Slow Dollar (12 page)

Reason said to just leave it alone, but fear made him remember the fingerprints, the pictures, and all the other details that could bring his world crashing down.

“How’d Lamarr find this place anyhow?” Stevie asked Eric as they drove slowly past the deserted-looking house and its collection of outbuildings, set down in the middle of nowhere.

“Aw, you can find anything on the Internet. He looked up Ames Amusement Corporation and found their schedule. So last week, when the carnival was over in Rocky Mount, he got tight with one of the brothers that helps set up the rides, got him talking over a couple of beers after hours. The guy’d been here to help pick up a generator. He remembered the road because it was such a dumb name, and Lamarr checked it out. Only place on the road that fit the description.”

They came to the end of Fannie Feather Road.

“Probably somebody’s sweet old grandmother,” said Eric.

“Or somebody’s favorite stripper,” said Stevie as they circled around the stop sign.

They hadn’t met a single car the whole length of the road. Things might be booming in the western part of Colleton County, but here on the eastern edge, it was still pretty much untouched farmland and third-growth wood lots.

Lamarr Wrenn was in the white van in front of them. The plan was that they’d cruise past twice, and if they didn’t see anyone, they’d drive into the yard and honk the horn. If anyone came to the door, they’d pretend they were lost and ask for directions to a nonexistent friend’s house.

“There he goes,” Eric whispered as the van turned into the long drive, through scraggly bushes that almost hid the place from the road.

With heavy misgivings, Stevie followed.

They had been speaking in such low voices that the sudden horn blast made them jump.

“Jesus!” Stevie said.

“Amen!” Eric agreed fervently.

Lamarr sounded the horn again and still no one appeared in the door. No curtain twitched. There wasn’t even a dog to bark.

With that, the van moved forward, down the rutted sandy lane that led to the sheds out back. This, too, was part of their plan: get the Jeep and the van out of sight behind the barns and then reconnoiter till they found what they had come for.

Lamarr drove in behind the furthermost structure, through thick weeds that looked as if they hadn’t been mowed all summer, and when Stevie swung around him, pointing the Jeep out for a quick exit if needed, Lamarr gave him a thumbs-up and repositioned his own vehicle. Built like a linebacker, Lamarr got out of the van and handed them each a pair of latex gloves like the ones he was already wearing.

Eric rolled his eyes. “You been watching too much television, man.”

“No, he’s right,” Stevie said as he slipped them on. “No point leaving them a business card.”

They fanned out, each checking the open or unlocked sheds that held gaudily painted signs and boards, boxes of stuffed toys, a popcorn maker with the glass missing from its sides, and bits and pieces of old carnival games and stands. At one locked door, all they had to do was tap the pin from the hinges to peek inside. The space behind was stacked with crazy mirrors from a fun house, so they carefully replaced the pins.

Finally, nothing was left but the shed they’d parked behind, the one shed with a hefty padlock. It stood a foot off the ground on rock supports. The windows were too high to look through even standing up in the Jeep and balancing on the roll bar. Worse, the door was hinged from the inside.

Lamarr reached into the back of his van and pulled out a tire iron.

“I don’t know, guys,” said Stevie. “So far, all we’ve done is trespassed. This knocks it up to breaking and entering.”

“No pain, no gain,” said Lamarr, sliding the flat end of the tire iron up under the hasp.

Before he could put some muscle into it and lever the hasp right out of the wood, Eric said urgently, “Somebody’s coming!”

Out on the road, a car slowed down and they heard it enter the brush-lined drive. As one, they dived back behind the barn and crouched motionless in the weeds to peer through the rocks that supported the building. The car stopped out of sight, and whoever was driving had cut the motor.

Silence for a long moment; then they heard the car door open and close, and soon a pair of sneakered feet and jean-clad legs came into view. The legs hesitated, then came straight on toward the locked door.

Because they had been waiting subconsciously for the jingle of keys, the next sound, a wrenching of metal from wood, was so unexpected that it took them a moment to comprehend.

Lamarr got it first.

