Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

Nothing like a homicide on the premises to draw in customers. People began swarming in even before we finished the cleanup. Okay, they spent a lot of time staring at the curtain behind which, as everyone had heard, I'd found the body, and starting whenever Michael made the slightest noise. Some even asked me to tell them about what had happened. But after milling around taking up space for a while, enough of them would feel sufficiently guilty to buy something. I began to hope I'd make up for lost time after all.

If I'd had a chance, I'd have tried to dust the fingerprint powder off every surface of the booth before letting people in, but I quickly realized that the lingering signs of the investigation proved more of a selling point than a tidy booth.

"Looks like you're catching up," Amanda said, popping across the lane during one of the few quiet moments we both had.

"Hope so," I said.

"I've been wanting to ask – where did you get that outfit you wore last night?"

"Michael had Mrs. Tranh make it," I said. "Why – do you want one?"

"I think I might look pretty good in a dress like that, with a set of those stays," she said, looking faintly sheepish. "And heck, if I'm going to do any more of these costumed fairs, I think I should get the right outfit."

"To tell you the truth, yesterday I'd have said you were crazy, but today – I feel kind of frumpy in this dress," I said, shaking my head in surprise. "By the way – you live in Richmond, right?"

"All my life," she said. "Even went to college there. Why?"

"Ever heard of a company called Cooper and Anthony?"

"Yeah, heard too much about it," she said. "Why?"

"What is it?"

"What was it, you mean," she said. "Small, family-owned business outside of Richmond. Started out making paper after the Civil War, then expanded into other stuff. Managed to expand themselves out of business about seven years ago."

"I heard they had help going out of business," I said.

"I've heard that, too," she said. "Mostly from men who lost their jobs when the place closed down. I always figured, they were so bitter, maybe it made them feel a little better to blame outsiders for their problems."

"I just talked to someone who lost money investing in Cooper and Anthony, and those bitter men just may be right."

"Damn, does that mean I have to go back home and apologize to Daddy and my uncles for thinking all these years that they were paranoid?"

"Oh, no; please don't tell me it's your family we're talking about."

"Not just my family; must have been six or seven hundred people lost their jobs when the place finally shut down."

"Any of them still bitter enough after all these years to do something about it?"

"We're talking about Benson, aren't we? He had something to do with the shutdown?"

"Engineered it, according to Mrs. Fenniman."

"This'll make Daddy's day, hearing the man responsible for him losing his job has passed over."

"Make mine; tell me you have an alibi for the time of the murder."

"Oh, don't you worry," Amanda said. "I have a real good alibi, and if Monty looks at me the way he was looking at you, my alibi damn well better punch his lights out if he wants to alibi me again tonight. I just hope that bunch of sorry old men up in Richmond were playing their usual Friday night poker game last night, or the cops'll be looking real hard at them. Couple of them caused some trouble already, back when the plant shut down."

"That's too bad," I said.

"Keep an eye on my booth, will you?" she said. "I think I'll wander over and tell Deputy Monty all about Cooper and Anthony."

"No problem," I said. "I'm sure Monty will be thrilled to know all about his six or seven hundred new suspects."

Of course, Monty might decide that the demise of Cooper and Anthony was too long ago to be relevant, but just imagining those hundreds of people up in Richmond, only an hour's drive away, lusting for Benson's blood, made me feel a little less anxious about our local suspects.

"That's not accurate," someone said behind me.

I turned to see a woman wearing a Town Watch badge frowning down at the table where I kept the small iron goods.

"I said, that's not accurate," she repeated, taking a sheet of paper out of her haversack. "They didn't have nails in colonial times."

"Actually, they did," I said, picking up one of the nails on display. "They looked different from our modern nails, of course, since they were made by hand. The shaft was usually square, and the head was either square or pyramid shaped because – "

"Nonsense," she said. She had taken out a quill pen and a bottle of ink – ready to write me up a summons for anachronisms. "They didn't have nails at all; they just used wooden pegs to hold things together."

