Dead, to Begin With, page 11
“I think our burglar was using the computer,” Rhodes said. “We’ll have to check for fingerprints.”
“We won’t find any except for Jake’s unless it was a pretty dumb burglar. Anybody who watches TV knows you have to wear gloves if you break into somebody’s house.”
“We have to go through the motions, though.” Rhodes looked around the room. “We might get lucky.”
“What are the odds?”
“Never ask me the odds,” Rhodes said.
“That’s not quite the right quote,” Ruth said, and Rhodes wondered if Seepy had been making her watch Star Wars movies.
“Close enough,” Rhodes said. “We need a computer expert to look at Jake’s files.”
“I know somebody,” Ruth said.
Rhodes had been afraid of that. “I have a feeling I know who you’re going to suggest.”
“Seepy’s really good with computers,” Ruth said, “He could come right now.”
“Fingerprints,” Rhodes said.
“I’ll tag and bag the mouse and keyboard. Seepy can bring his own to use. He has a few spares.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“You want me to call him?”
“Go ahead,” Rhodes said. “Tell him to bring Harry Harris along. No ghost-hunting equipment, though.”
“You think there might be ghosts here?”
“Absolutely not,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Seepy and Harry arrived soon enough, but they hadn’t entirely followed Rhodes’s instructions. Maybe Ruth hadn’t told them what he’d said. At any rate, they drove into the semicircular drive in their ghost hunters’ van that was decorated with a gaudy sign on both sides. The signs were the same, each announcing that the van was owned by Clearview Paranormal Investigations. Since Seepy Benton had received his nickname from the fact that his initials were C. P., Rhodes had a feeling that the C and the P were supposed to have a double meaning. The two sheeted ghosts that floated at either end of the name didn’t have captions, but Rhodes suspected they were Seepy and Harry in ghostly disguise, and he privately thought of them that way.
The good news was that Seepy and Harry didn’t have any ghost-hunting equipment with them, or if they did, they didn’t bring it into the house. Seepy had a wireless mouse, a wireless keyboard, and a small receiver that he plugged into the computer’s USB port. Neither he nor Harry even mentioned ghosts.
“Windows 7?” Seepy said as he sat down at the computer. “Way out of date. Windows 8 was terrible, I’ll admit, but Windows 10 isn’t bad. At least the Bluetooth is working.”
Rhodes didn’t think that “isn’t bad” was much of a recommendation. He told Seepy to stand back up.
“Why?” Seepy asked.
“I’m going to swear you and Harry in as temporary deputies. Unpaid. We want to make this investigation official.”
“Did you ever unswear me from the last time?” Seepy asked.
“I’m sure I did.”
“And I’m sure I wasn’t paid.”
“Just raise your hand. You, too, Harry.”
“I’m honored,” Harry said. “Did you know that T. S. Eliot was once made an honorary deputy of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department?”
“That’s not true,” Seepy said.
Harris had good posture, but he drew himself up even straighter. “Of course it’s true. I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. He was an honorary citizen of Dallas, too.”
“The guy who wrote that long, boring poem that nobody understands was a deputy?”
“Some of us like to think we understand the poem,” Harris said, “and it’s certainly no more boring than the binomial theorem.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Seepy said.
“He also wrote Cats,” Harry said.
“The musical?”
“The poems that were made into songs for the musical.”
“Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all,” Seepy said.
Rhodes thought the whole world was turning into Hack and Lawton, or maybe he was becoming too sensitive to silly arguments.
“I don’t need to know anything else about T. S. Eliot,” Rhodes said, “musical or otherwise.”
“Sorry,” Harris said. “Sometimes I get carried away.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” Seepy said.
“That’s enough,” Rhodes said. He swore them in and left Seepy and Ruth to the computer while he and Harry went into the library. Harry took a deep breath when he saw the books and magazines that Jake had collected.
