Slow Dollar Read online

  Slow Dollar

  Deborah Knott Mystery [9]

  Margaret Maron

  Grand Central Publishing (2011)

  Tags: Contemporary, checked, Mystery

  Contemporaryttt checkedttt Mysteryttt

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  Product Description

  For Judge Knott, the case before her seems to be an ordinary misdemeanor — except that the personal property that's been destroyed is an inflatable carnival ride. When the carnival comes to her own town a few weeks later, Deborah soon discovers there's nothing ordinary about this rag-tag collection of rides and games. Why does the ride owner's charm bracelet awaken half-forgotten memories? And what is her connection to Deborah's own family? When one of the concessionaires is found dead, his mouth stuffed with quarters from his game of chance, Deborah soon learns that he was also chancing a little blackmail on the side — blackmail that may threaten one of her brothers. In carnie lingo, "A fast dime is better than a slow dollar." Torn between judicial ethics and family love, Deborah must decide who gets which before more lives are ruined and the carnival moves on.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Glossary

  FORWARD

  I was introduced to the carnival world by my cousin Brandy, with it and for it for twenty-five years, and I am forever grateful. The books she lent, the inside stories she told, and all the jackpots she cut up with me were invaluable. If I learned more from my independent research than she intended, if my totally fictional Ames Amusement Corporation doesn’t exactly conform to her own “Sunday schooler” standards, I hope she’ll forgive me and understand the needs of the story I wanted to tell.

  As always, Judge Deborah Knott’s courtroom behavior owes much to the advice of District Court Judges John W. Smith, Shelly S. Holt, and Rebecca W. Blackmore of the 5th Judicial District Court (New Hanover and Pender Counties, North Carolina). Unfortunately, they have no influence at all on her out-of-courtroom behavior.

  For the uninitiated, I have included a glossary of carny terms at the back of this book.

  Carnivals arc pure Americana: the glitz and flash of colored lights, the fried-food-on-a-stick, the cotton candy, the “step right up-win a prize” pitches. If it’s summer, here’s probably one playing somewhere near you even as you read. Put down this book, turn off the television, load up any available kids, and go find one now. Build a memory for the children or for yourself before the carnival disappears into our past.

  PROLOGUE

  EARLY MAY

  BRAZOS HARTLEY

  The back door of the eighteen-wheeler had been pushed up about eight inches from the bottom and one of the side doors was open wide in an attempt at cross ventilation. An oscillating fan moved air around the cavernous interior, but the south Georgia night was so hot and muggy that the fan was having almost no effect.

  Beyond odd pieces of furniture stacked on one side, Brazos Hartley hunched over a laptop computer screen at the rear of the trailer. The young man had stripped to the waist but sweat dripped down his back and arms. It turned the snake tattooed the length of his right arm into something glistening and alive as he tapped the keys.

  Bare, low wattage light bulbs hung by both open doors to decoy night-flying insects. At the computer, a rusty gooseneck lamp illuminated the keyboard and spot-lighted the green marbleized fountain pen that lay across the top row of his function keys. As he typed, a stray moth fluttered up into the lamp, showering gray dust on the keys. He caught it and mashed it between his fingers, then wiped his fingers on his pant leg before picking up the pen by its slender barrel to examine it closely again. He scraped away a fleck of old, dried ink from the shining point, screwed the cap back on, and returned to the eBay listing he was composing:

  . . . circa 1940. Pump filler. Solid 18K nib and trim. Beautiful condition. Original owner was killed in WWII.

  Reserve price—

  Braz hesitated while greed warred with reality, then confidently typed $350.

  The fountain pen had been in the pocket of an old Navy jacket, part of a defaulted self-storage locker his stepfather Arn had bought last week down near Jacksonville. The locker had held a bent bicycle frame, a fairly new love seat with matching chairs upholstered in black leatherette, and a pair of tarnished and dented pole lamps. His eyes on the resale value of the furniture, Arn had been high bidder at one twenty-five. Only after he’d paid over the money could they enter the locker and check out what else was there. Usually it wasn’t much. This time, over behind the love seat, where no flashlight could reach, they’d found a boxy WWII vintage suitcase.

  The old suitcase was locked, and they’d had to wait till they got back to their current base to open it with Arn’s set of picklocks. Vintage luggage in good condition brought decent money these days, and Arn was careful not to bust the catch.

  Inside was pay dirt. A carefully folded American flag and a small gold-fringed banner with a gold star pinned to the middle lay atop the dark blue wool uniform of a Navy noncom.

  American flags were always good sellers at Southern flea markets, and authentic uniforms moved briskly, too, around the military bases that dotted the South.

  “Know what we got here?” Arn had said. “This must’ve been a kid got killed in the war and his folks just packed everything up when they sent his things home.”

  Beneath the uniforms were yellowed letters with certain parts carefully razored out by a wartime censor. No envelopes, to Braz’s disappointment. Old envelopes were what collectors wanted.

  But while Arn leafed through the letters, Braz shook out the clothes and surreptitiously felt the pockets. When his fingers discovered the pen, he’d palmed it slicker than an add-up agent working a razzle-dazzle.

