Half in Love with Artful Death (25 page)

“You got home about the usual time,” Rhodes said, “but you left Frances's early. I think you gave her the pain pills a little before the usual time, and when she went to sleep, you left. You didn't come home, though. You went somewhere else. You want to tell me about that?”

“I came home,” Ella said. “That's all.”

“You came home, all right, but first you went somewhere else. You went to Oscar Henderson's store.”

“I never.”

“I should've thought of it before,” Rhodes said, paying no attention to her denial. “You had red lines on your face, but I thought they came from crying. They didn't. They came from the stocking you had pulled over your head.”

Keen powers of observation, just like Sherlock Holmes and Monk. Ivy would be proud of him.

Ella set her coffee cup on the table and pushed it away from her. She didn't meet Rhodes's eyes.

“I don't think you can even buy stockings anymore,” she said.

“You can cut the leg out of a pair of pantyhose,” Rhodes said. “You were wearing jeans and a shirt, and you disguised your voice. Chris never considered that a woman might be robbing him, so he thought you were a man.”

“Wasn't me,” Ella said, without conviction.

“What really gave it away, though,” Rhodes said, “was the pistol. I knew Burt used to coach track, and I should've thought more about that. You know you could've been killed last night when Oscar got after you and started shooting? He thought you had a real gun, but what you had was Burt's old starter pistol. Isn't that right?”

“Starter pistol just shoots blanks,” Ella said. “Not even a real pistol.”

“That's right, but it looks enough like one to scare somebody like Chris.”

Rhodes looked around the kitchen. All that food, and Ella wasn't going to be there to eat it. Maybe she'd like to donate it to the jail to feed the prisoners.

“I know you needed money,” he said. “You couldn't even pay Abby at the Beauty Shack. It wasn't the first time. You paid her eventually, though. After you robbed Oscar's store.”

“Burt was a tightwad. He never let me have any money. You heard what Bonnie said.”

“I did. It was a shame he treated you like that.”

“He was a good man in some ways,” Ella said. She paused. “Sometimes it's hard to remember what they were, but we had food on the table. Sometimes not much of it, but we always had something. We paid all our bills on time, too, mostly. Burt's retirement wasn't all that good, and he was always looking for ways to get more money. Never found any, and he wouldn't ever let me get a job. He didn't like spending on what he called frivolous things, like my hair appointments. You ever wonder why our house is painted different colors?”

“I thought maybe Burt had an artistic side.”

“He never did, but he did paint the house himself. Couldn't afford to hire anybody. It's different colors because he couldn't afford to buy all the paint at once, and he just got what was cheapest.”

That was as good an explanation as any for the paint job, Rhodes thought. Kind of a sad one, too.

“He wouldn't let you have any money at all?”

Ella shook her head. “He said taking care of money was the man's job because he was head of the house. My mama always told me that was the way it was supposed to be. The man was the boss, so I just did what he said. I thought it was the right thing.”

“Bonnie doesn't seem to think that way,” Rhodes said.

Ella half-smiled. “Bonnie never did listen to Mama. She never did like Burt, either. Maybe I should've been more like her.”

Rhodes thought the same thing.

“You going to take me to the jail now?” Ella asked.

“That's my job,” Rhodes said.

“I guess you'll make me give Oscar his money back.”

“Yes, you'll have to do that.”

“Sure do hate to cheat Abby. She does a nice job on my hair.” Ella touched her head. “That stocking really did mess it up, though.”

“I think it looks fine.”

“You do? Really?”

“Really,” Rhodes said.

“Will I be able to go to Burt's funeral? It wouldn't be right if I wasn't there.”

“You'll be there,” Rhodes said. “I'll see to it.”

He would, too. She could go with one of the deputies as an escort. Ruth, most likely.

“You think I could call Frances Bennett?” Ella asked. “I need to let her know I can't be helping her out anymore.”

“Sure, you can do that.”

Ella stood up, went over to the phone, and made her call. Rhodes noticed that she didn't explain why she couldn't help out any longer.

