Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron Page A

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