Slow Dollar (5 page)

Arnold Ames glared at him. “Shut your mouth, Val! Now! Help the others close up, then get to the trailer and stay there. You hear me?”

The teenager nodded with matching anger, then stomped off toward his game stand.

“I apologize for our son,” said Tally Ames, and her voice broke again as the mention of one son seemed to renew her grief for the one so newly dead. “He’s—We’re—”

“I understand,” I told her, even though I didn’t. Unless it was because I was the one who found his brother’s body, so let’s kill the messenger?

“We do appreciate your offer of help, though,” said her husband. He put his arm around Tally’s shoulders to guide her toward the tent with picnic tables. “Come on and sit down, Tal. Kay’s getting you something to drink.”

As I started to walk away, Dwight called to me. He was holding out that stupid stuffed Dalmatian. “Sylvia forgot her dog. Could you stick this in my truck for me on your way out?”

“You sure you don’t want to forget it yourself?” I was only half joking.

“And find myself in the doghouse tomorrow? Not hardly. Course, if you don’t want to be bothered—”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Hand it over.”

With the thing hoisted on my shoulder, I walked on down to the main gate. The patrol cars and emergency vehicles had effectively closed the carnival for this night. Most of the gaming concessions were shuttered tight and looked shabby and forlorn with but a scattering of unflattering security lights to illuminate their gaudy fronts. Deputy Mayleen Richards had rigged herself a flat surface for her laptop and was typing in names and addresses so efficiently that only a few people were still in line when I got there, and the line moved briskly.

She smiled at the dog on my shoulder. “Oh, hey, Judge. I see you got lucky.”

“Not me, your boss.”

As she entered my name and numbers on the glowing screen, I made my voice casual. “Many of my relatives here tonight?”

Her sturdy fingers manipulated the keyboard and the list she’d compiled obligingly sorted itself in alphabetical order. Haywood and Herman and their wives had been there along with Robert and Doris and some of their grandchildren. Several of my nieces’ and nephews’ names were starred like mine to indicate they’d played the Dozer. As I’d feared, Stevie’s name wasn’t there at all, which made it a safe bet that Eric Holt’s wasn’t either. I made a mental note to look into it, but not tonight.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Dwight parked his truck, would you?”

Mayleen stood and shaded her eyes against the bright headlights of cars and trucks streaming from the parking area. There were still quite a few vehicles back there in the darkness and more than hall were pickups.

“Is that it down yonder towards the end?” she asked, pointing in what was also the general direction of my own car.

Shifting Mr. Dot to my other shoulder, I told Mayleen goodnight and headed across the gravel and grass lot. Dwight’s truck was there all right, but both doors were locked. I considered slinging the dog in the back to let it take its chances, but I know that enough of my fellow citizens would think this ridiculous object was something worth stealing, so I lugged it on over to my car and crammed it in the front seat, where it sat looking through the windshield as I fastened a seat belt around its bulk.

I wondered what Blue and Ladybelle would think if they caught sight of a dog like this in my car. Those two hounds belong to my daddy, but they like to lope across the fields and visit me, and they’re always trying to hitch a ride in my car if I start to leave while they’re there.

My brothers keep offering to get me a dog of my own even though I don’t want to bother with one just yet.

“You need you a good loud barker,” says Haywood.

“Protection,” says Herman.

“After all,” says Will, “you are living out there all by your lonesome.”

I should be so lucky

My so-called lonesome is only an illusion of isolation and nothing more. Daddy cut me off a few acres of the farm when I built out there, and while my plat’s surrounded by fields bordered in trees and brush so that no other house is visible, I wouldn’t have to yell loud to have half my family there in a heartbeat. The farm is criss-crossed by tractor lanes and somebody’s always passing by my place at any hour of the day and night, either one of the boys or one of their children.
I
say they’re being nosy,
they
say they’re just taking the shortcuts they’ve always taken.

Whichever, there are so many watchful eyes that only complete strangers or total fools would risk coming onto Knott land with evil in their hearts.