"Well, maybe you should tell that to the blacksmiths up in Colonial Williamsburg," I said, with growing irritation. "I spent quite some time up there, learning about eighteenth-century hardware, and I can tell you – "

"They're wrong," she insisted. "Wooden pegs. That's all they ever used. Wooden pegs."

"Look, lady," I said, losing my temper completely. "They had nails long before 1781. How do you think they put shoes on horses – with Scotch tape?"

Her mouth fell open as she pondered this. Then she recovered.

"Well, I never!" she exclaimed, storming out. "Just for that, I'm going to double your fine!"

As I was counting to ten, I heard someone slowly clapping. I turned to see Jess, the artillery captain.

"Good job," he said. "She doesn't believe you, of course. You should have reminded her they had nails at Calvary."

"I should have kept my temper," I said.

He shrugged.

"Who cares," he said. "Bunch of morons, the Town Watch. Not a one of them knows a rifle from a musket."

"I'm not sure I know, either."

"Yeah, but you're not running around telling people their expensive, well-researched, reproduction frontier rifles are anachronisms, are you?"

I groaned.

"I'll speak to them," I said.

"Thanks," he said. "They've been all over us, ever since Madame Von Steuben found out about the loudspeaker trick. And after the fiasco last night with their losing the key to the stocks, they're all trying to get out of the doghouse by putting us in it. Say, you know that cousin of yours?"

"Which one?" I asked. "I have about a million of them around here."

"The reporter guy, the one who got locked up. He wants to interview some of our people. Is he trustworthy?"

"Not in the slightest," I said. "He'd sell his grandmother to get a scoop."

"We'll be careful what we say, then."

"You don't have to talk to him at all, you know," I said.

"Well, I feel kind of sorry for him," Jess said. "All the other reporters who weren't even here all day got their stories, and he didn't get out of the stocks in time to make his deadline."

"He should be thankful. If he hadn't been locked up, maybe he'd have been in the stories," I said. "As a prime suspect, or maybe even the victim."

"Yeah, this way he's one of the few people in town who's in the clear," Jess said, turning to leave. "Him and the guy who passed out after locking him up."

As Jess strolled away, I suddenly wondered if Tony's drunkenness was such a good alibi. He'd been lying where Wesley couldn't see him, after all. He could have locked Wesley up, gone down to my booth to kill Benson, and then come back to lie down where I'd found him. For all I knew, he could have been awake when I stumbled on him.

Tony as murderer, I liked the idea.

I'd have to talk to Wesley – find out exactly what he remembered and see if my theory held water. And if it did, I'd make Monty listen if I had to knock him down and sit on him.

I ducked behind the curtain to tell Michael and found him laughing at something on the laptop screen.

"Okay," I said. "What's so funny?"

"Well, not the first CD; that's just the latest copy of Rob's game," he said, holding up one of the white paper envelopes, which he'd labeled lawyers from hell. "Not of general interest."

"Well, not to us, anyway," I said. "Although for Rob's sake, I hope it's a runaway success."

"As long as I never have to play it again," he said. I knew how he felt. Rob had drafted me as a beta tester so often I'd begun dreaming about the game, and I'd picked up so much miscellaneous trivia about torts and writs and habeas corpus that I could probably do a pretty believable impersonation of an attorney if I had to.

"What about the other disks?"

"Well, I suspect the one I've got in the machine now is Wesley Hatcher's disk," he said.

"The one with the incriminating evidence about the sheriff?"

"Exactly. Incriminating photos, to be exact."

"How bad is it?"

"Take a look," he said, starting to turn the laptop so I could see the screen.

"Michael," I said, backing away slightly, "I do not want to look at a bunch of dirty pictures, especially not of someone I know. Someone I'm related to, if you come right down to it. And besides – "

"Don't worry," he said. "Just look."

I glanced down at the screen. There was the sheriff, all right. And he was with a woman. They were seated, one on either side of a white, Formica-topped table, in front of a window. Outside the window you could see the storefronts of a shopping center, including a Farm Fresh supermarket.

