Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

"Flamingos?" said one of the browsers, looking up from a candleholder.

I winced. I was hoping to deliver Mrs. Fenniman's flamingos a little more privately. Not that I was exactly ashamed of them. I'd worked very hard, trying to make them – well, "a work of art" might be a slight exaggeration. "Aesthetically pleasing," anyway. Each flamingo was formed from a single, unbroken bar of metal, shaped into a slightly stylized outline. I was proud of how well I'd captured the light, airy feeling of the birds, the grace of their long, slender legs. I rather enjoyed the creative tension between the delicacy of the subject and the strength of the iron. And I'd made each one slightly different – some feeding, some walking, some lifting up their heads, some looking backwards. I'd taken pains to see that there were no child-endangering sharp points on my flamingos – the bills weren't all that sharp; it was an optical illusion created by narrowing the line of pink on the bills and filling in with matte black. And even the fluorescent pink finish had grown on me. Although I'd made fun of it when describing them to Michael, there was something oddly magical about the muted pink glow they took on at twilight.

Still, they were pink flamingos. And I had no desire to be stereotyped as "that lady blacksmith who makes those cute pink flamingos."

"Well," Mrs. Fenniman said, tapping her foot.

"I'm really busy," I said, "Maybe I could bring them over to your house after the show? If you're out campaigning, I could leave them on the back porch."

"Nonsense. You don't have to go to all that trouble; and besides, I want to see them now," she said. "You just keep doing what you're doing – I'll get them out and look them over myself. And Rob here can help me carry them," she added, reaching out an arm to snag my brother as he tried to sneak past.

I knew better than to argue.

"Take them out back, then," I said. "They're not in period."

I showed her where to find the metal storage case with the flamingos, gave her the key- – Monty had carefully locked them up again, of course – and let her get on with it. She and Rob dragged the case outside my booth and a little to the side, and began setting the birds up in the lane. In front of my booth.

"I said take them – oh, never mind," I muttered. "It's a lost cause."

"How much are you selling those for, anyway?" a customer asked.

I stifled a groan, counted to ten, and quoted an astronomically outrageous price.

The customer began writing a check.

"I'm doomed," I whispered, ducking behind the curtain when the customer had gone.

"What's wrong?" Michael said, jumping up from where he was playing with the laptop.

"I've just sold two more flamingos," I said.

"Congratulations," he said. "But I thought you only made the dozen, for your aunt."

"It's a commission," I said. "She paid in advance."

Michael looked at the check I was holding and did a double take.

"You're charging that for just two flamingos?"

"Without die family discount, yes."

"I do hope you'll give me the family discount when I order some for my mother."

"Of course," I said. "You even can get the much larger thoughtful-boyfriend discount if you lie, and say someone else made them."

"I'll keep that in mind," he said, chuckling. "So, do you want to see what's on the third CD-ROM?"

"Something juicy?"

"I have no idea," he said. "It keeps asking me for a password."

"Let me see," I said.

I tried to click on the CD-ROM's icon to open it. A gray box popped up, saying, "Please enter the unbreakable top secret password."

"That's definitely Tad's sense of humor," I said. "In case we had any doubt which CD-ROM was his."

"I tried everything I could think of," Michael said. "Including all the Greek words I know."

"Why Greek?"

"There are Greek letters written on the CD-ROM – see?"

He pushed the button to pop the CD-ROM drawer open, and pointed to the tiny characters scrawled around the circumference of the disk.

"You know Tad better than I do; maybe you can guess the password," he said.

"I don't have to guess," I said. "That writing just told me. That's not Greek, it's Elvish."

"Elvish?"

"Or maybe Elven; I forget which is correct. It's been years. Ever read Tolkien?"

"Yes, but as you said, it's been years," he said.

"Remember the scene where they kept trying to guess the password to the door of Moria, and realized that it was right there in the inscription – 'Speak friend and enter'?"

"Vaguely," he said.

I pushed the CD-ROM drawer back in, clicked on the icon, and when the password box popped up, I typed "the unbreakable top secret password" into the space.

The words "Welcome, Meg!" appeared in large, bright red letters.

"Bingo!" I said. "Tad's sense of humor plus Faulk's longstanding love of Tolkien equals one password. Not a real password that would do anything to stop a hacker, of course; just something to slow down amateur snoops."

"Call me amateur, then," Michael said. "It sure stopped me cold."

The words then disappeared in a highly artistic slow fade, to reveal a rather mundane screen full of the tiny icons that indicated files and folders.

"Where do we start?" I muttered.

"Maybe with the file named 'Read me first'?" Michael suggested.

Okay. I'd have gotten around to that in a minute. The readme file contained a note. Addressed to me.

"Dear Meg," it said. "I'm giving you this CD in case something happens to me, or even worse, to me and Faulk, because I know you'll figure out how to use it."

"I've been gathering evidence against a guy named Roger Benson. I started out doing it for a lawsuit I was going to file, because Benson stole Craft Works and had his company put out a pirated version. The more I look, the more evidence I find that I'm not the only one he's done this to, and it's scary how often die people who try to fight back have been having fatal accidents. Craft Works is pretty minor, compared with some of the stuff he's stolen, so I'm hoping he won't go after me, but if he does, please see that this gets to die FBI or someone who can do something with it."

