Read Online Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron - Free Book Online

eight, a couple of newcomers from Michigan who’ve really taken to our style of barbecue. Last year’s winners, the men’s Sunday school class of Mt. Olive A.M.E. Zion, started high-fiving each other, confident that they were about to carry home the blue ribbon again.
    The announcer milked the suspense for all it was worth, then cried, “The red ribbon goes to number four, and number seven is this year’s blue-ribbon champion! Let’s give ‘em all a big hand, folks.”
    Haywood grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it so fast across the uneven ground toward the announcer that Herman said later he thought he was taking a victory lap at Rockingham rather than accepting first place at a little old barbecue contest. “The way Brother Haywood was taking them curves, I needed me a seat belt.”
    The other ribbon winners crowded around to congratulate them.
    “What’d you say you soaked your oak chips in?” asked one of the Michiganites.
    “Grape Nehi,” Herman answered blandly.
    “Now, why’d you go and tell ‘em that?” Haywood scolded when they returned with their ribbon. “That’s liable to taste real good.”
              
    Leaving the big twins to fasten that blue rosette to their cooker and bask in their glory, Seth and Minnie walked into the Ag Hall with me for the Some Yam Thing or Other contest. Seth is five up from me and the brother who’s always cut me the most slack. Minnie is my self-appointed campaign manager and she’s the one who volunteered me to judge today. She believes in keeping me in the public eye. (At least, she believes in keeping me there as long as there are only positive things for the public eye to see.)
    Since last night’s murder hadn’t come up in front of her, I could safely assume she hadn’t yet heard of my involvement. I was hoping to keep it that way for the time being.
    As I glanced around In hall, I noticed other family members and looked at Minnie suspiciously. “I thought we agreed that none of the kids would enter.”
    “What makes you think they have?” she parried.
    “Oh, come on, Minnie. Why else are Doris and Robert here? And there’s Jess, your own daughter. And Zach’s Emma.”
    “Now, don’t worry about it, honey. There’s no names on anything. You just judge it like you would if you didn’t know they were in it.”
    It was a good thing that I had two colleagues to help with the judging or rumors might have started that the fix was in.
    “Yoo-hoo, Deborah!” my sister-in-law Doris called. When she caught my eye, she shifted her own eyes significantly from her grandson Bert to the table that held entries for the under-sixes.
    “I saw that,” said Luther Parker. Luther is tall and gangly and looks sort of like a black Abe Lincoln without the beard. He’s Colleton County’s first African American district court judge and has a dry sense of humor. “No playing favorites, now.”
    I looked around the hall and saw his wife Louise. We exchanged waves as a bright-eyed little girl ran up to her and tugged at her hand.
    Luther and Louise’s first grandchild.
    “May we assume Sarah’s entered in the first category?” I asked sweetly.
    He gave a sheepish shrug.
    “And what about you?” I asked our third judge, Ellis Glover, who’s Clerk of Court.
    “I don’t have a dog in the first fight,” he laughed, “but my sister’s son’s in the six-to-sixteen bunch.”
    “I probably have some nieces there, too,” I told them. “Shall we all recuse ourselves and go home?”
    “Not unless you know which entries are which,” said Luther.
    I admitted I didn’t and the same held true for Ellis and him, so we got down to it.
    The object, of course, is to give out as many rosettes as possible to the younger children. Neither Bert nor Sarah won first, second, or third, but they each carried off one of the ten green ribbons for honorable mention and were too young not to be pleased with their success.
    In the second group, I was pretty