Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron Page B

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