“I’m not an expert on book values by any means,” Harry said, “but I can tell there’s some pricey stuff here.” He walked over to one shelf and pointed to the spine of a book. “This looks as if it might be a first edition of A Christmas Carol. I wouldn’t touch it without cotton gloves on my hands. It’s worth thousands. Tens of thousands.”
He looked around the library and went to a small writing desk on one side of the room near a window. There was nothing on the desk. Harry opened a drawer and took something out.
“Gloves,” he said, holding them up for Rhodes to see. “Jake was a true collector, a careful man.”
Harry took the gloves and went back to the book he’d looked at. He put on the gloves, which were a little large for him, and carefully removed the book from the shelf. Rhodes walked over to take a look.
Harry opened the book. “Published by Chapman and Hall in 1843. First edition. Amazing. I’ve never seen one before.” He shut the book and replaced it as carefully as he’d removed it. He waved a gloved hand to indicate the shelves. “The books in here are worth hundreds of thousands, I suspect. I’ve never seen a collection like it.”
“Why would someone who broke into the house pass them up?” Rhodes asked.
“You might’ve interrupted them, or maybe they didn’t know the values. Or they were looking for something else.”
“I think that’s it,” Rhodes said, “but what else could it be?”
“That’s your job,” Harry said. “I’m an English teacher, not a detective.”
“I wish Seepy had your attitude.”
“He believes he’s invaluable to your department, but then he believes he’s good at everything.”
“Tell me about it,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go see how good he is with computers.”
“He’s good,” Harry said. “He’s very good.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Rhodes said.
* * *
What Rhodes saw first was that Ruth was the one who’d found something important. She was standing by a bookshelf holding an oversized book bound in artificial leather.
“It’s a Clearview Catamount yearbook,” she told Rhodes. “Jake has three of them here from his high school years. That was a long time ago. It’s hard to think of him being young.”
It was especially hard in Jake’s case, Rhodes thought, since he’d had only minimal contact with people in Clearview since that time. Rhodes wondered what the yearbooks were doing in the room with shelves full of crime novels and other fiction.
What was it that Ivy had said that morning? Maybe he knew them a long time ago.
“Let me have a look at that,” Rhodes said, and Ruth handed him the yearbook. It was one from Jake’s sophomore year, and Jake looked even younger than a sophomore. None of the people Rhodes was looking for were there, however. He flipped to the juniors. Still nobody, but he found them in the seniors: Ed Hopkins, Glenda Tallent, Al Graham, and Ron Gleason. Rhodes didn’t know what high school was like when Jake had attended, but in Rhodes’s day, the seniors hadn’t hung out with the sophomores. Maybe it had been different when Jake was in school. It was at least a connection.
Rhodes was about to hand the book back to Ruth when a picture of a girl in Jake’s class caught his eye. Elaine Garrett. She was a lot older now, and her hair wasn’t cut in a classic bob, but Rhodes recognized her. He’d seen her earlier that morning. She was married now, and her last name was Tunstall. She’d showed up later than expected at the Beauty Shack, and she’d been carrying an eight-pound sledgehammer. Rhodes flipped the page, and there was Harvey Tunstall, looking bored.
Rhodes closed the yearbook and gave it to Ruth. “Keep this one and the others as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Ruth asked, taking the book from him.
“I don’t know yet,” Rhodes said. “Let’s see what Seepy’s found for us.”
“Nothing,” Seepy said.
“You mean there’s nothing on the computer?”
“No, I mean there’s nothing here that will help you. He wasn’t trying to hide anything. His e-mail account opens right up without a password, and it’s mostly book orders from online dealers, rare books and new ones. He ordered a lot of books.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Rhodes said. “What else?”
“There are e-mails to Harry about the play, and e-mails to other people about the restoration of the theater. Nothing that looks like a clue to a murder.”
“What about other things? Pictures, documents, that kind of stuff?”
