“Honey, when you’re as pretty and smart as she is, all you need is thumbs. I doubt I would have got my scholarship without her telling me how to fill out all those application papers.”

  “Don’t you worry about snacks. I’ll bring them.”

  “And I’ll let you. I’ll provide drinks. See you tomorrow.”

  I pulled out my Rolodex—I was still old-fashioned enough to not have put all my contacts on the computer—and started calling. In an hour I’d gotten a yes from eight Ebony Sisters who were experienced at making the dolls. That was pretty good considering it was fair time when everyone was crazy busy.

  When I called Dove at home and asked for her help, she gave a disappointed squawk. “Shoot, you know I’d fly to the ends of the earth for Flory Jackson. But I’m going to some fancy-pants dinner for Isaac over in Cambria.”

  “It’s okay. There’s ten of us coming now, counting me and Flory. We knew it would be a crapshoot during the fair. Do you think Aunt Garnet might be interested?”

  Dove’s voice went low. “It’d be good for her. She’s been acting nut-tier than usual today. On the phone so much I’m thinking about starting a tab. She times it so she’s talking when I’m out in the yard or the garden, then hangs up when I walk in.”

  I cradled the receiver against my shoulder, bent another paper clip into a circle then looked through it like a monocle. “Can I talk to her?”

  “Garnet Louise!” Dove yelled, practically fracturing one of my eardrums.

  “Honestly, Dove, I’m right here in the same county,” I heard Aunt Garnet say. “There is no need to bellow like a bull.”

  “Hey, Aunt Garnet. Benni here. Think you’d be up to a doll-making session tomorrow night?” I explained the situation.

  “I’d love to. With all the inspiration at the fair, I’ve been itching to put a needle to fabric.”

  “Great, so that’s tomorrow. Are you sure you don’t want to do anything today?”

  “I’m letting you off the hook today. I want to catch up on my stories.” Aunt Garnet had been watching General Hospital and All My Children since they started, something she rarely admitted openly. “Oh, Dove just said to tell you she’s on her way back to the fair.”

  “Okay, tell her I’ll find her so we can trade trucks. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

  It was almost 11 a.m. before I settled down to my overflowing in basket. Two hours later, I’d finished two grant requests, sent brochures to twenty chambers of commerce, filled out my monthly expense report and finished a month’s accumulation of filing. Feeling proud of myself, I walked into the great room rubbing my aching neck. Deb, one of the quilters, was packing a plastic bag with paperback book covers, pillowcases, eyeglass cases and cell phone covers.

  “Where’s that going?” I asked.

  She looked up, startled. Her harried expression was typical during fair time. “Got a call from the gals at the museum booth. The tables are looking bare.” She glanced at the big black-and-white schoolhouse clock. “I have to drop these off and be back in time to pick up my girls at ballet practice in an hour.”

  “Give it to me. I’m heading up there.”

  “Thank you from the bottom of my overextended heart.”

  “That’s a lot of folks’ problem during fair time,” I said, picking up the bag. “Is there an inventory sheet?”

  “Yes, inside. Just hand it to whoever’s working.”

  I called Gabe and found out that Father Mark called and wanted to have dinner with him tonight.

  “No problem. I’ll just hang out at the fair and catch some of the events.”

  It would be the first time since it opened that I could wander around on my own with no agenda or goal.

  “Have a shaved ice for me,” he said.

  By the time I picked up Dove’s truck at the garage and drove to Paso, it was almost three o’clock. At the entrance, I begged one of the maintenance guys to give me and my bulky plastic bag of craft items a ride to the booth. Tonight would be one of the fair’s busiest nights. We were right in the middle of the fair’s run and something was happening in practically every venue. People were still excited yet the fair didn’t have that first day frenetic buzz. And no one yet had the zombie look common to the last few days. I dropped off the crafts to two very grateful workers and wandered over to the Bears Quilt Shop booth next door.

  “Hey, Russ. How’s business?” He wore a red and blue tie-dyed T-shirt that said: “Hold me, thrill me, make me buy fat quarters.”

