A Romantic Way to Die (18 page)

“Because she wasn’t anybody. Just some woman from a small town in the middle of Texas. She keeps goats in her yard. And yet she’d sold a book, and you hadn’t.”

Chatterton grimaced and said, “You’re right, sort of. I’m not so much jealous as I am envious. And it gets worse.”

“How?”

“She’s got the best agent in the business for her next book.”

“She has?”

“It’s the latest hot gossip. Even better than Terry Don Coslin’s death and Henrietta’s manuscript. Jeanne Arnot is going to take Vernell as a client. She thinks she can get six figures for her next book.”

Rhodes had liked
Wild Texas Wind,
but he hadn’t thought it was
that
good. Well, he was no judge of literature. Maybe he was just envious, like Chatterton.

“Good for Vernell,” he said, to prove he wasn’t.

“If you think I’m envious,” Chatterton said, “you should talk to some of those other prepublished writers.”

“Prepublished?”

“Okay,
un
published, then.”

“I’d think they’d be happy for Vernell.”

“Oh, they are. In a way. But they all wish it could have been them.”

Rhodes couldn’t blame them. Six figures. It had a nice sound. But Chatterton was as good as Hack and Lawton at getting off the subject. Rhodes got back to it.

“About that TV set,” he said. “What were you watching?”

“That millionaire show,” Chatterton said.

“There are a lot of those these days,” Rhodes said.

“The original one.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
I like to watch it because it makes me feel superior to the people on it, at least for a little while.”

“You feel superior? How?”

“The questions are so easy and silly that anyone could answer them.”

“I can’t,” Rhodes said, not feeling superior. “Not always.”

“It’s not a matter of knowledge, at least of important things. The questions don’t test that. They’re nothing but trivia.”

“I see what you mean,” Rhodes said.

“I thought you would. But I don’t want the writers I invite here to know that I’m sneaking off to watch a show like that. Or any other show. So I kept it quiet.”

“And you don’t let them have TV sets in their rooms.”

“No. It’s a gimmick, okay? I admit it. But I didn’t kill anyone because they found out I was watching television.”

“I didn’t think so,” Rhodes said. “But Terry Don knew, didn’t he.”

“He knew, but he didn’t care. After all, he was reading a mystery novel. I don’t think he wanted anybody here to know that, either. He wanted them all to think he was reading their historical romance novels. It was like a joke between us.”

“That show was over a long time before Henrietta was killed, though,” Rhodes said. “You might’ve watched it after dinner, but it didn’t last until nearly eleven-thirty.”

Chatterton looked sheepish. He said, “There are a few other shows I watch now and then. One of them is the ten o’clock news.”

“And after that?”

“Letterman,” Chatterton said. “I know he’s juvenile, but I can’t help it. I sort of enjoy it.”

“So do the Applebys,” Rhodes said.

“Who are they?”

“They live near here,” Rhodes said.

“I haven’t met them. Anyway, that’s what I was watching. When the musical guest came on, I left. I hardly ever care for the musical guest.”

“And that’s when the screaming started?”

“It started before I got there,” Chatterton said. “I may have implied something else.”

“You may have, all right.”

“I’m sorry. But now you know the whole story.” Chatterton glanced back toward the dormitory. “Can I go now? I have to get things ready for lunch.”

“Go ahead,” Rhodes said, and Chatterton got up and walked away.

Rhodes felt sorry for Chatterton, in a way. For most of his life the man had apparently been trying to live up to the name of some doomed British poet, and he’d never succeeded. Then he’d finally accomplished something to be proud of, and it had been virtually destroyed, all in one weekend.

But somehow Rhodes couldn’t rid himself of the nagging notion that Chatterton might have had a hand in his own destruction.

25

R
HODES WAS STILL SITTING UNDER THE PECAN TREE WHEN A van drove up. The words
The Round-Up
were painted on the side in letters that appeared to be made of rope. There was a picture of a very large steer under the name, and the restaurant’s motto was printed under the steer in black letters: ABSOLUTELY NO CHICKEN, FISH, OR VEGETARIAN DISHES CAN BE FOUND ON OUR MENU! Rhodes figured it must be quite an aggravation for the owner, Sam Blevins, to provide vegetarian dishes for Serena Thayer, but he supposed there were times a man had to go against his beliefs in order to satisfy his customers. If anyone mentioned it, Blevins could always say the dishes were “off the menu.”

