Slow Dollar

CHAPTER 11

SUNDAY EVENING

We stopped for supper at Las Margaritas in Garner, and the waiter, mistaking our relationship, seated us in a secluded booth made romantic by candlelight. I pushed the candle over to the side while Dwight ordered a Dos Equis for himself and a frozen margarita for me. There were years that I couldn’t face them, but I tried one again last spring and it was so refreshing that it’s back in the lineup now. Dwight likes burritos or chiles rellenos. I usually get the taco salad with extra guacamole. (I might not have been tempted had the serpent offered me an apple, but if it’d been an avocado, don’t bet the Garden.)

I was concerned about Stevie, but he’s a basically sensible kid and maybe when he’d had a chance to think about it, he’d realize that murder isn’t a game where you get to decide what to tell and what to withhold, especially when it’s the murder of a cousin. And even though he didn’t yet know Brazos Hartley was a cousin, blood still counts for something in our family.

“So,” I said to Dwight as our drinks came, “how come you’re not out with Sylvia tonight?”

He shrugged. “Sylvia and I are finished.”

“Really? What happened?”

He took a swallow of his beer and gave me a rueful look. “I guess she decided a divorced lawyer with monthly child-support payments was a better prospect than a divorced lawman with monthly child-support payments.”

“Reid? She’s seeing Reid now?”

That was so preposterous that I thought he had to be kidding. “Reid put the moves on her when he drove her home Friday night?”

“He was still there yesterday morning when I dropped that damn dog off.”

“Oh, Dwight.” Relieved to hear that his moodiness was due to Sylvia and not to anything I had or hadn’t done, I reached across the table and patted his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It wasn’t going anywhere with us. I was just waiting for her to realize it.”

I had to smile. “A gentleman to the end.”

He shrugged. “I learned a long time ago that things end better if the woman thinks it’s her decision.”

I can relate to that. I’ve dumped and I’ve been dumped and I know which hurts and humiliates more.

“Reid never could resist a challenge,” I said, “but if Sylvia Clayton thinks she’s going to get him to the altar...”

“I don’t know,” said Dwight. “Sylvia’s a nice person. And maybe he’s tired of window-shopping. I know I sure as hell am.”

“Me too,” I sighed.

Our food arrived and our talk turned to courthouse gossip and eventually back to the murder.

“I keep wondering why his mouth was filled with quarters.” I dipped a piece of my taco shell into the guacamole. “What’s the symbolism there? Put your money where your mouth is? Money talks?”

“Or keeps someone from talking,” said Dwight. “Money to keep his mouth shut forever?”

“The Ameses both say he was obsessed with money.”

“Most carnival people are,” I said, and told him about some of the bulletin boards I’d surfed that morning with their colorful language and blunt candor. “Their way of life almost demands it. They have from April till October to make enough to carry them through the rest of the year. Every day it rains, every day the thermometer goes much over ninety, every time the equipment breaks down, they’re losing income. All they’ve got is a smile and a fast line of talk—”

“And a gaffed game,” Dwight interjected cynically, referring to the dozens of ways a carny agent can keep you from winning if he wants to, despite the law’s best efforts.

“—and a gaffed game, maybe,” I conceded. “But you can’t cheat an honest man, and anybody who expects to get something for nothing ought not to be allowed on a midway. It’s a hard life out on the road for months—having to tear down all that gear and move it every few days, then set it up all over again. The real game, of course, must be dreaming up new ways to separate the marks from their money. Probably what keeps it from being a total grind.”

I thought of how Tally’s eyes had sparkled when she was stringing Reese along, keeping him in the game. “But it sounds like Braz Hartley took it a step further.”

Dwight nodded. “He did try a little blackmail this spring on the woman who runs the plate game.”

“The same woman who saw this Lamarr Wrenn bloody his nose? Polly somebody?”

“Polly Viscardi. She says this is the first time she’s hooked up with the Ameses, so Braz didn’t have a clue about her. She looks sweet and proper, doesn’t she?”

“I suppose.” I had a memory of bright red hair, a money apron tied around a thick waist, a smile for all who passed, and calculating eyes. And yes, she’d been one of those who offered support to Tally Friday night, but with her androgynous oil-stained leather work shoes, tight black slacks, and belligerent glares at all the gawkers, sweet and proper wouldn’t have been my description. Unless it was the pretty-in-pink ruffled blouse she wore? Or the little bells on the tips of her pink shoelaces? I’ve noticed that ruffles and pink can cloud men’s judgment at times.