  Unless it was extremely old or immediately recognizable as valuable, his stepfather never had much patience with anything paper. He preferred hard goods that he could turn over quickly at a decent profit. “A quick dime’s better than a slow dollar,” Arn always said, and he’d tossed the packet of letters Braz’s way, along with a couple of Zane Grey books and a New Testament that had been in the bottom of the suitcase.

  A half-dozen tiny black-and-white snapshots slid out of the Bible. Uniformed boys younger then than he was now stood on the deck of a ship, and in the background was another ship with big white numbers on its bow. It would take some detective work, but if he could figure out what ship it was, he could write an ad to put on the Internet auction site that would bring in a few bucks for the pictures. World War Two memorabilia always sold. Let Arn go for the quick dime. He’d take the slow dollar any day.

  Like this fountain pen. Arn would’ve put it out to auction with no reserve price, happy to take the high bid of whoever happened to be online that day. Ten dollars or a hundred, Arn wouldn’t care, Braz thought scornfully. He was like any other carny. All he cared about was the quick profit. And yeah, Ames Amusement Corporation was growing, but it was never going to be big-time. And even if it grew big as Strates, wasn’t like his mother and Arn would ever cut him a major piece of it. Not while baby brother Val was around.

  He completed the ad, using an e-identity that neither Arn nor Val knew about, then exited from the program and turned off the laptop. As the
screen went dark, he closed the lid, neatened the makeshift desktop, switched off his lamp, and stood up to stretch his cramped muscles. It was a little past two A.M. and time to hit the hay, hay being a mattress on the floor by the rear door. He’d quit sleeping in the family’s two-bedroom trailer four years ago, preferring to stake out his own private space here in the back of the eighteen-wheeler’s van rather than share a pop-out with his younger half-brother when they were on the road.

  Most of the trailers around him were dark and silent. Somewhere, though, a radio was playing soft jazz, and when he stepped out into the airless night, he heard a burst of laughter that sounded like his mother. She and Polly and some of the others were probably over there sipping ice-cold beers and cutting up jackpots. Arn and Val would already be asleep inside the trailer. Neither of them were the night owls he and Mom were.

  He thought about going over and scoring a cold one himself, but on second thought, after what happened last night, maybe not, he decided.

  A shower would feel good, but hot as it was, might as well wait and take one when he woke up. Be fresh for if that little blond townie came by tomorrow like she said she would when she was flirting with him at the Dozer tonight.

  What couldn’t wait was the need to empty his bladder. Portable donnikers were down near the Tilt-A-Whirl, convenient to the midway. Quicker and easier was to go around back to the bushes that grew at the edge of the field where they were parked.

  It was dark back there and he’d just finished his business and was zipping up when someone came around the corner.

  Male.

  Big.

  Moving with purpose.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a second figure by the truck’s front fender.

  Before he could speak, an iron fist to his midriff bent him double with pain. Another to his chest spun him around so hard that the third punch landed bruisingly on his right shoulder blade as he crumpled to the ground.

  “This is from Polly,” the man grunted as he gave a bone jarring kick to Braz’s left buttock and another to his ribs. Not enough to break one, just enough to hurt like hell.

  Instinctively, Braz drew up his legs and covered his head with his arms in a fetal position as the punishing blows and kicks continued. Pain blossomed through his body, and he cried out.

  At that, someone called in a low voice, “That’s enough, Sam! Let him alone!”

  The attacker gave Braz another halfhearted kick. “Try to mess over Polly again, you little shithead, and you won’t get off this easy. And you better not go running to Arnie or Tal, either. You and Skee keep your mouths shut. They hear about this, I’ll beat the crap out of both of you. You got that?”

  “He’s got it,” said the newcomer, a small elderly man. “Now get the hell away before somebody comes.”

  Despite the venomous words, both men kept their voices down.

  The one called Sam stomped off and Skee Matusik bent over Braz, who still writhed in agony on the ground.

  “Come on, kid,” he said. “Let ol’ Skee help you back inside.”

  He pulled the younger man to his feet and guided him around to the back of the trailer, where he pushed up the retractable rear door and pulled down the folding steps. Braz climbed them shakily and collapsed onto the mattress, half crying in his pain and anger. “The bastard!”

  “You got any aspirin?” Skee asked practically.

  Braz pointed toward the black zippered bag that held his toothbrush, razor, and other toiletries.

  The older man found the bottle, shook out three in his hand. There was a water bottle next to the pillow, and he handed both to Braz.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, and lay back on the makeshift bed, drained and exhausted and hurting all over.

  “Anything broken?”

  Braz shook his head wearily.

  “Didn’t think so. And he stayed away from your face, too,” said Skee. In this light, his missing teeth left dark holes in his tight smile. “Smart. Your shirt’ll cover all the bruises you’re going to have tomorrow, but Tally would’ve noticed a black eye or cuts on your chin.”

  “How come you didn’t pull him off me quicker?” Braz asked resentfully, wincing as he pushed the pillow into a more comfortable position.

  “Like Sam wouldn’t make two of me? You’re just lucky I could stop him when I did. What’d you do to piss him off like that?”

