A Romantic Way to Die (13 page)

There was also a round glass ashtray on the table. It had been emptied, but there were streaks of ash in the bottom.

Rhodes looked in the wastebasket, but there were no cigarette butts. There was nothing else, either. The wastebasket had been emptied, if it had ever been used at all. Rhodes ran a finger across the bottom, but there was no trace of ash. He didn’t find anything in the room or in the suitcase to indicate that Terry Don was a smoker. There was nothing in the bathroom, either, except for the shaving kit, and that contained only an electric razor, a small bottle of designer shaving lotion, a comb, a brush, a toothbrush, and a tube of extrawhitening toothpaste.

Rhodes came out of the bathroom and looked at the dresser. Sitting on top was a stack of paperback book covers. Rhodes walked over to the dresser and picked up the covers. He flipped through them and saw that they were all for historical romance novels. Every single one featured Terry Don on the cover. There was always a woman, too, but the focus was on Terry Don.

On some of the covers his hair was a bit longer than others, and it wasn’t always exactly the same color. Sometimes the color of his eyes was changed, too, but on every cover a large expanse of his chest was exposed. Sometimes he was wearing a torn shirt, sometimes the shirt was simply unbuttoned, and sometimes he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. None of the poses had much appeal for Rhodes, but he was sure they must have appealed to women. Otherwise Terry Don wouldn’t have had so much work. On the other hand, Rhodes thought, remembering what Henrietta had written, maybe he would have.

Rhodes counted the covers. There were sixteen of them, and from the information printed on the backs, Rhodes gathered that all the books were recent. Some of them hadn’t even been published yet. Terry Don might not have achieved his ambition of appearing on the cover of every historical romance novel that came out, but Rhodes thought that he must have been getting close to it, unless there were a lot more romances being printed than Rhodes thought there were.

Rhodes looked at the authors’ names. Serena Thayer was there, and so was Belinda Marshall. Rhodes wondered if Belinda had slept with Terry Don. He’d have to talk to her again.

He put the covers back on top of the dresser and opened the top drawer. There was a tidy stack of underwear, or what Rhodes supposed was underwear. He was a Jockey shorts kind of guy himself, but he liked something that pretty much covered the territory. What Terry Don had worn would barely get the job done. And it came in different colors. Rhodes had never owned a pair of shorts that wasn’t white. Terry Don had been a lot more sporty.

But not as far as his socks were concerned. There were a couple of pairs, both of them black, both of them made of thick cotton. Rhodes thought he’d seen a sock like that very recently.

He closed the dresser drawer and went back to the closet. Picking up the duffel bag, he carried it to the bed, set it down, and opened it. As he’d suspected it might, it contained Terry Don’s laundry.

It’s finally come to this,
Rhodes thought as he dumped the rumpled clothing out on the bed.
I’m literally going through somebody’s dirty laundry.

Besides some more wildly colorful underwear and a shirt, there was another pair of black socks. Or Rhodes supposed it was a pair. There was a third sock, too, identical to the others. It would be almost impossible to say which two of the socks belonged together.

Rhodes fumbled through the clothes, looking for the fourth sock. He didn’t find it, which was no surprise. He thought he knew where it was: in the evidence locker at the jail.

On his way out of the house, Rhodes couldn’t resist having a look in Chatterton’s room, as well. Chatterton hadn’t given him permission, but Rhodes wasn’t worried. He wasn’t going to do a search, just glance around.

Chatterton’s room was, if anything, even neater than Terry Don’s had been. Rhodes could have bounced a quarter on the bedspread if he’d wanted to, and if he’d had a quarter.

Rhodes wasn’t surprised. Chatterton struck him as someone who’d keep things in their places, though Terry Don hadn’t. For just a second Rhodes was ashamed of himself for stereotyping Terry Don, but he got over it very quickly. He was probably just jealous of Terry Don’s pecs, which weren’t doing Terry Don much good anymore.

There was one thing about Chatterton’s room that Rhodes hadn’t been expecting. In one corner, turned to face the bed, was a thirteen-inch color TV set sitting on a little TV stand on wheels. And there was a remote control on a nightstand by the bed. Apparently Chatterton had one rule for his guests and one for himself.