“Sweet like a buzz saw,” Dwight said. “He found her getting it on with one of the roughies in their haunted house back in May and threatened to tell her husband if she didn’t pay him. Only he wasn’t her husband. She had the roughie bust Braz’s balls, then kicked the not-husband out and moved the roughie in.”

Dwight’s plate was empty and the waiter removed it. “Another drink?” he asked us.

We both shook our heads, and I gestured that he could take my plate, too.

“Coffee?” asked Dwight.

I still had some of my margarita left. “But you get a cup if you want it.”

“No, we’ll just have our check,” Dwight told the waiter, who nodded and went away to fetch it.

“So if Polly Viscardi actually saw who came along and finished the job Eric’s friend started, she doesn’t have a real strong motive to tell, does she?” I said. “For her, it could be good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Your guess is good as mine, shug.”

“A woman could have stomped Braz hard enough to kill him,” I mused.

“Well, it’s downward force,” he conceded. “Enough momentum and determination, why not?”

“Might be why the Viscardi woman says she didn’t see anything.”

He wasn’t convinced. “And her motive would be?”

“Oh, I’m not doing motive tonight,” I said with an airy wave of my hand. “I’m just doing opportunity.”

“Yeah? Well, let me know when you get around to motive,” he said dryly.

“Did Tally hear about that blackmail attempt?”

“Not from Viscardi. She says she handled it herself. Didn’t feel a need to involve the Ameses.”

“What about the Ameses? Did you run background checks on them?” I wished I could confide in Dwight, but I couldn’t see that Tally’s identity had any bearing on the murder, and my first loyalty had to be to Andrew, even if he was acting like a horse’s ass at the moment.

“The husband,” Dwight said. “Just minor stuff. Traffic violations, license irregularities. And any juvvie records for the boy would be sealed.”

Thinking of all we’d learned about Braz, I found myself hoping that Val was a decent son. I liked Tally, and on a purely selfish basis, I hoped she wouldn’t have her heart broken again by her second child.

The check arrived in a black plastic folder, and Dwight tucked a couple of bills inside the cover as I finished my drink.

“Ready?”

I nodded.

Out in the parking lot, he jingled his keys and asked if I wanted to drive.

“It’s still early and I’m not in any hurry now,” I said.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, the radio was tuned to a country station, or what passes for country these days, and Dwight flipped up and down the dial before turning it off with an impatient growl. “Hell of a note when you can’t find real country on the radio anymore.”

My stabs at conversation went nowhere, and we drove south on Old Forty-Eight in deepening silence till the lights of Garner faded behind us. The moon kept slipping in and out of hazy clouds, and the comfortable easiness that had been present between us during dinner seemed to be evaporating with each mile we traveled. He had sounded okay about Sylvia and Reid, but I wondered if maybe he was more down about it than he wanted to admit. It’s one thing to think a relationship’s going nowhere, quite another to have a friend cut you out so abruptly.

“Deb’rah?”

“Mmmm?”

As if paralleling my thoughts, he asked, “Did you mean it when you said you were tired of channel surfing?”

“Oh, God, yes,” I sighed. “I’m always clicking on the wrong guys. And now Minnie’s after me about my image. She thinks Paul Archdale may be planning to run against me next time and that I’m vulnerable to a whispering campaign.”

I’m a yellow-dog Democrat and Paul’s a Jesse Helms Republican, but that’s not the reason we dislike each other. We had a run-in over a dog once that could have gotten him disbarred and me reprimanded had we gone public with the situation. If he could get away with it, he’d smear me with the biggest creosote mop he could find.

“She keeps saying I need to just pick somebody respectable and settle down.”

“How about me?” said Dwight.

“Oh, I don’t think Minnie worries about your reputation. Men still get cut more slack these days. Even sheriff’s deputies.”

“No, I mean how about you and me get married?”

I looked at him in astonishment, expecting to see a big smile, hear a joking comment. Instead, the set of his jaw was serious in the glow of the dash lights and he kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Dwight—”

He still wouldn’t look at me. “It’s really not that crazy. Think about it a minute before you say no, all right? We’ve known each other since you were born. Our families like each other. We like the same old movies. We know each other’s moods and bad habits. You like Cal. Cal likes you.”

I was speechless.

