Slow Dollar (14 page)

Dwight was slowly making his way up Cameron Avenue when we got out to the sidewalk. At least a dozen cars were stacked up behind him. I pulled Stevie around to the driver’s side, told Dwight to shove over, pushed my nephew in, and moved smartly down the street.

At the stoplight at South Cameron, I leaned across Stevie and said, “Don’t worry, Dwight, I didn’t tell him anything Eric said.” 

Dwight kept a poker face. “That’s good,” he said.

When the light changed, I continued on down half a block and turned left into the parking lot at the Carolina Inn. It’s got a Guests Only sign, but hey, we might’ve been planning to dine there that evening for all the inn knew. I pulled into an empty slot directly under one of the security lights and cut the truck lights. Both of us turned in our seats to look at Stevie.

He tried to brave it out. “So what did Eric tell y’all?”

“No, son,” Dwight said gently. “That’s not the way it works. I ask the questions. You give me straight answers, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what happened at the Dozer game that night when you and Eric and your friends were there? Was Braz Hartley in the well of the game wagon?”

Stevie nodded.

“Was he razzing y’all?”

“Is that what Eric said?”

“C’mon, Stevie,” I said.

“No, he wasn’t razzing us. But one of our friends was on his case.”

“What about?” asked Dwight.

“I didn’t hear,” Stevie said cautiously. “All I know is that one minute we’re putting in our quarters, playing the game, everything’s cool. Next minute, Lamarr’s yelling that Hartley’s an effing thief. Hartley was standing by that swinging-door thing, and Lamarr just reached over, grabbed him by the shirt, and socked him smack in the face. Hartley was bleeding like a stuck pig and crying that his nose was broken. Eric and I grabbed Lamarr and got him away. Honest, Mr. Dwight. All Lamarr did was sock him one. He was sitting on the step of the wagon when we left and everybody else sort of scattered.”

“Who’s Lamarr?” Dwight asked.

“Lamarr Wrenn. He’s from Dobbs, but he’s tight with Eric and they room together at Shaw. He’s majoring in economics, putting himself through school. A good guy, honest, Deb’rah.”

“And this Lamarr was with you and Eric the rest of the evening?”

“You heard what Eric said.”

“We want to hear what you say,” said Dwight.

My nephew looked at me with misery in his eyes. “Don’t I have a right to an attorney about now?”

“Are you serious?”

“I know I don’t have to say anything that incriminates myself. I have the right to remain silent.”

“He’s right, Deb’rah,” said Dwight. He handed Stevie his cell phone. “Here, son. You want to call your parents? Tell them to meet you in Dobbs with an attorney?”

I’m sure Stevie had the same image of Haywood and Isabel roaring into Dobbs as I had. “God, no!”

“Well, then? Were you guys with this Lamarr Wrenn or not?”

“Not,” he said reluctantly. “Lamarr was pumped and still mad as hell and he said he was going home. Eric offered to go with him, but he said he needed to be alone. Needed to think.”

“What time was this?” Dwight asked.

Stevie shook his head. “I don’t know. I never looked at my watch till right as we were leaving.”

“You’re sure he left?”

“We didn’t follow him, but he was heading for the entrance when we split up.”

“And you didn’t hear what he was mad at Hartley about?”

“I was around on the back when they got into it. All I heard was what I told you.”

“And where was Eric?”

“Right beside me. It was over as quick as it started. A few words, one punch. That was it, Mr. Dwight. I swear.”

“Who else was with y’all?” Dwight asked.

I didn’t recognize either of the other two names, but Dwight jotted them down on a scrap of paper, then said, “Okay. Thanks, Stevie. We’ll run you back to your dorm.”

“That’s it?”

“Unless you saw or heard something else I ought to know?”

“Nope, that’s it.” His face shone with holy innocence, but I’d seen his palpable relief an instant before.

He immediately turned to Dwight and said, “If you’ll let me out, I’ll walk back to the dorm.”

