Slow Dollar

by Margaret Maron

  It was the man who ran the duck pond next to their Dozer, the guy who’d found the carnival’s patch for her last night. Shorter than me, he was one of those wiry little white men who reach a certain age and then time stops. They look the same at eighty as they did at forty: wispy gray hair, weather-beaten face with deep lines around the eyes. Although his arms were free of tattoos except for a band of small red spiders around his scrawny wrist, the head of a bright green dragon peeked up past the neckline of his dark blue T-shirt. He wore dirty jeans and even dirtier white sneakers and carried a cardboard tray that held hamburgers and two capped drink cups.

  “Arnie asked me to bring you something to eat, Tal,” he said, proffering the tray. “He said he’d be along in a few minutes. You heard any word yet on how it’s going? If they caught the guy who did it?”

  His eyes were bright with curiosity.

  “Hey, you’re the lady found Braz, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  I knew Dwight or some of his people had probably already talked to him and it really wasn’t my place to ask, but I couldn’t resist.

  “You worked next to Braz all evening, didn’t you?”

  The man looked from me to Tally.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “Deborah, this is Skee Matusik. He’s known Braz since before he was crawling. His wife Irene’s the friend I told you about that used to babysit for me. Deborah and me, we’re kin to each other, Skee.”

  “Yeah?” His face cleared but his eyes were still wary. “Yeah, I was there all evening, but there’s canvas between my store and the Dozer, and I was pretty busy till about nine.”

  “Polly told Arn that he and some black guy were mixing it up. Braz wasn’t a fighter. What happened, Skee?”

  “It was over before I knew it was happening,” he said with a shrug. “All I saw was some black and white kids pulling another black kid away. I looked around the corner of the tent and saw Braz sitting on the step of the Dozer with his nose all bloody, so I wet a towel in my pond and gave it to him. Polly came over, too. We asked him if he was all right and he said he was. Next time I looked around the corner, I didn’t see him. Figured he was taking a break.”

  “No loud voices? Nobody running away?”

  “Lady, this is a carnival. It was Friday night. Loud voices? Running? Who’d notice?”

  “Who’s Polly?” I asked.

  “Runs the plate pitch across the way from the Dozer.”

  Through the open door, I saw Tally’s husband heading toward us.

  I patted her shoulder and told her I’d be in touch soon.

  As I threaded my way across power lines and cables that snaked through the grass, past the trailers and back to the midway, Dwight fell into step beside me.

  “Buy you a chili dog?” he offered.

  I kept on walking. “She didn’t have anything to say that you probably don’t already know.”

  “Hey, did I ask?”

  “No, but you were fixing to, weren’t you?”

  He smiled down at me ruefully. “Well...”

  “Fortunately for you, I’m starving, so yes, you can buy me a chili dog.”

  “Unless you’d rather have barbecue?”

  “That would mean the big twins and Isabel and Nadine,” I reminded him.

  “Right. Chili dogs, then.”

  Not that Dwight doesn’t enjoy their company, but he knew perfectly well that if we joined my brothers, there would be four conversations going at the same time and none would be the one he clearly wanted to have with me.

  The murder didn’t seem to be affecting either the festival or the carnival. The beautiful weather had brought out a big crowd, and we had to wait in line several minutes for our dogs and drinks. I got bottled water, Dwight got something in a drink cup with ice.

  “So what did she want?” he asked when we were settled with our food on a low wall out of the flow of foot traffic.

  “Oh, this and that,” I said vaguely.

  Normally I can tell Dwight anything. In this case, though, I didn’t feel that Tally’s true identity was something I could talk about to anybody till I’d told Daddy and Andrew.

  “She was worried about the legalities of getting her son’s body back. And funeral arrangements. I gave her Duck Aldcroft’s number.”

  A drop of chili landed on his blue tie and I wet my napkin with water and leaned over to wipe it off before it could leave a spot.

  “She did tell me that he hadn’t been in any trouble with the law since he got involved with buying up storage lockers and selling the stuff on eBay and at flea markets.”

  “Yeah,” said Dwight. “The van he’s been sleeping in looks like a thrift shop. Furniture, books, clothing.”

  “Find anything useful?”

  “I doubt it. The place had been tossed before we searched it.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. Least that’s what his stepdaddy says. Says Braz took after his mother. Place for everything and everything in its place. And it was still sealed from last night, so that means whoever tossed it probably did it between three o’clock when he took a computer break and the time we sealed it.” He took a swallow of his drink and frowned as he looked into the cup. “These damn things are more ice than drink.”

  “I don’t suppose Ames knew what the tosser was looking for?”

  “Says not.”

  “Remember I told you about Tally Ames being in my courtroom this month?”

  “Yeah. Someone vandalized her slide. So?”

  I recapped the case for him in more detail. Since he’d been the one who arrested the Lincoln brothers on the larceny charge that sent them away two years ago, he listened intently.

  “Don’t you see? They were so mad at Arnold Ames for buying their tools when they defaulted on the storage locker fees that they tracked him down and slashed his ride. What if Braz Hartley bought the locker contents that belonged to somebody who was even more violent than the Lincoln boys?”

