“So,” I said to Dwight as our drinks came, “how come you’re not out with Sylvia tonight?”

He shrugged. “Sylvia and I are finished.”

“Really? What happened?”

He took a swallow of his beer and gave me a rueful look. “I guess she decided a divorced lawyer with monthly child-support payments was a better prospect than a divorced lawman with monthly child-support payments.”

“Reid? She’s seeing Reid now?”

That was so preposterous that I thought he had to be kidding. “Reid put the moves on her when he drove her home Friday night?”

“He was still there yesterday morning when I dropped that damn dog off.”

“Oh, Dwight.” Relieved to hear that his moodiness was due to Sylvia and not to anything I had or hadn’t done, I reached across the table and patted his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It wasn’t going anywhere with us. I was just waiting for her to realize it.”

I had to smile. “A gentleman to the end.”

He shrugged. “I learned a long time ago that things end better if the woman thinks it’s her decision.”

I can relate to that. I’ve dumped and I’ve been dumped and I know which hurts and humiliates more.

“Reid never could resist a challenge,” I said, “but if Sylvia Clayton thinks she’s going to get him to the altar...”

“I don’t know,” said Dwight. “Sylvia’s a nice person. And maybe he’s tired of window-shopping. I know I sure as hell am.”

“Me too,” I sighed.

Our food arrived and our talk turned to courthouse gossip and eventually back to the murder.

“I keep wondering why his mouth was filled with quarters.” I dipped a piece of my taco shell into the guacamole. “What’s the symbolism there? Put your money where your mouth is? Money talks?”

“Or keeps someone from talking,” said Dwight. “Money to keep his mouth shut forever?”

“The Ameses both say he was obsessed with money.”

“Most carnival people are,” I said, and told him about some of the bulletin boards I’d surfed that morning with their colorful language and blunt candor. “Their way of life almost demands it. They have from April till October to make enough to carry them through the rest of the year. Every day it rains, every day the thermometer goes much over ninety, every time the equipment breaks down, they’re losing income. All they’ve got is a smile and a fast line of talk—”

“And a gaffed game,” Dwight interjected cynically, referring to the dozens of ways a carny agent can keep you from winning if he wants to, despite the law’s best efforts.

“—and a gaffed game, maybe,” I conceded. “But you can’t cheat an honest man, and anybody who expects to get something for nothing ought not to be allowed on a midway. It’s a hard life out on the road for months—having to tear down all that gear and move it every few days, then set it up all over again. The real game, of course, must be dreaming up new ways to separate the marks from their money. Probably what keeps it from being a total grind.”