The lights of Dobbs dimmed in my rearview mirror as I drove westward under the three-quarter moon. I knew my surface thoughts of dogs and busybody brothers were just a stalling effort to keep my mind from playing an endless loop of that young man crumpled on the floor of the Dozer, his face like raw steak, those bloody quarters spilling from his mouth.

Blood money?

Money to keep his mouth shut?

Surely his killer intended some sort of symbolic statement with that grisly touch?

And why had his brother been so hostile? At the Pot O’Gold, even before I found Braz’s body, he hadn’t taken my outstretched hand when his mother introduced us. I’d ruled in favor of Ames Amusement Corporation and had put a judgment on those vandals that would repay any monetary loss they’d suffered. Was he mad because I hadn’t sent them to jail instead?

Or was he simply acting out some sort of adolescent angst with his parents and it wasn’t about me at all? And for that matter, why wasn’t that boy in school instead of traveling with a carnival?

“
Not your problem
,” said the pragmatist who lives in my I lead and tries to keep me from messing with things that aren’t my business.

From the other side of my head came the preacher who tries to keep me from acting only in my own self-interest. “
The Ameses are poor wayfaring strangers
.”

“
With plenty of friends to comfort them
,” said the pragmatist.

But there had been something odd about Val Ames’s words: “We don’t need the help of any damn Knotts.” As if it weren’t just me he was angry at, but other members of my family, too.

Had some of my nieces or nephews insulted him since the carnival came to town? Or gone down to Widdington last month and caused trouble? None of my brothers’children are bad kids, but they aren’t Sunday school saints, either. Andrew’s son A.K. spent a couple of weekends in jail last summer for vandalism and Herman’s Reese has brawled his way into overnight lockups a time or two. Some of the others, including the girls, have collected DWIs and misdemeanor possession of marijuana before settling into respectability. And let’s not talk about the times I’ve danced with the devil myself.

Haywood’s Stevie has always stayed out of trouble, though. So why had he and Eric Holt sneaked away from the carnival without telling Dwight’s people that they’d played the Dozer?

I wasn’t crazy about any of the possible answers.

Maybe it was time to listen to the pragmatist for a change, or as Daddy’s housekeeper Maidie would say, “Don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.”

Nevertheless, blood-smeared quarters troubled my dreams all night, only they were blue beneath the blood, not silver.

Saturday dawned hot and sunny. My calendar might say this was the last weekend in September, but nobody had told the thermometer that it was no longer summer. Cutoffs and sneakers had been fine last night; unfortunately, today’s obligations called for more formal wear.

A policeman’s lot is not an ‘appy one, according to Gilbert and Sullivan. The same might be said of a judge’s. Most of the time, we’re called upon to pass judgment on society’s offenders “who’d none of ‘em be missed.” But at least there’s dignity in the courtroom. So why are we always being asked to judge things outside the courtroom?

Which is to say that rather than catching up with laundry and all the household chores I tend to let slide during, the week, I was due to spend this Saturday morning judging the Some Yam Thing or Other contest at the harvest festival.

Sweet potatoes are a big money crop in Colleton County, and farm kids have always had fun with some of the oddities to be found when digging potatoes in the fall. I still remember one in which the root end was so forked that it looked like a man on tommy-walkers. If the contest had existed back then, I’d have painted that yam in a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam suit with a cotton beard and entered it. Today I could expect anything from yams shaped like cell phones to Elvis look-alikes. The only rule is that the base potato has to remain uncut. Contestants can augment, but they’re not allowed to carve.

A silly event to get involved with (thank you very much, Minnie), but when you have to run for elective office, it’s politic to show that you can be a good sport.

I settled on a two-piece blue chambray dress that does good things for my eyes and sandy blond hair, thick-soled straw espadrilles that would help keep my feet out of the dust that was sure to be churned up around the exhibit hall, and silver dangles for my ears. As I rummaged in my jewelry box for an elusive earring back, I had to move several bags made of treated brown flannel that keep my silver pieces from tarnishing. Before I had a house of my own, inexpensive silver jewelry was a popular Christmas or birthday gift from my sisters-in-law. Now they’re into sheets, towels, and cookware.

