every time you think about it,” he said grimly.
“I don’t, I’m not,” I protested. I took his hand, uncurled his fist, and slipped the ring on my finger. It was a perfect fit.
“I can’t wait to start wearing it,” I lied, handing it back for safekeeping till he had told his son and I would have to put it on for all the world—and my family—to see. “When are you going up to tell Cal?”
“I would’ve already gone if Polly Viscardi hadn’t been killed last night.”
“It wasn’t suicide? She didn’t kill herself because she’d killed Braz?”
“Nope. It’s murder with a sloppy attempt to look like suicide.”
“You can tell that quick? Before the autopsy?”
“All Percy had to do was look at the rope with a magnifying glass,” said Dwight, speaking of Percy Denning, the deputy who’d had extra training as their crimescene specialist. “Whoever killed her used a rough jute rope. Looped it over the pipes that supported the canvas roof of the stand, then hoisted her up. Percy could tell by the direction the fibers had been rubbed that the line had been pulled across the pole and tied off while it supported her whole weight. If she’d tied it off first, then jumped off the edge of the platform like we were supposed to think, the fibers would have been rubbed in the opposite direction.”
“Then she wasn’t the one who stomped Braz?”
“Oh, we’ve still got her tagged for that.”
I looked at him questioningly.
“Her shoes. We’ve sent them to the SBI lab for confirmation. She’d cleaned them up pretty good, but Percy’s pretty sure from the heel print in the Dozer and the sample he scraped out of the crack between the heel and the shoe itself that she’s the one stomped Hartley to death. The blood type’s consistent with his.”
“Wait a minute! Does that mean
“Too soon to know,” he answered.
“What about time of death?”
“Sometime between one A.M. and daybreak. The night guard was supposed to make the rounds at twelve, two, and four, but there’s just his word for it that he did. Even then, there was lots of time in between. He says he would have noticed if there was anybody unauthorized on the lot.”
“What about authorized?”
“He said the patch—Koffer—was still roaming around at midnight, so we talked to him, too. Something about measuring one of the game stands to see if it was longer than the independent agent claimed. I gather they pay by the running foot for the privilege of booking in with the carnival and some of the agents try to fudge the figures. He says it cuts down on the hassles just to measure when no one else is around. He also says he was asleep in his own trailer by one o’clock.”
“Polly’s bunkmates say the last time they saw her was around one. That they went to bed and she stayed up to read.”
“Yeah, Richards told me. They say anything else she might not’ve heard?”
Feeling like a total snitch, I repeated the gossip Tally had told me about Polly’s love life, about her current lover whom she’d taken from Tasha, and her former lover—the corn dog cook who was also Eve’s father. Probably none of it was relevant, but I’d have felt even worse if I didn’t tell him and it turned out to be important.
“Tally didn’t ask me not to repeat it,” I said, “and she’s clicked on the possibility that we’re more than friends. All the same—”
“Don’t worry, shug. It’s probably common knowledge on the lot. They won’t know it came from you.”
I glanced at my watch. A quarter past twelve and I was due in court at one.
“I need to get rolling, too,” Dwight said. “Want to ride into Dobbs with me?”
“And you’ll bring me back this evening?”
He nodded.
“Okay. Just let me go say goodbye to Tally and Arnold.”
As we walked back through the house, I almost bumped into Stevie, who did an abrupt about-turn and ducked into the bathroom.
I leaned close to the door. “You can run but you can’t hide forever, Stevie Knott. You and I are due for a little prayer meeting.”
I tiptoed away. Let him think I was waiting outside the door to snag him.
Out on the porch, we found that several of the carnival people had already left and the Ameses were getting ready to leave themselves. Tally wanted to walk down to the grave site alone with her son and husband, so I hugged her goodbye and said that I’d get over to see her again before the carnival closed.
Then I hugged Andrew, who gave me a bear hug back. Lastly, I told Daddy I was going to leave my car there for the time being and ride over to the courthouse with Dwight. He’s played too much poker to give us away, and as for the others, they take Dwight so much for granted that no one seemed to think it odd that he’d make the round- trip out from Dobbs twice in the same day. Indeed, April was still so clueless that she even smiled up at him and said, “We’re going to have to get you and Sylvia out for supper one night before too much longer.”
Dwight turned a becoming shade of red, which made my brothers laugh and rag him about wedding bells in his future.