When Ella hung up, she said, “I guess we might as well go, then. You going to put handcuffs on me?”

Rhodes knew that he should, but he said, “No, I don't think that's necessary.”

“I appreciate it,” Ella said, and Rhodes thought she really meant it.

*   *   *

When he'd booked Ella into the jail, Rhodes sat down to write yet another report. Hack wasn't going to stop pestering him, however.

“You never told me that you thought Ella was the robber,” he said. “You coulda told me that before you left.”

“I didn't want to jinx it,” Rhodes said.

“Jinx it? You don't believe in jinxes or haints or any of that stuff.”

“Maybe not, but it's better not to take chances. Anyway, now you know.”

“You say she confessed?”

“I don't remember saying that.”

“Well, did she?”

“More or less. She'll tell us more, I'm sure. She showed me Burt's starter pistol, and I brought that with me.”

He'd already logged it in and put it in the evidence room. If Chris could identify it, that would help things along.

“She never hurt anybody,” Hack said. “Couldn't have, not with that starter pistol. I bet she didn't even load it with blanks.”

“Probably not.”

It hadn't been loaded when she showed it to Rhodes, and it didn't appear to have been fired in years.

“You oughta just let her go,” Hack said.

“Can't do it. Have to do the job, even if things don't always work out like we want them to.”

“I know that. Just seems like a shame, considerin' the circumstances.”

“The judge and the jury will have to do that for us. Not our job.”

“I know that, too. What I think is, you oughta be doin' somethin' about Burt's murder 'stead of arrestin' his poor old widow.”

“That reminds me,” Rhodes said. “What about that paperwork Ruth was going to get for me?”

“What paperwork?”

“Burt's phone records. Did she get them?”

“Hard to get that stuff on the weekends,” Hack said. “It used to be a whole lot easier before we got all these cell phones and different carriers.”

“Sure. In the old days you could just ring up the exchange and ask for Myrt.”

“You been listenin' to Fibber McGee again,” Hack said.

He was right. Rhodes had subscribed to satellite radio, and he enjoyed listening to the channel that played old-time radio shows when he had the chance. He no longer had much access to the kind of bad old movies he enjoyed, but the radio shows were on twenty-four hours a day.

“You think the phone records would help?” Hack asked.

“Yes, mainly because they'd give me a motive. Or at least point me to something I think could be a motive.”

“You gotta know who did it before you need a motive.”

“Oh, I already know that,” Rhodes said.

 

Chapter 22

Rhodes hadn't been entirely truthful with Hack. He didn't really know who'd killed Burt Collins, not in the sense that he was a hundred percent certain, but he thought he was on the right track. He even thought he knew what the motive was, but he needed to clear that up. The phone records would've helped, but he probably wouldn't be getting those until the next day at the earliest. While he wanted to make an arrest before then, he didn't want to rush into anything. There was no rush. He didn't think the killer was going to do away with anyone else, just as he didn't think that Burt's death had been premeditated.

Hack tried to pry the name of the suspect out of Rhodes, but it didn't work. Rhodes wasn't going to spill anything prematurely.

“You'll just have to wait,” he told Hack. “You'll find out soon enough.”

“I want to know before that Jennifer Loam does,” Hack said. “It's gettin' to where the news is out on that Web site of hers before I even find out what's goin' on.”

“She's a good reporter,” Rhodes said.

“She's wormin' things out of Andy, is what she's doin'.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Rhodes said.

The phone rang, and Hack answered. He talked a couple of seconds and then said, “I'll see what he thinks. Hold on.”

Hack muted the phone and turned to Rhodes. “This here's Oscar Henderson. He says they're kickin' him out of the hospital and he needs a ride to his store. He says you're the one put him in the ambulance, so you owe him the ride back to his car.”

If Oscar was doing well enough to be discharged from the hospital, he'd probably be able to answer a few questions, so Rhodes said, “Tell him I'll see him in five minutes.”

