“Seven thousand, James.”
“Shit.”
Then we saw the black limousine pulling around the side of the tent. The windows were tinted, but the license plate told the tale. CSHDLR 1. There must be more where that one came from. The limo inched its way around our truck, and headed down the narrow road that led to the causeway. I remembered the line they used to use when an Elvis Presley concert was over. “Elvis has left the building. Elvis has left the building.” This Cashdollar guy must be richer than Elvis.
“Permission to come aboard.” I looked out the back of the truck, and Crayer stood there, umbrella open and a yellow slicker covering his short body.
“Come on in.”
He jumped up from the step-up, throwing water into the truck, scooted around my serving table, and looked out our side window. “Playing who slips first?” He dripped all over our wooden floor.
James gave him a glance. “It’s actually a real game?”
“Ah, you do enough of these things, everything becomes a game.”
I pulled up a stool and offered it to the wet donut man.
“Boys, I’ve got some very bad news.”
“How bad?”
“Tonight is gonna hurt.”
The rain beat a tattoo on the metal roof of the truck and James stared glumly out the window at the mad dash of worshippers running and sliding to their cars. “I kind of had that feeling.”
“Cash has a saying — ”
“Yeah?”
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a saying.” James put his hand out the window, letting the steady downpour soak his palm. “You win some, ya lose some.”
“Well, there’s gonna be taketh and lose tonight.”
I studied our neighbor. “Bruce, you said I could ask you anything, right?”
“About this operation? Sure. Fire away.”
I sat on the edge of my table/counter, a pan of peppers next to me that would probably never see the grill tonight. Heavy rain beat down on the truck and I spoke up to be heard. “Ten years ago, Cashdollar was here, at the park, doing a tent service and a young girl was killed. Were you here then?”
Crayer looked at me carefully, then slowly shook his head. “I came here three years ago, full time.”
“You’d never worked for Cashdollar before?”
He was quiet, his mouth drawn in a tight line. “Yeah, actually I did. Off and on for a couple of years. I don’t see why it’s any of your business, but I could have been here that year. I’ve worked a lot of shows, a lot of carnivals. I can’t remember all of them.”
“So, did you know anything about it?”
“What?”
I gave the situation a two-second review. It couldn’t hurt to ask the man what he knew.
“A seventeen-year-old girl was strangled. And just a couple of years ago, a food vendor died, right here. Do you know anything about these deaths? Just wondering, Bruce.”
He paused. Confusion colored his face. “Are you thinkin’ about what I said yesterday? About the senator getting killed?”
“Well, it struck me that Cashdollar has been mentioned in three different killings.”
“Three? I mentioned one, for God’s sake.” Crayer backed up a step, gazing at me with a puzzled look on his face. “Ah, what I said. I meant nothin’. I think somebody took Cash too seriously and maybe shot the senator. But I didn’t really mean that the rev had him killed. Don’t ever get the idea I said that.”
“What about the girl?”
“That was a while ago. Like I said, I don’t remember much about it.”
“Skip was there — here. Right, pardner?” James jumped in.
“Yeah. I was. I met the girl.”
Crayer’s eyes got a little brighter. “Oh? You met the Washington girl?”
I studied him for a moment. He’d perked right up. “Yeah. Her name started with a C I think. Do you remember?” I waited for him to finish it for me. Instead, he shut down.
“No. It was a long time ago.”
“Cabrina. Cabrina Washington.”
He avoided my look. Instead he shook his head again. “I don’t know, okay?”
“I’ve got a friend who says she was Cashdollar’s underage girlfriend.”
Crayer gave me a brief look of recognition, then shrugged his shoulders. “A lot of craziness goes on in a place like this. Not all of it involves the Lord’s work, believe me.”
“So you don’t know if Cashdollar was ever implicated in her death? Or the death of the food vendor?”
He frowned and shook his head. “Hell, no. Why would you say such a thing? Listen, the vendor? It was accidental. I don’t know what you heard, but nobody was involved. A pure accident. And the girl? I told you, it was a long time ago.” The donut man stood up, adjusted his rain gear, and stepped down from the truck. “There’s nothin’ to that. Okay? I’ve got a couple of years on you, son. I don’t think you come into somebody’s home or business and start asking questions as if the person is a criminal. At least we don’t do that where I come from.” He stared at me. Almost a pleading in his eyes. Then he turned and started back toward the donut trailer. Almost as an afterthought he shouted over his shoulder, “Oh, and by the way, there’s still gonna be a game at Stan’s tonight and you’re invited.”
There was a pounding on the side of the truck and James stuck his head out the vented window.
“Can we get a couple of burgers?”
James gave me a frantic look. “Uh, sure. Let me get some meat on the grill. We just didn’t think with all this weather that — ”
“Hey,” the young man stared up at him, water streaming from his long blond hair and down his face. He motioned to the young pregnant girl by his side. “People still got to eat.”
CHAPTER TEN
“N ice guy, Bruce.” James was cleaning up the burger flipper, his big long fork, and wiping his hands on his apron. We’d sold about fifty sandwiches. Paid for the space, minus the cost of meat, peppers, onions, buns, plates, gas, potatoes, and, oh yeah — our time.
“Why? Because he invited you down to get your ass kicked again in poker? I thought he was evasive and not that nice at all. What he wanted to do was distance his comments about Senator Fred Long.”
“What do you mean, distance his comments?” James gave me a funny look.
“I brought up the murdered girl, and he immediately wanted to tell me that he hadn’t meant anything about his comments the other night. I mean, he practically accused Cashdollar of killing Fred Long.”
James continued to wipe his hands. A little soap would have helped. “Now that you mention it — ”
“So I’m thinking that’s one of the reasons he came over here.”
“What? To tell us the rev was not the killer?”
“Yeah. And he made a big deal of telling me that the vendor death was an accident.”
“Oh, come on. It came up, pardner, that’s all.”
“And when I asked him about Cabrina Washington, he said he didn’t remember much because it has been so long ago.”
“So?”
“And right away he remembers her last name. He says ‘Oh, you mean the Washington girl?’ Like it was on the tip of his tongue. I thought that was a little strange. And he doesn’t want to admit he was working the revival show back then. And finally, he almost warns me about asking too many questions. Did you hear that?”
“Maybe he was right, pard. You were coming down pretty hard on Cashdollar. Was he ever implicated and all that? Maybe it’s best to just drop it.”
“It was a question. That’s all it was. And I never even asked him what he meant when he said ‘I was there when Long was shot.’ What did that mean? Was he there, standing right there? Was he in D.C.?”
“Skip, what’s the last movie you and I saw?”
I stared at him for a moment, thinking. “What the hell does that have to do with the current conversation?”
“Just humor me. What was the last movie we saw, pard?”
“We rented Disturbia. And we were talking about it and — ”
“Yeah, kind of weak.”
“- and you decided to rent Rear Window, the Hitchcock movie. You said Disturbia was a really weak copycat movie of Rear Window.”