Slow Dollar (11 page)

A low stool stood next to the end wall, and she sat down on it and rested her throbbing head against the cool metal ledge. Here in the morning dimness of the Dozer well, her eyes filled as she thought about his life.

“I’m sorry, Braz,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

And even as her heart ached for his loss, she knew that part of her grief was guilt because Braz had been right.

“Tally? You okay?”

She opened her eyes, disoriented for the moment, then realized Dennis Koffer was peering in at her over the swinging flap. The show’s patch wore a ball cap with “East Bay Raceway” stitched across the front and his usual cigar poking out the side of his mouth beneath his neat gray moustache.

“Yeah, Dennis. Thanks.” She fumbled in the pocket of her shorts for a tissue and blew her nose.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. What are you doing up so early?”

“Just getting my ducks in a row about today. You opening the Dozer?”

She nodded.

“You do remember that we’re a Sunday schooler this evening, right?”

“Oh, God, I’d forgotten.”

“You might want to narrow the side spills a little and add more prize chips, okay?”

“Okay.”

Sundays in the South were usually big-dollar days, and today would be no exception, especially since the Fall Festival Committee had decreed that tonight would be church night. This meant everything had to be squeaky clean so that Sunday school classes and youth groups, their parents and chaperons, could come out to the carnival, enjoy the lights and the rides, buy fried candy bars and chili dogs, and play for charity without being led into temptation. They would have money in their pockets, too, because many of the groups would come to “play for Christ” and to donate their prizes to toy drives for underprivileged children.

All evening, gospel and Christian rock would blare from the speakers strung through the lot, totally indistinguishable from soul and secular rock unless you listened carefully to the words.

For hanky-panks, it would be just another evening, but the gaffed games would have to be played fairly straight, which meant stashing the expensive plush and electronics that no one was ever allowed to win and scrambling to restock their stores with “slum,” cheap prizes that wholesaled at less than it cost to play the game. The alibi agents and flatties always griped when required to turn the midway into a Sunday schooler, but it was good public relations. Made the town fathers look On you a little kinder.

The patch smiled at her. “And you’ll remind Val no tricks with the Spot?”

Against her will, Tally had to smile back. “Now, Dennis, what are you suggesting?”

“Just be sure he loses the gaffed set tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

If the flat metal disks were less than a certain proportion to the red spot, it would become impossible to cover every bit of the red. If a sharpie stepped up too confidently to the counter and Val was getting close to having thrown twenty-five percent of his plush already, he would palm the regulation-sized disks and slip the mark a set of microscopically smaller ones.

All in a day’s work.

As Dennis moved on, Tally finished her coffee and looked around, seeing what Braz would have seen on Friday night.

Arnie had laid out the midway. Since this was their first time playing Dobbs, they didn’t really know how big the crowd would be—festival committees were notorious for lying about average attendance—and he’d deliberately kept it on the narrow side so that people would have to brush up against the stores. Nothing was worse than a wide midway and sparse crowds. When that happened, the marks hewed to the middle of the walkways and resisted the impulse to lay their money down.

Across the midway on the south side was Polly’s Plate Pitch, with the Rope Climb on the left and the Balloon Race on the right. On the north side was Windy Raines’s Bowler Roller, a shooting gallery, and the Bottle Setup. All six stores were easily visible. Skee Matusik’s Lucky Ducky was next door to the west and the ears-and-floss wagon was on the east, but the tent walls would have blocked Braz’s view of them.

Normally she or Arnie would have been checking around every hour or so to make sure everybody was in the flow, but one of their ride jockeys had quit and one of their cooks was stoned in the bunkhouse about to get his ass fired. There had hardly been time to let anybody even go to the donniker till after the marks with young kids had started to clear out. So it wasn’t surprising that neither Polly nor Windy had noticed what was going on over here at the Dozer. But why hadn’t one of the marks?

“Deborah left a message for you on the answering machine,” Isabel said as her son got up from the table and headed for the dishwasher with his empty plate. “Wants you and Eric to go swimming this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I heard it,” said Stevie. “Thing is, I’ve got some stuff to look up in the library for my history class tomorrow, and Eric said he wanted to get back to Shaw early, too.”

“Well, give her a call so she’ll know not to expect you,” Isabel said.

“Yes, Mama.” He spoke in exaggerated resignation and his teenage sister giggled.

“Mom’s still not sure you know enough to wipe your own—”

“Here now, that’ll be enough of that kind of talk,” said Haywood. When it came to proper language for a daughter, Haywood was his father’s son.

“—nose,” Jane Ann finished. She looked at her father in all innocence. “What’s wrong with nose?”

“Never you mind.”

“What did you think I was going to say?” she persisted, laughter dancing in her blue eyes.

“Bel?”

“Jane Ann, help Stevie clear the table and stop picking at your daddy,” Isabel scolded.

Obediently, the girl rose and lifted the meat platter. “All the same, Mom, I still think Dad has a dirty mind.”

Haywood laughed and told Isabel he believed he could eat just another small slice of that coconut pie if she’d cut him off one.

