Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (29 page)

"Eric," I said. "How far do you think you can lead Duck?"

"She'll follow me anywhere," he boasted. "At least when she's not sitting on her eggs, that is."

"Good," I said. "You know those guys who are firing the cannon out on the battlefield?"

I watched as Eric went down the driveway, carefully holding the eggs, with Duck following behind. With any luck, if Eric could find a moment to deposit the eggs on top of the cannon, we'd have another night's reprieve from the cannon fire.

And the cannon crew would, I knew, take good care of Duck.

Probably overfeed her, but then, so did Dad and Eric.

"Remember," I called. "Wait until the skirmish is over. And try not to let anyone see you."

Eric nodded, not even looking back, so fiercely was he concentrating on the eggs.

When I got to the house, I found Mother and Mrs. Fenniman moping on the porch as neglected glasses of lemonade sweated small puddles onto a tile-topped table.

"Hello, dear," Mother said, faintly, as I sat down.

Mrs. Fenniman merely grunted.

I thought of going to the kitchen for a glass so I could pour myself some lemonade, but it seemed like too much trouble. I sat down on the glider and rocked for a while in silence. From time to time, either Mother or Mrs. Fenniman would sigh.

I don't know why I didn't succumb to the contagious atmosphere of gloom and depression, but I didn't. Okay, I'd arrived ready to whine a little and extract some sympathy, but seeing the two of them pining away like lost souls ticked me off. It was okay for me to get depressed, dammit, but a world in which neither Mother nor Mrs. Fenniman was out causing some kind of mischief was truly a world turned upside down.

"So what's wrong with you?" I finally asked Mrs. Fenniman.

"I feel worse than a snake with a potbelly," she said. "That low-down polecat of a sheriff has stolen the damned election with his sneaky tomato toss."

"Then go out and do something sneakier," I said.

"Can't," she said.

"Yes, you can," I said. "I have every faith in your superior guile and cunning."

"I thought you were going to think of something for me," she complained.

"Okay, borrow the dunk tank they use at the county fair and have them set it up in front of the courthouse," I suggested. "Or go hand out your grandmother's recipe for stewed tomatoes. Better yet, go down to the garden-supply store and buy up all the tomato seeds you can find and hand them out."

Mrs. Fenniman chuckled faintly; then more vigorously as she started thinking about it.

"I might," she said. "I just might do that. I think I'll go down there right now."

She got up, drained her lemonade, and strode off down the driveway.

"It's October," Mother pointed out. "They probably don't have a lot of seeds at the garden-supply store."

"Well, by the time she gets there and finds that out, she'll be so fired up she'll think of something better," I said. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing, dear," Mother said.

"Well, it's too dull for me around here," I said, standing up. "I'm going down to the battlefield to watch the rehearsal. Mrs. Waterston sure does know how to put on a festival. I think she'll be a shoe-in to chair next year's committee."

Mother sniffed.

"And I bet the battle's going to be the most exciting thing of the whole weekend," I went on. "Yes, I bet people will be talking about that battle for weeks. Months, even."

"Nonsense," Mother exclaimed. "It's going to be a complete disaster. You should hear some of the ridiculous things she's said about it. That woman knows nothing about how to plan a battle."

"And how much do you know about planning battles?" I asked.

"As much as Mrs. Waterston, thank you very much," Mother said. "And a great deal more about the Battle of Yorktown. After all, I grew up here. She's going to spoil everything."

"Well, there's not much you can do about that now," I said.

"We'll see about that," she said. She got up, went into the house to repowder her hair and top it off with a huge flower-trimmed straw hat, and set off down the driveway at a brisk pace.

As I followed, more slowly, I didn't know whether I'd done a good deed or just stirred up trouble, but I felt better now that only one of us was moping.

Out on the battlefield, chaos reigned. Rope barriers now divided the battlefield proper from the sidelines, where workmen had begun erecting bleachers for the spectators. Mrs. Waterston, in yet another fabulously ornate period dress, was running up and down the sidelines like a football coach, barking out orders with an anachronistic megaphone that the Town Watch were studiously ignoring. I could tell from some of the comments of other people in the watching crowd – friends and family of some of the reenactors, from the sound of it – that they resented her. I could only imagine what the troops felt about the whole thing.

Especially since a lot of the participating reenactors had been to Yorktown Day before and knew a lot about what actually took place back in 1781. I figured out, finally, why so many reenactors tolerated Mrs. Waterston's unpopular decisions – she had somehow convinced the National Park Service to allow her to stage the reenactment on the actual battleground, an unheard of feat in recent memory. Still the troops obviously didn't like her plans as detailed on the official instruction sheets the Town Watch handed out. A few people were shouting mad and a lot more simply muttered mutinously.

And yet the show went on, and Mother appeared to have something to do with it. To my surprise, she was acting as a peacemaker. After Mrs. Waterston passed through a group, stirring up discontent and making herself about as popular as the tax on tea must have been, Mother would follow in her wake and leave even the surliest soldiers smiling.The rehearsal skirmish got started late, but it did start, with Mother, sitting at the edge of the battlefield, smiling and waving a handkerchief at the participants whenever ill will seemed about to erupt.

"It's too good to be true," I muttered, as I sat on the bleachers with Dad, watching another column of troops march out onto the field for the rehearsal. "She's up to something."

"Who's up to something?" Dad asked.

