“Lucky for you,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah.” Harvey’s grin disappeared. “You can go on in if you want to. Just knock on the door first to let her know you’re there.”

  Rhodes went to the door, careful not to trip over any of the concrete, and tapped on the door. He opened it, went inside, and found himself in the living room. The venetian blinds were closed, and the only light came from the TV set. Elaine sat on an old couch with a coffee cup in her hand. She wasn’t wearing overalls today. She had on jeans and a white blouse.

  “Mrs. Tunstall?” Rhodes said.

  Elaine looked away from the TV. “Hey, Sheriff.”

  She didn’t seem surprised or upset to see him. Her medication must have taken effect.

  “You ever watch The Young and the Restless?” she asked.

  “I’m usually at work,” Rhodes said.

  “It’s pretty complicated if you don’t keep up with it,” Elaine said. She picked up the remote control that lay beside her on the couch and turned the TV volume down. “There’s these two families, see, the Newmans and the Abbotts, and they live in some town called Genoa City. I don’t think it’s a real town.”

  “Probably not,” Rhodes said.

  “You have a seat, Sheriff. This couch will hold both of us.”

  Rhodes sat on the couch, and Elaine continued to tell him about the soap opera, gesturing with the remote. “There’s this man, Victor Newman, who has some kind of business, and he’s been married to a lady named Nikki a few times. Seems like everybody on there’s been married to everybody else at one time or another. Jack Abbott doesn’t like Victor, and Victor doesn’t like him. I don’t much blame either one of them. They’re both pretty mean sometimes. Anyway, he has this sister named Ashley. Jack does, I mean, he’s the one that has the sister, not Victor.”

  Elaine stopped talking and looked at Rhodes. She set her coffee cup and the remote on the low table in front of the couch.

  “I guess you didn’t come to talk about a soap opera,” she said. “I’m real sorry about what happened in town yesterday. Sometimes I get upset like that, but I don’t mean to hurt anybody.”

  Rhodes wondered if she’d hurt anybody yesterday. If she had, it hadn’t been at the Beauty Shack.

  “You knew Jake Marley in high school, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I sure did. I went out with him a few times. It was a real shame he died yesterday. He’d finally come out of his shell and started to do some good in his hometown.”

  “What was he like in high school?”

  “He used to be just a normal boy, I guess you’d say. When I was going out with him, anyway. He liked the usual stuff, football, cars, things like that. That was before he got funny.” She paused and looked at the TV, then back at Rhodes. “I don’t mean funny ha-ha, you know?”

  “I know,” Rhodes said.

  “What happened after a while was, he got all quiet and didn’t talk to hardly anybody. He came to school most days, but sometimes he’d miss two or three days in a row. People said he wasn’t sick but just staying at home. He managed to graduate, but just barely. Some of us thought maybe if his name had been Smith or Jones, he might not’ve, you know?”

  “I guess that kind of thing can happen. Have you seen Jake since he’s been working on the theater in Clearview?”

  Elaine looked at the TV set. “I haven’t talked to him or anything. I doubt he remembered me.”

  “You’ve never been by the theater to look it over?”

  Elaine kept her eyes on the TV set. “I’ve driven by a time or two when I was in town. Just to see how it looked.”

  “But you didn’t see Jake?”

  “I think I saw him going inside once. I didn’t stop to be sure.”

  “Did you drive by yesterday?”

  “I don’t remember. I’m real sorry about what I did, Sheriff.” Elaine touched her hair. “I like this haircut just fine now. I hope Lonnie won’t hold what I did against me.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” Rhodes said, wondering if Elaine was telling the truth. It wouldn’t have been easy for her to climb up that ladder with an eight-pound sledgehammer hanging from the loop on her overalls, but it could be done by a woman as strong as Elaine. “Did anybody know what it was that made Jake change?”

  “Just one second, Sheriff,” Elaine said. “I want to pause this DVR thing. This is Friday’s show, and the last scene is about to come on. They always have a good last scene on Friday. I don’t want to miss it.”