“Stevie—”

But Dwight had opened the door and stepped out, and Stevie didn’t linger. “
‘
Night, Deborah. ‘Night, Mr. Dwight,” he called, already halfway across the parking lot.

“Now what do you suppose he thought Eric didn’t tell us?” I asked as we watched Stevie take a shortcut through the inn’s lobby.

“Whatever it was, he’ll probably be on the phone to Shaw in five minutes, getting their stories together.”

We stopped for supper at Las Margaritas in Garner, and the waiter, mistaking our relationship, seated us in a secluded booth made romantic by candlelight. I pushed the candle over to the side while Dwight ordered a Dos Equis for himself and a frozen margarita for me. There were years that I couldn’t face them, but I tried one again last spring and it was so refreshing that it’s back in the lineup now. Dwight likes burritos or chiles rellenos. I usually get the taco salad with extra guacamole. (I might not have been tempted had the serpent offered me an apple, but if it’d been an avocado, don’t bet the Garden.)

I was concerned about Stevie, but he’s a basically sensible kid and maybe when he’d had a chance to think about it, he’d realize that murder isn’t a game where you get to decide what to tell and what to withhold, especially when it’s the murder of a cousin. And even though he didn’t yet know Brazos Hartley was a cousin, blood still counts for something in our family.

“So,” I said to Dwight as our drinks came, “how come you’re not out with Sylvia tonight?”

He shrugged. “Sylvia and I are finished.”

“Really? What happened?”

He took a swallow of his beer and gave me a rueful look. “I guess she decided a divorced lawyer with monthly child-support payments was a better prospect than a divorced lawman with monthly child-support payments.”

“
Reid?
She’s seeing Reid now?”

That was so preposterous that I thought he had to be kidding. “Reid put the moves on her when he drove her home Friday night?”

“He was still there yesterday morning when I dropped that damn dog off.”

“Oh, Dwight.” Relieved to hear that his moodiness was due to Sylvia and not to anything I had or hadn’t done, I reached across the table and patted his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It wasn’t going anywhere with us. I was just waiting for her to realize it.”

I had to smile. “A gentleman to the end.”

He shrugged. “I learned a long time ago that things end better if the woman thinks it’s her decision.”

I can relate to that. I’ve dumped and I’ve been dumped and I know which hurts and humiliates more.

“Reid never could resist a challenge,” I said, “but if Sylvia Clayton thinks she’s going to get him to the altar...”

“I don’t know,” said Dwight. “Sylvia’s a nice person. And maybe he’s tired of window-shopping. I know I sure as hell am.”

“Me too,” I sighed.

Our food arrived and our talk turned to courthouse gossip and eventually back to the murder.

“I keep wondering why his mouth was filled with quarters.” I dipped a piece of my taco shell into the guacamole. “What’s the symbolism there? Put your money where your mouth is? Money talks?”

“Or keeps someone
from
talking,” said Dwight. “Money to keep his mouth shut forever?”

“The Ameses both say he was obsessed with money.”

“Most carnival people are,” I said, and told him about some of the bulletin boards I’d surfed that morning with their colorful language and blunt candor. “Their way of life almost demands it. They have from April till October to make enough to carry them through the rest of the year. Every day it rains, every day the thermometer goes much over ninety, every time the equipment breaks down, they’re losing income. All they’ve got is a smile and a fast line of talk—”

“And a gaffed game,” Dwight interjected cynically, referring to the dozens of ways a carny agent can keep you from winning if he wants to, despite the law’s best efforts.

“—and a gaffed game, maybe,” I conceded. “But you can’t cheat an honest man, and anybody who expects to get something for nothing ought not to be allowed on a midway. It’s a hard life out on the road for months—having to tear down all that gear and move it every few days, then set it up all over again. The real game, of course, must be dreaming up new ways to separate the marks from their money. Probably what keeps it from being a total grind.”

I thought of how Tally’s eyes had sparkled when she was stringing Reese along, keeping him in the game. “But it sounds like Braz Hartley took it a step further.”