  “Better than we thought it would be. We might even make a profit this year. Those fabrics for the Harriet Powers replica quilts are flying off the tables. You sell the book and we sell the fabric. What a team!”

  “Glad it’s working out. They’ve run out of dolls, though. We’re going to have a doll-making session tomorrow night. Any of you guys free?”

  “Wish we were, but we’re all here until midnight.”

  “I thought so. Anyway, we’ll do the best we can. I have quite a few people lined up.”

  “You’ll get ’em made, Miss B. Oh, there’s something I thought you should know.” Russ’s voice became serious.

  “What is it?”

  “You know that Dodge Burnside, the one who was hassling Jazz?” It didn’t surprise me that our booth neighbors knew about the incident. During the time that the county fair was in session, it was akin to living in a very small town.

  “Yes,” I replied slowly, hoping he would tell me Dodge had confessed to murdering Cal and that he was now in custody.

  “He came by last night looking for Jazz. Vivs and William saw it all.”

  “What happened?”

  Vivs was over at the fabric measuring table. Russ gestured at him to come over. “Tell Benni what you and William saw last night.”

  Vivis dark eyes were solemn. “He was mad and, frankly, a little drunk. Bonnie and Virginia were working. He didn’t get a thing of them. They just gave him the runaround.” He gave a wide, mischievous grin. “Said that they’d heard she’d left town, maybe even the state.”

  William walked up holding a bolt of coffee brown fabric printed with silver spurs. “I went over and told him that I heard she went to Missouri.”

  “Missouri? Why in the world . . .”

  William laughed. “First state that popped in my head. Probably because my friend, Laura, just sent me some Jack Stack barbecue. Mr. Dodge stomped off cussing to beat the band.”

  “What time was that?”

  Vivs thought for a moment. “Right before the fair closed. I’d say around eleven p.m.”

  Long after I’d followed Dodge to his friend’s house in Atascadero. “Thanks, you guys. I’m not sure what that was all about, but it’s good to know.”

  “You take care, Benni,” Vivs said, resting his solid hand on my shoulder. “Watch your back.”

  “Believe me, I will.”

  Though I still needed to find Dove, I wandered through the midway, savoring the familiar smells of popcorn, cotton candy and America’s favorite scent—deep-fried everything. Jack and I had spent so much of our young life enjoying these rides, playing these impossible games. In a trunk somewhere I had a baby blue teddy bear he won climbing the rope ladder. It took almost every penny he had, but he was determined to win it. In his honor, I took a chance on one of the games he especially loved, the milk can toss. I almost got the softball in six times. The giant stuffed pink panthers grinned at me in the same cunning way the carnie did when he took my dollar bills.

  “C’mon, honey, one more time,” the carnie said. He was gaunt and tanned, his eyes the spooky blue of an Australian shepherd. “You’ll win yourself a kitty this time.”

  I gave him a skeptical smile.

  “Let me give it a try,” a male voice said behind me.

  The carnie snatched the dollar bill extended to him before I could turn around.

  Hud grinned at me. “Want a pink panther, little girl?”

  I held out my arm and stepped to the side. “Good luck.”

  “Piece of Yankee cake.” He took the three softballs, eyed the milk cans and threw one, two, three—each one landing perfectly inside the milk can.

  The carnie gave him an annoyed but respectful look. “You worked the circuit?”

  “Nah,” Hud said. “Just lucky.” He handed the man a ten-dollar bill.

  “Have lunch on me.”

  “Thanks, dude.” The carnie handed me a stuffed pink panther half my size and then instantly started his patter on other customers.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked, shifting the unwieldy toy from one arm to the other. Like a lot of things in life, wanting it was more appealing than actually getting it.

  He grabbed the toy from me and stuck it under his arm. “It’s all in the toss. The milk can’s hole is only one-sixteenth of an inch bigger than the softball. You gotta throw underhanded and give it a little spin.” He demonstrated with an imaginary ball. “Not so hard once you figure it out. Took me some practice, but I conquered it.”

