Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron

would sound innocuous to Haywood or Isabel but would let my nephew know I meant it when I said I really wanted to catch up with everything that’s been happening to him lately.
    Dwight should know by now that I won’t leave trouble alone when it involves my family.
              
    As a teenager, I used to make the drive from the farm to Dobbs in just under twenty minutes. With all the new housing developments and population growth, the speed limit’s dropped to forty-five miles an hour and it now takes me closer to thirty, which means that there was plenty of time for Daddy to drive down the lane past Maidie’s house, through the cut, and around the fields to my house.
    His truck was parked at my back door when I pulled into my yard, and he was sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette.
    Ladybelle came over and nuzzled my hand in greeting as I got out of the car, but Blue continued to sprawl with his head on Daddy’s workboot and merely thumped his tail in welcome.
    “He’s getting lazy,” I said.
    “Naw, just getting old,” said Daddy. “He’ll be twelve, come Thanksgiving.”
    He’s partial to those two hounds, but like most farm people, he’s realistic. Over a long lifetime, he’s watched a lot of puppies turn into good dogs, then grow old and die.
    He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up so I could hug him. “You look mighty pretty in that blue dress, shug. Real ladylike.”
    “Looks can be deceiving,” I said lightly, not looking to pick a fight. “Come on up on the porch and let me get you some tea.”
    I opened the screen door and stepped inside to switch on the ceiling fan above the circular glass-and-metal table. I don’t like air-conditioning any more than he does. Long as the air’s stirring and I don’t have to do stoop labor out under a hot sun, the heat doesn’t really bother me. Oh, I’ll complain about it right along with my friends, but that’s only pro forma. In actuality, I love our hot, muggy summer days unless they drag on and on through early fall without a break. Makes our winters more special.
    Daddy pulled out a chair, took off the white straw planter’s hat he wears from April till October, and hung it on a nearby peg. His hair has been snow white since before I was born and was still thick across the crown.
    “Better bring another glass,” he said off-handedly. “Andrew’ll be along directly.”
    I about dropped the pitcher.
    “
Andrew?
”
    “That is what you wanted to talk about, won’t it?” he asked. “Andrew’s girl being back and her boy getting hisself killed?”
    “You know who she is? How? Who told you?”
    He gave a half smile. “Well, now, shug, you ain’t the only one knows people at the courthouse. I been keeping an eye on the Hatcher farm ever since old Rod Hatcher died. Watched the farm go to his sister, then to her boy, then back to the boy’s cousin three years ago, and he didn’t have but two cousins. Carol and Olivia. Tallahassee Ames won’t old enough to be Carol, so I figured she had to be Olivia. Had somebody backtrack on her and sure enough.”
    “Somebody?” I asked suspiciously. “Dwight?”
    “Naw, not Dwight.”
    “Terry White, then?”
    “I ain’t saying.”
    He didn’t have to. Terry’s an SBI agent and would do anything for Daddy, long as it was halfway legal. I was the one introduced them when he and I were hanging out together a hundred years ago. They bonded over a bass right out there on that pond, long before I built a house in this pasture, and they stayed tight even after Terry and I moved on to other relationships. Veteran lawmen and old reprobates are just two sides to the same coin, which is probably why Terry and Dwight are so crazy about my daddy and why he’s right fond of them, too.
    “She tell you how come her to change her name to Tallahassee?”
    “That’s where she joined the carnival,” I said.
    “Real sorry to hear about her boy. Just wish you won’t the one had to find him. You okay?