Nothing unusual in that, Rhodes thought, and let himself out of the house.

18

R
HODES WENT OVER TO THE MAIN BUILDING TO SEE IF RUTH had finished her investigation of the third floor. As he climbed the stairs, pointing the flashlight ahead of him, he heard her moving around on the floor above. The sounds were nothing like the creaking of the rafters that he’d heard earlier.

The fluorescent lantern was sitting on a paint can, and it threw long shadows on the walls. Ruth was putting something in a bag when Rhodes asked how the investigation was coming along.

“Just about done,” she said. “There wasn’t much to find, though.”

“Fill me in.”

“You can see a couple of places where somebody shuffled through the dust, but there aren’t any clear footprints. The dust is really disturbed under the window, but you and Chatterton probably had something to do with that when you were looking out earlier.”

“We were careful,” Rhodes said, knowing that was true of himself. He wasn’t so sure of Chatterton, however. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he wondered about Chatterton, who wouldn’t stay where Rhodes told him to. Could he have been deliberately trying to mess up the crime scene?

“Let’s say we didn’t mess things up,” he said. “What would you think happened?”

“I’d say there were two people up here and that one of them pushed the other one through the window. It would’ve been easy. See how low the window ledge is?”

Rhodes had already noticed. The ledge was no more than knee high. It would’ve been easy to push someone hard enough to make him lose his balance and topple backward, especially if the push came as a surprise.

“Why would anyone be up here?” Rhodes asked.

“That’s an easy one,” Ruth said. “They wanted somewhere to talk privately. This is about as private as you can get.”

Rhodes agreed. It was private, but dusty. Even as he thought about the dust, Ruth sneezed. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose.

“The dust up here is pretty bad,” she said, jamming the tissue back in her pocket. “Or haven’t you noticed?”

“I was just thinking about it, but dust doesn’t seem to bother me. What were you putting in the bag when I came up?”

“Fibers from cloth of some kind,” Ruth said. “They were on the window glass.”

She pointed to one of the jagged glass teeth still clinging to the frame.

“Right there,” she said.

“Could be from Terry Don’s shirt,” Rhodes said.

“It probably is,” Ruth agreed. “On the other hand, maybe whoever pushed him couldn’t resist having a look.”

“Right. We should be so lucky. Anything else?”

“No. I’ll come back up here tomorrow and try again when the light’s coming through the windows. You never know what might turn up.”

That was true, Rhodes thought. He was quite familiar with the idea that everyone at a crime scene left something behind and took something away. But he didn’t think anything more would turn up here than had turned up in Henrietta’s room.

“You can go on home,” he told Ruth. “I’m going to stay for a while. Maybe something will come to me.”

Which, the way things had been going, was about as likely as something turning up in the morning, he thought.

“It’s getting late,” Ruth pointed out.

Rhodes didn’t need anyone to tell him that. His eyes were burning, a sure sign that he needed some sleep. Or that the dust was bothering him more than he thought.

“Leave the lantern,” he said, handing her the flashlight. “I might need it.”

Ruth took the flashlight and said, “I have some crime-scene tape. I can put it across the doorway if you want me to.”

“Good idea,” Rhodes said, though he was sure the tape wouldn’t keep anyone out, any more that it would keep him in.

Ruth attached the tape to both sides of the doorframe, told Rhodes good night, and left. Rhodes watched the doorway as the flashlight beam gradually faded away as his deputy descended the stairs.

Rhodes spent the next few minutes holding the lantern and going over the floor near the window, but he didn’t find anything that Ruth had missed. He hadn’t really thought he would. Maybe he was turning into a pessimist.

