A Romantic Way to Die (19 page)

“The TV reporter’s cameraman!” Jan said.

“Great idea!”

Claudia got a Mont Blanc ballpoint and a small leather notebook from her purse. She flipped the notebook open and started writing in it. When she was done, she flipped the notebook closed and stuck it back in the purse with the pen.

“What do you think, Sheriff?” she said. “Are we on the right track?”

While they had been discussing the plot of the book, the dark cloud had been moving steadily closer. Now the wind was beginning to pick up out of the north. It was cool, and there was the smell of rain in it. Several people were looking in that direction and Lorene Wilson pointed to a flicker of lightning in the cloud.

“Who knows?” Rhodes said about the plot idea. “You two could have it all figured out. I think I’ll have some of that cobbler and ice cream. Can I get some for either of you?”

The two women still hadn’t finished their barbecue, so Rhodes got the cobbler and ice cream for himself. It was served in a paper bowl.

When he was seated at the table again, he said, “I’d like to ask you two something, if you don’t mind.”

“We knew you’d get around to it sooner or later,” Jan said. “Are we suspects?”

“Not at all,” Rhodes said. “Unless you’ve been killing people you don’t have any connection with so you’ll have a plot for your novel.”

“You’re making fun of us, aren’t you,?” Claudia said.

“No. I just have to follow up on my own theory, though, in case I’m right and you’re not.”

“Okay. I can see that, and besides, I’ve never been grilled before. It might be fun. Go ahead.”

“I don’t think this really counts as grilling. Lorene Winslow says that she was talking to the two of you when Henrietta was killed. Is that the truth?”

“I hope you don’t think we’d tell a lie,” Claudia said.

“Unless it was going to help us get away with killing people we’re not connected with,” Jan said. “In that case, you’d have to expect a lie or two.”

“But we’re not lying about Lorene,” Claudia said. “She’s a very nice woman, and we were just giving her a little advice about hair coloring.”

Both she and Jan looked over to the other table, and considered Lorene. The wind was blowing a bit harder now, and Lorene’s hair was moving with it. She patted it back into place with her hand, seemingly unaware that she was being watched and talked about.

“That shade of red she uses is all wrong for her,” Jan said. “I think she should go with something a little more brunette.”

“But anyway,” Claudia said, “we were with her all the time. She’s innocent.”

Rhodes had thought that was the case. As far as he knew, Lorene had no reason to kill Henrietta. The character of Lorraine in Henrietta’s manuscript had come off pretty well compared to most of the others, and there was nothing else between the two women as far as Rhodes knew.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “And of course that means the two of you are in the clear.”

“I thought you’d already said we weren’t suspects,” Jan reminded him.

“Only if you weren’t killing strangers to get a plot,” Rhodes said. “In that case, I’d have to take you in, lock you up, and throw away the key.”

“I think there are a couple of people at the college who might pay you to do that,” Jan said. “Do you take bribes?”

“You should know better than that,” Claudia told her. “You can tell by looking that he’s an honest man.”

Rhodes didn’t think he looked honest. He thought he looked beaten up and maybe a little bit overweight, but not particularly honest. And if he looked honest, that wouldn’t mean that he actually was. An honest man probably wouldn’t be eating cobbler and ice cream while planning not to mention his indulgence to his wife later on.

The cloud was moving faster than ever, casting a black shadow over the fields less than a mile away. The lightning was flickering in and out of the cloud, from which a hard rain had begun to fall.

Sam Blevins came out of the van and asked everyone to take the paper plates, the disposable utensils, and any other trash and put it all in two large plastic trash cans that had been placed by the van.

“And hustle it up,” Blevins said. “Before we all get wet.”

Rhodes looked at the rain moving toward them and decided he’d leave the last bite of cobbler in the bowl.

26

R
HODES WASN’T IN A GOOD MOOD AS HE DROVE THE COUNTY car back toward Clearview. He hadn’t wanted to leave Obert before talking to several other people, but when he checked with Hack, the dispatcher had said that there was another emergency.

“The ghost is back,” he said.

“There was never a ghost in the first place,” Rhodes said. “And if there was, I got rid of it.”

