Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos ml-3

by Donna Andrews

  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.

  "You down here to haul some lowlife back to Richmond?" Monty asked.

  "I'm down here for the reenactment," Mel said. "It's my hobby."

  I didn't like the way they were glaring at each other, so I decided to distract them.

  "Look, you're not doing much with my booth right now, other than interrogating people in it," I said. "Any chance you could find a more private place to do that so I can actually start doing some work here?"

  "I was just going to send for you," Monty said, with a scowl. "Now that we've cleared up the disappearance of the cash box, we're finished here."

  He went off, taking Mrs. Waterston, Mel, and the rest of the police with him.

  I looked around my booth. If I were a deputy whose job probably depended on my boss getting reelected, I'd be a little more careful how I treated voters' relatives. Obviously, at some point, the police had stopped considering my booth an active crime scene and started using it just as a place to hang out, judging from the number of coffee cups and doughnut boxes stashed in the corners.

  "I'll get rid of these," Michael said, grabbing a stack of the rubbish. "And I think I saw Eileen down the lane; I'll let her know you're opening up.Anything I should bring back?"

  "Some customers would be nice," I said.

  "I meant to help with the cleanup," he called over his shoulder.

  "I take it back," Amanda said from across the lane. "He cleans; he's a keeper."

  With Michael pitching in to help, the booth was ready for business far sooner than I'd expected. And to my astonishment, Cousin Horace even showed up with my laptop a few minutes after the police had gone.

  "No real need for us to keep this around, and I thought you could use it," he said, and disappeared before I could thank him.

  "That was nice," Michael said.

  "I hope he had permission to give it back," I fretted. "Not that I'm going to ask Monty, of course. But at least now, when things are quiet, I can check those CDs."

  "I could do it now," he said, "if you don't mind. We've pretty much finished the cleanup."

  "Go right ahead," I said. "Just let me know if you find anything juicy."

  "Grisly as it sounds, I should probably take this anachronism behind the curtain," he said.

  "Be my guest," I said. "But no practical jokes. No dying elephant screams, no clanking chains, no blank shots."

  "I'll be a perfect lamb," he said, and disappeared behind the curtain with my laptop.

  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?"
<
br />   "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."