  “None of your business. But I’ll tell you one thing: This is my last time out. Come October, I’m finished with the carnival for good and all.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Skee, who’d heard it before. He went over and pulled the side door nearly shut and turned the fan full on Braz. “Want me to turn out these lights?”

  “I mean it,” Braz said drowsily. “Who needs this fuckin’ life?”

  “Some of us, kid,” sighed the old carny. “Some of us.”

  CHAPTER 1

  JUDGE DEBORAH KNOTT

  FIRST WEEK IN SEPTEMBER

  I was holding court over in Widdington and it was our fifth drunk-and-disorderly of this hot September morning.

  Actually our fifth, sixth, and seventh since there were three men involved in the same incident.

  “Call Victor Lincoln, Daniel Lincoln, James Partin,” said Chester Nance, the ADA who was prosecuting today’s calendar.

  If James Partin had ever stood before me, I didn’t remember, but the Lincoln brothers, Vic and Danny, were husky young white men whom I’d found guilty of larceny more than two years ago. Itinerant carpenters, they had been stealing appliances from the newly finished houses in Tinker’s Landing before their owners could move in.

  I gazed from one set of bloodshot eyes to the other. “Time sure does fly. I didn’t realize you guys were out already.”

  “Time off for good behavior,” Vic said, trying to look upright and respectable. He and his cohorts had already waived their rights to an attorney.

  “Too bad your good behavior didn’t last,” said Chester Nance. “Class-one misdemeanor, Your Honor. Injury to personal property. Misdemeanor assault. Intoxicated and disruptive.”

  It was the usual story except that this time, the personal property destroyed was the Pot O’Gold Rainbow.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “An inflatable carnival ride, Your Honor.”

  “How do you plead?” I asked the accused.

  “Not guilty,” Vic Lincoln said confidently. “We might’ve had a couple of beers, but we won’t drunk. Just having a good time. We didn’t really hurt nothing.”

  “Just put a three-hundred-dollar cut in my ride,” the woman seated at Chester Nance’s table observed.

  “Mr. Nance,” I warned.

  The ADA stood hastily. “Call Mrs. Tallahassee Ames.”

  The woman rose from the table and moved easily across to the witness stand, where she placed her hand on the Bible.

  She looked to be pushing forty—at least three years older than me—and her slender body had an air of muscular hardness to it. Her shoulder-length dark hair framed a square face that was attractive, if a little weather-roughened like farm women who’d sized up too many crops under too many hot suns, which, come to think of it, probably isn’t too much different from sizing up crowds in strange towns. The big gold hoops that swung from her ears made me wonder if she ever moonlighted as the carnival’s gypsy fortune-teller. Instead of flowing skirts and veils, though, she wore well-cut jeans, high-heeled boots of red snakeskin, and a red silk shirt with the top buttons left open. Several gold necklaces encircled her throat and a diamond-crusted cross on one of them dipped down between her breasts. Danny Lincoln was staring at its resting place and breathing with his mouth open.

  The tangle of small gold charms on her bracelet clinked and jingled against the Bible as Mrs. Ames placed her left hand on it and swore that she would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  “You may be seated,” said my clerk.

  “State your name and address,” said Chest
er Nance.

  “Tallahassee Ames, currently of Gibtown—sorry, I mean Gibsonton, Florida.”

  Puzzled, Nance looked at his notes again. “Didn’t you give the police officers a local address that night?”

  “I might’ve told him I owned property in this county, but my legal residence is Florida.”

  “I see.” Again he shuffled papers. “Please tell the court your occupation.”

  “My husband and me, we own and operate Ames Amusement Corporation.” The witness chair was one step lower than mine, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were an unexpected deep clear blue. “Three rides, five games, two grab wagons.”

  “Grab wagons?” I asked.

  “Corn dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, soft drinks, okay? Grab and go food.”

  “On July seventh of this year, where were you and your amusements?” asked Nance, virtuously staying on topic.

  “Us and another outfit were set up over in the abandoned Kmart parking lot at the edge of town here for the Fourth of July.”

  I hadn’t been to Widdington’s Fourth of July celebration since I was a teenager, but I knew they went all out—parade, fireworks, and a ten-day carnival to raise money for their rescue squad.

  Under Nance’s questioning, Mrs. Ames described the events leading to last month’s incident. Her voice had the husky timbre of a heavy smoker.

  According to her testimony, it was around eleven o’clock on a Thursday night. Average closing time for a weeknight. Widdington isn’t New York. It isn’t even Raleigh. The owner of the other rides had already shut down his Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl, and she herself was in the process of securing her guessing game when she realized there was trouble over at the Pot O’Gold, a contraption that sounded like a large, colorful sliding board.

  “It’s basically a big plastic balloon shaped like half a rainbow, okay?” She gestured with her hands, and her charm bracelet tinkled like little gypsy bells. “One side looks like a big treetop with clouds over it. Inside, there’s a set of spiral steps that go up thirty feet to the top. When you come out of a door in the cloud, you’re on top of the rainbow. We’ve got an air compressor that keeps it inflated. The way it works is that you sit on a slide sack and try to land in the pot of gold at the bottom.”