  “You really need to get a life, Clouseau.”

  He threw his free arm around my shoulders. “You know I had a lonely childhood. Not much to do but practice at things like that.”

  His voice was flippant, but there was an edge to it. I did know his story. Hud had grown up on a huge ranch in Texas, the only child of a rich, abusive father who’d died a long time ago, leaving Hud a fortune in oil wells, an institutionalized schizophrenic mother and a broken psyche. My heart hurt for the sad young boy I imagined he’d been, setting up replicas of carnival games and working for hours at winning them.

  I patted the cat’s fuzzy pink head. “Well, Detective Hudson, I’m very impressed with your skills and I think we should donate Mr. Panther to the Sheriff’s Department Lost Child booth.”

  “Good idea. Maisie has so many stuffed animals on her bed at my house I can barely find her in the morning.”

  On our way to the booth, I told him what the Bears Quilt guys said about Dodge looking for Jazz last night. It didn’t seem to faze him.

  “He’s a jerk, Benni, but so far we don’t have any tangible reason to connect him to Calvin Jones’s homicide.”

  “His murder investigation didn’t even make the front page of the Tribune today. I bet if it had been Juliette Piebald—or one of a city council member’s family—the news and the police would still be all over it.”

  He turned his head away from me. “I resent that. We give all our cases equal importance.”

  “Yeah, right.” I was married to a police chief and knew the score. It was an unspoken but well-known fact that cases were not treated equally. There was no doubt that if Cal had come from a prominent family or was a pretty girl or a young child, his homicide would have garnered more attention. The unfairness of it rankled me.

  We passed by the entrance to the Bull Pen. A group of ranchers—friends of my father—lingered at the door shooting the breeze.

  “Hey, Benni,” one of them called. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” I called back. “Anyone see Dove?”

  “Saw her over at the petting zoo,” another rancher said.

  I nodded my thanks.

  “I have to go exchange keys with Dove,” I told Hud. “See you later.”

  “Later,” he replied curtly, obviously annoyed by my accusation.

  “Whatever,” I muttered as I passed the antique John Deere tractor display. If my words irritated him enough to work harder on Cal’s case just to prove me wrong, it was worth his anger.

  Dove was right in the middle of the petting zoo, encouraging the young children inside to be slow and careful while petting the lambs, goats and rabbits. The exhibit was sponsored by the San Celina Farm Bureau. Though some of the ranchers didn’t like the idea of food animals being treated like pets at the fair, Dove thought it helped teach kids to respect animals, to treat them kindly and humanely. “Children, especially those not raised around farm animals, need to know that even though they might be our supper some day, it’s our responsibility to treat them with dignity and compassion while they are in our care.”

  I walked through the sawdust to where Dove was demonstrating to two little girls how to hold pellets in the flats of their palms. When a pair of hungry little goats nibbled at their palms, the girls shrieked with delight.

  “Hey, Gramma,” I said, dangling her car keys with the horsehair-braided key chain. “Got your smog certification done. Your truck’s parked over by the oak tree in the back of the preferred lot.”

  She pulled my keys out of her jeans pocket. “Thank you, honeybun. That saves me a good bit of time. Yours is toward the front.”

  “Yeah, I saw it. What’re you doing tonight?”

  She stretched, her hands massaging her lower back. “Heading home after this. Garnet wants to fix dinner tonight, so I’m letting her.” She looked up at me, sucking in her finely wrinkled cheeks. A large straw sun hat shadowed her eyes. “What’re you up to?”

  “No specific plans. Just hanging out at the fair.”

  “Have you seen Isaac’s pictures yet?”

  “No, I haven’t. That’s a good idea. He’s showing some new ones, right?”

  She nodded. “Took ’em when we went to Yosemite last January.”

  “I’ll check them out.”

  There was an awkward silence. Then she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Though she didn’t say a word, I could feel her fear as surely as if she’d written it on a chalkboard. I squeezed back, knowing that any attempt at words would only annoy her.