Dwight nodded. “He did try a little blackmail this spring on the woman who runs the plate game.”

“The same woman who saw this Lamarr Wrenn bloody his nose? Polly somebody?”

“Polly Viscardi. She says this is the first time she’s hooked up with the Ameses, so Braz didn’t have a clue about her. She looks sweet and proper, doesn’t she?”

“I suppose.” I had a memory of bright red hair, a money apron tied around a thick waist, a smile for all who passed, and calculating eyes. And yes, she’d been one of those who offered support to Tally Friday night, but with her androgynous oil-stained leather work shoes, tight black slacks, and belligerent glares at all the gawkers, sweet and proper wouldn’t have been my description. Unless it was the pretty-in-pink ruffled blouse she wore? Or the little bells on the tips of her pink shoelaces? I’ve noticed that ruffles and pink can cloud men’s judgment at times.

“Sweet like a buzz saw,” Dwight said. “He found her getting it on with one of the roughies in their haunted house back in May and threatened to tell her husband if she didn’t pay him. Only he wasn’t her husband. She had the roughie bust Braz’s balls, then kicked the not-husband out and moved the roughie in.”

Dwight’s plate was empty and the waiter removed it. “Another drink?” he asked us.

We both shook our heads, and I gestured that he could take my plate, too.

“Coffee?” asked Dwight.

I still had some of my margarita left. “But you get a cup if you want it.”

“No, we’ll just have our check,” Dwight told the waiter, who nodded and went away to fetch it.

“So if Polly Viscardi actually saw who came along and finished the job Eric’s friend started, she doesn’t have a real strong motive to tell, does she?” I said. “For her, it could be good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Your guess is good as mine, shug.”

“A woman could have stomped Braz hard enough to kill him,” I mused.

“Well, it’s downward force,” he conceded. “Enough momentum and determination, why not?”

“Might be why the Viscardi woman says she didn’t see anything.”

He wasn’t convinced. “And her motive would be?”

“Oh, I’m not doing motive tonight,” I said with an airy wave of my hand. “I’m just doing opportunity.”

“Yeah? Well, let me know when you get around to motive,” he said dryly.

“Did Tally hear about that blackmail attempt?”

“Not from Viscardi. She says she handled it herself. Didn’t feel a need to involve the Ameses.”

“What
about
the Ameses? Did you run background checks on them?” I wished I could confide in Dwight, but I couldn’t see that Tally’s identity had any bearing on the murder, and my first loyalty had to be to Andrew, even if he was acting like a horse’s ass at the moment.

“The husband,” Dwight said. “Just minor stuff. Traffic violations, license irregularities. And any juvvie records for the boy would be sealed.”

Thinking of all we’d learned about Braz, I found myself hoping that Val was a decent son. I liked Tally, and on a purely selfish basis, I hoped she wouldn’t have her heart broken again by her second child.

The check arrived in a black plastic folder, and Dwight tucked a couple of bills inside the cover as I finished my drink.

“Ready?”

I nodded.

Out in the parking lot, he jingled his keys and asked if I wanted to drive.

“It’s still early and I’m not in any hurry now,” I said.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, the radio was tuned to a country station, or what passes for country these days, and Dwight flipped up and down the dial before turning it off with an impatient growl. “Hell of a note when you can’t find real country on the radio anymore.”

My stabs at conversation went nowhere, and we drove south on Old Forty-Eight in deepening silence till the lights of Garner faded behind us. The moon kept slipping in and out of hazy clouds, and the comfortable easiness that had been present between us during dinner seemed to be evaporating with each mile we traveled. He had sounded okay about Sylvia and Reid, but I wondered if maybe he was more down about it than he wanted to admit. It’s one thing to think a relationship’s going nowhere, quite another to have a friend cut you out so abruptly.

“Deb’rah?”

“Mmmm?”

As if paralleling my thoughts, he asked, “Did you mean it when you said you were tired of channel surfing?”

