“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.