Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (23 page)

"I would notice, normally, but everybody was handing me CD-ROMs yesterday – Tad brought by a CraftWorks patch, and Rob gave me his CD-ROM of the game to keep. I probably thought I'd dropped one of those and put it in my haversack."

"Or maybe I shoveled it into your haversack along with all the rest of the contents when I kicked it over."

"That's right, you did," I said.

"So should we give it back?"

"Later," I said. "When we get my laptop back and can figure out which one is Wesley's."

"I suppose we'll have to inspect the contents pretty thoroughly to do that."

"Naturally," I said. "Wesley will just have to suffer a little longer."

"Okay," he said. "Where to next?"

"Well, I thought – "

"Meg!" Mrs. Waterston said, from behind us.

"Morning, Mom," Michael said.

"Good morning," she said, rather perfunctorily. "Meg, that sheriff's a relative of yours, isn't he?"

"A distant relative, yes," I said, wondering what she was going to complain about. I knew, from experience, that no one ever asked if people were relatives of mine if they were going to pay them extravagant compliments.

"Then can't you get him to do something? That is how you get things done in this… town, isn't it?"

I wondered, briefly, what adjective she'd swallowed. "Crazy," maybe? "Backwards?"

"Godforsaken?" I'd heard them all; sometimes even said them myself, but she knew better than to say them aloud. And I knew better than to ask.

"What is it you want him to do, anyway?" I asked instead.

"I want him to finish this investigation," she said, "before it ruins the festival."

"Ruins the festival?" I echoed.

"Look how many tourists there are today!" she exclaimed, with a sweeping gesture. "Hundreds! And what are they seeing? Are they seeing an authentic colonial encampment? A thriving market full of period crafts? A little slice of Yorktown's history? No! All they see is dozens of modern police running all over everywhere."

"Actually, I think most of the tourists are rather enjoying the excitement," Michael remarked.

"Well, that's not what I brought them here to enjoy," Mrs. Waterston said. "What are the police doing, anyway?"

"Trying to solve a murder, I suspect," I said. "Questioning suspects and searching tents and booths."

"Well, they could question people out of sight of the tourists, couldn't they?" Mrs. Waterston demanded. "And what are they searching for? They have the murder weapon, don't they?"

"Well, yes," I said. "But they still haven't found my cash box."

"Your cash box?" Mrs. Waterston said, in a surprisingly faint voice.

"Yes, my cash box. It seems to have disappeared from my booth between the time I left for the party and the time I found the body, and while our local police may not have the extensive experience with homicides you get in a big city, they can put two and two together. They think it's pretty obvious that whoever killed Benson also took my cash box."

"But… but… that's impossible," Mrs. Waterston stammered.

"And just why is that?"

"Because I took your cash box," Mrs. Waterston said. "And I assure you, I'm certainly not the murderer."

Michael recovered first.

"Mom, why on Earth would you steal Meg's cash box?"

"I didn't steal it," she snapped. "I just took it for safekeeping. I thought she needed to learn a lesson about carelessly leaving her cash box lying around, in plain sight, in an unlocked booth."

"Gee, thanks," I said. "But for your information, I didn't just leave it lying around. I left it locked in one of my metal storage cases."

"Well, when I came by your booth, it was just sitting there on the table."

"And when was that?"

"I left the party for a little while about nine thirty or ten," she said. "I hadn't seen Spike all day, so I was going to bring him back with me. Your… brother was supposed to have dropped him off at my house and fed him. Which he hadn't done properly, of course; he must have let Spike slip out when he left the house, and I found the poor little thing cowering in the yard, trembling with hunger. I fed him, and I was heading back to the party with him. But on the way he managed to slip his leash and ran off into the craft-fair site. I thought perhaps he'd detected a prowler."

"More likely a prowling cat," I said.

"So I followed him," she said.

"Even though you thought there might be a prowler about?"

"I thought some of the Town Watch would be about, too, instead of carousing themselves into a stupor at the party," she said, in something closer to her usual tone. "But never mind; we won't see that happening again."

I briefly felt sorry for the Town Watch.

"I'm holding you responsible for their behavior for the rest of the fair."

My sympathy for the Town Watch evaporated.

"Anyway, I finally cornered Spike in your booth, barking at something."

"Probably the murderer," I couldn't help saying.

"Oh dear!"

"Meg!" Michael exclaimed. "Mom, it was probably only the body."

"Oh, that's so reassuring, Michael," Mrs. Waterston said. "Not a murderer; only a dead body. How silly of me to be upset."

"So what happened when you found Spike?" I said.

"I picked him up, and I noticed your cash box, just lying there on the table. I didn't know anything else had been happening; I just thought you'd been careless. So I took it away for safekeeping. I locked it in the safe, where I keep my own jewelry," she said. "It was perfectly safe, and I was going to tell you so today. With the murder and all, it slipped my mind."

"And it never crossed your mind that it might have had something to do with the murder – after all, you found the cash box in my booth, the murder was in my booth."

She shook her head.

"The booth had been ransacked," I said. "Didn't that strike you as odd?"

"It didn't look that messy for your booth," she said.

"Mom," Michael said, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking stricken. "I didn't mean – "

"Never mind," I said.

She glanced up at Michael, looking very upset, and for the first time I could remember, I felt – could it be sympathy? For Mrs. Waterston? Yes, definitely sympathy, and perhaps just a little bit of something that might resemble affection. She was so clearly upset by Michael's disappointed tone of voice – more upset by that than by the possibility that she'd barely escaped an encounter with our knife-happy murderer or with his victim. Call me a softie, but it's hard to keep on disliking someone who cares so much about the man you're in love with. Why couldn't she have shown more of her doting maternal side before?