It was signed "Thaddeus R. Jackson" and below the note, in typically organized Tad fashion, he'd listed phone numbers and addresses for the regional and national FBI offices and half a dozen other law-enforcement agencies.

"Oh, great," Michael said. "He gives you a bombshell like this, and makes sure he does it so publicly that Benson knows exactly where to come looking for it."

"I assumed Benson was looking for Rob's game disk," I said. "He knew I had that; I don't really think he knew Tad had passed along his evidence."

"But you don't know that for sure," Michael said. "And no offense to Rob and Tad, but I can't imagine either CraftWorks or Lawyers from Hell is worth killing people over."

"No, but according to mis next file, Tad thinks Benson's company was using games and programs like CraftWorks as a cover for laundering cash for the Russian mafia."

"Sound plausible to you?"

"How do I know?" I said, with a shrug. "I mean, Faulk's an old friend, but I haven't really known Tad that long, and only because of Faulk. He always seemed like a nice guy."

"A little excitable," Michael said.

"You could say that," I said. "In fact, if I'd only met him this weekend, I think I'd say he was a loose cannon with a hair-trigger temper and a serious grudge against Roger Benson."

"Yeah, frankly, that matches my first impression," Michael said. "Doesn't he seem to be overreacting just a little to the software piracy?"

"Not if he and Faulk are going deep into debt to fund the legal battle against Benson, which is what I gathered from talking to Faulk."

"Ouch. Meg, I hate to say it, but if I were Monty, Tad would look awfully suspicious to me."

"You don't have to be so tactful," I said. "He looks awfully suspicious to me, and I'm supposed to be his friend, dammit. Or at least his boyfriend's friend. He supposedly has an alibi, but I don't know if it's any good. This is great; we have to figure out if the stuff on this CD means Tad is in danger, or if he's just being melodramatic, or maybe trying to cover up a murder."

"For the sake of argument, what if Tad decided it was a mistake, giving you the CD-ROM, and went back to try to collect it, found Benson ransacking your booth, and attacked him?"

"Or what if he went back to my booth to collect the CD-ROM, and Benson followed him and attacked him?"

"Also possible. He could have killed Benson in self-defense, or at least what he thought was self-defense."

"Then what about the alibi?" I said.

"True," Michael said. "If the alibi is genuine. Then again, if it isn't genuine, doesn't arranging it suggest premeditation?"

"I hate this," I said. "I really hate this. I know how hurt Faulk will be if he finds out we suspect Tad, and that's nothing compared to how hurt he'll be if Tad turns out to be the killer. Michael, don't tell anyone we looked at this. If Tad's alibi's a phony and he did kill Benson, and realizes that he handed me his motive on a platter – "

"Understood. The less we know the better," he said, and began closing the windows Tad's program had opened. "I tried to look at it, but there was a password; I couldn't do anything with it. I know you probably won't want to hear this, but I think we should give this to Monty."

"I don't want to hear it, but I agree. But we do it in front of witnesses. And not till we've made a copy of the data. Remember, we're not sure Monty's even qualified to investigate this."

"Okay," he said. "l’ll start on the backup."

"Meg," Eileen said, sticking her head behind the curtain. "Someone else wants to ask about the flamingos."

"I'm doomed," I muttered as I went back out into the booth.

I'd sold another flamingo and was deep in negotiations with a customer who wanted some wrought-iron cranes when Mrs. Fenniman came storming back into the booth.

"I'm only paying for twelve flamingos," she announced.

"Well, that's fine," I said. "I only made twelve."

"Then you need to learn to count, girl," she snapped back. "There're thirteen of them."

"There can't be," I said.

"Come see for yourself."

I followed her out into the lane, where a crowd of tourists were inspecting the flamingo flock at close range.

"Clear the area!" Mrs. Fenniman boomed out, and the tourists did; or at least enough that I could see the whole flamingo herd.

I took a quick count. She was right. There were thirteen.

"You see," Mrs. Fenniman said, noticing my frown.

"Yes, I see," I said. "But I only made twelve flamingos, so one of these has to be a ringer. And it's not hard to see which," I added, zeroing in on the runt of the litter.

Oh, it was made along the same general lines as my flamingos. Same method, approximately the same size. The workmanship was far inferior, though. Where my birds flowed in long, graceful curves, this one had an awkward, squarish shape. The color was ghastly, not a pure pink at all but one with mottled brown and gray overtones, and the finish was peeling off in great leprous patches. The edges were less-finely finished – knowing how many small neighborhood children went to visit Mrs. Fenniman, I'd worked hard to see not only that the bills were blunt but that none had any rough places, sharp edges, or dangerous points. But every corner of this bird was a laceration waiting to happen, and it had a beak so sharp no responsible person would put it anywhere near small children. In fact –

"Call Monty," I told Michael. "There's blood on this flamingo's beak."