Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (2 page)

She tossed the cigarette to the gravel and ground it out under the sole of her canvas shoe. She picked up the butt and put it in the pocket of her slacks.

“I like to keep the place clean,” she said.

Rhodes nodded. “You said you had something to tell me.”

Sandra looked over at the dilapidated building across the street. The sun was just above the top of it now, and Rhodes shaded his eyes with his hand as he turned to look. There were times when he wished he wore a Western-style straw hat in the summer like nearly every other sheriff in Texas, but he'd never liked hats, and they made him uncomfortable.

“I think there's somebody over there,” Sandra said. “On the second floor. I thought about reporting it last week, but it slipped my mind. It's some kind of tramp, I'll bet. Maybe he killed Lynn. If he did, it's all my fault.”

“It's not your fault,” Rhodes said. He pulled off his gloves and stuck them in a back pocket. “Unless you killed her.”

Sandra lit another cigarette and sucked down some smoke. She let out a white plume and said, “You know me better than that, I hope, Danny.”

Rhodes could've told her that nobody ever knew anyone that well, but he didn't think it was a good idea.

“I should've reported that tramp,” Sandra continued. “I did the last time somebody was there.”

Rhodes thought back. It had been nearly three months, but he remembered the call. Buddy, one of the deputies, had checked it out. He hadn't found anyone, but he did see signs that someone had been living there: an old mattress on the floor, some empty bottles and cans. Buddy had checked on the building every day for a while after that, but whoever had been occupying the place had moved on.

Maybe he'd come back, or maybe someone else had moved in.

“I think he was there this morning,” Sandra said. “I thought I saw someone moving around up there when I got here.”

“Where was he?” Rhodes asked.

“Up there on the second floor.” Sandra pointed. “The first window on this end. He might still be there.” Sandra shivered. “I'm afraid he killed her, Danny.”

Rhodes stared up at the window she'd indicated. It was the only window along that side with all the glass panes intact. Rhodes thought he'd better take a look up there before whoever Sandra had seen took a notion to leave, never to be seen again. If he hadn't left already.

Rhodes went to the door of the beauty shop, opened it, and told Ruth what he was going to do. She nodded, too engrossed in her examination of the scene to do anything more.

Rhodes closed the door.

“You can stay here,” he told Sandra.

“You don't have to worry about me,” she said. “I'm not about to go over there. You be careful.”

“I will,” Rhodes said.

“Ivy says you aren't, not always.”

Rhodes looked at Sandra. His wife had her hair done at the Beauty Shack.

“What can I tell you?” Sandra said. “We talk about everything here. It's not gossip. Just sharing information.”

“I've heard that before,” Rhodes said.

“I'll bet. You be careful, anyway.”

“I will,” Rhodes said. “Trust me.”

“I've heard that before. It usually means things won't turn out so good.”

“They will this time,” Rhodes said. He hoped it was the truth.

Chapter 2

Rhodes crossed the street. The old building was alone on the block. Years ago there had been other things near it. A church at one time. An auto repair shop at another. Houses. Now the nearest house was a block away. The ground was mostly hard-packed dirt, though in a few spots blades of brownish green grass poked through in discouraged clumps. Old tire ruts, hardened into near-permanent trails, crisscrossed the lot. On the corner to Rhodes's right an old mesquite tree leaned toward the street, its tiny green leaves barely moving in what passed for an early morning breeze. Long green beans hung among the leaves, and Rhodes remembered a day long ago when he'd been pulling a few of those beans and accidentally rammed a mesquite thorn into the heel of his hand. He'd been wary of mesquites ever since.

The door to the hotel was in the middle of the building, or it had been. Now there was a big sheet of graffiti-covered plywood over it. Rhodes gave the edge of the plywood a pull, but it was nailed to the door frame and didn't budge. He walked along the side to the other end of the building, the part that had housed the service department of the auto dealerships. The two wide wooden doors to the service bays were pulled down and nailed shut. Rhodes tried both of them, but all he could do was wiggle them a bit in their frames.