  “You reckon?” Dwight said thoughtfully. “Mayleen and Jack have been hearing that he and his brother didn’t get along. Don’t forget that more people are murdered by family members than by strangers.”

  “So who was the stranger that punched him in the nose the first time last night?” I gibed.

  “Who told you that?” he asked sharply. “Mrs. Ames?”

  “No, it was the guy running the Lucky Ducky duck pond. Skee Matusik is his name. Said he didn’t see it actually happen, but a woman across the way did. A woman named Polly? Runs that game where you try to land coins on a plate?”

  “We’re looking into it,” he said. “Leave it alone, Deb’rah.”

  Usually when he’s warning me to mind my own business, there’s a blend of exasperation and amusement in his voice. This time I heard something different there. A real No Trespassing sign.

  And suddenly I remembered Stevie. Who hadn’t given his name to either deputy last night.

  And Eric Holt. Who could fit the description of some young black guy whose friends had pulled him of Braz and hustled him away.

  CHAPTER 7

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON (CONTINUED)

  As soon as I got back to my car, I took out my cell phone and called Daddy’s number. Not surprisingly, Maidie answered. Technically, she doesn’t work on the weekends, but nobody ever put up a time clock for her to punch at the kitchen door, and since she and Cletus live just down the lane from Daddy’s shabby old farmhouse, she’s in and out whenever it suits her. If she happens to be in when the phone rings, she answers it automatically because my father doesn’t like talking on the phone and won’t pick up if he knows she’s around.

  “Is Daddy there?” I asked.

  “Him and Cletus just got back from the long pond with a mess of brim for supper,” she said. “Don’t you want to come eat some? They’s plenty.”

  “Sure,” I said promptly, knowing that pond fish meant Maidie’s crispy cornbread and a medley of late summer vegetables, including the best fried ok
ra in North Carolina. “And while I have you, are Eric and his parents still coming out for dinner after church with y’all tomorrow?”

  “Far as I know they are. Why?”

  “I just thought that maybe you’d tell him to bring his swimsuit and he and Stevie can go swimming off my pier.”

  “I bet he’d like that,” she said. “I’ll call him right now before I forget it.”

  “Be sure and tell him I’m particularly looking forward to seeing him. I haven’t had a chance to talk to either of them in a long time.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said. “You want to speak to your daddy a minute?”

  “Has it ever been more than a minute?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Hang on, honey.”

  A moment later, I heard Daddy say, “Yeah?”

  No How you doing? How’ve you been? Everything all right? He expects us to state our business and get off the phone.

  And much as it pains him to take a local call, long distance makes him crazy, even when he’s not paying for it. My brother Adam, one of the little twins, will deliberately call from California and see how long he can keep Daddy on the line before he says, “Well, less’n you got something to say worth ten cents a minute to say it, I’m gonna get off ‘fore you go broke.”

  Adam hasn’t yet made it to five minutes.

  “You going to be there for the next hour?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m just Ieaving, the festival here in Dobbs. I’ll run past my house and change clothes and then I’ll be over,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s—” I hesitated. No point in just blurting it out. Better to wait till I could soften the news with words and judge his reaction as to how much to tell.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  “Fine,” he said, and hung up.

  Next I called Haywood’s house. I didn’t really expect Stevie to answer, so I wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t. I left a message on the machine that I hoped would sound innocuous to Haywood or Isabel but would let my nephew know I meant it when I said I really wanted to catch up with everything that’s been happening to him lately.

  Dwight should know by now that I won’t leave trouble alone when it involves my family.

  As a teenager, I used to make the drive from the farm to Dobbs in just under twenty minutes. With all the new housing developments and population growth, the speed limit’s dropped to forty-five miles an hour and it now takes me closer to thirty, which means that there was plenty of time for Daddy to drive down the lane past Maidie’s house, through the cut, and around the fields to my house.

  His truck was parked at my back door when I pulled into my yard, and he was sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette.

  Ladybelle came over and nuzzled my hand in greeting as I got out of the car, but Blue continued to sprawl with his head on Daddy’s workboot and merely thumped his tail in welcome.

  “He’s getting lazy,” I said.

  “Naw, just getting old,” said Daddy. “He’ll be twelve, come Thanksgiving.”

  He’s partial to those two hounds, but like most farm people, he’s realistic. Over a long lifetime, he’s watched a lot of puppies turn into good dogs, then grow old and die.

  He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up so I could hug him. “You look mighty pretty in that blue dress, shug. Real ladylike.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” I said lightly, not looking to pick a fight. “Come on up on the porch and let me get you some tea.”

  I opened the screen door and stepped inside to switch on the ceiling fan above the circular glass-and-metal table. I don’t like air-conditioning any more than he does. Long as the air’s stirring and I don’t have to do stoop labor out under a hot sun, the heat doesn’t really bother me. Oh, I’ll complain about it right along with my friends, but that’s only pro forma. In actuality, I love our hot, muggy summer days unless they drag on and on through early fall without a break. Makes our winters more special.