“Yeah, well, that’s your story. I wouldn’t try tellin’ that to the prisoners.”

Rhodes was having trouble hearing Hack because the rain was pounding very hard on the roof of the county car, producing a kind of continuous roar.

“Can’t Ruth handle things?” he asked.

“She’s got her own emergency. Soon as the rain started, an eighteen-wheeler skidded off the road out near the Wal-Mart and wound up in the bar ditch. It’s a mess out there.”

Rhodes could imagine. About the only way to create a traffic jam in Blacklin County, aside from a celebrity book-signing event, was to have an accident near Wal-Mart, which was where all the traffic was. And the rain would just make everything worse.

“Anybody hurt?” he asked.

“Not that I heard of.”

“That’s good. If Ruth is investigating, who’s directing the traffic on the highway?”

“Buddy’s doing it.”

“All right. I guess that’s covered. Where’s the ghost?”

“At Ballinger’s funeral home. Some guy drove past there and saw it. Called it in on a cell phone.”

“How does he know it was a ghost?”

“Says it must be. Weird lights flashin’ on and off all over the place.”

“Did you call Ballinger?”

“First thing. Both places, his office and the funeral home. Didn’t get an answer at the office, and I got the answering machine at the funeral home. Maybe the ghost’s got him.” Hack paused, then said, “Not that anybody seems to care, but I’d care if I was the sheriff. You never can tell what those lights might be. If it’s not a ghost, it might be somebody tryin’ to smoke a finger. Or maybe they went for a big toe this time.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rhodes said.

It took him a little longer than that because of the rain, but he got there as quickly as he could with the water sluicing across his windshield and causing his car to hydroplane unnervingly when it hit the puddles where the rain was blowing and washing over the road. The high wind shook the car, lightning crackled, and thunder crashed. If ever there was a time for a ghost to come back, this was it.

Except, as Rhodes had pointed out to Hack, there had never been a ghost in the first place, no matter what the prisoners thought.

All the houses in the neighborhood around the funeral home were dark. There were no streetlights, either, and the whole area was murky as midnight, though it was only around one-thirty in the afternoon. Probably lightning had struck a transformer, Rhodes thought.

The funeral home itself wasn’t exactly dark. Rhodes could see a faint whitish light in some of the windows, which meant that Ballinger was prepared for emergencies, as Rhodes would have expected. There was also a light in the little building that Ballinger used for an office.

When Rhodes parked the county car in back of the funeral home, he saw a flash of bright light on the inside. A few seconds passed, and then there was another flash. It didn’t look much like a ghost to Rhodes, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. There was no reason for a fluorescent lamp, a candle, or an old-fashioned coal-oil lamp to flash like that.

Rhodes got out of the car and ran for the back door of the funeral home, getting thoroughly wet and cold before he was able to get under cover again.

When he was inside, he stood there dripping water, watching for the flash. It came again, and then again. Rhodes walked down a hall, the rubber soles of his shoes squeaking on the polished hardwood floor, and went into one of the rooms where viewings were held.

There was a battery-powered fluorescent lamp sitting on a table in one corner. An open casket stood to one side. Rhodes saw the body of an old man he didn’t recognize in the casket.

A heavyset younger man stood near the casket, holding a camera. He either hadn’t heard Rhodes enter the room or didn’t care that he was there. He was muttering to himself and taking pictures of the dead man.

Rhodes cleared his throat loudly, and the man turned around.

“Sorry to bother you,” Rhodes said. “What’s going on?”

The man held up the camera and said, “I’m taking pictures, that’s what.”

“I can see that,” Rhodes said. “But why?”

“Why? You want to know why?”

“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “I do.”

“Because my mother made me, that’s why.”

The man was younger than the one in the casket, but he was no kid. Rhodes guessed that he was in his late forties.

“Your mother made you?” Rhodes said.

“That’s right. I told her I didn’t want to, but she wouldn’t let me off that easy. She put the old guilt trip on me. She said Aunt Ellie was too old to do it herself. That’s Aunt Ellie’s husband in the casket there. Uncle Roger. Who was too cheap to buy Aunt Ellie a camera, even if she were able to take pictures herself, which she isn’t. So here I am.”