  She got the remote and pushed a button. The action on the TV set froze.

  Elaine waited for a second, then set the remote back down. “I thought everybody knew what happened to Jake.”

  “It was before my time,” Rhodes said. “I never heard the story.”

  “It was his sister,” Elaine said. “She died in a car wreck.”

  “I did know about that, but I didn’t know Jake changed afterward.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like it happened in one day, you know? It was kind of slow. He just got more and more down and withdrawn till finally he was like I told you. He didn’t associate with anybody even when he did show up at school, and then after he graduated, his parents died when he was pretty young. I guess that didn’t help any. Maybe if he’d seen a doctor and gotten some meds…”

  Rhodes didn’t want to get into a discussion of Jake’s medical condition. “What was his sister like?”

  “She was a real pretty girl. Gwendolyn, that was her name, but everybody called her Gwen. Real pretty, and popular, too. She was a cheerleader one year. It was a real shame, what happened to her, that car wreck and all. People said she must’ve been drinking, but I never believed it. She wasn’t that kind of a girl. She was real smart, had a lot of boyfriends.”

  “And Jake was sweet on you.”

  Elaine smiled. “I used to be real pretty myself. I wasn’t ever a cheerleader or anything, but I went out with Jake a time or two. Did I tell you that already? For some reason he and I never hit if off, though. Harvey, now, he was really something in those days, good looker, football player, and once I started going with him, I wasn’t interested in Jake anymore. Jake might’ve been richer, but Harvey’s been real good to me, you know?”

  “I know,” Rhodes said. “You said Gwen had a lot of boyfriends. Do you remember who they were?”

  “Oh, yes. They were the popular boys in her class. They all still live here in town. You probably know them. Ron Gleason was one. Al Graham. Ed Hopkins, too. She went out with all of them, played them against each other.”

  Rhodes wasn’t a big believer in coincidences, though he knew they happened now and then, but the fact that the boys Gwen Marley had dated were the very men Jake had insisted on casting in the play Harry Harris was to write couldn’t possibly be coincidental. Something was going on there, and maybe it was connected to Jake’s murder.

  “What about Glenda Tallent?”

  “Oh, sure, I knew her. She was just as pretty as Gwen. They both ran with that same crowd, and they were good friends. Gwen and Glenda, the Two G’s. When Gwen wasn’t going with one of those boys, Glenda was.”

  “You’re sure about those names?’ Rhodes said.

  “Sure I’m sure. I wouldn’t forget a thing like that. They were all two years older than me, and that was a big difference in those days. I thought they were practically grown-ups. I thought they knew all about life and everything.” Elaine paused. “I guess I was wrong. Nobody ever figures life and everything out, do they?”

  “Not that I know of,” Rhodes said. “It’s not easy to do.”

  “Sure hasn’t been easy for me and Harvey. We did all right for a while, but things happen, you know? I got sick, and sometimes I get off my meds. When you’re young, who ever thinks something like that will come along?”

  “Nobody,” Rhodes said. He stood up. “Thanks for talking to me. I’m glad you’re doing okay, and I appreciate what you told me about Jake.”

  “I’m sure sorry he’s dead. He was funny for a long time, but he’d gotten a lot better.”

  “That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

  “It doesn’t do him any good to be better when he’s dead, though.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “It did before he died, though,” Elaine said. “For a while.”

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “I guess it did.”

  Chapter 14

  Rhodes drove back to Clearview feeling that he’d learned something important. He didn’t know exactly what it was yet, but the connections among Gwen Marley and the men Jake had insisted on casting in the play had to mean something. If Rhodes could figure out what the connections were, he might find the answer to why Jake was killed.

  Or he might not, but it was a place to start. He thought about eating lunch before he talked to any of the men he wanted to see. They all had businesses in Clearview, so they might be at lunch themselves. Rhodes figured he could afford to take the time for a little bite. He didn’t want to take too long, so he drove by the Dairy Queen and got a Jalitos Ranch Burger at the drive-through. He didn’t order any fries, which he felt relieved him of any guilt incurred by having the burger.

