Bill Crider - Too Late to Die

“I don’t know very much about ordering wine.”

“Just ask for the house wine. It’s not bad, and you can get it by the glass instead of by the bottle.”

“You’ve been there, I take it.” Rhodes was not really surprised.

“Sure. Where else is there to go if you want a good meal and a pleasant atmosphere?” Kathy picked up her pen and started looking over the top paper. “It’s very popular.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just not used to this sort of thing,” Rhodes said ruefully. “I’m too old to be taking a strange woman out to dinner.” He glanced down at his stomach and was dismayed that he couldn’t quite see his belt buckle. “I don’t know why I didn’t just go by her house and see what she wanted to say. Sometimes I just talk before I think about what I’m getting myself into.”

Kathy stood up and kissed her father on the cheek. “Don’t be silly. It’ll do you good to get away from your problems and have a nice dinner with an attractive woman.”

Rhodes had to laugh. “It almost seems as if you’ll be glad to get rid of me. You sound like you want me out of the house.”

“That’s not it at all. Just enjoy yourself and don’t worry so much.”

“I’ll try,” Rhodes said, not making any promises.

Jeoff’s was on a side street just off a main thoroughfare. It was actually a remodeled private home, with tables in the various rooms. There was a green, tree-shaded yard, which was crossed by a sidewalk. To obtain entrance, customers had to ring the doorbell, which was answered by a young waitress dressed as if she might be about to set off for school. It was all a little too cute for Rhodes’s taste, but Ivy Daniels seemed to like it.

“Look at all the plants,” she said as Rhodes held her chair for her. “They’ve really done a nice job with them.”

It was true. The room in which they had been seated looked to Rhodes like a miniature jungle. The walls were hung with baskets of green plants, and not a corner was bare of something growing. In fact, the room was so small that there was room only for the one table and all the plants. Rhodes liked the privacy, but he wasn’t overly fond of the plants.

“They’re all right,” he said. “It’s the skylight that does it.” In remodeling the house, the restaurant owners had installed a sizeable skylight in each of the dining rooms.

Rhodes walked around the table to his own seat, brushing a Boston fern with his leg. The waitress came in, and he paid her five dollars to join the ‘club.’

“What wine can I get you?” the waitress asked, after Rhodes had slipped his new identification card into his billfold.

“What are the house wines?” Rhodes asked, feeling sophisticated.

“We have a white wine and a rosé,” the waitress said. “Which would you prefer, Ivy?” Rhodes asked. They had decided on first names while driving over.

“The rosé, please,” she said.

“I’ll have the same,” Rhodes said.

The waitress left them with menus, and Rhodes glanced covertly at Ivy while choosing his meal. He had to admit that he liked what he saw: a good, strong face, not exactly pretty, but certainly handsome. Her hair was short and seemed to accent her features in just the right way, softening them slightly. Her eyes were blue, and her teeth were even and straight.

But what does it matter? Rhodes thought. I’m not really interested . “What looks good to you?” he asked.

“The small tenderloin, I think. Well done,” she added.

“Sounds good to me too. I’m glad I won’t have to watch the blood when you cut.”

I’ve got to do better than that , Rhodes thought, even if I’m not interested .

But Ivy seemed not to notice anything crude in his statement. “I’ll have the salad, not the soup, and a baked potato instead of the French fries,” she said.

“So far, so good,” Rhodes said. “I’ll have the same thing.”

The waitress came with the wine and took their orders. After she had gone, Rhodes decided that it was time to find out why Ivy Daniels had wanted to talk to him. He took a sip of the wine, which wasn’t too bad, although he didn’t really like wine, and said, “I was a little surprised to get your call. Were you that impressed with me last night?”

Ivy smiled. “It does have to do with last night,” she said, “but not necessarily with my impression of you.”

“You weren’t impressed, then?”

“Oh, I was impressed, all right, but I was more impressed with that stunt of Ralph Claymore’s. I thought it was quite unfair.”

The waitress came back in with the salads and a basket of breadsticks and crackers, along with a revolving stand holding various kinds of dressing. Ivy helped herself to the Thousand Island, as did Rhodes. Then he took a breadstick and unwrapped it. “I don’t think that what happened was entirely Claymore’s fault,” he said. “I’ve done a little checking, and I’m pretty sure that he and Terry Wayne-the guy who made the big scene-don’t know one another.”

“Oh,” Ivy said. “I was so sure that it was a setup.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a setup. I agree with you that it was. I’m just saying that I don’t think it was Claymore’s idea. I think that Wayne probably went to him with it.”

“But he went along with Wayne.”

“Well, you can’t blame him, really. It was a ready-made piece of sensation.”

“Yes, and it made the front page of this afternoon’s paper.”

Rhodes usually read the paper after eating supper, and in his rush to pick up Ivy he had forgotten all about it. “Is that so?” he said.

‘‘It’s so. The paper didn’t really take sides, but it didn’t look so good for you.”

They ate in silence for a minute. They both knew that the Clearview paper rarely took sides in any election.

Finally, after mastering a particularly large piece of lettuce, Rhodes said, “I’ll bet you didn’t call just to offer me your sympathy.”

“That’s right, I didn’t. I don’t really know how to go into this. It’s just that I didn’t like what happened, and I know something that probably you should know. But it may not be important at all, and I don’t like to think that I’m being vindictive by telling you. Besides. .”

“Hold on, hold on,”‘ Rhodes said. “The best thing to do is just to tell me. Then we’ll work on the morality of it. It’s too late to hold back now.”

“Couldn’t we just have a nice dinner and talk about something else?”

Rhodes suddenly realized how much he was enjoying talking to this woman, and he knew that he really didn’t care if she had anything of importance to tell him or not. But he said, “I think that you should go ahead and tell me. You wanted to, or you wouldn’t have called. We can have another dinner later and talk about something else at it.”

Ivy looked at him. “That would be very nice. The other dinner, I mean. I think I’d like that.” She paused and took a sip of wine. “Now. What I wanted to tell you was this. I have an aunt who lives in Thurston. She told me yesterday afternoon that Ralph Claymore has been visiting Jeanne Clinton.”

So that’s why he avoided that topic last night, Rhodes thought. He didn’t want to be tied to it in any way. “How does she know?” he said.

“Someone told her, she said.”

“Did she say who it was?”

“Yes. Someone named Bill Tomkins.”

It was Friday morning, the morning that most residents of Blacklin County looked forward to each week. But that was not the case in the sheriff’s department. Friday meant that the weekend was coming, the weekend when ordinary citizens would be getting ready to go to the lake and do a little fishing, go to the local clubs and do a little drinking, go out on the highway and blow the carbon out of their car’s engine. For some other citizens, not so ordinary, it meant a chance to sneak in a not-so-carefully guarded store or get up a friendly little game of poker in an abandoned warehouse or maybe just drive off from a convenient self-service gas station without paying.