Free Ghost of a Chance by Bill Crider Page B

Nellie comfortable, and in factthey’d lived in tents for their last stay in the county. It had been raining then, too, as Rhodes recalled, and he thought they might have learned enough from that experience to look for accommodations that were a little bit more resistant to the elements.
    The first two houses Rhodes checked were dark and lonely. On the first, the roof had fallen into rooms and there were no windowpanes left. It might have been a comfortable home at one time, but no one would be living there again.
    The second house had a roof but no floor. It was an old wooden structure built up on stone blocks, and something—termites, maybe—had destroyed the flooring. Rhodes stood by a window and played the flashlight beam over the place where the floor had been. On the rough ground there were a couple of trash heaps that hadn’t been made recently. A rat scuttled out of one of them and ran from under the house into the weedy field behind it.
    The third house he checked had a light in the front windows. It looked like fluorescent light, though Rhodes doubted that there was any electricity running to the house.
    Out in back of the house was a ramshackle chicken house built of corrugated tin. It was plenty big enough to hold a couple of motorcycles.
    Rhodes stopped the car at the fence in front of the house and gave his light bar a short buzz. There was a brief whine from the siren, and red and blue and white light flickered over the dark exterior of the house.
    Rhodes stepped out of the car. “Hello, the house,” he called.
    There was no answer, but after a minute the door opened and someone limped out onto the front porch.
    “Hello, Rapper,” Rhodes said.
    Rhodes had no idea where Rapper had gotten his name. He’d had it long before the hip-hop nation had given the word its current meaning, and Rhodes was sure that Rapper couldn’t make a rhyme even if he were so inclined, which he most certainly never would be.
    Rapper was short, not more than five-seven in his motorcycle boots, with a beer-barrel belly and graying hair that he combed straight back from his forehead in a sort of satanic V. As Rhodes was well aware, Rapper always avoided telling the truth if he could think of a plausible lie. Or even an implausible one.
    “Good evening, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “Nice of you to come calling on us. Don’t you think so, Nellie?”
    Rhodes could see Nellie standing behind Rapper in the doorway. The origin of Nellie’s name was as much a mystery to Rhodes as Rapper’s. Nellie was thin but fit, with slicked-back hair that Rhodes thought might have had a touch of Nice ’n Easy in it, or something similar, though he couldn’t be sure. No one of Rhodes’s acquaintance had seen Nellie buying hair coloring in Wal-Mart.
    “We’re always glad to see our old friend the sheriff,” Rapper said, talking to Rhodes as much as to Nellie. “Why, if it weren’t for him, I might still be able to run a fast quarter mile on the track.” He held up his hand and showed off the fingers with the missing tips. “Or I might even still have all my fingers.”
    Nellie grinned but didn’t say anything.
    “If you’d stay out of Blacklin County, you wouldn’t get into so much trouble,” Rhodes told them. “It might be a good idea for you to leave now, before I have to arrest you for trespassing.”
    “Now, that wouldn’t be very friendly, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “And you’d be making a big mistake. Nellie and I aren’t trespassing. Right, Nellie?”
    “Not us,” Nellie said. “We’re as legal as the day is long, just the way we always are.”
    Rhodes didn’t think that either of them had more than a nodding acquaintance with legality. He said, “You mean you’re paying rent on this house?”
    “Didn’t I tell you the sheriff was a smart man, Nellie?” Rapper said. “Didn’t I tell you how sharp he was?”
    “You sure did,” Nellie said. “He’s a regular Eckstine.”
    “That’s Einstein ,” Rapper