“Shit! The bastard’s a fucking thief!” Tire iron still in hand, he came roaring up out of the weeds. “Hey! You! What the hell you think you’re—”

With Stevie and Eric uncertain whether to follow or try to hold him back, he bulled his way between the van and the shed wall, started to turn the corner, stepped into a mole run, twisted his ankle, and went down so hard the ground around them shook.

By the time the other two got around Lamarr to look, the thief, if that’s what he was, had already jumped back in his car and was halfway down the long dirt drive, kicking up clouds of dust. Between the dust and the glare of the late-afternoon sun in their eyes, the only thing they could be sure of was that the vehicle appeared to be a dark midsize sedan.

Lamarr limped around the corner and pointed in outrage at the lock and hasp that now lay on the ground. A few feet away was a claw hammer the guy had dropped in his flight. The open door was swinging on its hinges.

Lamarr quit cussing and beamed at Stevie like an innocent black angel. “We didn’t do the breaking. All we’re going to do is the entering.”

Even though we were almost into October, Sunday lived up to its name—a day of hot sunshine that kept the pond water warm.

I knew that both Stevie and Eric would be going to church this lovely morning, then big dinners with their respective families would occupy them till long past one, so I didn’t expect to see them much before three o’clock.

I probably could have used a session in church myself. Instead, I spent the first part of the morning packing away most of my summer clothes and air fluffing some of my lighter fall clothes in the dryer.

At ten o’clock, I figured Tally would probably be awake so I called to let her know Braz could be buried at the farm.

“I know. I talked to that Mr. Aldcroft last evening. He says your dad’s taken care of all the expenses and he won’t accept our money. That wasn’t necessary. We can take care of our own, okay?”

“Believe me, Tally, it’s necessary for him. Let him do this. Please? And he wants you to know that anyone you want to be there, any of your friends from the carnival, will be welcome.”

“That’s good,” she said stiffly.

The silence grew awkward.

“I guess you haven’t heard from Chapel Hill yet?” I asked.

“No, but Mr. Aldcroft called them and they said either today or tomorrow, so we’re thinking, say ten o’clock Tuesday morning, okay?”

“Tally, you do understand that the rest of the family’s going to have to be told? They’d never forgive us if we don’t. We’ll try to keep them from stampeding you, but—”

“What about Andrew? What’d he say when you told him?”

I took a deep breath, trying to find the words.

“Bad as that, huh?” Cynicism tinged her voice.

“I’m sorry, Tally. But he’ll come around. I know he will.”

“For what? I’m a little old to be looking a daddy, Deborah. But thanks for calling. I guess I’ll see you Tuesday, okay?” she said and hung up.

I gave Andrew a mental smacking and went back to cleaning out my closet and dresser drawers.

At midday I diced green peppers, onions, and mushrooms and made a western omelet with fresh tomatoes on the side. Not much of a Southern Sunday dinner, but probably healthier than some that would be eaten on the farm today.

While sorting clothes, I chatted on the phone with Portland, who told me that our mutual uncle (hers by blood, mine by marriage) had finally decided to retire and why didn’t we throw him a party? I called Aunt Zell to see if she thought Uncle Ash would want one, but only got their answering machine.

I restrained myself from calling April to see if Andrew had talked to her about Tally yet. If he hadn’t, how would I broach it? If he had, surely she’d call me if she wanted to talk? Better to leave it for now.

I checked my e-mail, deleted the three inspirational messages forwarded by Robert’s wife Doris without reading them, chuckled at a bawdy joke from Isabel, answered the most urgent messages, then surfed the Net for a while. Out of curiosity, I went to my favorite search engine and keyed in “carnival.” Most of the results either had to do with Mardi Gras-type carnivals or cruise ships, so I reset the parameters to exclude those. As I followed the links from one site to the next, an interesting picture of carnival life and carnival culture emerged from the electronic ether. I found myself wishing I could call Tally and ask her at least a dozen frivolous questions based on what I was finding.

When I eventually surfaced, it was almost three o’clock. I put on my bathing suit, pulled an old T-shirt on over it and, since boys are always hungry, laid out a bag of nachos to go with a jar of salsa I’d unearthed from the back of my refrigerator. (There was just the teensiest bit of mold around the lid, which wiped right off. And don’t tell me you’ve never done that yourself.)

