Slow Dollar dk-9

by Margaret Maron

  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?”

  The small Ferris wheel was already turning and music was playing beyond the Agricultural Hall when I came skidding up at five past ten. I thought Dwight’s visit had made me late, but I soon learned that I’d confused the time of my event with the barbecue contest and wouldn’t have to face any yams till eleven. That gave me a chance to visit with Herman and Haywood and to see how they were faring in the blind tastings.

  A dozen or more black steel cookers were lined up under the huge oak trees that shaded the rear of the hall. The big twins had been there since midnight, slowly grilling a hefty pig on their gas-fired cooker and taking turns catching catnaps in the back of Herman’s van.

  “Just like setting up with a ‘bacco barn,” said Haywood, who really wasn’t quite old enough to remember those days when tobacco was cured with wood fires that had to be fed all through the night. He liked to think he was, though.

  Two of my sisters-in-law, Haywood’s Isabel and Herman’s Nadine, were seated nearby in folding chairs. Herman’s an electrician here in Dobbs, so Isabel and my niece Jane Ann had spent the night with Nadine and her Annie Sue rather than drive back to the farm. Evidently, they’d brought breakfast for the twins because Herman was munching on a homemade biscuit.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked.

  “Oh, those girls were still talking when we went to bed,” said Nadine. “We won’t see them before noon.”

  “What about Stevie? Didn’t he stay over, too?”

  “He had laundry to do,” said Isabel with a comfortable chuckle for her un-motherliness. “If he wants to wear cotton shirts, then he’s gonna be the one to wash and iron them. Same with Jane Ann.”

  “Just what I tell my kids,” Nadine chimed in. “You get good polyester and you can’t tell it from cotton ‘cepting you don’t have to iron it.”

  She gave my chambray dress a critical look. “Is that cotton?”

  “Well, I like cotton for my work shirts,” said Haywood. “You’n heat to death in them synthetic shirts. You got any more of them ham biscuits, honey?”

  Isabel reached into a cooler at her feet and waved a somewhat depleted but still fragrant basket of cholesterol and carbohydrates beneath my nose.

  “Don’t you want one, too, Deb’rah?”

  Well, of course, I did—Isabel makes her buttermilk biscuits big as bear claws and she’d sliced the salt-cured dark red ham with an equally generous hand—but somehow I dredged up the willpower to resist.

  “Just finished a big breakfast,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t hear my stomach growl in protest above the music coming from the midway. “I’ll be back for some barbecue later if there’s any left.”

  “We’ll save you some, honey,” Haywood promised, biting into pure succulence before getting on my case.

  Even though Herman’s still in a wheelchair, there had been plenty of opportunity between catnaps and hands of gin rummy for the big twins to visit the other cookers and catch up on all the gossip around the county. Haywood’s never seen a stranger and has never been shy about asking questions or giving advice and Herman’s not far behind him.

  “Heard you was the one found that boy that got hisself killed,” Haywood said disapprovingly.

  “Ought you to be doing such stuff and you a judge?” asked Herman.

  “You need to remember to be a little more dignified,” Haywood said. “Don’t look good for you to be messing around with trouble like that.”

  “I promise you it wasn’t something I’d planned on,” I told them.

  Nadine and Isabel wanted to hear every detail, and they were disappointed at how little I could tell them. I gathered there were much more interesting speculations making the rounds of the cookers—“You know what carnival people are like. All them tattoos? Steal you blind if you take your eyes off ‘em”—and they were prepared to share those speculations with me, but Seth and Minnie arrived about then just as someone with a microphone called for our attention.

  “The first round of tasting has been completed,” he announced. “The final four are numbers one, four, seven, and eight.”

  There were whoops and cheers from the spectators and a couple of good-natured boos from the eliminated cooks.

  “We’re number seven,” Haywood confided in a bass whisper that could’ve been heard in Raleigh if the music from the merry-go-round on the other side of the fence hadn’t drowned him out.

  They had placed second last year, he reminded me, and while second “won’t real shabby considering the competition, this year me and Herman’s got us a secret ingredient.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, ma’am! This year we soaked some oak chips overnight in ginger ale and we sprinkled them on the bottom to get that extra flavor in the smoke.”

  But for all his pretense of complacency, he and Herman watched closely as the judges sampled the four finalists and marked their scorecards. Then, after a whispered conference, they each went back for yet another taste of numbers four and seven. I saw Haywood’s big hand clench Herman’s shoulder.

  A final huddle with the judges, then the list of winners was handed to the announcer. Honorable mention went to number one, a team of Shriners from Dobbs. To everyone’s surprise (and more than
a little chagrin), third place was awarded to number eight, a couple of newcomers from Michigan who’ve really taken to our style of barbecue. Last year’s winners, the men’s Sunday school class of Mt. Olive A.M.E. Zion, started high-fiving each other, confident that they were about to carry home the blue ribbon again.

  The announcer milked the suspense for all it was worth, then cried, “The red ribbon goes to number four, and number seven is this year’s blue-ribbon champion! Let’s give ‘em all a big hand, folks.”

  Haywood grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it so fast across the uneven ground toward the announcer that Herman said later he thought he was taking a victory lap at Rockingham rather than accepting first place at a little old barbecue contest. “The way Brother Haywood was taking them curves, I needed me a seat belt.”

  The other ribbon winners crowded around to congratulate them.

  “What’d you say you soaked your oak chips in?” asked one of the Michiganites.

  “Grape Nehi,” Herman answered blandly.

  “Now, why’d you go and tell ‘em that?” Haywood scolded when they returned with their ribbon. “That’s liable to taste real good.”

  Leaving the big twins to fasten that blue rosette to their cooker and bask in their glory, Seth and Minnie walked into the Ag Hall with me for the Some Yam Thing or Other contest. Seth is five up from me and the brother who’s always cut me the most slack. Minnie is my self-appointed campaign manager and she’s the one who volunteered me to judge today. She believes in keeping me in the public eye. (At least, she believes in keeping me there as long as there are only positive things for the public eye to see.)

  Since last night’s murder hadn’t come up in front of her, I could safely assume she hadn’t yet heard of my involvement. I was hoping to keep it that way for the time being.

  As I glanced around In hall, I noticed other family members and looked at Minnie suspiciously. “I thought we agreed that none of the kids would enter.”