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herself?” he asked.
    “She’s in Waco, going to beauty school,” Clyde said. “Says she’s gonna make thirty thousand dollars a year, just cuttin’ hair. You believe that, Sheriff?”
    Rhodes said he wasn’t sure how much money a person could make by cutting hair.
    “Says the tips are real good if you got a good clientele,” Clyde went on. “That’s the word she used. Clientele. I don’t think she’s planning on coming back to Obert to work. There’s not a whole lot of clientele here.”
    “What about you boys?” Rhodes asked. “Still working at Wal-Mart?”
    “Yes, sir,” Clyde said.
    “And doin’ real well, too,” his mother said. “The both of them. Clyde’s going to be the manager of the automotive center, and Claude’s been put in charge of sporting goods.”
    Rhodes said that he was glad to hear it. He’d gotten them the jobs they’d started out in, and he was pleased that they’d made the most of their chance. He’d been afraid they might turn out like their father.
    “I guess you didn’t come here to talk about my family, though,” Mrs. Appleby said.
    “No,” Rhodes admitted. “I came about your phone call.”
    “The naked woman,” Claude said, grinning broadly.
    “That’s right. Who saw her?”
    “Well, it wasn’t me,” Claude said.
    “Me, neither,” Clyde said. “I wish it had been, though.”
    “You hush your mouth, Clyde Appleby,” his mother said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
    Clyde grinned at Claude, who grinned back. As far as Rhodes could tell, neither one of them was the least bit ashamed.
    “What time did you see this woman?” Rhodes asked Mrs. Applebly.
    “It wasn’t long after David Letterman was over,” she said, turning her attention back to him. “Claude and Clyde like to watch that Top Ten list of his, and he’s got to where sometimes he doesn’t give it out until the show’s practically over. That’s the way it was tonight, which is why I was up so late.”
    Rhodes knew that Mrs. Appleby hadn’t seen the naked woman on Letterman’s show, though he supposed it was possible that she had. Rhodes seemed to remember something about an incident with Drew Barrymore.
    “Ma went outside to get some air,” Claude said. “She does that every night before she goes to bed unless the weather’s bad. That’s when she saw that woman.”
    “Makes me wish I’d gone for some air, myself,” Clyde said.
    “You hush,” Mrs. Appleby said. “You know better than to talk like that.”
    “Shoot,” Clyde said. “You should hear how they talk down at the Wal-Mart. And I mean the customers, not just the people who work there.”
    “Never mind,” Rhodes said. This was getting as bad as trying to get information from Hack and Lawton. “Can you show me where you saw her, Mrs. Appleby?”
    “Come on outside and I can,” she said, getting out of the rocker.
    Rhodes followed her out through the kitchen. She pushed open a door, and went down some concrete steps into the back yard. Rhodes stood beside her, and she pointed toward the back of the yard where several tall trees grew. Over the tops of the trees, Rhodes could see the main building of the college on top of the hill, looking even more like a castle from a Universal horror movie than ever.
    “I was standing right here,” Mrs. Appleby said. “And she was right back there.”
    The moon was going down, and it was quite dark back in the trees, which were about fifty yards away. Rhodes wondered how well Mrs. Appleby could have seen anyone.
    “Are you sure it was a woman?” Rhodes asked.
    Mrs. Appleby half turned her head to look at him.
    “There’s ways to tell, Sheriff,” she said.
    “Right,” Rhodes said. “But the light’s not good, and—”
    “It was better then. The moon was up more, and I could see all right. It’s against the law to run naked right out in the open, isn’t it?”
    Rhodes said that public nudity was a misdemeanor in the state of Texas.
    “That is, it’s a