Three o’clock came. The boys didn’t.

At three-thirty, I started calling. Isabel answered the phone, sounding sleepy. “Stevie? He went on back to Chapel Hill right after dinner.”

“Didn’t he get my message?”

“Yes, but he said he had a paper to work on or something. Didn’t he call you?”

I punched the speed-dial button for Maidie and it rang eight times before she answered. “Sorry, Deb’rah. Him and Stevie left here before two o’clock. They said they had to get up with a friend or something before going back to school. Eric did tell him you was hoping to spend a little time with 
‘
em, but Stevie said you’d understand. Maybe next time, honey.”

Understand? Oh, yes. I understood all too well. Question was, what could I do about it?

Since coming to the bench, I’ve gotten a little spoiled. If I want someone in my courtroom at a certain hour on a certain day, they damn well show up or risk a contempt of court. And if that doesn’t scare them into appearing, there are bailiffs and deputies to go out and find them for me, whether in jail or at large.

Unfortunately, bad as I wanted to at that moment, I couldn’t sic a bailiff or a deputy on either of those two boys.

To cool off, I walked out on my pier, stripped off the T-shirt, and jumped in. It took a few minutes of serious swimming before the water did its job and let me look at the situation objectively.

There was a reason they hadn’t left their names with either deputy Friday night, a reason they were deliberately avoiding me now. All the same, Stevie and Eric arc two of the most laid-back kids I know. Did I honestly think that either of them would let a carny’s casual trash talk get under their skin?

Of course not.

And even if Braz
had
managed to slip the needle in, wouldn’t they both just walk away from him? That didn’t mean they didn’t know something or that they hadn’t been there when punches were thrown. And they could well have been the friends seen pulling the puncher away.

I swam out to the boat mooring that marked a tangle of old tree roots left behind on the bottom when this pond was dredged. Bass liked to lurk down there, and it was one of Daddy’s favorite fishing spots. Nobody was out fishing today, though. I had the place completely to myself.

The late-afternoon sun edged down behind the pines, casting long shadows across the pond. Floating on my back, gazing up into the sky, I watched the fluffy clouds above me go from snowy white to gold and pale, pale pink with streaks of deep blue in the crevices.

Drifting lazily on the still water, I let myself think about Kidd Chapin and gradually realized—the way you realize that a sprained ankle or sore knee has finally stopped hurting even when you put your full weight on it—that I was, at long last, completely over him, even though this breakup had hurt more than any time since Jeff Creech dumped me back in college. I no longer missed Kidd himself, but I sure did miss being in love, missed having my pulse quicken at the thought of someone, missed looking forward to seeing, kissing, being held. All the same, I had spent the whole summer learning to live without all that, and if I never had it again, at least I’d had it once.

(“
More than once
,” came the preacher’s stern reminder.)

(“
More than twice
,” leered the pragmatist.)

The gold-and-pink clouds above me deepened to orange and purple and I was beginning to think about food when something big landed in the water off the pier fifty feet behind me with an enormous splash. I was so startled that it was as if a featherbed had been yanked out from under me, and I sank beneath the surface to come up spluttering as I saw someone swimming toward me.

“Jesus, Dwight!” I said when he pulled up close enough to hear. “I thought you were an alligator or something.”

“Alligator?” Treading water, he grinned at me. “There’s no alligators for a hundred miles.”

“All the same, you should’ve hollered or given me some warning.”

“I really did scare you? Sorry, shug, but I did call. You must have been a million miles away.”

“Just running through the backwoods of memory. Clearing out some old underbrush.”

“Say again?”

“Never mind. What’re you doing here?”

“I thought maybe I’d get up with Eric and Stevie, but they’d already left. Maidie and Isabel both said you’d asked them to come swim this afternoon, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I came in their place. I stopped by Mama’s, picked up a bathing suit, and here I am. Didn’t mean to scare you, though.”

“Just yell louder next time, okay? Race you around the mooring and back?”