Earrings in place, I rooted around for a silver pin I hadn’t worn in ages. It didn’t seem to be there. I pulled Open my lingerie drawer and poked around at the back where I keep odd pieces I don’t really like but hate to throw away. No luck.

I’d just about given up on the pin when my fingers felt an unfamiliar shape inside another of those tarnish-resistant bags. I opened it and there was the silver charm bracelet my mother had started for me when I was a toddler.

Dangling from the first link was a calendar page for August with a tiny little peridot marking my birthday. Next came a doll, a teddy bear, an ABC, a pair of scissors, a dog—

Tricksy!

Lord God in glory. How long was it since I’d last thought of Tricksy? I was nine when he ran under a tractor wheel and had to be put down. I cried for two days, yet I’d almost forgotten buying this charm, which I swore would keep him in my heart forever and ever. As I had forgotten this Empire State Building and a domed Capitol, souvenirs of my first trips to New York and Washington with Mother and Aunt Zell—“Just us girls,” Mother had said.

She adored Daddy and was crazy about her sons and her stepsons, but sometimes all that maleness got overwhelming and then she’d call her sister and it was off to the beach, off to a big city, off to the mountains for a long weekend of purely female indulgence.

The bracelet was so bound up in memories of her that I hadn’t worn it since I was eighteen, since the summer she died.

Yet here it was, hardly tarnished at all, and thick with tiny objects whose symbolism I could barely recall. It reminded me of the gold charm bracelet Tally Ames had worn when she testified in court, the delicate jingle when she placed her hand on the Bible.

I clasped the bracelet around my wrist and looked at the effect in the mirror. It echoed the gleam of my silver earrings. Festive, but not flashy. And time to get another haircut, I noted. I like to keep it right at chin line, not brushing my shoulders.

A little eyeliner, a touch of blusher, lipstick and I was almost ready to go as soon as I found my car keys.

I had just picked up my straw shoulder bag when a truck door slammed outside and Dwight’s voice called, “Anybody home?”

“Two minutes later and the answer would have been no,” I told him as he pulled open the screen door and came in.

Like me, he had on his working clothes this morning: olive chinos, dark blue jacket, a soft white shirt with small blue figures. The end of a blue knit tie trailed from his pocket. Dwight cleans up real good, if I do say so. No wonder Sylvia seems so taken with him.

“I was out this way and thought I’d have breakfast with Mama, but she’s off somewhere, so I was hoping maybe you’d give me a cup of coffee.”

Dwight has two younger sisters. You’d think that would be enough for any man. (Mine usually say that one’s too many and that I wrecked the perfect dozen Daddy was aiming for.) But he’s always walking in and out as if I were Beth or Nancy Faye.

“I guess you want Sylvia’s dog, too?”

He had the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry about that. I could have sworn I left the truck unlocked.”

“The dog you can have,” I said. “It’s still in my car, but I have to judge the yam contest at ten, so it’ll have to be a quick cup.”

“I was wondering why you were so dressed up. That dress looks real nice on you.”

“Don’t start,” I said. “Daddy’s always fussing that he never sees me in anything but shorts or jeans and am I sure I’m a girl?”

He put up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I wasn’t sniping. You can wear gunnysacks for all I care.”

I thought about Sylvia, always so neat and feminine in dresses or pastel slacks. No cutoffs for her.

As I refilled the coffeemaker and spooned fresh coffee into the basket, Dwight noticed my bracelet. “When did you start wearing that again?”

“Today. I found it in the dresser just now. I’m surprised you remember it. I hadn’t thought about it in years myself.”

“Does it still have the scissors?” he asked, his big hand reaching out to touch the small charms till he located it. “I was with Will and the little twins when they bought it for your birthday. I forget how old you were. Six? Seven?”

(Even though Adam and Zach are a couple of inches taller now than Herman and Haywood, they’ll always be called the “little” twins because they’re younger.)

“Why scissors?” I asked.

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head.

“Miss Sue used to put your hair in pigtails in the summer. She said it was cooler and neater. But you hated the way it pulled, so—”

I burst into laughter as memory flooded in. “—so I took her sewing scissors and whacked them off!”

