Bill Crider - Too Late to Die

The latter types the sheriff’s department would always have with them, and to tell the truth Rhodes and his deputies didn’t even spend very much time worrying about them. They had to worry about the ordinary folks, the ones whose boats hit a snag in the lake and disappeared under the brownish water; the ones who got a little too excited when their girlfriends won a wet T-shirt contest and strangers, who had to be disciplined, looked at them too long and hard; the ones who were out endangering everyone else’s lives by zooming down the county roads at ninety miles an hour.

Thursday night, however, had been quiet; Hack had little to report when Rhodes came in. “Just a couple of drunks, and one little domestic fight. Billy Joe’s doing fine. Him and that Polish fella have hit it off right well.”

“Just how do you mean that?” Rhodes said

“I mean they don’t bother one another none. Billy Joe still ain’t talking, and the Polish fella can’t talk so any of us can understand him. Except that Bob says he ain’t Polish. He’s gonna check up on him today.”

“Well, keep me posted,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

“Thurston again?”

“That’s right. Thurston again.”

Rhodes left the office.

April was Rhodes’s favorite month, even in election years. It might have seemed a cruel one to that poet Kathy had once told Rhodes about. T. S. Eliot, that was his name. Old T. S. hadn’t been from Texas, though, to see the way the grass and wildflowers just seemed to spread all over the place almost overnight if the rains were right. It was a pleasure to drive along and look at things growing.

Unfortunately, the pleasure was marred considerably by the thoughts that kept crowding themselves into Rhodes’s mind, thoughts not connected in any way with the freshness of the season. There was Ralph Claymore, for one thing. It was beginning to seem as if everyone in Blacklin County had been slipping around to see Jeanne Clinton on the sly, even Claymore, who therefore almost certainly had to be considered a suspect in her murder.

And there was Billy Joe, with what was probably Jeanne’s blood on his shirt. Not to mention Hod Barrett, who certainly had the physical equipment to do the job, not to mention the temperament. Of course, if you wanted a motive, you couldn’t forget Elmer.

But it was Bill Tomkins who was worrying Rhodes the most right now. Tomkins hadn’t minded at all mentioning the fact that Hod Barrett was seeing Jeanne, or if he’d minded, it hadn’t taken much to get him to mention it. But he’d held back about Claymore. Why? That was the main thing Rhodes wanted to ask him. Besides, if he’d held out one bit of information, he might have held out more. What if he’d been stopping in at Elmer’s himself? He seemed to be about the only one who hadn’t been, if what Rhodes had found out about Claymore was true.

Thinking about how he’d gotten that piece of news turned Rhodes’s mind into channels of thought that were considerably more pleasant, if still somewhat puzzling and complicated. He hadn’t really thought of women at all, as women, since the death of his wife. He’d dealt with women on both sides of the law, seen them at stores and in restaurants, talked to them in the course of his re-election campaign (such as it was); but he had not until the night before thought of one of all those women-certainly not someone like Mrs. Wilkie-as being of a different sex from him. It was as if he had been neutralized in some way, had lost his sexual feelings completely.

Now he realized that those feelings hadn’t been lost. They’d just been in mourning, or storage, or hibernation, or wherever it was that such things went after the death of a wife that you’d loved long and deeply. Now, stirred by Ivy Daniels, they were back.

Rhodes wasn’t sure just what the attraction was that she held for him. She was a good-looking woman, of course. There was that. But there was more to it. There was something about her that he liked: her self-sufficiency, her competence, something like that. Anyway, he thought, it did no good to try to explain it; the feeling was there, and that was that. What he would do about it was something else again.

Last night he had taken her home and walked her to her door. There was no adolescent heavy breathing, no panting good-night kiss on the order of the latest romance novel’s description; yet both of them knew that there was something between them, a feeling that neither was quite ready to acknowledge in words but which was nevertheless obviously present.

Rhodes had followed through on his earlier hint, to which Ivy had responded so positively, and asked her to have dinner with him again. They would be going out Saturday night. He found himself wondering whether he should buy a sports jacket for the occasion. He hadn’t had much need to dress up lately.

Well, he wouldn’t worry about it yet. Maybe they could just go somewhere and get a hamburger. Ivy looked like the kind of woman who didn’t demand that you make a big impression on her. Besides, they’d already been to the fanciest restaurant in Clearview. It was all downhill from Jeoff’s.

Rhodes’s pleasant thoughts were interrupted by his arrival in Thurston. The town was clearly dying, and before long it would probably go the way of Milsby. There was only one paved street, and that was actually a farm-to-market road leading on to another little town. The only businesses left in Thurston were on the paved street-Hod Barrett’s grocery, the post office (the only new building in town), the bank, a hardware store, a tavern (“beer joint” the residents called it), another grocery store even smaller than Barrett’s. There had been other stores once, but they were now almost forgotten. A local resident had bought their buildings, torn them down, and sold the brick. On graveled streets and dirt roads leading off the paved one were the homes and churches.

Looking at one of the latter off to his right, the First United Methodist Church, a white frame structure with a black shingle roof badly in need of replacement, Rhodes happened to think of Barrett’s remark about his wife. “She goes to bed and reads her Bible. . ” That was what Hod had said. Thinking about it, Rhodes decided to pay Mrs. Barrett another call, even before he visited Bill Tomkins.

The Barrett house wasn’t like every other house in Thurston. It was what Rhodes’s mother used to call “spruce.” It was more than that; it was immaculate. Funny he hadn’t really noticed that the first time. The lawn looked as if it had been edged with a ruler. The bushes might have been trimmed by an artist; there was not a single twig above the proper level. There wasn’t even a leaf out of place, for that matter. Rhodes remembered Hod’s standard joke about buying his wife the best yard equipment money could buy. She certainly deserved it; she knew just how to use it.

As Rhodes parked his car in the drive, he noticed that Mrs. Barrett’s passion for order extended beyond her lawn. Rhodes had heard of houses that were so clean you could eat off the floor-the Barrett house was so clean that he had no doubt you could eat off the driveway. He recalled the spic-and-span room he had sat in before, the coaster he had been provided for his glass of tea. Mrs. Barrett was a woman whose desire for cleanliness and order was far out of the ordinary. He wondered just how far that passion did extend.

When she answered his knock at the door, Mrs. Barrett was wearing a plain housedress. Her hair was caught up in a sort of turban fashioned from a faded pink towel, and she held a brush in one hand.

“Oh, it’s you again, Sheriff,” she said. “I was just cleaning the light fixtures.” She gestured with the brush. “Sometimes I take them down and wash them in the bathtub, but I thought they could go for another week without that.”