Out in the kitchen, Jane Ann set the remains of a pork roast on the kitchen counter. “Come for a ride?” she asked her brother. She slid soiled tableware into the dishwasher basket. “It’s been ages since you and I took the horses out together.”

“Sorry, kid, I really did tell Eric I’d pick him up before two. Maybe next time.”

“Sure,” she said, trying not to whine.

A CD she’d borrowed from Annie Sue lay on the counter where she’d left it when they came home last night. Drops of water had splashed on the cover, and she carefully blotted them away with a paper towel, then set it atop the refrigerator out of harm’s way.

“It’s just that I never get to see you alone. Now that you’re at Carolina, you’re gone most of the time. And when you do come home, you’re either hanging out with Gayle or your friends. It’s like the older you get, the less I see of you. Like you’re not part of the family anymore.”

“You and I spent the whole morning together,” Stevie protested.

“In church? Here with Mom and Dad? I don’t count that being together.” She went back to putting away the leftovers.

“Well, what about yesterday? You were at the carnival with your friends all day while I was out here alone with the ironing board and washer.” Stevie held the refrigerator door open for her. “Things change.”

He grinned and draped a dishtowel over her head. “But you’re always going to be my doofus sister, no matter how old I get.”

Jane Ann crumpled the towel into a ball and aimed it at his head; he ducked and caught it just before it hit his tea glass on the counter.

“Good hands,” she said. “I still wish you’d come riding, though.”

“I wish to hell I could, too, kid.” He sounded so sincerely regretful that she was mollified.

“Well, don’t let it wreck your life. Actually, I’ve got homework myself. Two more acts of Shakespeare to read.”

“Miss Barnes’s class?”

“Yeah, and she expects us to know the meaning of every single word.”

“I know. I had her, too, remember?”

So okay. Yes
, thought Jane Ann as they shared groans over the toughest teacher at West Colleton High.
He will always be my brother
.

Twenty minutes later, Stevie was helping Eric throw his duffel bag in the back of the Jeep.

“This is crazy, you know that, don’t you?” he said when they were on the road and heading east, not north toward Shaw in Raleigh.

“When else’ll we have this chance?” Eric said logically. “Sunday afternoon? The place should be deserted. You don’t think it’s fair Lamarr should get cheated out of what’s rightfully his, do you?”

“No, but—”

“Besides,” he argued, “if we get caught and you’re with us, Deb’rah and Mr. Dwight won’t let them do anything to us.”

“Don’t count on it,” Stevie said darkly. “She let A.K. sit in jail three weekends last summer, remember?”

Brad Needham sighed and clicked off the television. Hard to concentrate on anything under the circumstances, and while he enjoyed watching public television (or enjoyed the idea of watching it), lap quilting and cooking shows just weren’t doing it for him this afternoon.

On the floral couch where she had been drifting in and out of sleep since lunchtime, Janice roused herself with a yawn. “I was watching that, Bradley.”

“Sorry.” He clicked it back on.

“You coming down with something, hon?”

“No, why?”

“I don’t know. Ever since we got back, you’ve been sort of blue. And like your mind’s elsewhere.” She looked up into his dark brown eyes. “You’re not worried about work or anything, are you?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said, gratefully seizing on her suggestion. “In fact, I was thinking about running over to the office to work on my report for a couple of hours.”

He took his stockinged feet off the pale blue velvet has sock that matched his pale blue velvet lounge chair and slipped on the sneakers that were neatly tucked beside the chair.

“Oh, hon!” She sat up in protest. “Can’t you do it here? I thought you finished that thing before we left California.”

“I did. But there are a couple of facts I want to check before I print it out—some data I need to get off the mainframe—and you know me. I won’t rest easy till I get it done.”

Janice smiled at him indulgently as he stood and hitched up the jeans he always wore for Sunday chores. “Oh, you! Always worrying about one more detail that needs doing.”

As he stood up, she leaned back on the couch and looked around their pretty living room with deep satisfaction. “Isn’t it wonderful to be back home, Bradley? California was great, but three months was much too long, don’t you think?”

God, did he ever agree with that, thought Brad, but he merely nodded.

“Sandwiches for supper okay with you?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll try not to be too long.”

Once in the car, though, he hesitated about which way to go. The office first, he decided, brushing back the strands of dark hair that fell across his forehead. Janice didn’t exactly keep tabs on him, but it wouldn’t hurt for the guard on the desk to be able to tell her he’d been in if she should call.

And then?

He had been so careful over the years. Never a single slip. And then there was the extra precaution he’d taken when he married Janice, a precaution that worked so well he’d come to rely on it and eventually take it for granted. It never once occurred to him that those extra weeks in California that the company had tacked onto his original assignment could be his undoing. He should have read the fine print, but who knew? And where did he go from here? He’d made himself face that guy Friday night and where had it gotten him? He should have stayed away.

But maybe it was going to be all right. It was almost forty-eight hours and no one had come looking for him. No reason for Dwight Bryant or anyone else to connect him to a sordid little carnival murder.