  Daddy pulled out a chair, took off the white straw planter’s hat he wears from April till October, and hung it on a nearby peg. His hair has been snow white since before I was born and was still thick across the crown.

  “Better bring another glass,” he said off-handedly. “Andrew’ll be along directly.”

  I about dropped the pitcher.

  “Andrew?”

  “That is what you wanted to talk about, won’t it?” he asked. “Andrew’s girl being back and her boy getting hisself killed?”

  “You know who she is? How? Who told you?”

  He gave a half smile. “Well, now, shug, you ain’t the only one knows people at the courthouse. I been keeping an eye on the Hatcher farm ever since old Rod Hatcher died. Watched the farm go to his sister, then to her boy, then back to the boy’s cousin three years ago, and he didn’t have but two cousins. Carol and Olivia. Tallahassee Ames won’t old enough to be Carol, so I figured she had to be Olivia. Had somebody backtrack on her and sure enough.”

  “Somebody?” I asked suspiciously. “Dwight?”

  “Naw, not Dwight.”

  “Terry White, then?”

  “I ain’t saying.”

  He didn’t have to. Terry’s an SBI agent and would do anything for Daddy, long as it was halfway legal. I was the one introduced them when he and I were hanging out together a hundred years ago. They bonded over a bass right out there on that pond, long before I built a house in this pasture, and they stayed tight even after Terry and I moved on to other relationships. Veteran lawmen and old reprobates are just two sides to the same coin, which is probably why Terry and Dwight are so crazy about my daddy and why he’s right fond of them, too.

  “She tell you how come her to change her name to Tallahassee?”

  “That’s where she joined the carnival,” I said.

  “Real sorry to hear about her boy. Just wish you won’t the one had to find him. You okay? He was messed up pretty bad in the face, I heared.”

  But I was still reeling. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “What for?” he asked. “She knowed who we were and where we were. When she didn’t try to sell the farm, I figured she’d come looking us someday when she was ready to know us. We hadn’t done nothing for her growing up, so we didn’t have no claims on her now. Figured it was her choice.”

  My brother drove into the yard about then, parked his truck beside Daddy’s old Chevy, and got out. There was a puzzled look on his face.

  “Does he know?” I asked.

  Daddy shook his head. “You want to be the one to tell him?”

  “Tell me what?” said Andrew as he came up on the porch and joined us at the table.

  Of my eleven older brothers, Andrew’s third in the birth order after Robert and Frank. He’s the one that looks the most like Daddy. His thick brown hair is fast going gray and will probably be all white in another year. He’s also the one that seemed to have the hardest time of it as a child. Didn’t get a chance to be a baby long before the big twins came along and pushed him out of his mother’s lap.

  “Andrew was wild as a ditch cat,” Aunt Zell says whenever she talks about the houseful of boys Annie Ruth left behind, which explains why she always had a soft spot in her heart for him.

  Although he eventually came to love my mother, it was hard for him to show it, especially since he was the one who initially resented her the most after Annie Ruth died and Daddy remarried. Took him a long time to find his way in life, to find April, who gentled him and brought him back to the farm and a settled life.

  “Tell me what?” he asked again, beginning to get an apprehensive look on his face. “What’s wrong? A.K.? Ruth?”

  “No, no,” I assured him. “I saw both of them when I was leaving the carnival and they were fine. Enjoying the rides.”

  He didn’t relax. “What then?”

  There was no easy way to say it, but I couldn’t help trying.
/>
  “Andrew, I heard today that Carol’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”

  He looked at me blankly, trying to think who I was talking about.

  “Carol Hatcher,” said Daddy.

  Carol was more than half a lifetime behind him, and nothing I’d ever heard made me think there’d been anything other than sexual attraction between them.

  “Olivia too?” he asked.

  “No. She’s alive and she’s here.”

  He swiveled in his chair abruptly as if he expected her to come walking from my kitchen onto the porch.

  “Not here in the house. Here in the county,” I said. “She’s with the carnival over at Dobbs.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You heard about the young man that was killed over there last night?”

  Andrew nodded.

  “That was your grandson, Andrew.”

  “The hell you say, Deb’rah!”

  “Watch your tongue,” Daddy said mildly. He never likes it when the boys use language around me.

  “Well, tell her to watch hers.” His jaws were tight with anger. “Olivia ain’t mine! How many times I got to tell y’all that Carol gave it out to every guy in three counties?”

  “You can tell it till you’re blue in the face,” I said, “but it won’t change the fact that you’re the one got tagged fair and square. She’s yours, kid.”

  “And how would you know? You won’t even born then.”

  “Because Mother said so, remember? She was so sure that she took you over to the Hatcher farm right after you and Lois were married, but Carol had gone off with Olivia again.”

  “You were just a baby,” he said. “How could you know that?”

  “I told you. Mother said so. Just before she died, she told me all about it. Besides, I’ve seen her, Andrew. I’ve talked to her. She looks more like you than A.K. or Ruth.”

  “What’s she doing back here?”

  “Right now, she’s part owner of the carnival, but she did wind up getting the old Hatcher place and she and her husband have been fixing up the house.”