"They're in a fast-food restaurant," I said.

"A McDonald's, I think, from the color scheme."

"You're right," I said. "In fact, I think I know exactly which McDonald's – it's on Route 17, in Gloucester, about four or five miles north of Yorktown. I recognize the shopping center behind them."

"You're probably right," he said.

"Is that it? Him sitting with a woman in Mickey D's?"

"Well, not just sitting with her," Michael said. "Here he is shaking her hand when she arrives at the table… opening up his box of Chicken McNuggets… opening the mustard sauce. And look – he's offering her some fries."

"And she's taking one," I said, shaking my head. "Heavy stuff here."

"Hey, maybe mat's it," Michael said. "Maybe it's the fast food that's incriminating. Did he make a campaign promise to go on a diet and shape up?"

"Not that I've heard," I said. "Why would he? I can't imagine anyone would care. And who is she, anyway? She looks vaguely familiar."

"Not someone you know, then?"

I peered close, and had Michael run through the whole picture sequence again.

"Like I said, she looks vaguely familiar, but mat could just be because I've been staring suspiciously at her face for fifteen minutes now," I said, finally. "Unless – Michael, she could be the same woman we saw talking to Benson last night. The one driving the Jaguar."

"That's what I thought," he said. "I wasn't sure, though."

"Go back a couple – there. The profile. It's definitely her; I got a good look at her profile when she drove past. It has to be her."

"Of course, since we have no idea who she is, I'm not sure that helps much."

"Do you think you could figure out how to crop one of those so it shows just her? I've got my little printer in the van; we could print out a copy of it."

"Great idea; then we could show it around, and find out if anyone knows her. Although that's going to take an awful lot of time," he said. "And I suppose we ought to give this to Monty, come to think of it."

"Don't worry about showing it around," I said. "We'll show it to Mother; if she doesn't know who it is, the odds are no one else in town will, either, and if she does, we can give it to Monty along with the information about who she is."

"Good point," Michael said. "I'll see what I can do about the cropping. One other thing – what do you make of this?"

He opened up a file. A letter, from Wesley to the Canton, Ohio, Police Department, inquiring about one Ranulf Brakenridge Montgomery.

"He's suspicious of Monty," I said. "Do you think this has anything to do with the blond McHussy?"

"I don't see how. Looks more like he just saved it by accident in the same folder as the photos. I do it all the time."

"But since we don't know what he found out from the Canton PD, we don't really know, do we?"

I went back to helping customers, while Michael fiddled with my laptop. I wished I could help, but sales were brisk, and after having my booth occupied all morning by the police, I needed to make up for lost time.

At one point, I made a run back to my van for another load of stuff, including the printer. When Michael saw me return, with one of my handy metal storage cases on the dolly, he put the laptop aside and stood up, ready to help me carry the ironwork into the booth.

"Hang on a second," I said. "I need to do something first."

Michael watched in astonishment as I took out a large canister of black pepper and shook a generous amount of the contents over the metal in the case.

"Okay, you can haul it in now," I said, with a sneeze. "Try not to knock off any more than you have to."

"What's the pepper supposed to do?"

"It's all for show," I said. "The minute the first customers noticed the fingerprint powder, they started buying like crazy. Bought nearly everything in the booth. So I brought out the stuff that had been behind the curtains – of course the police had dusted that, too, and all of it sold."

"So now you're shaking pepper on stuff that wasn't even in your booth, and telling mem it's fingerprint powder."

"I'm not telling them anything. If they want to leap to the conclusion that it's fingerprint powder, well that's their problem. If anyone ever asks me, I'll tell the truth. But they don't; they just swarm in like jackals, looking for souvenirs of a murder. So I'm giving them souvenirs."

He chuckled, hauled out the ironwork, and set to work hooking up the printer to the laptop. He was doing it all wrong, but I bit my tongue. I'd realized long ago the futility of telling Michael how to do computer tasks, so I left him to figure it out and went back to selling my dusty ironwork.

