“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 traveled with us. She was a player, all right.”

“How do you mean?”

“You met her, didn’t you?”

“Not really. We tossed a few quarters at her plates, but I can never get anything to stick, and then I saw her with you Friday night.” I remembered bright red hair, the pink laces on her shoes, and that off-the-shoulder ruffled blouse as she flirted with the men in our party to encourage them to keep tossing quarters. “She seemed...” I tried to find the right words. “I don’t know. She looked very feminine, but I felt she might be sort of hard underneath?”

“That was Polly, all right. She had an eye for anything in pants, but they didn’t get in her pants unless she saw a use for them. Like poor old Sam. He was just a roughie at the beginning of the season and she was shacking with Mike, our cook. Then one day, boom! Mike was back in the bunkhouse and Sam was in her bed, okay? I don’t think either of them knew what hit ‘em.”

“How did Mike take it?”

“You mean was he the one killed Polly?”

“Scorned lover? Jealousy?”

“Scorned and jealous, yeah. Do anything about it? Nah. Just kept getting stoned. Eve took it worse.”

“Eve?”

“She’s Mike’s daughter. I don’t think she was pissed at Polly so much for dumping her dad as because he quit pulling his full weight here and that made more work for her and Kay.” She put the mustard jars in the ice chest. “And of course, Tasha was with Sam before Polly moved in on him.”