“I just want to be married, Deb’rah,” he said plaintively. “I’m tired of bars and pickup lines and trying to be funny. I’m tired of living in a bachelor apartment. I want a real home. I want to plant trees, cut the grass, buy family-size packs of meat at the grocery store. I want somebody beside me I can laugh with and enjoy coming home to every night, somebody who won’t be jealous because I love my son and like having him here whenever Jonna will let me.”

“But what about love?” I asked. “You’re not in love with me, Dwight.”

“So? You’re not in love with me, either, but we like each other, right? I mean, you don’t think I’m repulsive, do you? Or all that hard to be around?”

“Of course not. It’s just that I’ve never thought of you that way before.”

“Nothing will change. Except that neither of us’ll have to go home after the movie’s over.” This time, he did shoot me a grin before turning his eyes back to the line of cars coming at us.

“But what about—?” Suddenly I felt shy. “What about sex?”

“I like it,” he said promptly. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Don’t tell me you were madly in love with every guy you ever slept with.”

“Maybe not to begin with, but I certainly meant to be or I wouldn’t have. And anyhow, just how many do you think there’ve been?” I asked indignantly, mentally counting up even as I spoke.

They would all fit comfortably on the fingers of one hand, so it’s not like my bed’s been a revolving door. All the same, Dwight had a point. In fact, he had several. He’s decent and caring. Takes his obligations seriously and he’s not exactly hard to look at either, not with that solid build and strong face. And yes, we were comfortable with each other... most of the time.

But marriage? Sex?

He kept glancing over at me as he drove, but now it was my turn to stare straight ahead as I considered the ramifications. My family would be over the moon, of course, but what about Cal? Dwight often brought him out to the farm when the child was down for a long weekend or for his summer vacation and he always seemed happy enough in my company. All the same, things would surely be different if his dad and I were married.

Married.

There was something awfully final to that word. Yet, wouldn’t it be a relief to be done with all the games? Playing the field sounds glamorous at seventeen, amusing at twenty-seven, but at thirty-seven the field was getting pretty damn thin and a lot less amusing with each passing year. Did I want to be like the friends who were still hanging at Miss Molly’s every weekend, hoping to get lucky, hoping not to spend the rest of their lives alone?

“How come you and Jonna really busted up?” I asked.

“No one big reason. She just didn’t want to be married anymore. What about you and Chapin?”

“He did want to be married. Only not to me.”

Again the silence stretched between us as we passed through Cotton Grove, along Possum Creek, and onto the road past the farm. The moon flicked in and out of the thick trees.

“Okay,” I said at last.

“Really?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“You’re sure?” he persisted.

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Dwight turned off the hardtop into the lane that ran up to my house. When we pulled in next to the back porch, he left the motor running and reached across me to open the door so I could hop out as I always did.

“Well,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. Want to—”

I turned off the key in his ignition.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Before we make it official,” I said, “we need to find out if we’re really as compatible as you think we are.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t play dumb, Dwight.”

“Oh.”

He doused the truck lights and followed me into the house. The moon followed, too, and we did not turn on any lamps.

After a lifetime of treating Dwight like family, I was afraid that sex with him would feel vaguely incestuous. Instead, once we got past the first awkward kiss, it felt normal.

Okay, better than normal.

All right, dammit! It felt wonderful.

Nevertheless, as the coital glow faded, a wave of sadness washed over me. Lying next to him in the moon-softened darkness of my bedroom, I said, “We’re just settling, aren’t we?”

“Settling?”

“Settling for safe and comfortable because we’re afraid the real thing’s never going to come along?”

“You want an escape clause?” he asked quietly.

“Well, we ought to look at it logically.”

For some reason, that seemed to irritate him. “Oh shit, Deb’rah Knott! You never looked at love logically in your whole damn life.”

“But this isn’t love, is it? I mean, we love each other. We always have. But this isn’t romantic love. This is expedience. And I don’t know why you’re getting so huffy.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I? You no sooner say yes than you’re looking for a way to bust us up. If we do this, I expect it to be for better or worse till death do us part. No more divorces.”

“And what if someone comes along who makes you feel the way you felt when you and Jonna first fell in love?”

“Not going to happen,” he said stubbornly. “And even if it does, I’ll just remind myself where that feeling ended up the last time around.”

His denial of love’s importance made me so much sadder that I couldn’t speak and his head turned on the pillow beside me.

