, so here we are. I hope you weren’t kidding.”
“I wasn’t kidding,” she assured him. “I like a good hamburger as well as anyone. To tell the truth, I’d just as soon have a good burger as that tenderloin.”
Rhodes found himself not knowing what to say next. It struck him suddenly that he was too old to be out on a date, and he felt awkward.
If Ivy sensed his feeling, it didn’t show. The brief silence didn’t seem to bother her at all. She let it lengthen for a minute, then spoke again. “How is your investigation going?” she asked. “Have you cracked the case yet?” She laughed. “Or do real lawmen really say things like ‘crack the case’?”
Rhodes laughed too. “I don’t know about ‘real lawmen,’” he said. “I do know that nobody around the sheriff’s department is likely to say anything like that. That could all change, though, if Ralph Claymore is elected. I expect he’ll require everybody to talk like they talk on television.”
The conversation went smoothly after that, with Rhodes telling Ivy about what he’d been doing and about the lack of progress. “Of course, the second killing hasn’t made it any easier,” he added.
“I’ll just bet,” Ivy said. “Nothing is ever as easy or as simple as it should be.” She then launched into some funny stories about the hazards of running for justice of the peace. There had even been a letter about her in the Clearview Herald, which Rhodes hadn’t read.
“Well, you should have read it,” Ivy told him. “It was a classic. Really, it’s hard to believe that people could believe such things, especially in 1986.”
The letter had been from a woman who objected to Ivy’s campaign. The woman felt that it was a fine thing to live in a free country, where women had the right to do as they pleased; but she thought that it was a shame that some women were pleased to run for public office. She knew that she, as a mere woman, would hate to be put in a position where she might have to make a decision that reflected unfavorably on a man, one of those creatures that God had clearly intended as her superiors. For her part, she was quite content to cook and clean for her husband, as every woman should do in the natural order of things.