“And then tried to get Zach to even it out before Miss Sue saw it, but she came in and caught y’all and thought at first that he was the one who’d done the whacking.”

We both smiled, remembering Mother’s dismay. Fortunately, her sense of humor had kicked in and she decided that my butchered looks were punishment enough.

“Daddy was the one that grumbled the most,” I said. “Mother took me to the barbershop and had it clipped almost as short as you boys, remember?”

Dwight grinned. “Yeah, Mr. Kezzie wasn’t one bit happy till it grew back in.”

As the coffee finished dripping, I asked how things were shaping up with Braz Ames’s death.

“Brazos Hartley,” he said, pulling out a chair at my kitchen table. “He was from Mrs. Ames’s first marriage.”

“Brazos?”

“Born when the carnival played Texas,” Dwight explained. “And Val is for Valdosta, Georgia. I guess it helps keep track. I didn’t ask.”

“Does that mean she was born in Tallahassee, Florida?” I sliced a bagel, slid it into the toaster, and set out cream cheese and a jar of strawberry jam that my sister-in-law Mae gave me this spring.

“You might say. It’s where she joined the carnival, anyhow. You toasting that thing for me? You don’t have to feed me.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically. “Like you didn’t tell me about Miss Emily not being home just so I’d feel sorry for you.”

I poured coffee for both of us, not bothering with cream or sugar since we both drink it black. The toaster popped up with the bagel nicely browned, and I slid it onto a sandwich plate.

Bagels instead of biscuits. What’s the South coming to? Smelled wonderful, though. After last night’s indulgence, my breakfast had been half a grapefruit. Without sugar.

“So what’s the story with Brazos?” I asked. “From the way his mother was acting before she knew who was hurt, it was like she thought he was the perp instead of the victim.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that, too. That’s why I had Mayleen run his name through NCIC as soon as we got back to the office.” He smeared cream cheese and jam on both halves of the bagel. “Don’t you want some of this?”

“Couldn’t eat another bite,” I lied as I sipped my coffee. “Mayleen find anything on him?”

“Juvenile records were sealed, of course, but there’s been an incident or two these last eight years, ever since he turned sixteen.”

“He was twenty-four? But Mrs. Ames can’t be forty yet.”

“Your point being?”

True. Children with babies turned up in my court every week. Since her son Val was so clearly no more than fifteen or sixteen, I’d just assumed the other son was a teenager, too.

“What sort of crimes?” I asked.

“Breaking and entering. A little possession of stolen property. Nothing major yet. Did six months on one of those possessions. Only crimes against property, though. No assaults. None that show up in his records anyhow and, oddly enough, no drugs or alcohol, either. According to his mother, he didn’t smoke or drink beyond an occasional beer. She sounds a little proud of that.”

“Maybe there’s not much to be proud of where he’s concerned. Sad.” I capped the jam and put it back in the refrigerator. “They have any idea who killed him? Or why?”

“If they do, they’re not sharing it with me. Jack and Mayleen are going to search the semi this morning and—”

“Semi?”

“Yeah. Best I can tell, he camped out in the eighteen-wheeler when they’re on the road. The Ameses live in a trailer with the younger kid; then they’ve got a couple of travel trailers they use as bunkhouses for their hired help, a large one for the men and a smaller one for the women. But Hartley slept in the truck van, so we sealed it last night before we left.”

I glanced at the clock. “Speaking of leaving—”

“Yeah, I need to get moving, too.” Dwight swallowed the last of his coffee, wiped his lips on a paper napkin, then carried his plate and cup to the sink.

As we walked out to our respective vehicles, Dwight said, “Tell me again your connection with Mrs. Ames?”

“She was the complainant in a vandalism case I heard three or four weeks ago.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. Why?” I opened my car door so he could take Sylvia’s stuffed dog.

“She wants to see you. Asked me to ask you if you’d stop in if you were going to be at the festival today.” He unbuckled his prize Dalmatian and tossed it onto the seat of his truck.

“Me?”

“Well, you did tell her to let you know if there was anything you could do to help, didn’t you?” He grinned at the look on my face. “Didn’t expect her to take you up on it, did you?”