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.“Vegetable soup.With cornbread.”“Low fat cornbread, I guess,” Rhodes said.“As low as cornbread gets.We have to make up for that bacon cheeseburger.Not to mention the Blizzard.”“I might be late,” Rhodes said.“It won’t be the first time, will it?”There was no reproach in the words, for which Rhodes was grateful.“No,” he said.“And it won’t be the last.”“I knew what I was getting into when I married a man of action,” Ivy told him.“So I don’t mind.Much.Just be sure I get my share of the action.”“I promise.”“I’ll hold you to it.”“I hope so,” he said.One reason Rhodes didn’t get home was that Hack got a call from a stranded motorist out on the highway about halfway to Thurston.The motorist said that he’d had a flat and was changing his tire when someone stopped on the shoulder of the road behind him.The motorist thought it was a Good Samaritan, stopping to help out.“Only he didn’t help,” Hack reported straightforwardly.He had to be straightforward, since Rhodes had been listening to one side of the conversation.“He just grabbed up the guy’s spare, which was a practically new Michelin radial lyin’ there on the ground.He threw it in the back of his truck, got in, and took off.”“Did you get a description?” Rhodes asked.“For a wonder,” Hack said.“The guy that called is pretty bright.He says it was a red Isuzu, and he even got the license number.”“Run it,” Rhodes said.Hack did.“Jerry Grubbs.Well, we sure know him, don’t we?”“We sure do.He’s probably at home right now, thinking about selling the tire.”Ruth was off duty, having already put in some overtime, and Buddy, the night deputy, was on patrol.Buddy could pick up the motorist.That left it to Rhodes to see about Grubbs.Rhodes knew where Grubbs lived, since, as Hack said, they knew him.Grubbs had never worked for a living as far as Rhodes knew.He had always lived with his parents, who supported him until he was nearly thirty.Then his father died of a heart attack.His mother died of cancer a year later.Both of them had insurance, though not much, which seemed to be fine with Grubbs.He didn’t need much, and what he couldn’t afford to buy with the insurance money, he stole.He never stole much that Rhodes knew about — beer at a convenience store, a pair of jeans at Wal-Mart, a car battery at John West’s auto parts store, a package of Trojans from Billy Lee’s drug store.What Rhodes sometimes worried about was what didn’t get reported.Grubbs had a habit of picking up anything he took a fancy to, and there were bound to have been times when he got away with things.People knew about him, and they were careful when he was around, but they couldn’t watch him every single minute.The truth was that Grubbs didn’t really know better than to steal.He wasn’t exactly the most intelligent resident of the county, and he had strange ideas about property.He’d never served more than a few days in jail because he was always sorry about having taken something that wasn’t his.That is, he was sorry when things were explained to him.Sometimes it took a while for the message to get through.And when it finally did, he immediately forgot it.Grubbs lived just off an unpaved county road in the run-down house his parents had left him.He hadn’t taken care of the place, and even in the dark Rhodes could see that in a few years the area around the house would look more like a dump than a front yard.The red Isuzu looked good, though.It was the only thing that Grubbs seemed to care about.It was parked at least twenty feet from the chinaberry tree that four or five scraggly white leghorns were roosting in.Rhodes parked the county car and turned off the lights.By the time he got out, Grubbs had turned on the porch light and joined him in the yard.“Hey, Sheriff,” Grubbs said.“How ya doin’?”He was short and wiry, and he wore jeans and a cowboy hat that pushed down on his ears because it was about one size too big.Rhodes wondered where he’d picked it up.“I’m doing fine, Jerry.How are you?”“Great.Great.Been watchin’ a little TV.Sure some funny shows on these days, right?”“I wouldn’t know,” Rhodes said.He never watched TV except when some old movie was on.“Well, there are.The one about that nanny cracks me up.I love to hear her say ‘Ohhhhhh, Mr.Sheffield.’”Rhodes supposed that Grubbs was trying some kind of accent, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.“You haven’t been watching TV all night, have you?” he asked.“Whacha mean, Sheriff?”“I hear you’ve been helping out stranded motorists.”“Oh, yeah.That guy with the flat.I gave him a hand out there on the road.”“You didn’t exactly give him a hand, Jerry.You took his spare tire.”Jerry appeared to be completely amazed.“Me?”“You.”Jerry looked all around the yard.“I don’t see any tire.Do you?”“No,” Rhodes said.“Where is it?”“Where is what?”“The tire, Jerry.I know you took it.”“Think you can find it?”Rhodes couldn’t see too much of the area around the house in the dim light from the porch.Besides, he didn’t want to spend any time looking for something that Jerry could show him.“I don’t want to look for it, Jerry.Why don’t you tell me where it is?”“If you can’t find it, I get to keep it, don’t I?”“That’s not the way it works,” Rhodes said.“Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.”“That’s not exactly the way the law reads,” Rhodes said.“And you didn’t find the tire.”Jerry jammed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and looked stubborn.“Did so find it,” he said.“It was layin’ right there in the road.”“The man who owns it was about to put it on his car.”“Well, he shoulda said so.Shouldn’t have left it layin’ there where somebody could just run over it.”“He didn’t leave it lying there, Jerry.He took it out of his trunk so he could put it on his car.”“Well, it’s mine now.Finders, keepers.”“No, Jerry.It still belongs to the man who was changing the tire.Where is it?”“I’m not tellin’.If you find it, you can have it, though.That’s fair.Finders, keepers.”Rhodes knew how to be patient, but he wasn’t going to spend the night arguing with Jerry Grubbs.“If you don’t tell me where the tire is, I’m going to have to take you in to the jail, Jerry.I don’t have time to look for it tonight.”Jerry stuck his hands deeper into his back pockets.“Finders, keepers.”“You won’t change your mind?”“Finders, keepers.Losers, weepers.”“All right, then.Let’s go to the jail.”“Can I go turn off my TV?”“Let’s get you in the car,” Rhodes said.“I’ll turn off the TV for you.”“No, no!” Jerry shook his head violently and turned to the house, breaking into a run before Rhodes could grab him.“No, no!”Rhodes followed as fast as he could, stumbling on the hard, churned ground.He caught up with Jerry just inside the front door and saw at once why Jerry hadn’t wanted him to turn off the TV.The tire was sitting there in the living room, right up on the couch as if it were watching The Nanny.Jerry made a dive for it.“Finders, keepers!”“Not this time, Jerry,” Rhodes said, grabbing Grubbs’ arm.“I’ll just take that now.”Holding onto Grubbs, he walked over to the couch.“I’m going to let you go.Will you stand right there?”“I guess so,” Grubbs said.“I sure do like that tire, though.It’s a Michelin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]