Bill Crider: Too Late to Die

Elmer crushed the thin metal can, and beer spewed up and over his hands, spilling on the floor and running under the Redbook that lay nearby. “By damn, Sheriff! Don’t you dare say a thing like that about my Jeanne! She wasn’t seein’ anybody! There wasn’t nobody for her but me! Understand?”

Rhodes had gotten more of a reaction than he anticipated. “I understand, Elmer. I wasn’t trying to imply something that would make Jeanne look bad. I just thought that if she had a regular visitor, you know, we might have a starting place.”

Elmer slumped back in the platform rocker in which he sat and reached for another beer. “No visitors,” he said. “No matter what anyone else tells you. No visitors.”

Rhodes decided to drop the subject for the time being, but it was clearly something that he needed to check up on. He took a different approach. “OK, Elmer, if you say so, it must be true. No visitors. I’ll just have to think about something else. By the way, why were you so late getting home this morning?”

“Wasn’t so late. Don’t usually get here until around ten or so. Have a little breakfast, talk to the boys. You know. I was at Sally’s this morning.”

That would be easy enough for Rhodes to check. He’d already called the cable plant, and Clinton had worked his full shift. He’d have Johnny Sherman or one of the other deputies check at Sally’s to make sure Elmer had been there, too. “Well, that’s about it for now, Elmer,” he said. “I guess I’ll have some more questions later; maybe one of the boys will be by instead of me. Don’t go off anywhere so we can’t find you, hear? “

“I hear, Sheriff, I hear. You just find out who killed Jeanne. Then you let me have a few minutes with him. That’s all I’m asking.”

As Rhodes walked back onto the porch, Clinton was staring off into space with unfocused eyes and swallowing beer.

Hod Barrett’s little grocery store was caught in its usual mid-afternoon lull. There were no customers, except for two old men on the loafer’s bench, and it wasn’t likely that either of them was going to buy anything. Rhodes pulled open the left screen and walked in.

The store was much darker than most modern groceries. It was lit by three fly-specked hundred-watt bulbs that hung down from the ancient stamped-tin ceiling by twisted, fabric-covered cords. The floor was the same cement as the walk out front, stained darker from years of spills and sweepings. There were shelves along the walls to Rhodes’s left and right, and a long, two-sided shelf in the middle. To his left was the bench and the soft-drink cooler, a very old one in which the drinks sat up to their necks in icy water circulated by a small pump. To his right was the glass candy case, filled mostly with hard candy and gum. The store wasn’t air-conditioned, and chocolate tended to melt.

Hod Barrett was at the back of the store beside the meat cooler that separated his small butcher shop from the rest of his stock. He was leaning over a counter working on his accounts. About the only way he could keep any customers was to offer credit; otherwise, everyone in town would drive to the Safeway in Clearview. Beside Barrett was an old cash register that doubled as his adding machine when he worked on the accounts.

“Figuring your taxes, Hod?” Rhodes joked as he strolled to the rear of the store.

“Already done that,” Barrett replied. “Next time I ought to get a lot of money back, considering all my losses to thieves that you can’t catch.” He flipped an account book shut with a snap and stuffed it in a file.

“Does Elmer Clinton have an account in there, Hod?” Rhodes asked.

Barrett looked up. “Of course he does. Nearly everybody in town has an account with me, large or small. You can’t drive all the way to Clearview when you need a quart of milk, and if you can get credit you take it.”

“Is Elmer’s account one of the large ones or one of the small ones?”

Barrett didn’t even have to check his account books. “It’s one of the small ones. I think Elmer buys most of his groceries before he comes home after work. He has to drive over to Clearview anyway. I don’t hold it against him. What’s all that got to do with my store being robbed, anyway?”

Rhodes shrugged. “Nothing, probably. But your robbery kind of has to take second place now that Jeanne Clinton’s been killed.”

Barrett started to protest, but Rhodes went on without giving him an opening. “I guess it was Jeanne that did most of the buying here, and not Elmer.”

Barrett nodded. “That’s right. She came in every day or so for little items. Bread. Milk. Laundry powder. Never bought more than two or three items at a time. Always put them on the bill, always paid right on the first.”

“How well did you get to know Jeanne, Hod?” Rhodes inquired mildly.

Barrett shoved his account file aside roughly and started around the counter. “Now, see here, Sheriff, I’ll have you know. .”

“Now, Hod, don’t get your blood pressure all elevated,” Rhodes said. “I just thought you might be able to tell me if she had any enemies here in town, anyone that might want to do away with her. I don’t believe a single thing was stolen from that house, like there was from your store, and since you live right nearby I thought you might be able to give me a lead.”

Barrett pushed both hands down on the counter and took a deep breath, visibly getting control of himself. “OK, Sheriff, I see what you mean. I just thought. . never mind. No, I don’t know of anyone who didn’t like Jeanne. She was a nice, friendly girl.” A thought seemed to strike him. ‘‘Say, you don’t think there could be any connection between the robbery here and the killing, do you?”

“Now that’s a right interesting idea, Hod,” Rhodes said. “Can’t say as I’ve given it any real consideration, but now that you mention it, I’ll give it some thought.”

Barrett had a disgusted look on his face, which indicated his idea of the dim mental processes of the county’s law enforcement officers. If he had to give them all their ideas, he seemed to be thinking, then things were really in a mess.

“By the way, Hod,” Rhodes said, interrupting Barrett’s thoughts, “Do you think your wife might be able to tell me any more than you have about Jeanne? I mean, seeing as how you all live so close by her and all. Not more than a block away, is it? Since Miz Barrett stays home most of the day, she might have seen something more than you.”

Barrett’s stocky body didn’t move, but his Adam’s apple rose and fell several times as if he were swallowing a golf ball. His voice, when he spoke, was thin and forced. “You stay away from my wife, Sheriff,” he said. “She don’t know nothing, and she won’t have nothing to tell you.

“You seem a little tense today, Hod,” Rhodes said kindly. “I know this robbery has you on edge, and you probably aren’t thinking too straight. But you know that there’s been a murder, and it’s my job to ask questions of anybody that might have information. You understand that, don’t you?”

Barrett’s arms went limp and dangled at his sides. For the first time Rhodes noticed how long they were, way out of proportion on Barrett’s chunky body, like the arms of an ape. He must be hell to buy shirts for , Rhodes thought.

“Yeah, I understand,” Barrett said. “I just didn’t think it was necessary.”

“You never know, Hod,” Rhodes said, turning and walking to the front of the store. “You just never know.”

He glanced at the two old men as he passed by the loafer’s bench. Their ears looked like they were growing on stalks. Rhodes smiled, stopped, and handed each one of them one of his cards.