  On the way to the fine arts building to see Isaac’s photos, I decided to drop by Levi’s office and see how he was doing. Today there was only the older woman and the snoozing dog at the administration office counter.

  “Is Levi in?” I asked.

  The woman looked up from her computer and nodded. “Back in his office.” The dog yawned and flopped over on its side.

  I started down the hallway when Jazz burst out of Levi’s office, tears streaming down her face. She rushed past me, her head down.

  “Jazz, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she wailed without looking back.

  I hesitated, then walked into Levi’s office. He sat behind his desk with the phone in one hand and his walkie-talkie in the other. He nodded at me to take a seat. I watched as he deftly solved a mix-up between two groups who’d somehow scheduled the Wild West Stage at overlapping times.

  After a few minutes, he hung up the phone, then turned down his walkie-talkie’s volume. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long arms above his head. “Please tell me you aren’t here with a problem that needs my attention.”

  I held up my hands, showing front and back, like a magician. “Nothing, I swear. I just wanted to see how you are doing.”

  He sat forward, folding his hands in front of him. Above us, I could hear the air-conditioning cycle and switch on. A cool wash of refrigerated air snaked around the small room. He inhaled deeply. “I’m assuming you encountered my agitated daughter on your way into my office.”

  I nodded and didn’t elaborate. If he wanted to pursue this conversation, that was okay, but if he didn’t, no problem.

  He rested his chin on one hand. “I’m a horrible father.”

  “No, you are not.”

  “She’s mad at me.”

  “She’s nineteen.”

  “No, it’s more than that. She has good reason. This morning”—he turned to stare out his small office window overlooking the fairgrounds—“I told her I was thinking about moving away from the Central Coast.”

  That caught me completely by surprise. “Levi, you’ve lived here for twenty-five, thirty years? Where would you go?”

  “Thirty-one years,” he said softly. “And in all that time I can count on two hands how many times my race was a problem. Maybe it was the people we hung around, but I never felt . . . threatened.”

  “Levi, has something else happened?”

  “Our back door. Someone spray painted swastikas on it last night.”

  I felt my stomach churn. “Oh, Levi, I’m sorry . . .”

  He shook his head. “If it was just me, they couldn’t pry me away from my home. They could paint a thousand swastikas, call me every name in the book. I grew up in Alabama. I’ve seen this, experienced this.” His eyes shined with agony. “But my little girl. Benni, I have to protect my little girl.”

  I waited, not certain what to say.

  “I told her after the fair ended, I might resign, look for a job in a bigger city. Atlanta, maybe. Or Los Angeles. I want to go . . .” He looked away. “This might be hard for you to understand, but I want to blend in. Ever since I came to Cal Poly, married Ruth, then settled down here, I’ve stood out. When I was younger, I didn’t mind as much. But now . . .”

  I wished that he was revealing this to Gabe . . . or Jim . . . or Oneeda . . . anyone but me. What could I say to him? I was a small-town white woman who’d never come close to experiencing his feelings of alienation.

  But I was sure of one thing. “Levi, you’re right, I can’t even begin to understand what you are going through, but I know this. This fair . . . this county . . . so many of us who live here, would miss you. I don’t want you to leave.”

  In the heat of emotion, remembering the times my husband had been disrespected because of his skin color, I added, “Besides, you can’t let them win. If you want to live somewhere else, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t let them decide if or when you leave. That gives these terrible people power they shouldn’t have.”

  My voice faltered. Who was I to tell this man what he should or shouldn’t do? Right at that moment, I wished that someone could beam me up and deposit me on some other planet. “Oh, Levi, I’m so sorry. That was so embarrassingly condescending of me . . . ”

  He held up his hand. “You’re right. I swear, for a moment there I think my darling Ruth inhabited your body. It’s just that when you think your child is in danger, the first thing you want to do is get her away.”

  “I’m sure Jazz understands that. She’s just very emotional right now.”