Blevins pulled his gray Suburban to a stop behind the van and got out. He was around six feet tall and wire thin, and Rhodes thought he looked like a walking advertisement for a high-protein diet. He was dressed in his usual outfit: a white western shirt, starched and ironed Wranglers, and low-heeled black boots.

Rhodes sat and watched as Blevins directed the unloading of the van. Before long, several long tables had been set up under the trees near the dormitory and folding chairs had been placed around them.

Rhodes wondered what the main course of the lunch would be. And he wondered if there might be an extra plate for a hungry law officer who was willing to pay his way. He strolled over to where Blevins was directing the placement of folding chairs and said hello.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Blevins said. “What happened to you? You look like you wrestled a bear and lost. Or maybe tied.”

“It wasn’t a bear,” Rhodes said. “It was a building.”

Blevins looked over at the smoke- and water-stained exterior of the main building and said, “I take it back. Looks like you won.”

“I don’t think anybody won. What’s for lunch?”

Blevins said that the menu for the day was barbecued brisket, pinto beans, coleslaw, and potato salad.

“With jalapeño peppers, onions, and pickles if you want ’em. Iced tea to drink. And then there’s cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream for dessert.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to serve potato salad?”

“Don’t worry. It’s been kept cold all the way here, and we’ll be serving it right out of the containers. You won’t have anybody dying of ptomaine.”

“That’s good to know. But I didn’t think you served vegetable dishes.”

Blevins made a face. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. But they go with the meat, and they’ll help with the special vegetable plate, which, God help me, is steamed carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli. Can you believe it? Who’d eat that kind of stuff?”

“Vegetarians,” Rhodes said.

Blevins rolled his eyes. “What planet do those people come from?”

“This one, I think,” Rhodes said.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t understand ’em, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

“Any chance that you could set an extra plate?” Rhodes said.

Blevins stared at him in mock horror.

“Of the brisket, I mean. Not the vegetables. I’ll pay.”

“Heck, Sheriff, after what you did, solvin’ that moose-head murder at my place, you can eat for free any time you want to.”

“I believe in paying my way. How much?”

Blevins didn’t haggle. “Six seventy-five.”

Rhodes got seven dollars from his billfold. That left him with twenty dollars in case he found something else to spend it on.

“I don’t have any change,” Blevins said when Rhodes handed him the money.

“The quarter’s the tip.”

Blevins grinned. “That’s about right.”

He went over to the van and helped unload the big pans of food and set them up on the tables over the cans of Sterno that would keep them warm.

Just as everything was finished, people started filing out of the dormitory. Rhodes spotted Claudia and Jan and went to ask if he could join them for lunch.

“Sure,” Claudia said. “We could probably use the protection, considering what’s been going on around here. But you don’t look up to putting up much of a fight if it came to that.”

“He might surprise you,” Jan said. “He looks pretty tough to me.”

“I’m not tough,” Rhodes said. “Just sore. Let’s get in line.”

They were served on paper plates and handed a sealed plastic bag that held plastic eating utensils, a paper napkin, and two small packets of salt and pepper. It wasn’t easy to eat barbecue on a paper plate, not if you put enough sauce on it. But Rhodes was willing to make the effort.

After they were served, they found seats at the end of one of the tables where they had an excellent view of a large part of Blacklin County. The sky was clear and blue for the most part, and they could see for miles, but there was a heavy, dark blue cloud in the north that meant a change in the weather was heading their way.

Rhodes wasn’t interested in the view or the weather, however. He was more interested in the people seated next to them and at the nearby tables. Lorene Winslow was at another table talking to a woman Rhodes didn’t know. Vernell Lindsey was sitting by Jeanne Arnot. The two of them had their heads together, and they were engaged in an intense conversation. Rhodes wondered if they were discussing the market price of Vernell’s new book.