“But if you want an escape clause, if that someone comes along for you... Well, then, I won’t try to make you stay, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

He rolled closer and gathered me into his arms. “It’ll all work out, shug. You’ll see. It’ll be fine.”

His hand was gentle as he smoothed my hair away from my face, and his soothing words reminded me of someone trying to reassure a nervous filly that the saddle wouldn’t hurt at all. Amused and comforted, I eventually quit nickering and took the carrot he offered on his open hand.

After a second test of compatibility (we needed to be absolutely certain, didn’t we?), Dwight and I put our clothes back on and sat at my kitchen table to talk until after midnight.

Over coffee and some of Maidie’s oatmeal cookies, we agreed that he’d move in with me after the wedding and we’d think about adding on to my small house in the spring.

We also agreed he’d tell his mother and I’d tell Daddy; then he’d drive up to Virginia to tell Cal himself. Until then, to guard against any rumors reaching the boy first, no siblings and no friends.

“Just Portland,” I emended. We’ve always told each other everything and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep her from guessing that something serious was on my mind.

“That means Avery, too, you know.”

I nodded. “It always has, but he’s never talked out of turn that I know of.” I looked at Dwight suspiciously. “Has he?”

“Well, maybe to me once or twice,” he admitted sheepishly. “When he and Portland were worried about you out there messing in stuff that could get you hurt.”

“So that’s how you found out,” I said, remembering a couple of those times when I’d have sworn there was no way he could know what I was up to. “Okay, Portland and Avery and nobody else till you tell Cal.”

“You gonna want a big church wedding?”

“Not really. You?”

“Hell, no. I say we go stand in front of a magistrate. How about Gwen Utley next week sometime?”

“Be serious, Dwight. There’s a lot of middle ground between a big church wedding and a magistrate’s court. Part of this is PR—show the voters I’m becoming a respectable married woman, remember? That means pictures in the newspaper and some sort of church ceremony. And you know how hurt the boys would be if we didn’t invite them to come. Or their wives if we didn’t let them do the reception.”

Dwight laughed and leaned back in the wooden chair till he was extended his full length. “In other words, the usual big, sprawly Knott family celebration with two pigs on the cookers and half the county invited?”

“It’ll probably be too cold for a pig-picking,” I murmured, sneaking a discreet glance at the fit of his jeans. My body still pinged and tingled like an overheated engine cooling down.

“Too cold?” he scoffed. “It won’t get too cold till November.”

“I was thinking the Christmas holidays,” I said. “When Cal could be here.”

“Christmas!” He sounded dismayed. “That’s three whole months away.”

“No, it’s not.” I pulled out a calendar and laid it on the table between us to count the weeks. “We’re practically into October, see? So it’s only ten or twelve weeks till Christmas vacation starts. We’ll need that much time to get it together. You’ll have to give notice on your apartment. I have to clear my court calendar and find a dress. Not white satin with a train and veil,” I assured him, “and you won’t have to wear a tux, but I think I ought to look a little bit bridal, don’t you?”

There was a discreet glance of his own as he ran his eyes over my snug shirt. “I guess.”

(Ping!)

“It won’t be easy finding something for a matron of honor who’s gonna be about nine months pregnant,” I mused aloud, already making lists in my head.

“You’re having bridesmaids?”

“Just Portland. To balance your brother. You’ll want Rob to be your best man, won’t you?”

He nodded. “Did you hear that he and Kate are expecting a baby?”

“No! When?”

“January or February.”

Rob and Kate were already raising two children: her son, who was born after her first husband died, and her orphaned cousin, who was four or five when Kate married Rob. This would be their first child together.

January or February? Nice. That should help distract Miss Emily’s attention from Dwight and me. I adore his eccentric mother, but sometimes she’s a real force of nature.

We talked some more, then Dwight got up to go. I walked him out to the truck and he gave me a chaste goodnight kiss on the forehead. At least it started out chaste. We were both breathing heavily when we pulled apart.

“No,” I said a little unsteadily, “not repulsive at all.”

He laughed and stepped up into his truck.

I watched till his taillights disappeared through the trees, then went back to bed where I lay awake another hour thinking about where I’d landed myself this time. It might not be a great and burning romance, it might be settling for safe and comfortable, but it was certainly going to have its compensations.

(“Ping!” chortled the pragmatist.)

(“Would you just quit that and go to sleep?” the preacher scolded.)

(But I noticed he was grinning, too.)