  He decided it would be a good idea to take the burger home to eat it. Ivy wouldn’t be there, since she took a lunch and ate at her desk, which allowed her to take off early in the afternoon. She always offered to fix Rhodes a lunch, too, but the idea of eating a sandwich with turkey baloney and wilted lettuce didn’t appeal to him. What appealed to him was the idea of having his burger with another of the Dr Peppers with real sugar.

  Yancey was thrilled to see Rhodes come in, but he was thrilled to see anybody come in. It was as if he thought that everyone who left the house would be like poor Charlie on the MTA and never return, so he was overjoyed when someone did.

  As for the cats, they were as indifferent as ever. Come, go, it didn’t matter to them as long as they had food and water in their bowls. They hardly bothered to open their eyes when Rhodes came into the kitchen. They were disturbed enough to stretch and shift positions, but it was clear that Rhodes didn’t matter to them at all.

  Rhodes set his burger on the table and checked to be sure that they did have the essentials, and then he checked to be sure that Yancey did, too. All was well, so Rhodes got a Dr Pepper from the refrigerator and sat down to eat his burger, which had deep-fried jalapeños and pepper jack cheese among its ingredients. He’d need the Dr Pepper to cool his mouth.

  It was a little difficult to eat at first because Yancey kept dancing around Rhodes’s feet, but he got tired after a couple of minutes and lay down beside the chair for a little nap. Rhodes ate his burger, had an occasional swallow of Dr Pepper, and thought about his next step.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t know anything about Gwen Marley’s death other than that she’d died in a one-car accident. It had happened nearly fifty years ago, but if there had been any serious talk about it at the time, it had all faded away, not even to be revived by Jake’s sudden return to the world. That didn’t mean nothing was suspicious about the wreck, however. It just meant that suspicions had been so few that they’d been forgotten. The sheriff’s department would have done an investigation, but records that old might be hard to find. Some of the older files were kept in the courthouse, where Rhodes had an office he seldom visited. He’d drop by there and see if he could find the reports of the accident. Then he could decide on how to proceed.

  He disposed of the paper that had wrapped the burger by taking it to the outside trash bin. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Ivy to see it, he told himself. It was just to keep the smell out of the house.

  When Rhodes went back inside, Yancey was awake and yipping as if he hoped Rhodes would stick around and give him a romp in the backyard.

  “No time for fun,” Rhodes told Yancey. “I have to go to work.”

  Yancey looked sad as Rhodes went out the door this time, even though Rhodes tried to reassure him.

  “I’ll be back,” Rhodes said. “So will Ivy. Don’t worry.”

  Yancey looked more than worried. He looked inconsolable, and Rhodes watched through the screen door as the little Pomeranian slunk off to his bed in the guest room. The cats hadn’t been disturbed by Yancey’s excitement and had slept through the whole thing. At least Rhodes didn’t have to worry that they’d miss him.

  * * *

  Rhodes walked by the Dr Pepper machine in the basement of the courthouse and looked at it with disdain. The soft drinks it held weren’t made with sugar, so he couldn’t be bothered with it.

  He slipped into his office without running into anyone and went immediately to the door that opened into a storeroom that held boxes of dusty old documents from the sheriff’s department. Everything now was stored electronically, which was fine, as long as the storage media didn’t break down. Paper might be dusty, and it might turn yellow, but it didn’t crumble to pieces for a long, long time if it was stored correctly. The courthouse was air-conditioned and sealed against the elements, so Rhodes was sure that the paper documents would be there until well after he was gone and some new sheriff was digging through them.

  Rhodes didn’t have to dig long this time. He found the box he wanted at the end of a row. It wasn’t on top of the stack, but it wasn’t on the bottom, either. It was right in the middle, so he had to move only two boxes to get to it. He flipped through the old file folders, all of them neatly fitted with typed labels, until he came to the one he wanted. When he took it out to his desk, Jennifer Loam was sitting in a chair, waiting for him.