Rhodes walked around the far corner of the building, but there was nothing at that end except a brick wall covered with more graffiti. It was easy enough to read because there was gravel all along that end of the building and no bushes grew there. Rhodes looked at the initials and slogans that had been spray-painted on the bricks.
LARRY LOVES SUZIE
. A red heart with an arrow through it.
SENIORS '
99
. BEAT THE GOATS.
The last one had nothing to do with animal cruelty unless you believed that football rivalries fell into that category.

Rhodes turned the corner and looked around the neighborhood. The Clearview city hall and post office were a couple of blocks away on his left. They were on the edge of the old downtown, and they were both well-kept buildings. A couple of cars were parked in front of the post office, and another drove by down the street. That counted as a busy morning in Clearview.

Rhodes turned to look at the side of the former car dealership. The sun brightened the bricks and graffiti, and there was a rusty fire escape attached to the wall. It led up to a cockeyed door on the second floor. Rhodes looked at the door for a couple of seconds. It had been painted at one time, but the constant exposure to the sun and weather had stripped it bare. No one had bothered to cover the half-open doorway with plywood.

Rhodes put his foot on the first step of the fire escape. It seemed solid enough, and he started to climb.

Then he thought better of it. Going up there alone could be a bad idea, and Rhodes had said he'd be careful. He might need backup. Ruth was busy, but Buddy, the other deputy on duty, should be available. Rhodes went down the two steps he'd taken and walked back to his car.

Sandra leaned against her dirty Suburban, smoking another cigarette. “You find anybody?” she asked.

“I haven't been up there yet,” Rhodes said. He opened the car door, got in, and called Hack on the radio.

“You got a murder on your hands?” Hack asked as soon as he heard Rhodes's voice.

“Could be. Send Buddy out here. I'm going to check out that old building across the street from the Beauty Shack, and I want him for backup.”

“He's headed down to Thurston to patrol.”

“How far away is he?”

“Couldn't be far. He just left. Maybe five minutes.”

“I'll wait for him,” Rhodes said.

“Did you call the ambulance yet?”

“No,” Rhodes said. “Ruth's still working the scene. I'll have her take care of it, though.”

“Don't forget to call the justice of the peace.”

The JP would have to make a declaration of death.

“She'll do that, too,” Rhodes said.

He racked the mic and got out of the car. He might as well ask Sandra a few questions while he was waiting.

“You see anybody move around up there while I was gone?” he asked.

Sandra took a deep drag on the cigarette, inhaled, and blew out smoke. She tossed it to the gravel and stepped on it. This time she didn't pick it up.

“I didn't see anything. I guess I was watching you most of the time. You still look like Will o' the Wisp Rhodes from a distance.”

In his one moment of high school athletic glory, Rhodes had run a kickoff back for a touchdown. The reporter for the local paper, long since deceased, had tagged him with the nickname that Sandra had recalled. A few plays later, Rhodes had gotten the injury that ended his season, and the Will o' the Wisp was no more, though the nickname wasn't entirely forgotten.

“The greater the distance,” Rhodes said, “the more I resemble that kid.”

The truth was that it was hard even to remember those days now. They'd been a long time ago.

“Tell me about Lynn,” he said.

Sandra looked down at the cigarette butt. She bent over and picked it up. When she straightened, she said, “I guess I know what you mean. You've probably heard the stories.”

“A few,” Rhodes said.

“People talk,” Sandra said. “When a woman's young and pretty.” She gave a rueful grin. “I guess they never talked much about me.”

Rhodes grinned, too. “Jimmy did.”

Jimmy was Sandra's husband, James Ray Wiley, whom everyone had called Jimmy and still did. He'd been on the football team with Rhodes, but he'd played in the offensive line and had been a considerably better player. He'd even made all-district his senior year, and because of that he'd had a college scholarship. A broken leg his freshman year ended his football career. He'd dropped out of college and come home to open a car repair shop, but he'd gotten cancer and closed it a couple of years previously. The cancer was in remission, but he still wasn't up to working.