“He didn’t save pictures, and he wasn’t a writer,” Seepy said. “His browser history has been erased, but he has it set to erase every so often. It probably erased automatically. His home page has a newsfeed on it, and that’s about all. His bookmarks are mostly for book dealers. He doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account.”
Rhodes would’ve been very surprised if Jake had been on Facebook or Twitter or even known what they were. “Surely there’s something else.”
“Not much,” Seepy said, “and don’t call me Shirley.”
“I’ve seen that movie,” Harry said. “It’s hilarious.”
“This isn’t the time for movie reviews,” Rhodes said. “We need to find something on that computer.”
“What?” Seepy said. “I can’t find it if it’s not here. Maybe if I had my EMF meter.”
“Never mind that,” Rhodes said. “There aren’t any ghosts here. What else is on there?”
“Nothing, really. He does have a couple of bookmarks for a newspaper archive, and he’s looked through it occasionally.”
“Looked for what?”
“The archive saves only the most recent searches. They’re from the time the theater opened and then when it was a theater. He was researching it for the restoration, I think.”
That was no help at all. “Can you tell if any files have been deleted recently?” Rhodes asked.
“I can check the Recycle Bin.” Seepy moved the cursor and clicked the mouse button. “Don’t see anything. Of course the Recycle Bin could’ve been emptied.”
“Maybe whoever broke in was looking for something and didn’t find it,” Ruth said. “Either on the computer or in the house.”
“That could be it,” Rhodes said. “Or whatever was taken was so small that I didn’t see the person carrying it, and it’s not something we’d be likely to notice being missing. All right. We’ve done what we can for today. Ruth, I’ll take the yearbooks with me and drop them off at the jail before I start interviewing people. You seal the place after we leave.”
“What about me and Harry?” Seepy asked.
“You’re now unsworn,” Rhodes said.
“And unpaid.”
“You knew that when you signed up.”
“How about you just let me and Harry hang around for a while. Check the EMF meter and a few things like that. This old house has quite a history.”
“No ghost hunting,” Rhodes said. “We’re leaving.”
“Fine,” Seepy said. “We’ll go to the theater, then.”
Rhodes wondered who was in charge of the theater now. Maybe no one was. Things were going to be disorganized for a while with Jake not being around to oversee them.
“Do you have your key, Harry?” Seepy asked.
Harry dug around in his pocket and brought out the key, holding it up for all to see.
“Good,” Seepy said. “You want to come with us and make sure we don’t break anything, Ruth?”
Ruth looked at Rhodes as if to say she wasn’t responsible for Seepy. “Can’t,” she said. “I’m on duty, and I have an assignment.”
“You’ll be sorry if we find a ghost,” Seepy said.
“I don’t think I have a lot to worry about,” Ruth said, and Rhodes smiled. Seepy wasn’t going to put anything over on Ruth.
“You can’t go to the theater now, even if you have a key,” Rhodes said. “It’s a crime scene. No trespassing.”
“You sure do know how to spoil a guy’s fun,” Seepy said.
“All part of the job,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 13
The town of Obert, what was left of it, which wasn’t much, sat on top of Obert’s Hill. Down the hill and a couple of miles along the highway was the town of Wesley, where Harvey and Elaine Tunstall lived.
Driving down the hill from Obert, Rhodes looked out at the trees that covered the hillside. At the bottom of the hill the country flattened out. Cotton fields had once lined both sides of the road, but now the fields were barren or, like the hill, overgrown with trees. Every mile or so a house stood near the road. The people in the houses didn’t have to worry about noisy neighbors. Or any kind of neighbors.
Within a few minutes, Rhodes reached Wesley, which had somehow managed to remain something that resembled a town, even though the population was under a thousand. Wesley still had a school and a post office. It even had a bank. That was about all it had, however. The buildings in what had been the downtown were in worse shape than the ones in Clearview. Several were just brick shells with grass and trees growing in the middle of them. One had collapsed, and bricks lay in heaps along what was left of the walls. A couple had false fronts that had been stuck on by hopeful entrepreneurs who’d lost their hope soon afterward. Now the windows were soaped or broken, and the buildings were vacant. There had been a cotton gin once, but cotton was grown on corporate farms now in the high plains and the Rio Grande valley, not in Blacklin County. Every little town had had a cotton gin once, but they had closed long ago. Hardly a trace of any of them was left.