“Taking pictures,” Rhodes said.

“Anything wrong with that?”

“I guess not.”

“There must not be. You should see our family albums. Half of ‘em are filled with pictures of people in caskets. There’s a picture of Uncle Earl in one of ’em. He was Aunt Ellie’s big brother. Every time Mama sees that picture, she says, ‘That’s the only picture we have of Earl.’ Me, I’d just as soon have no picture at all. How about you?”

Rhodes said he wasn’t fond of pictures of dead people.

“Well, my family sure is. And you want to know what makes it worse?”

Rhodes wasn’t sure he did, but he said, “What?”

“I have to go out after the funeral tomorrow and take pictures of the grave, that’s what. It’s not enough that our family albums are full of pictures of people in caskets. We gotta have pictures of their graves, too. And you want to guess what else?”

Rhodes said he didn’t think so.

“That’s all right. I don’t blame you. You couldn’t guess it if I gave you ten years. So I’ll just tell you. I have to go back when the headstone’s put in, and I have to get pictures of that, too. We could have a whole book devoted to just the headstones if we wanted to separate ’em out.”

The man paused and looked at Rhodes. It finally seemed to dawn on him who he was talking to.

“You’re the sheriff, right?”

Rhodes agreed that he was.

“You here to arrest me? Because I don’t think there’s any law against what I’m doing. God knows, I wish there was. Anyway, Mr. Ballinger knows I’m in here. He’s had to deal with my crazy family before.”

“I’m not here to arrest you,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that somebody reported some strange lights here, and we’ve had some other problems lately. So I had to check it out.”

“I didn’t mean to bother anybody,” the man said. “I’d have been gone before now if the lights hadn’t gone out. It’s not easy to be sure you have a good shot when you’re working half in the dark. But I’m about done. Just four or five more shots, and I’ll have both rolls finished.”

“Two rolls?” Rhodes said.

“Hard to believe, right? But Mama always wants two rolls. Twenty-four shots on a roll. No more, no less. One thing about working in the dark, though, the pictures are gonna be pretty darn spooky. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I guess Mama’ll have to decide.”

“Just for the record,” Rhodes said, “I’ll need your name and address.”

“Gil Blanton,” the man said, and gave Rhodes his address. “But, like I said, Mr. Ballinger knows I’m here. You can ask him.”

“Don’t worry,” Rhodes said. “I will.”

27

B
ALLINGER WAS SITTING AT HIS DESK, HOVERING OVER A NOTEBOOK computer, concentrating on the screen. There was a fluorescent lantern on a table, but the light from the screen was what illuminated the funeral director’s face.

“Thank God for battery-powered computers,” Ballinger said, looking up. “There are five more minutes left in this auction, and I’d have missed out completely if I’d been hooked up to electricity.”

“What if the battery plays out?” Rhodes asked.

“Don’t even mention that. Besides, I have an hour left on this one at least. And I have a spare.”

“How about the telephone line?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you have to be hooked into it?”

“I am.”

“So that’s why Hack couldn’t get you,” Rhodes said. “You should have a separate line for that computer. How are people supposed to get in touch with you?”

“They can call the other building,” Ballinger said. “There’s an answering machine there.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“Like what?”

“Like a ghost.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts. If there were, I’m pretty sure I’d have seen one by now, considering the kind of business I’m in. And I haven’t seen a single one.”

“Not everybody’s in your kind of business. Funny lights scare some people.”

“Gil Blanton,” Ballinger said, figuring out what Rhodes was talking about. “I never thought about him scaring anybody, being so used to him. I guess somebody put in a call.”

“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “And—”

Ballinger held up a hand for silence. He was staring at the screen again.

“Not now,” he said. “I have to make this final bid.”

He tapped the keys of the notebook as the light from the screen flickered on his face.

“Got it!” he said. “I figured the other bidder had put in a top bid of five bucks.”Hang on a minute, and I’ll finish up here.”

Rhodes waited patiently. Ballinger had for years haunted garage sales around Blacklin County looking for old paperback books, the kind Ballinger claimed they didn’t write anymore. Their virtues, according to Ballinger, were many: they were short, they were tough, they were well written.