  “The door was open,” she said, “so I made myself at home.”

  “I noticed,” Rhodes said.

  He knew the door hadn’t been open. He never left it open. It hadn’t been locked, however, and Jennifer was the kind of person who’d have tried the doorknob without even thinking about it.

  “I checked by the jail,” Jennifer said, “but you weren’t there. Hack said he didn’t know where you were. He sounded a little peeved about that.”

  Rhodes sat at his desk and laid the folder on it. He was surprised that a youngster like Jennifer would use a word like “peeved.” “Hack gets that way a lot.”

  “He said you never kept him in the loop.”

  “He says that a lot, too.”

  Jennifer leaned forward. “You never keep me in the loop, either.”

  “You’re not a member of the department.”

  “I’m a member of the press. I have an obligation to my readers to let them know what’s going on in the county. I shouldn’t have to track the sheriff down to find out what I need to know.”

  Rhodes laughed. “You’ve tracked me down often enough. You didn’t have any trouble this time.”

  Jennifer laughed, too. “I’ve found you here before. I saw the Tahoe parked in your space outside and figured you’d be here.”

  “Good work. Maybe I should make you a deputy. What did you want to know?”

  Jennifer turned serious. “The talk all over town is that Jake Marley was murdered, but I don’t put gossip on my Web site. I’d like to know the truth.”

  Rhodes was surprised that Hack hadn’t told her, but maybe she hadn’t asked him. Too, she was dating one of the deputies, Andy Shelby. However, Andy hadn’t been in on the investigation so far and might not have known anything about it. Or he’d kept his mouth shut, which Rhodes would’ve preferred.

  “It’s true that Jake’s death is being investigated,” Rhodes said. “I’m not sure that he was murdered, though. It might’ve been an accident, but we’re investigating because the circumstances are suspicious.”

  “How are they suspicious?”

  Rhodes wasn’t going into the specifics because he didn’t want to give too much away. He said, “Jake fell from a height. The question is whether somebody helped him fall. Right now, that’s about all I can tell you.”

  “I can see why Hack gets peeved at you.”

  Rhodes spread his arms and turned his palms up. “I’m telling you all I can. We’re just getting started with the investigation.”

  Jennifer looked at the file Rhodes had put on the desk. “Yet you came all the way over here. You must be working on something.”

  Rhodes put both hands palms down on the file. “It’s just something I’m checking out. It might not mean a thing.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me what it is.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “It never hurts to ask. Are you going to look at that file?”

  Rhodes looked at it, then looked back at Jennifer.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  Rhodes opened the file, which, as he’d thought it would, contained the old forms used for investigations years ago. It also had several garish black-and-white photos of the accident scene.

  “Okay,” Rhodes said. “I’ve looked at it. I can’t tell you what’s in it, though, or even why I’m looking at it. It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “It must have been going on for a long time if the file was buried over here in the courthouse.”

  “I have to warn you against unwarranted speculation,” Rhodes said.

  Jennifer stood up. “I never speculate, but sometimes I conjecture.”

  “You have to be careful about that kind of thing.”

  “I know,” Jennifer said. “I’ll see you later, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t have any doubt about that.”

  “Shall I close the door when I leave?”

  “Good idea,” Rhodes said. “You never know who might come in if it’s open.

  Jennifer laughed and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  When Jennifer was gone, Rhodes read through everything in the file folder. The report was straightforward. Gwen Marley’s car had been going too fast, missed a curve on a county road not too far from her home, and shot through a barbed-wire fence. The car had spun in a half circle, and the rear end had hit a tree. Gwen had been thrown from the car, hit her head on another tree, and died instantly.

  Hardly anyone had worn seat belts in those days, so Rhodes wasn’t surprised that Gwen had been thrown from the car. It happened often. She might have survived if her head hadn’t hit the tree, but it did, so that was the end of the story.