*   *   *

Oscar was sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby when Rhodes came in. He had a bandage on his forehead and a grumpy look on his face.

“They say I have to stay in this thing until I'm out of the hospital,” Oscar said, patting the arm of the wheelchair. “I can walk just fine, but they're scared I'll fall on my butt and sue 'em for a million dollars.”

“You know that's not true,” a nurse said as she came up behind Oscar. “I'll wheel you out, and then the sheriff can be responsible for you.”

“He owes me money,” Oscar said, “so he better treat me right.”

“I don't owe you a thing,” Rhodes said. “The money's in the evidence locker at the jail.”

“My money,” Oscar said. “You got it. You owe me.”

The nurse gave Rhodes a look that said Oscar was probably crazy, and Rhodes nodded. The nurse grinned and pushed the chair outside with Rhodes trailing along behind her. Oscar complained all the way about how he was perfectly able to walk out on his own two feet, but he seemed happy enough to have Rhodes and the nurse help him out of the chair when they got to the curb. The county car was parked only inches away, and while Oscar was steady enough to get inside by himself, Rhodes kept a hand on his arm anyway, just in case. He made sure that Oscar got in the car safely and fastened his seat belt.

“I feel like a ten-year-old kid,” Oscar said.

“Must be nice,” Rhodes said. “I feel like I'm about a hundred.”

He shut the door and went around to the driver's side to get in. When he was seated and belted, Oscar said, “You really feel like you're a hundred?”

“No,” Rhodes said. He started the car and pulled away from the hospital. “I was just kidding. I don't feel like a ten-year-old kid, though. More like about twenty-seven. Old enough to have more sense than to go chasing somebody with a gun through a dark woods at night. Now that's something a ten-year-old might do.”

Oscar touched the bandage on his forehead. “I can't argue with that one.”

“I didn't think you could. Next time you get the idea to hang around your store with a loaded pistol, do me a favor. Go home. Better yet, leave the pistol at home to start with and don't try catching robbers on your own.”

“I got a license,” Oscar said.

“You have a license to carry, not to go around playing Dirty Harry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Oscar said. “It was a dumb thing to do, but I had a feeling the robber might come back to get the money he dropped. I know you can't have a deputy there all the time, so I thought I'd see what I could do.”

“What you did was get hurt,” Rhodes said, “and it could've been a lot worse. You could've shot somebody. Even a ten-year-old would have better sense than to run through the trees and fire a pistol at somebody.”

“Well, that's the thing,” Oscar said. “You got me all wrong on that. I didn't fire at anybody.”

“The pistol had been fired,” Rhodes said. “I checked.”

“I didn't say it hadn't been fired. I just don't remember being the one who fired it. I think it must've gone off when I hit my head.”

Rhodes could see how that could've happened. He decided to believe it, which would save him from having to charge Oscar with something like discharging a firearm in the city limits. It was a good thing that stupidity wasn't a crime, since Oscar wasn't the only one in town who was guilty of it. Plenty of people were. The jail wouldn't hold all the guilty parties if a law was ever passed against it. Rhodes was afraid he might even get tossed in there himself.

“I'm glad you didn't get hurt any worse than you did,” Rhodes said.

“So am I, and I'm glad I didn't hurt anybody. I wouldn't want to have that on my conscience. I hope he doesn't come back again, though. I'm tired of being robbed, and I think Chris likes it even less than I do.”

“It's not going to happen again,” Rhodes said. “We have somebody in custody.”

Oscar looked surprised. “You do?”

“We do. It wasn't a man who robbed you, by the way. It was a woman.”

“You mean I might've killed a woman?”

Rhodes didn't think it was likely that Oscar would kill anybody except by accident. The problem was that accidents happened, which is why he'd given Oscar the little lecture.

“Would killing a woman be any worse than killing a man?” Rhodes asked.

Oscar thought about it. “I guess not. Seems worse, somehow, but it's all the same. Somebody dies.”