Of All Sad Words: A Dan Rhodes Mystery - Hardcover

Crider, Bill

 
9780312348106: Of All Sad Words: A Dan Rhodes Mystery
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 031234810X ISBN 13: 9780312348106
Verlag: Minotaur Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Strangers are moving into Blacklin County, and none of them is any stranger than Seepy Benton, a math teacher whom the county judge suspects is a wild-eyed radical. Benton and Max Schwartz, who has opened a music store, are among the students in the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy, which seemed like a good idea when Sheriff Dan Rhodes presented it to the county commissioners. However, when a mobile home explodes and a dead body is found, the students become the chief suspects, and the commissioners aren’t happy. To make matters worse, there’s another murder, and one of Rhodes’s old antagonists returns with his partner in crime to cause even more trouble.

As always in Blacklin County, there are plenty of minor annoyances to go along with the major ones. For one thing, there’s a problem with the county’s Web page. The commissioners blame Rhodes, who knows nothing about the Internet but is supposed to be overseeing their online presence. Then there’s the illegal alcohol being sold in a local restaurant. It was produced in a still that Rhodes discovered after the explosion of the mobile home, and he’s sure it has some connection to the murders.

It’s another fun ride with genre veteran Bill Crider, and, once again, it’s up to Sheriff Dan Rhodes to save the day before Blacklin County becomes the crime capital of Texas.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Bill Crider is chair of the English department at Alvin Community College. He is also the author of the Professor Sally Good and the Carl Burns mysteries. He lives with his wife in Alvin, Texas.


Bill Crider is chair in the English department at Alvin Community College.

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Of All Sad Words

A Dan Rhodes MysteryBy Crider, Bill

St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright © 2008 Crider, Bill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312348106
Chapter 1

When he was in high school, Sheriff Dan Rhodes had been compelled to memorize poetry. Unfortunately, very little of it had stuck with him over the years since. He had a vague recollection of a mountaineer whose fist was a knotty hammer, and he recalled that lives of great men all remind us of something or other, but that was about it. In fact, the only rhyming lines he remembered were a couple that went “of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

Rhodes, having had those words stuck in his head for a large part of his life, might even have believed them at one time. Now, however, he was convinced that they were baloney. The saddest words of all were “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Not that the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy hadn’t been a good idea in some ways. It created a lot of interest, it had informed people about the sheriff’s department and county government, and it had generated some nice publicity for the department.

But things had gotten out of hand.

“You’ve created a bunch of vigilantes is what you’ve done,” Jack Parry told Rhodes.

Parry was the county judge. He had a fringe of white hair around his head and a round pink face that was always shaved close. If he’d had a beard, a red suit, and some granny glasses, he’d have looked like Santa Claus. Sometimes he was almost as cheerful as old Santa, but this wasn’t one of those times.

He didn’t dress like Santa, either. He wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt, and a blue-and-red-striped tie. He had on some kind of fancy shaving lotion that Rhodes, being an Aqua Velva man, couldn’t identify.

“I think you’re wrong,” Rhodes told him. “We don’t have any vigilantes.”

“I’m the county judge. I’m never wrong. Well, hardly ever. I made the mistake of speaking to that academy of yours. I should have stayed home and watched the Astros game.”

“They lost,” Rhodes said.

“That was three weeks ago. How can you remember?”

“They lose a lot.”

Parry shook his head. “I know it. I don’t even know why I watch them. But even if they’d lost by ten runs, it would have been better than standing in front of those wild-eyed radicals you brought together.”

Rhodes and Parry were sitting in Parry’s chambers, located in a big corner room of the county courthouse. Rhodes also had an office in the courthouse, but his was sparsely furnished and seldom used. If the cleaning staff hadn’t visited it regularly, it would have had cobwebs hanging from the light fixture.

Parry, however, had an oak desk with a leather top, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with what Rhodes assumed were law books and commentaries, comfortable leather chairs for his visitors, and even a little refrigerator. Rhodes had never seen what was kept in the refrigerator. He sometimes wondered if there might be a Dr Pepper or two.

“You think Randy Lawless is a wild-eyed radical?” Rhodes said.

Lawless was a lawyer, probably the most prosperous one in Blacklin County. He looked more like a Republican legislator, which he had been for a couple of terms, than any wild-eyed radical Rhodes could imagine, which is why he’d offered Lawless as an example.

“Not him,” Parry said. He paused and leaned back in his chair. “He’s too busy making money on his court cases to cause any trouble for the county, unless maybe it’s for you when he defends somebody you’ve arrested. Come to think of it, though, he does drive an Infiniti. That’s pretty radical for around here.”

Rhodes could think of at least one case in the not too distant past in which Lawless had defended a client against a murder charge, but that was his job. Rhodes didn’t hold it against him.

“What about Max Schwartz?” Rhodes said.

“You’re getting warmer.”

Schwartz was one of two newcomers to the county who’d attended the academy. He’d arrived in Clearview about ten months earlier, behind the wheel of a red Chrysler convertible, with his blond wife at his side and a big dog, a black Lab, in the backseat.

Schwartz claimed that he’d left his law practice in Kentucky because of burnout and that he’d started driving, until he’d found a small town that appealed to him and had a business opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. Why he thought Clearview needed a music store was anybody’s guess, but he’d rented a building in the downtown area, such as it was, and opened up to as much fanfare as the chamber of commerce could provide. If you wanted to buy a guitar or a clarinet, Schwartz was your man. He’d already joined the Lions Club, and his wife worked with the town’s newly created amateur theatrical group, the Clearview Players.

“His convertible’s red,” Rhodes said. “He could be a Communist.”

“Now you’re just messing with me,” Parry said. “Anyway, there aren’t any more Communists since the Berlin Wall got knocked down. You know who I’m talking about.”

Rhodes knew all right. Parry’s wild-eyed radical was the other newcomer, Dr. C. P. Benton. Benton was chairman of the math department at the community college branch that had opened in temporary quarters in downtown Clearview several years ago. The enrollment had grown so much that there was now an actual campus on one of the highways outside of town. Many of the instructors had homes in or around Clearview now, instead of commuting into town for their classes, and Benton was one of them.

Though he was a member of the community, he didn’t look like anybody else in town. What hair he had was often in wild disarray, he’d been seen carrying a guitar case, and he referred to his rented house as the “Casa de Math.” He didn’t mow his lawn much, either. He even had a beard—neatly trimmed, but still a beard. Clearly, he wasn’t a man to be trusted.

“He claims he moved here because of a broken heart,” Rhodes said.

Parry nodded. “He’s mooning after some woman down in a little town called Hughes, around Houston. Sally something or other. They taught at the community college down there.”

“You know more about him than I do,” Rhodes said, but he knew a few other things. So did Parry, and Rhodes figured he’d get around to mentioning them.

Sure enough, Parry said, “He’s been coming to the commissioner’s court meetings.”

The commissioner’s court had nothing to do with the dispensing of justice, even though it was presided over by the county judge. It was the county’s governing body, and each of the county’s precincts elected a commissioner to sit on it. Among other things, it set the tax rates and saw to the building and maintenance of county roads and bridges, as well...

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Verlag
Minotaur Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
031234810X
ISBN 13 
9780312348106
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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