Ghost of a Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

some kind of vegetable mixture. Rhodes suspected there was tofu in there somewhere. However, there was no fat, and Ivy had insisted that a sandwich made from it tasted just as good as the real thing. It didn’t to Rhodes, and the low-fat Miracle Whip didn’t, either. Put a slice of fake cheese, also made with tofu, on the sandwich, and Rhodes supposed you had a really healthy lunch, but one that he found about as tasty as the afternoon newspaper.
    For just a second or two, he thought longingly about a hot roast beef sandwich and how good it would taste. But since he couldn’t have one, he made the healthy sandwich of vegetable products, ate it, and washed it down with tapwater. As far as he knew, there was nothing fattening at all in tap water. He’d tried diet Dr Pepper, but he couldn’t get used to it. For his money, Dr Pepper without the sugar just wasn’t Dr Pepper.
    When he was done with the sandwich, he went out on the porch and dropped the wet clothes in the washer. Yancey was over on the other side of the porch eating, which he enjoyed even more than he did barking. He paid no attention at all to Rhodes, who turned on the washer, put in the soap, and told Yancey it was time to go outside for a while.
    Yancey wasn’t enthusiastic. While Rhodes held the door open, he looked out at the puddles of water with what appeared to be vast suspicion.
    “Fine,” Rhodes said. “If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”
    Yancey immediately bounded outside, yipping and running over to Speedo’s igloo. Speedo came out, and they both charged around the yard chasing one another and splashing through every puddle they could find. Some of them they splashed through twice.
    When Yancey was finished with his business, Rhodes let him back in the house. Speedo hung around expectantly, as if hoping that Rhodes would stick around for a romp. Rhodes apologized for not having the time, and left.
    Back at the jail, Rhodes had to tell Hack and Lawton all about Ty Berry, though they already knew most of the story.
    “I’ll bet it was that Faye Knape who killed him,” Hack said when Rhodes was finished.
    Faye Knape was the immediate past president of the Clearview Historical Society, a group that was often in conflict with Ty Berry’s Sons and Daughters of Texas. Both groups wanted the same things, but they couldn’t always agree on how to get them. In fact, they could hardly ever agree on anything at all other than their basic goals. Rhodes sometimes thought that the disagreements were a result of each group’s desire to get the credit for whatever gains in historical preservation were made in the county.
    Recently the two groups had at last found something to bring them together: the cemetery issue. Though none of the Historical Society members had been at the commissions’ meeting, they had written a letter to the Clearview Herald expressing their support for the Sons and Daughters’ campaign to save the cemeteries.
    There was only one problem: Faye Knape didn’t agree with the rest of her organization’s members. She thought that Ty Berry was, as she put it, “grandstanding to get attention.” She didn’t believe that the looting was as serious as he said it was, she didn’t think that the county should be wasting its time and money on extra patrols, and she even hinted that Ty Berry might be ransacking the graveyards himself, just to draw attention to the Sons and Daughters.
    “I’ll bet what happened is this,” Hack continued. “Old Faye went out there to the cemetery to confront Ty, and he stood right up to her. She wouldn’t like that. So she shot him.”
    “Don’t sound likely to me,” Lawton said. “She’s a good-sized woman. She wouldn’t have to shoot him. She could’ve just squashed him like a fly.”
    “It’s flea ,” Hack said. “Squashed him like a flea . Ever’body knows you can’t squash a fly.”
    “Can’t squash a flea, either,” Lawton said. “You ever try it? Those boogers