“No loud voices? Nobody running away?”

“Lady, this is a carnival. It was Friday night. Loud voices? Running? Who’d notice?”

“Who’s Polly?” I asked.

“Runs the plate pitch across the way from the Dozer.”

Through the open door, I saw Tally’s husband heading toward us.

I patted her shoulder and told her I’d be in touch soon.

As I threaded my way across power lines and cables that snaked through the grass, past the trailers and back to the midway, Dwight fell into step beside me.

“Buy you a chili dog?” he offered.

I kept on walking. “She didn’t have anything to say that you probably don’t already know.”

“Hey, did I ask?”

“No, but you were fixing to, weren’t you?”

He smiled down at me ruefully. “Well...”

“Fortunately for you, I’m starving, so yes, you can buy me a chili dog.”

“Unless you’d rather have barbecue?”

“That would mean the big twins and Isabel and Nadine,” I reminded him.

“Right. Chili dogs, then.”

Not that Dwight doesn’t enjoy their company, but he knew perfectly well that if we joined my brothers, there would be four conversations going at the same time and none would be the one he clearly wanted to have with me.

The murder didn’t seem to be affecting either the festival or the carnival. The beautiful weather had brought out a big crowd, and we had to wait in line several minutes for our dogs and drinks. I got bottled water, Dwight got something in a drink cup with ice.

“So what did she want?” he asked when we were settled with our food on a low wall out of the flow of foot traffic.

“Oh, this and that,” I said vaguely.

Normally I can tell Dwight anything. In this case, though, I didn’t feel that Tally’s true identity was something I could talk about to anybody till I’d told Daddy and Andrew.

“She was worried about the legalities of getting her son’s body back. And funeral arrangements. I gave her Duck Aldcroft’s number.”

A drop of chili landed on his blue tie and I wet my napkin with water and leaned over to wipe it off before it could leave a spot.

“She did tell me that he hadn’t been in any trouble with the law since he got involved with buying up storage lockers and selling the stuff on eBay and at flea markets.”

“Yeah,” said Dwight. “The van he’s been sleeping in looks like a thrift shop. Furniture, books, clothing.”

“Find anything useful?”

“I doubt it. The place had been tossed before we searched it.”

“What?”

“Yep. Least that’s what his stepdaddy says. Says Braz took after his mother. Place for everything and everything in its place. And it was still sealed from last night, so that means whoever tossed it probably did it between three o’clock when he took a computer break and the time we sealed it.” He took a swallow of his drink and frowned as he looked into the cup. “These damn things are more ice than drink.”