"Never mind," I said, knowing Dad would never find fault with anything Mother did, however outlandish. "Monty looks very cheerful."

The deputy was standing a few feet away, talking very enthusiastically to a group of people.

"Who's that he's talking to?" Dad asked.

"Reporters, probably," I said. "Yeah, I recognize one of the guys from the
Daily Press.
And Cousin Wesley, of course."

"A complete cover-up," Wesley said, leaving the group around Monty to sprawl on the bleachers just below us. "Well, they'll see. You can't get away with trampling on the First Amendment like that."

"And I wish I thought they'd done a really thorough investigation," Dad said. "I just think they're in danger of overlooking something."

"Yeah," Wesley said, "like the very real possibility that Benson wasn't even the intended victim. They're absolutely ignoring the danger to other potential targets."

"like you, for example?"

"I have enemies; I keep telling them that."

"They haven't even tried to investigate my alibi," Dad said. "For all they know, I could have sneaked away from the party and killed Benson, and they would have the wrong guy locked up."

"This is ridiculous, Dad!" I said. "If it's not Wesley whining about how he was the intended victim, it's you saying they ought to consider you a suspect. Well, here's your chance, Dad. There he is – go for it. I'll even lend you a flamingo."

Both Wesley and Dad looked startled.

"Yeah, make fun of it," Wesley said. "How would you feel if I turned up in your booth tonight with a beak in the back, huh? Your own cousin?"

"I think I could cope," I said.

"Now, now," Dad said, "Look, there's Michael's unit. He looks nice in his uniform."

Well, actually "nice" wasn't quite the word I would have used, but he was well worth looking at. I followed him with my eyes, but thanks to Dad and Wesley, my mind had drifted back to the murder, Faulk's arrest, and my fear that if I didn't do something, the real killer was going to get away.

"So what do you think, anyway?" Wesley said. "Deputy Monty seems to be pretty sure he's got the right man. Do you think Cates did it?"

"He's wrong," I said. "And we'll prove it, as soon as that stupid Monty stops preening himself and listens."

At least I hoped we would prove it.

"What, have you got like a witness or something?" he asked.

"Something like that," I said.

Or maybe it would be just me trying to prove it, I thought, smiling back as Michael caught my eye. He seemed to be enjoying himself, clowning around with several of the guys from his unit. Somehow I didn't think he was going to be up for more sleuthing.

Okay, I'd do it by myself. Scour the camp for anyone else who wore a kilt – there had been a few. And wasn't there a whole unit of highlanders coming down for the battle tomorrow? Maybe some of them had come early. And I could find Mel, the bounty hunter, and pick his brains. Maybe he'd seen something while tailing Mrs. Waterston. Then again, he was from Richmond. What if he was another Cooper and Anthony victim seeking retribution?

And what if I'd too easily dismissed Wesley's insistence that he was the intended victim? If he was right, that opened up the possibility of additional suspects – Tony, for example. What if Monty was right about him faking drunkenness after killing Benson?

And what if Wesley was right about Monty having as much to hide as anyone? I had to find a way to check on him. And what about the mysterious blonde in the Jaguar?

And I needed to find Tony again and interrogate him some more. Maybe I could shake him on the sock story. Then again – we knew he's been at my booth; we only had his word that he was hiding under the table. Maybe he was only making up the story of the socks. Maybe we'd all dismissed him as a suspect too easily. Roger Benson had made more than enough enemies. Maybe I should snoop around and find out if Tony was one of them. Why weren't his fingerprints on the flamingo, anyway? Or maybe they were, and the police dismissed them as irrelevant because they knew he'd made the bird. I recalled that both he and Benson had used the phrase "parallel development" in referring to their misdeeds. Did that suggest that they knew each other?

And while I was at it, I was going to find Tad – I hadn't seen him to tell him about Faulk's arrest – and get at the truth about this alibi business.

I turned to leave, still brooding over the possibilities. I glanced over at Wesley, hoping he wouldn't tag along. It was going to be hard enough trying to talk to people without Wesley underfoot.

Wesley was watching the troops with a speculative look in his eye. In fact, he seemed to be staring at Michael. I suppressed a giggle. When he'd asked about witnesses, I'd been looking at Michael. What if Wesley had jumped to the conclusion that Michael was the witness?

Well, let him, I thought. Michael's going to be too busy to bother with Wesley, and if chasing around after Michael keeps Wesley out of my way, all the better.

I noticed with some surprise that Mother was leaving, escorted by a dozen officers, all from different units, to judge by their uniforms. What was she up to?

I was about to follow her to find out when I ran into Jess, from the cannon crew.

"Hey, thanks for sending the kid with the duck," he said. "Looks like we might all get another good night's sleep after all."

"So Madame von Steuben bought the eggs as a reason not to fire the cannon."

"Hell, no," he snorted. "She was for making an omelet right then and there, and maybe duck
a 1'orange
for dessert. But then – well, come take a look."

I followed him upstream, against the departing crowd, and onto a small rise, where he stopped and pointed toward the cannon emplacement.

I could see Duck, comfortably settled on the back end of the gun, with her head tucked under one wing. Perched on the muzzle of the cannon, like a living gargoyle, was Mrs. Fenniman. In her right hand she held one of my pink flamingos – well, okay, I suppose they were her flamingos now – and I could just make out a sign dangling from its beak.