But the next time I saw Wesley pass by outside, I ran out to him. He was so preoccupied I had to grab his arm to get his attention, and when I did, he yelped and jumped away as if I'd stabbed him.

"For heaven's sake, calm down," I said. "What's wrong with you?"

"Sorry," he said. "I'm a nervous wreck. I can't believe that idiot deputy won't even consider the possibility that Benson wasn't the intended victim."

"Well, consider the source," I said, seeing an opportunity to wangle information. "I mean, what do we really know about Monty's detective abilities?"

"Not much," Wesley said. "And the sheriff doesn't either. If he did, he wouldn't have put a glorified meter maid in charge of a homicide investigation, would he?"

"Glorified meter maid?"

"Well, what would you call 'parking enforcement'?" Wesley said. "That's what he was – not any kind of a detective. And to think, my very survival could be in his hands."

"And who knows?" I said, "That could be like asking the fox to guard the hen house."

"What do you mean?"

"The more I think about it, the more I wonder how Monty managed to get to the crime scene so fast," I said. "He claims he was on his way here to silence the artillery when the call about the murder came in – but what if he was already here for another reason?"

Wesley looked pale.

"You don't really think – " he began.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I should never have come here," Wesley said, and scuttled off. I ducked back into the storage area to tell Michael what I'd learned.

"Of course, now I'm feeling guilty," I said. "Poor Wesley really seems to believe he was the intended victim, and now he's more paranoid than ever."

"Well, what if he isn't just paranoid?" Michael said, looking thoughtful. "It is pretty hard to tell people apart when they're all wearing the same thing. I keep embarrassing myself, mixing up a couple of the guys in my regiment, for the same reason."

"True," I said, remembering how I'd accidentally blasted poor cousin Horace, thinking he was either Wesley or Benson.

"If the murderer really was after Wesley, that opens up a whole new set up suspects," Michael said. "I'd feel better if I thought the police were at least considering the possibility."

"I'd feel better if I thought the police didn't have something to hide," I said. "Between those blackmail photos of the sheriff and now this news about Monty – maybe there's a good reason why Monty keeps ordering me to keep my nose out of his investigation."

"Well, that and the fact that he resents you trying to do his job," Michael said. "Let's not let him know we're snooping – at least not until we find out if Wesley's scoop on Monty is true."

I nodded, and went back out to mind my booth. I tried to think how we could check on Monty's background without waiting until the weekend was over. My only idea was to ask some computer-sawy person to do an online search – and the only person I could think of was Tad. Who wasn't above suspicion to me, even if Monty had managed to confirm his alibi. Damn.

At any rate, the fair was in full swing now, and I couldn't very well abandon it to go snooping, so perhaps Monty's suspicions would be lulled by closing time. Between serving customers and keeping the Anachronism Police in line, I had my hands full. What criteria had Mrs. Waterston used to recruit the Town Watch, anyway? Not knowledge of history, that much I knew. I'd already uncovered one watchman who thought we were commemorating D-Day.

Rob dropped in eventually. From the tomato stains on his clothes, I deduced that he'd kept his promise to help out Horace.

"Have you seen Mrs. Waterston?" he asked.

"Yes, and it looks as if you may be off the hook," I said.

"Really?" Rob said, his face lighting up. "They figured out who killed Benson?"

"I meant off the hook with Mrs. Waterston," I said. "She has no idea you lost Spike for four hours; she thinks you committed the far lesser sin of letting him slip out the door when you took him home."

"I guess that's an improvement," Rob said.

"Then again, maybe if you told her what really happened, she'd decide you're too irresponsible to take care of Spike."

"Oh, I am! I am!" Rob exclaimed. "I should never be given responsibility for a helpless animal. Someone should tell her that!"

"Someone like your sister, I suppose," I said. "Grow up, Rob; if you don't want to take care of die damned dog – "

"I've come for my flamingos," Mrs. Fenniman announced, marching into my booth.