of loudspeakers with music and handheld mikes with pitches, the night air crackled with radioed dispatches.
Down at the gate, a news van with a mobile transmitter had appeared and I saw someone from the Dobbs
The man from the Bowler Roller had finished shutting up quickly, and when he came over to help tie down the tent flaps, Tally introduced us. “Deborah, this is Windy Raines. Believe it or not, Windy, she’s my aunt.”
“Really? Now, how come I don’t have any aunts like you?” he said, leering rakishly, a leer spoiled by the fact that he was missing a couple of teeth and was probably nearing sixty.
“Behave yourself,” Tally warned. “Her boyfriend’s that deputy sheriff over there.”
I started to say Dwight wasn’t my boyfriend, then remembered that well, yes, he was. It was going to take some getting used to.
Across the way, the crimescene van was back. Yellow tape looped around the Plate Pitch and floodlights lit up the interior till the stacks of glassware blazed in the glare. Beyond the hood of a patrol car, I saw Dwight in the center of a knot of men, both uniforms and civilians. I recognized Arnold Ames, Dennis Koffer, Skee Matusik, and a couple of prominent men who were on the county’s festival committee. A moment later, they were joined by an unfamiliar heavyset man who listened silently as Ames and Koffer appeared to be bringing him up to speed.
“Ralph Ferlanski,” Tally told me. “The other owner. He owns the Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl and the swings.”
“And the generators,” Windy reminded her with a hint of bitterness in his tone.
“And the generators,” she agreed equably, not letting herself get drawn into whatever problem he had with the other owner.
“God, this is bad as a hurricane,” said Skee Matusik, who had evidently been invited to take himself away from the Plate Pitch area. “They’re saying tomorrow may be dark, too.”
“The hell you say!” Windy Raines exclaimed. “How they expect us to make our nut?”
“The teenagers’ll be back for you guys,” Matusik said bitterly, “but I might as well go on and make the jump now. Nobody’s gonna bring the kiddies out to a place where somebody’s getting killed every time you turn around.”
Tally’s jaw tightened, and I looked down at the scrawny little man coldly. “In case you’ve forgotten, Tally’s son is one of those people who got killed, and I’m sure he didn’t lie down and die just so you could have a bad day. Any more than that poor woman over there.”
“Oh, hey, Tal! I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it like that. Polly and me, we might not’ve got along, but you know how much Irene and me loved Braz.”
“It’s okay,” she said wearily.
“Lord, lordy,” said Raines. “Polly gone, too. Midway’s not gonna be the same without that redheaded spitfire keeping the ashes stirred.”
We finished securing the Dozer and tying the tent flaps closed.
Thanks to Dwight, I found myself sneaking close looks at their footgear. Tonight all three wore those unisex leather work shoes with thick soles. Raines’s were calf high lumberjacks, laced with leather strings, while Tally’s were regular low-tops laced with round cords. Matusik’s were ankle-high with regular brown laces that stopped two holes short of the top pair. His and Tally’s shoes left ridge patterns in the dirt, but Raines’s were so old that if they’d ever had a tread, they were now too worn to show. On the other hand, they didn’t seem to have been cleaned lately and the discolorations looked like normal dirt and grease to me. Certainly no huge blotches of dried blood on the dark brown leather to say they’d stomped a young man to death three nights ago.
Having finished with the Dozer, Tally moved on to the ears-and-floss wagon next door, but the two young women working there—Candy and Tasha—had everything under control, they said, and were almost finished. Both were teary over Polly’s death.
“They bunked in together,” Tally told me as I followed her down to their other grab wagon, the one that sold corn dogs and cold drinks. “Candy, Tasha, Eve, and Kay. Kay’s the one found her. They bunk at one end of the trailer next to us, and Polly and Sam bunked at the other end. Polly’s been like their den mother this time out.”
We found the other grab wagon empty and abandoned. Tally wasn’t surprised.
“Towners!” she muttered, swinging up into the wagon. “Eve and Kay were working this one alone because our regular cook’s been stoned since Friday afternoon, but I had to pull Eve off yesterday to work the Guesser, so we hired someone local to help Kay. Then tonight when I pulled Kay off to cover for Polly, the new girl said she could handle it. Everything was all made. She would’ve had to keep moving, but really, there’s nothing to it. Looks like she took off the minute we left, though.”
She checked the money box beneath the counter. Empty. “Another no surprise,” Tally said grimly.
The window counters and grill were a mess.
There was a bucket of clean soapy water under one of the counters. I hung my jacket on the outside knob, stepped up into the wagon, squeezed out the dishcloth, and got busy.
“What are you doing?” Tally asked. “You’ll wreck your clothes.”
“They’re washable,” I said, glad that I’d chosen to wear a cotton pantsuit and low shoes this morning.
“But you’re a judge.”
“So? I’m also a pair of hands, and you can use some help.”
While she turned off the grease vat, stowed the food in a refrigerated chest under the counter, and moved stuff out of my way, I washed off everything that felt greasy or sticky. We made a good team. There’s something about working together that lets down the roadblocks and fosters trust. Soon she was telling me about Polly Viscardi.
“We’ve known her for years, Arnie and me. She and Irene were good friends, too, but this is the first time she’d