“Oh, God, yes,” I sighed. “I’m always clicking on the wrong guys. And now Minnie’s after me about my image. She thinks Paul Archdale may be planning to run against me next time and that I’m vulnerable to a whispering campaign.”

I’m a yellow-dog Democrat and Paul’s a Jesse Helms Republican, but that’s not the reason we dislike each other. We had a run-in over a dog once that could have gotten him disbarred and me reprimanded had we gone public with the situation. If he could get away with it, he’d smear me with the biggest creosote mop he could find.

“She keeps saying I need to just pick somebody respectable and settle down.”

“How about me?” said Dwight.

“Oh, I don’t think Minnie worries about your reputation. Men still get cut more slack these days. Even sheriff’s deputies.”

“No, I mean how about you and me get married?”

I looked at him in astonishment, expecting to see a big smile, hear a joking comment. Instead, the set of his jaw was serious in the glow of the dash lights and he kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Dwight—”

He still wouldn’t look at me. “It’s really not that crazy. Think about it a minute before you say no, all right? We’ve known each other since you were born. Our families like each other. We like the same old movies. We know each other’s moods and bad habits. You like Cal. Cal likes you.”

I was speechless.

“I just want to be married, Deb’rah,” he said plaintively. “I’m tired of bars and pickup lines and trying to be funny. I’m tired of living in a bachelor apartment. I want a real home. I want to plant trees, cut the grass, buy family-size packs of meat at the grocery store. I want somebody beside me I can laugh with and enjoy coming home to every night, somebody who won’t be jealous because I love my son and like having him here whenever Jonna will let me.”

“But what about love?” I asked. “You’re not in love with me, Dwight.”

“So? You’re not in love with me, either, but we like each other, right? I mean, you don’t think I’m repulsive, do you? Or all that hard to be around?”

“Of course not. It’s just that I’ve never thought of you that way before.”

“Nothing will change. Except that neither of us’ll have to go home after the movie’s over.” This time, he did shoot me a grin before turning his eyes back to the line of cars coming at us.

“But what about—?” Suddenly I felt shy. “What about sex?”

“I like it,” he said promptly. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Don’t tell me you were madly in love with every guy you ever slept with.”

“Maybe not to begin with, but I certainly meant to be or I wouldn’t have. And anyhow, just how many do you think there’ve been?” I asked indignantly, mentally counting up even as I spoke.

They would all fit comfortably on the fingers of one hand, so it’s not like my bed’s been a revolving door. All the same, Dwight had a point. In fact, he had several. He’s decent and caring. Takes his obligations seriously and he’s not exactly hard to look at either, not with that solid build and strong face. And yes, we were comfortable with each other... most of the time.

But marriage? Sex?

He kept glancing over at me as he drove, but now it was my turn to stare straight ahead as I considered the ramifications. My family would be over the moon, of course, but what about Cal? Dwight often brought him out to the farm when the child was down for a long weekend or for his summer vacation and he always seemed happy enough in my company. All the same, things would surely be different if his dad and I were married.

Married.

There was something awfully final to that word. Yet, wouldn’t it be a relief to be done with all the games? Playing the field sounds glamorous at seventeen, amusing at twenty-seven, but at thirty-seven the field was getting pretty damn thin and a lot less amusing with each passing year. Did I want to be like the friends who were still hanging at Miss Molly’s every weekend, hoping to get lucky, hoping not to spend the rest of their lives alone?

“How come you and Jonna really busted up?” I asked.

“No one big reason. She just didn’t want to be married anymore. What about you and Chapin?”

“He
did
want to be married. Only not to me.”

Again the silence stretched between us as we passed through Cotton Grove, along Possum Creek, and onto the road past the farm. The moon flicked in and out of the thick trees.

“Okay,” I said at last.

“Really?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“You’re sure?” he persisted.

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Dwight turned off the hardtop into the lane that ran up to my house. When we pulled in next to the back porch, he left the motor running and reached across me to open the door so I could hop out as I always did.