Later, Meg, I told myself. Aloud, I said, "You'll have to talk to the police, you realize."

"Oh, dear," she said. But then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

"We'll go with you, if you like," I said.

"Thank you, Meg, but there's no need to trouble yourselves, really," she said, as she began marching off. "I'm sure you both have a lot to do."

"Well, I'm going that way anyway," I called after her. "I don't have all that much to do until they let me have my booth back, which I hope they might possibly be ready to do. It's almost noon, after all."

But Michael held me back as I started to follow her.

"Meg – what if they suspect Mom?"

"Don't worry – they may suspect her at first, but she's in no real danger of getting arrested or anything."

"Why not?" he said. "She was in the booth around the time of the murder – how can she prove she didn't do it? Spike certainly can't give her an alibi."

"She has a better alibi than anyone at the fair," I said. "See the guy following her?"

"Which guy?" Michael asked, frowning.

"The guy in the blue uniform with the gold trim – the one who's sauntering just a little too casually down the lane behind her."

"Who's he?"

"One of Jess's men, no doubt – gold trim means artillery, remember? And Jess said he had someone following her around every minute."

"That's right!" Michael exclaimed, his face lighting up. "I'd forgotten about that; thank goodness you didn't. I'll just run up to the artillery camp and find out who was following her last night. The sooner we get that straightened out, the better."

"Good idea," I said. "I'll go down to my booth and make sure they don't haul her away to jail in the meantime."

"Thanks," he said. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and turned to go. But after about two steps he turned and looked back.

"Meg – I know she's irritating as hell, but she means well," he said, and then ran off toward the hill where the cannon-crew members were working. At least I assumed they were working; we'd heard the boom of the cannon at irregular intervals all morning, and I doubted they'd try the tape-recording ploy in broad daylight.

I headed back to the town square, where the sheriff again sat in the stocks while Cousin Horace did a brisk business selling half-liquid tomatoes. Today, I noticed, a lot more of the aspiring pitchers were craftspeople – probably reacting to the turmoil the sheriff's underlings were creating throughout the craft fair. Or maybe they thought the sheriff was in charge of the Anachronism Police.

"Hey, Horace," I said, joining him behind the table. "How's it going?"

"Your brother Rob's supposed to spell me in fifteen minutes," he said. "Have you seen him?"

"He could still be talking to Monty," I said, pitching in to make change for a customer while Horace handed out the tomatoes. "Want me to go look for him?"

"Please," Horace said.

"Okay," I said. "But before I do, tell me something. When was Monty going to get around to telling me that my dagger wasn't the murder weapon?"

"How did you –? But that's – No one's supposed to – "

Horace stood, his mouth hanging open, each hand gripping a tomato with such force that the juice was running down into his sleeves.

"Hand the man his ammo, Horace, and stop gaping,"

"I don't want those used-up tomatoes," the customer complained.

"Two nice, fresh, rotten tomatoes, coming up," I said.

Horace, looking dazed, dropped the squashed tomatoes and fished out two less-damaged ones.

"Don't try to tell me it's not so," I told Horace, in an undertone. "And if Monty finds out I know, you can tell him I deduced it, partly from what the police have been up to all morning and partly from something he said himself, and I'll say that in public if he tries to take it out on you. But just tell me: what makes them think it wasn't my dagger?"

"Shape of the wound," Horace muttered, as another customer stepped up. "Coroner said your dagger couldn't have made it."

"So what did?" I said, out of the side of my mouth, while smiling at a man who handed me a dollar bill.

"Something bigger," Horace said, while counting out ten tomatoes.

"Bigger how? Longer? Wider?"

"Blunter. like an unsharpened dagger. Unsharpened something, anyway."

"So that's why they were inspecting everyone's weapons?"

"Yeah, and not getting anywhere," Horace said, looking a little less nervous now that all the customers were busy pelting the sheriff. "Some of these reenactors keep their weapons sharp; we found that out the hard way."

"You'd think cops would know to treat weapons more carefully. Did anyone get seriously hurt?"

"No. Used a few Band-Aids, though."

"Please tell me Monty is wearing one of them."

"Most of them," Horace said, snickering. "Anyway, that's why they're back to searching the craft fair so hard, especially the blacksmiths. Looking for unsharpened weapons."

"Thanks, Horace," I said.

"I didn't say anything," he said.

"Of course not. Thank you for your eloquent silence."

I strolled on back to my booth. The police presence had shrunk to Monty and two other officers, and both were listening to Mrs. Waterston. Michael was there, too, with Mel from the artillery camp.

"Are you sure there's no way she could have shook you off?" Monty said, turning to Mel.

Without changing his expression, Mel reached inside his coat, took out his wallet, and held it out. Monty tilted his head to inspect it, but I noticed that he didn't take his hands out of his pockets. And he reacted as if a skunk had lifted its tail at him.

"So you're a damned bounty hunter," he said.

"I'm a private investigator," Mel said. "And yes, I'm presently working for a bail bondsman. It's legal, and I'm damned good at it. So I can guarantee you, she didn't shake me off."

Michael beamed at me as if I were personally responsible for putting his mother under surveillance by a genuine private investigator for the duration of the murder inquiry. Mrs. Waterston looked less enchanted with the whole thing.