Chatterton was sitting alone at the end of the table. It wasn’t as if people were avoiding him, Rhodes thought. He just didn’t seem interested in having any company.

Belinda Marshall, Marian Willoughby, and Serena Thayer were together, chatting amiably. Rhodes wondered if they really got along well or if they were sticking together because they were the real professionals in the group.

“This is a beautiful place,” Jan said. She took a drink of tea from a plastic glass and then set it back on the table. “It’s too bad such terrible things have been happening.”

Claudia looked at Rhodes speculatively.

“And speaking of terrible things,” she said, “I’ll bet you didn’t ask to sit with us just because we’re from out of town and looked lonely. Or am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong,” Rhodes admitted after taking a bite of the barbecue, which was fork-tender and delicious. “Where are you from, by the way?”

“I’m from Dallas,” Claudia said. “My husband works for the county, and I’m a social worker. I’ve known Jan for years. She’s from a little town to the east of Dallas, and she and her husband both work at a college there. She’s a dean. Do you think she looks like a dean?”

Rhodes said he wasn’t sure what a dean was supposed to look like.

“They’re supposed to be gnarly old men,” Jan said.

Claudia nodded. “And she’s not a bit gnarly. Anyway, we heard about this workshop, and we knew we had to come.”

“Why?” Rhodes asked.

“Because we’re trying to sell a historical romance that we collaborated on,” Claudia said.

“And because Jeanne Arnot was going to be here,” Jan said. “She’s the best agent there is. There was an article about her in
Romantic Times
not long ago. Serena Thayer’s one of the best writers in the business, too. We knew we could learn a lot from the two of them.”

“Like all about the arc of the story,” Rhodes said, recalling the session he’d asked Belinda Marshall to skip.

“Right! But we didn’t think we’d get involved in two murders and an explosion,” Claudia said.

“That’s a bonus, all right,” Jan said. “We may be able to use it all in a book.”

“You’re going to write a mystery novel next, I guess,” Rhodes said.

“We both think it would be a good idea,” Claudia said. “You know, we’ve been talking about our plot, and we might be able to help you solve the murders.”

Rhodes ate some more barbecue and some pinto beans. He tried the potato salad and the coleslaw. Everything was good, though he thought there was too much salad dressing in the potato salad and the slaw.

“All right,” he said after a while, resigning himself. “Tell me your plot.”

“The way we see it,” Jan said, “is that one of the writers did it. She’s sure she’ll get away with it because there’s no connection between her and the people she killed.”

That was an interesting idea. Here Rhodes had been spending all his time in the naïve belief that the murderer knew her (or his; Rhodes wasn’t letting Chatterton off the hook) victims, when he should have been considering the fact that somebody might be going around killing strangers.

“Why would she kill people she didn’t know?” he asked.

“Not that she didn’t know,” Claudia said. “She might know them slightly, but she wouldn’t have any connection with them. Or not much of one.”

“Okay,” Rhodes said. “But why kill them?”

“It’s obvious,” Jan said. “To get a plot for her book.”

“You mean she’d write about a workshop like this one where someone was killing people she didn’t know so she’d have a plot for a mystery novel?”

“That’s right, more or less.”

“But wouldn’t the book be a dead giveaway when it was published?”

“Of course not,” Claudia said. “She wouldn’t set the book at a workshop. She’d set it at a glamorous vacation resort or a fashionable dude ranch. Or maybe at some spectacular festival, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Or maybe the Battle of the Flowers parade in San Antonio.”

“And she wouldn’t have a sheriff as the detective,” Jan said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Rhodes said. “Who would she have doing the detecting?”

“A feisty female TV news reporter,” Claudia said. “Whose husband has recently died tragically of some terrible disease, leaving her with beautiful sad eyes and an air of mystery.”

The thought of feisty TV news reporters momentarily spoiled Rhodes’s appetite. He was dreading facing them. But if he could get everything taken care of, he wouldn’t have to. Or if he did, he wouldn’t have to face them for long.

“And the murders would have to be a lot more gruesome,” Jan said. “There wasn’t enough blood in these two.”

“Probably someone would have to die in the explosion, too,” Claudia said thoughtfully. “Or maybe just be tragically maimed for life.”