“Jimmy was the only one,” Sandra said.

“I wouldn't let that worry you,” Rhodes said. “Nobody talked much about me, either.”

“Now, Danny,” Sandra said. “Don't sell yourself short. All the girls went for you in a big way.”

“Maybe for the fifteen minutes that I was a hero,” Rhodes said. “After that, it was all over. But we weren't talking about me and you.”

“I know.” Sandra shaded her eyes and looked at the building across the street. “I don't like to say anything bad about somebody who's dead.”

“She won't mind,” Rhodes said.

“Lynn didn't mind when she was alive. People talked about her even in the shop. They knew she could hear them. They wanted her to. She just laughed, and that made them mad. They never quit coming, though, most of them. One thing about us here at the Beauty Shack, we can sure cut hair.”

She pulled a cigarette pack from the pocket of her shirt and took a butane lighter from her pants.

“I know what you're thinking,” she said. She returned the pack to its place, lit the cigarette, and slipped the lighter back into her pants pocket. “I'm just nervous, that's all. Anybody would be nervous if they came in to work and found a dead person.”

Rhodes nodded. “You were going to tell me about her.”

“We all liked her.” Sandra puffed on her cigarette. “Me and Lonnie and Abby, I mean. She was funny, always joking around, and she didn't act like she was prettier than me and Abby, even if she was. Younger, too, at least younger than me.” Puff. Puff. “A lot younger.”

Rhodes knew the feeling. He often thought that everybody was younger than he was these days.

“She even joked about running around with men,” Sandra said. “Married ones, single ones, she didn't care, she said, as long as they were fun to be around. Lots of women in town wouldn't like that.”

A car drove by. The driver slowed down and looked out the window when he noticed the county cars and the sheriff standing there. It was Billy Lee, who owned a small pharmacy, on his way to work. Rhodes lifted a hand in a wave. Lee nodded and drove on. In a little while the news that something was going on at the Beauty Shack would be all over town.

“Did any of them dislike it enough to kill her?” Rhodes asked.

Sandra drew so hard on the cigarette that it burned down to her fingers. She exhaled such a cloud of smoke that Rhodes had to wave it away with his hand as she tossed the butt to the gravel and crushed it.

“I couldn't tell you that,” Sandra said. She pointed. “Is that somebody moving up there?”

Rhodes looked up at the window of the old hotel. He didn't detect any movement, but that didn't mean there hadn't been any. He looked down the street and saw a county car.

“That's Buddy coming along,” he said. “Send him over when he gets here.”

Rhodes trotted across the street and around the building. He didn't want anybody to sneak down while he wasn't watching, and he hoped they hadn't done it already. Maybe he shouldn't have called for backup, after all.

Nobody was on the fire escape, and nobody was in sight other than the drivers of a couple of cars that passed a block away. Rhodes stood at the foot of the fire escape and waited for Buddy, who hustled up in a minute or so.

“What's going down?” Buddy asked.

Buddy was short, wiry, and a bit fidgety, not to mention addicted to out-of-date clichés. He didn't like crime and criminals, and he sometimes acted as if he had a personal mission to straighten out the morality of the entire county, an attitude that led to a certain overeagerness.

“Maybe nothing,” Rhodes said. “Sandra says there might be someone upstairs.”

“I should've kept on checking the place,” Buddy said. “Those dadgum squatters come in all the time.”

“Also, somebody killed Lynn Ashton.”

Buddy's face turned red. He shook his head. Crimes upset him, and this was a bad one.

“She's over there in the Beauty Shack,” Rhodes said.

Buddy's voice was choked. “She … had a bad reputation.”

“She did, but we don't know that's why she was killed. Could've been a robbery. Could've been something else.”

“We'll find out who did it,” Buddy said, without hesitation or doubt. He pointed up the fire escape. “You want me to go up there?”

“We'll both go,” Rhodes said. “Me first.”

Buddy's fingers twitched above the butt of his revolver. “Think we'll need our sidearms?”

“Not yet,” Rhodes said, and he started up the iron steps.