All over the state little towns that had thrived for so long were dying or dead. The ones that were hanging on, like Wesley, would be gone soon, and even the somewhat larger ones like Clearview probably wouldn’t be around when the grandchildren of the people in the elementary school there now were grown.
It made Rhodes a little sad to think about it, and he was glad he wouldn’t be around to see the end, when nobody remembered what it was like to shop in a little mom-and-pop grocery instead of Walmart or to have lunch in a little local restaurant instead of a glass-and-plastic national chain establishment. Or go to a movie in a little local theater like Clearview’s old opera house.
That last thought reminded Rhodes of why he was in Wesley, and he turned off the highway onto a street paved with cracked asphalt. He drove a block to the Tunstall house. It was old and small but not run-down. It had belonged to Harvey’s grandparents, and Harvey and Elaine had moved there years ago when the grandparents had died. Harvey was handy with tools, and he kept the place in good shape. He was in the front yard, working on his sidewalk.
Rhodes parked the Tahoe in the street and got out as Harvey picked up a piece of concrete and carried it to a flatbed trailer hitched to his pickup. The pickup was parked facing the street, and with the attached trailer it took up most of the driveway.
Harvey dropped the piece of concrete on the trailer, and it fell with a thud beside several other chunks, shaking the trailer a little.
“Looks like hard work,” Rhodes said, walking across the lawn, which looked nothing at all like the one at Jake’s house. The grass was mostly dead, and dirt showed through in several places.
“Sure is,” Harvey said.
He was a large man, with wide shoulders and a big stomach. He had on a pair of overalls like the ones Elaine had been wearing the previous day and a long-sleeved shirt that had probably been dark blue once but was now faded to a lighter shade. He wore a pair of leather gloves but no hat, and Rhodes noted that his hair, while mostly gray, was still thick and wavy, with no thin spot in the back.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” Harvey asked. “I got a feeling you didn’t come to help me bust up my sidewalk.”
“Looks like you’re about finished,” Rhodes said, glancing at the broken pieces of concrete where the sidewalk had been. A sledgehammer leaned against the side of the house, and Rhodes was sure it was the one Elaine had been carrying when she attacked the Beauty Shack.
“Just about,” Harvey said. “Wanna help me pour a new one? I got another pair of gloves in the garage.”
Rhodes grinned. “I’d like to help, but I came to talk to Elaine if she’s feeling up to it today.”
“She’s okay,” Harvey said. “She’s in the house, watching some soap opera she recorded yesterday. She always records ’em, just in case she’s not here. She was here yesterday, but she didn’t feel like watching it. Too much excitement early in the morning.”
Rhodes nodded. “She didn’t do much damage at the Beauty Shack. You need to be sure she takes her medication, though.”
“I try. She’s pretty sneaky. She promises to do better, and she does for a while.”
“Maybe she’ll stick to the regimen this time.”
“I hope so. What you want to talk to her about? Is she in trouble again?”
“Not as far as I know. This isn’t about her. She went to school with Jake Marley, and I wanted to ask about him.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but Rhodes didn’t want to go into his reasons with Harvey.
“Never liked Jake much myself,” Harvey said. “Elaine, though, she dated him for a while.” He grinned and got a faraway look in his eyes. “Turned out she liked me better.”
Rhodes was never surprised to learn that high school experiences still mattered to people as they got older. Nobody ever seemed to forget certain things. People who’d known Rhodes in his high school years still sometimes called him Will o’ the Wisp because of a story that had been in the local paper about a high school football game. He figured that if he lived to be a hundred, they’d still be doing it.