I was a third of the way there before Dwight got his bearings and headed after me. My form’s better, but he’s got a longer stroke and stronger back and he finished up at the pier at least three strokes ahead of me. That was all right. Gave me a chance to get my thoughts in order before we talked. Not that I knew anything more about Stevie and Eric than he did.

The air was starting to get cool as the sun settled further in the west and I climbed onto the pier and wrapped a towel around me.

“Did you hear from Chapel Hill yet?” I asked.

Dwight continued to bob around in the water. “They’ve released the body, and Duck was supposed to send someone for it this afternoon.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“I didn’t get the official report yet.”

“Unofficially then. And don’t say you can’t tell me when you know it’s going to be public record soon as the DA’s office gets hold of it.”

Dwight pulled himself out of the pond, and water streamed from his body. He hadn’t brought a towel, so I handed him mine and slipped my T-shirt back over my damp suit.

“Okay, unofficially,” he said as he dried off. “He drowned in his own blood.”

“Really?”

“Truth. The ME thinks that somebody either knocked or pushed him down and then stomped him in the face while he was on his back. Most likely, he was unconscious at that point and his nose was smashed so badly he’d have had to breathe through his mouth.”

“Only that was stuffed full of quarters,” I said, shivering at the memory as a light breeze blew across the pond.

We walked back up to the house and I gave him first dibs on the shower.

While he dressed in my spare room, I sluiced off all the pond water, dried my hair, and pulled on fresh jeans, a white shirt, and a blue cotton cardigan. When I got back to the living area, Dwight was thumbing through my collection of old videos.

“We’ve watched them all,” I said.

“So I see. I thought you might’ve broke down and bought something new.”

“Sorry.”

It was still light outside, but fast heading for dusk. Dwight roamed the room restlessly, picking up a framed snapshot of my parents, then one of a gang of us at a cookout over at Robert’s house.

“Is something bothering you?” I asked.

“No, why?”

“I don’t know. You look uptight about something.”

Dwight’s normally as comfortable as an old faded T-shirt, but this evening he seemed edgy, unable to light, almost as if he were annoyed at me over something that he knew was none of his business but was working up to blasting me about it anyhow.

“What dorm’s Stevie in?” he asked abruptly.

“Old East,” I said.

“Is that one of the ones next to the Old Well?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. You know why. Why else did you try to get him and Eric over here this afternoon? You know they didn’t leave their names with Jack or Mayleen.

Just like you know that Eric could’ve been the one to punch Braz Hartley.”

“No, I don’t!” I said hotly. “And neither do you. He wasn’t the only black kid at the carnival Friday night.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got to start somewhere, and it might as well be with the one who’s acting suspicious. Or his friend. The one who has an aunt who can make him talk. Ride with me over to Chapel Hill?”

“This evening?”

“Why not?”

“Aren’t you seeing Sylvia tonight?”

“Nope. I’m seeing Stevie. Or I will if you’ll help me find him. You’re the one went to school there.”

“You could’ve,” I reminded him tartly.

Dwight looks more like a football player these days, but there was a time when he was so fast and could shoot a basketball from outside with such accuracy that Dean Smith had sent scouts to his high school games. For some reason, though, Dwight had joined the Army right after graduation.

He was driving his pickup this evening instead of a patrol car and he didn’t look very official in jeans and a long-sleeved green knit shirt with a navy blue collar.

“Shaw’s closer,” I said.

“Yeah, but you’re not Eric’s aunt. I thought I’d try to get Stevie to talk to me, off the record. Tell me what he saw, then go from there. We can stop for supper on the way home at that Mexican place you like. You want to come or not?”

With the odd vibes he was giving off, I wasn’t sure. On the other hand, I didn’t want him hassling Stevie without me there.

“Okay,” I said, “but only if I drive.”

“What’s wrong with my driving? Just because I keep to the speed limit—”

Dwight’s actually a good driver. When expediting with blue lights flashing and siren blaring, he can safely cover as much ground as any other officer in the county, but put him behind the wheel when he’s off duty and he becomes an automotive ambler, moseying along at five or ten miles below the speed limit. The drive to Chapel Hill takes me about fifty-five minutes. It would take him at least ninety.