Actually our fifth, sixth, and seventh since there were three men involved in the same incident.

“Call Victor Lincoln, Daniel Lincoln, James Partin,” said Chester Nance, the ADA who was prosecuting today’s calendar.

If James Partin had ever stood before me, I didn’t remember, but the Lincoln brothers, Vic and Danny, were husky young white men whom I’d found guilty of larceny more than two years ago. Itinerant carpenters, they had been stealing appliances from the newly finished houses in Tinker’s Landing before their owners could move in.

I gazed from one set of bloodshot eyes to the other. “Time sure does fly. I didn’t realize you guys were out already.”

“Time off for good behavior,” Vic said, trying to look upright and respectable. He and his cohorts had already waived their rights to an attorney.

“Too bad your good behavior didn’t last,” said Chester Nance. “Class-one misdemeanor, Your Honor. Injury to personal property. Misdemeanor assault. Intoxicated and disruptive.”

It was the usual story except that this time, the personal property destroyed was the Pot O’Gold Rainbow.

“The what?” I asked.

“An inflatable carnival ride, Your Honor.”

“How do you plead?” I asked the accused.

“Not guilty,” Vic Lincoln said confidently. “We might’ve had a couple of beers, but we won’t drunk. Just having a good time. We didn’t really hurt nothing.”

“Just put a three-hundred-dollar cut in my ride,” the woman seated at Chester Nance’s table observed.

“Mr. Nance,” I warned.

The ADA stood hastily. “Call Mrs. Tallahassee Ames.”

The woman rose from the table and moved easily across to the witness stand, where she placed her hand on the Bible.

She looked to be pushing forty—at least three years older than me—and her slender body had an air of muscular hardness to it. Her shoulder-length dark hair framed a square face that was attractive, if a little weather-roughened like farm women who’d sized up too many crops under too many hot suns, which, come to think of it, probably isn’t too much different from sizing up crowds in strange towns. The big gold hoops that swung from her ears made me wonder if she ever moonlighted as the carnival’s gypsy fortune-teller. Instead of flowing skirts and veils, though, she wore well-cut jeans, high-heeled boots of red snakeskin, and a red silk shirt with the top buttons left open. Several gold necklaces encircled her throat and a diamond-crusted cross on one of them dipped down between her breasts. Danny Lincoln was staring at its resting place and breathing with his mouth open.

The tangle of small gold charms on her bracelet clinked and jingled against the Bible as Mrs. Ames placed her left hand on it and swore that she would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“You may be seated,” said my clerk.

“State your name and address,” said Chester Nance.

“Tallahassee Ames, currently of Gibtown—sorry, I mean Gibsonton, Florida.”

Puzzled, Nance looked at his notes again. “Didn’t you give the police officers a local address that night?”