He set the lantern back on the paint can and walked back over to the broken window to look outside. On a clear day from the top of Obert’s Hill you could look out over the countryside and see for long distances. You couldn’t see as far at night, of course, not even with the moon, but Rhodes could see over the tops of the trees behind Billy Quentin’s house and down at the Appleby place. He could see the white gravel of the country road that ran in front of their houses until it disappeared in the heavier trees farther on. He could see the still shapes of cattle in one of the pastures, and he could even see the dog pen behind Billy Quentin’s house. He couldn’t see Grover, but he saw the dark outline of a wooden doghouse, and he figured Grover was asleep inside, maybe dreaming of chasing rabbits through the pasture or barking at squirrels in the trees.

He imagined two people standing in front of the window at just about dusk. There wouldn’t be much light for them to see by, but they could see one another’s faces, look in one another’s eyes. He wondered what they’d seen there.

Rhodes walked away from the window and sat on a paint can near the doorway, thinking about all that had happened and trying to make some sense of it. He had the beginnings of an idea, but that was all. He needed more than that, not only because he wanted to find the killer but because he was going to be bombarded by the press the next day. He wouldn’t be surprised if even some of the tabloid reporters turned up. Terry Don Coslin was just the kind of character they loved to write about.

Rhodes had never had to deal with much media pressure. There had been a reporter for K-Vue, Red Rogers, who’d been a bit of a problem, but Rogers wasn’t around any longer, as Lawton had pointed out the other day. Rhodes had never been pestered much by the local paper. The Clearview
Herald
had never won any prizes for investigative reporting.

But this was going to be a very different kind of situation. Rhodes hoped he could deal with it.

Rhodes listened to the sounds that the building made. He’d become more aware of them now that he was expecting them, and the stillness of the big, empty room made it all the easier to hear them. The wind, which had been hardly noticeable earlier, was blowing out of the north now, and it was coming in through the broken window, making a noise of its own. Rhodes figured the weather would be cold by the next morning.

He forced himself to stop thinking about the weather and to concentrate on the murders. As he sat there and considered the different aspects of the case, one thing seemed clear to him: someone was lying. Maybe several someones.

That was to be expected, of course. People always lied to the law. He wasn’t entirely sure why, except in the case of the guilty. They had a pretty good reason. But why did other people lie?

In this case there were probably any number of reasons. To protect a friend, maybe, or to gain some kind of advantage over someone else. If Rhodes could figure out the reasons, maybe he could figure out who the liar was. Or the liars.

Because he was sure there was lying going on. Someone had struggled with Henrietta, and it was almost certain that not all the women had been where they claimed to have been at the time Henrietta died. One of them had been in that room with her.

Or maybe Chatterton had. He’d told Rhodes that he was checking to see if all the guests had what they needed, but Rhodes didn’t recall that anyone had backed up that story. It would have been easy enough for Chatterton, or anyone else for that matter, to have gone out the back door of the dorm and run back around to the front, mingle with the crowd, and later swear they’d been there all along.

Would anyone have seen Chatterton leaving Henrietta’s room? Rhodes wondered.

Maybe not, he thought. The room was at the end of the hallway, only a step or two away from the door to the outside. Out one door, out another, and into the darkness. And then there was that displaced window screen. Getting out without being seen would have been easy for Chatterton.

And it would have been easy for any number of others, too. Rhodes was going to start the next morning by trying to break down everyone’s alibi. He’d start with Chatterton, and then move on to the others.

He also wanted to talk to Belinda Marshall, since Terry Don had been on the cover of her book. He wondered whether they were involved, and if so, how much. If there was something going on between them, and there probably was if Rhodes wanted to believe Henrietta’s version of what Terry Don was like, then Serena might have yet another reason to become upset with Terry Don.

But that meant Rhodes would have to prove that Serena was up on the third floor with Terry Don, and in the room with Henrietta.

Rhodes sighed. It was time for him to go home and get some sleep. Maybe he’d get lucky and figure out the answer in his dreams.

Right,
he thought.
And while I’m at it, maybe I’ll dream of all the numbers in next week’s Texas Lotto game.

He picked up the lantern and started to stand. As he did, the light reflected off something near the window. Rhodes couldn’t tell what it was, but he could see that it was in a crack between two boards, which no doubt explained why Ruth Grady had missed it. She’d have had to shine the light on it just right to know it was there.