“I might’ve told him I owned property in this county, but my legal residence is Florida.”

“I see.” Again he shuffled papers. “Please tell the court your occupation.”

“My husband and me, we own and operate Ames Amusement Corporation.” The witness chair was one step lower than mine, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were an unexpected deep clear blue. “Three rides, five games, two grab wagons.”

“Grab wagons?” I asked.

“Corn dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, soft drinks, okay? Grab and go food.”

“On July seventh of this year, where were you and your amusements?” asked Nance, virtuously staying on topic.

“Us and another outfit were set up over in the abandoned Kmart parking lot at the edge of town here for the Fourth of July.”

I hadn’t been to Widdington’s Fourth of July celebration since I was a teenager, but I knew they went all out—parade, fireworks, and a ten-day carnival to raise money for their rescue squad.

Under Nance’s questioning, Mrs. Ames described the events leading to last month’s incident. Her voice had the husky timbre of a heavy smoker.

According to her testimony, it was around eleven o’clock on a Thursday night. Average closing time for a weeknight. Widdington isn’t New York. It isn’t even Raleigh. The owner of the other rides had already shut down his Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl, and she herself was in the process of securing her guessing game when she realized there was trouble over at the Pot O’Gold, a contraption that sounded like a large, colorful sliding board.

“It’s basically a big plastic balloon shaped like half a rainbow, okay?” She gestured with her hands, and her charm bracelet tinkled like little gypsy bells. “One side looks like a big treetop with clouds over it. Inside, there’s a set of spiral steps that go up thirty feet to the top. When you come out of a door in the cloud, you’re on top of the rainbow. We’ve got an air compressor that keeps it inflated. The way it works is that you sit on a slide sack and try to land in the pot of gold at the bottom.”

She saw my raised eyebrow and smiled. “Well, actually, the pot’s padded and filled with gold-colored sponges that look like gold bars. If you land in the pot, though, you either get a prize or you get to slide again.”

“Sounds as if you probably hand out a lot of freebies,” I said.

“It’s a little harder than you might think,” she drawled. “But maybe you’d like to try it yourself in a few weeks. We’re booked to play the harvest festival over in Dobbs.”

“As to the night of July seventh?” said Chester Nance.

“My husband had gone on up to Virginia to check out a new elephant-ear trailer, okay? So it was just me and my two sons to look out for things.”

(At least I didn’t have to ask what an elephant ear was. Not with my weakness for fried dough. Hot and crispy, sprinkled with cinnamon and powdered sugar, it’s my biggest indulgence when the state fair comes to Raleigh every October.)