Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron

killed?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t
think
.” My newfound niece pressed the wet towels to her eyes even as she shook her head in frustration. “Nobody that really knew him would hurt him.” She hesitated, choosing her words with care. “I mean... he’s had his problems. All kids do. And he wasn’t any angel, okay? I know that. I did the best I could, but hell, I was still a kid myself when I had him. If it hadn’t been for Irene Matusik, I’d have probably dropped him on his head the first week.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Irene? She and her husband had the doublewide next door to Hartley’s trailer in Gibtown. Maybe you saw him last night? Skee Matusik, okay? She started with the duck pond he’s still running, Had a couple of other hanky panks, too. She loved children, but couldn’t have any on account of her bad heart. All the same, she’s the one showed me how to take care of Braz when he was born. What does a fifteen-year-old know about being a good mother if you had a tramp for your role model?”
    I started to protest, but she brushed away my words with an impatient wave of her hand.
    “You think I don’t know why Andrew Knott claims I’m not his? With my grandpa yammering at me how she was the whore of Colleton County? Maybe your brother’s right. Maybe I’m
not
any kin to you.”
    “With those eyes? That mouth? What’s your real hair color?”
    “Dirty blond. Even duller than yours,” she said with the same tell-it-like-it-is bluntness of some of my younger brothers.
    “You’re kin,” I said firmly.
    There was a framed snapshot on the ledge behind the couch of her family standing in front of a gleaming new Pot O ‘ Gold. There were palm trees in the background and a bright blue Florida sky. Tally was in the center, her husband had his arm loosely around her shoulder, and her younger son leaned against her other shoulder. A young man with long sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail stood slightly apart from them, his face in a shadow. His arms were tightly folded across his chest to make his muscles stand out, and there were tattoos running up both arms.
    “Is that Braz?” I asked.
    “He didn’t like to have his picture took, but we’d just got that ride and we were so proud of it. First brand-new one we ever bought. You know the smell of a new car? It’s not half as sweet as the money smell of a brand-new ride. This is the only picture I have with all four of us in it together.”
    Her eyes filled again as she looked at her dead son. Never mind that his shadowed face was indistinct. I knew she was seeing every feature as sharply defined as the others in the photograph. To me, though, there was no mistaking that lanky build.
    “Throw them both in with the rest of my nephews and you’d be hard-pressed to say which boy belonged where,” I said. “Did Braz have any cowlicks?”
    Her smile was wobbly as her hand went unconsciously to her nape. “He and Val both got mine. Reason I can’t wear my hair real short.”
    “Me too,” I said, lifting my hair so she could see my version of the cowlicks most all of Daddy’s descendants have on either side of their necks. “Daddy says his grandfather had them there, too.”
    “I wish I had a better picture to show you, but everything’s back in Gibtown. Wait a minute, though.”
    She got up and went into her bedroom. I heard a drawer open and close, then she was back, carrying a red billfold thick with credit cards and photographs.
    “Here’s his graduation picture.”
    For some reason, that surprised me. Carny kids graduate from regular high schools? But there he was, a head-and-shoulders shot in a cap and gown that hid his tattoos. He had a senior’s usual pimply chin and goofy, self-conscious grin, but there was a gold stud in his nose, two rings through his left eyebrow, and another three in the visible ear. His face was more oval than square, and while his eyes were Knott blue, all right, they were closer together than