Bill Crider - Too Late to Die

Rhodes scraped the bottom of the popcorn bowl, getting a few of the unpopped kernels along with the good ones. “I thought she might, at first,” he said. “Then I got another idea that I want to check out. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow and see if she’s just batty or if she has some information that I can really use.”

“Not to change the subject,” Kathy said, “but I’ve put out some steaks to thaw for supper, and there’s plenty for three. You could cook them on the grill, and we could ask Ivy Daniels to join us. I’ll bet she’d like to hear that story about the funeral.”

Rhodes was hesitant. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She’s too much of a lady to laugh about a funeral.”

“I laughed,” Kathy pointed out.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Rhodes said. “I just meant that, well, maybe we ought not to rush things with Ivy. I don’t want to seem too pushy, and. . uh. .” He couldn’t think of how to end his sentence.

“You do like her, don’t you?” his daughter asked.

“Well, of course, but. . I’m not really sure how she feels about me. After all, we’ve only seen each other a couple of times.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Kathy said. “You get out of that monkey suit and find that apron you wear when you cook outside. I’ll do the calling. I won’t make her feel obligated. I can be very tactful when I try. If she turns me down, I can always call Mrs. Wilkie. I’ll bet she could get herself over here in a New York minute.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Rhodes said.

“Don’t be too sure. Anyway, I’ll bet Ivy will not only come over, she’ll also laugh at the story about the funeral.”

“If she doesn’t laugh, will you do the dishes?”

“I always do the dishes.”

“And a good thing, too,” Rhodes said.

He was right. It was a good thing, because Ivy not only came, she laughed. But that was all right with Rhodes. He liked a woman with a sense of humor.

Rhodes didn’t even go by the jail the next morning. Sunday night was the quietest night of the week. It was almost impossible to get liquor or beer on a Sunday, so there were very few accidents or fights. Even the few burglars in the area seemed willing to take the day off. Too, he wanted to talk with Mrs. Barrett before questioning her husband. He doubted that a night in jail would do anything to soften Hod up, and if there was a chance that Mrs. Barrett could provide him with any solid information he wanted to get it.

As he pulled into the Barrett drive, he once more marveled at the way things were kept. Such neatness, while undoubtedly commendable from most standpoints, was foreign to him. He got out of the car and knocked at the door.

There was no answer. Rhodes waited about thirty seconds and knocked again. Still no answer. It was possible that Mrs. Barrett had taken some sort of medication after arriving at home. She had certainly been in a state that would seem to have called for something like that.

Rhodes knocked for a third time, much more loudly than before, at the same time calling Mrs. Barrett’s name. When he still received no response, he opened the screen and tried the door knob. It didn’t move. The door was locked.

Rhodes thought he might as well try the back door before disturbing the neighbors. He walked around the side of the house on the neatly trimmed lawn, hoping that he wasn’t displacing any of the carefully manicured blades of grass beneath his feet.

The back yard was as meticulously cared for as the front. Rhodes walked to a small screened-in porch and opened the door. Then he stepped inside. There was a wooden door leading from the porch to the kitchen. The top half of the door had a window in it, but Rhodes didn’t try to peek past its curtains. He knocked loudly and called.

No one answered, and Rhodes tried the knob. Locked. He peeked in the crack between the curtains. He could see very little, but what he could see was more than enough. He stepped back, took off his left shoe, and smashed out the window, after which he reached in and unlocked the door.

Mrs. Barrett lay in the middle of her kitchen. There was a.30-.30 rifle on the floor beside her. Most of her head was gone. There was blood and other material on the ceiling and on the walls. Even a little on the stove, and of course on the floor.

Rhodes looked around. No note was evident. He stepped carefully around the body and looked quickly through the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could spot.

There was a wall phone in the bedroom. Rhodes picked it up and began making his calls.

Once again it was afternoon when Rhodes got back to the jail. He felt that it was his job to tell Hod Barrett about his wife. In a way it was Rhodes’s fault that she was dead.

Rhodes spoke briefly to Hack, filling him in. Then he went up to Barrett’s cell. Billy Joe was nearby, making not a sound. Barrett was making enough noise for both of them.

“Goddammit, Sheriff,” he said. “How long you think you can keep me locked up like this? I may be just a dumb country storekeeper, but I know that I got as many rights as the next fella. I guess it’s time I called me a lawyer and saw about suing the whole lot of you!”

Rhodes didn’t answer. He opened Barrett’s cell, not locking the door behind him, and went to sit on the bunk.

“You tellin’ me I can go, leavin’ the door open like that?” Barrett wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

“You can go, Hod,” Rhodes said, “but first you got to listen to what I have to say. You aren’t going to like it, any more than I’m going to like saying it. Your wife’s dead.”

“Dead? What you mean, ‘dead’? She was fine yesterday.”

“She was in her kitchen, shot dead with a.30-.30. The rifle was right there on the floor by her. You have a rifle like that, Hod?” Rhodes asked.

Barrett couldn’t quite take it in. He sat beside Rhodes on the bunk. “Yeah, yeah, I got a gun like that. Winchester. Haven’t fired it in years. Keep it behind the bedroom door. In case of break-ins at the house. A man’s got a right to protect his house.”

“Of course he does,” Rhodes said. “I’d be willing to bet money that rifle’s the same one used on Bill Tomkins, though. It won’t take too long to find out.”

Barrett’s mind wasn’t working in sequence. “Dead? My wife is dead? Shot in our own house?”

“That’s right, Hod. I know how you must be feeling, and I know what you must think of me and my department. She’s dead.”

Barrett shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “This is some kind of cheap trick to get me to say something. Well, it won’t work, because I got nothin’ to say. I sure didn’t kill Bill Tomkins, but even you can’t be dumb enough to think I could kill my wife while I was locked up in your jail.”

Rhodes shook his head. “No tricks,” he said. “I wish it was a trick. She’s really dead, Hod.”

Barrett wrapped his huge hands around the edge of the mattress of the bunk and squeezed. “If she’s dead, who killed her? Answer me that one.”

“I think it was meant to look like she killed herself, Hod.”

“With my gun? She didn’t have no more idea how to use that gun than a chicken. She couldn’t even have got the safety off,” Barrett said with disgust.

“I said it was meant to look like she did it, not that I thought she did. Anybody who’d think Mrs. Barrett would mess up her kitchen just to kill herself didn’t know your wife very well,” Rhodes said. “I only met her at home the two times, but I knew her well enough to know that much.”

“We had our troubles,” Barrett said, his voice cracking slightly, “but I never thought about her bein’ dead. Good lord, Sheriff, how many more folks are goin’ to get killed around here before you put a stop to it?”