Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

by Donna Andrews

  “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.

  Chapter 31

  “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’d 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 W
esley, 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 à l’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.

  “And the sign says … ?”

  “SAVE OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS,” Jess said. “Hell of a nice old lady, even if she is a bit of a fruitcake.”

  “Most of my family are.”

  “I was only kidding about the fruitcake bit.”

  I shrugged.

  “Just one thing,” he asked. “What is the other egg, anyway?”

  “Other egg?”

  “Yeah, I can tell one of those eggs the duck is sitting on is hers, but the other’s way too big. What is it?”

  “Ah,” I said. “I bet Eric broke one of the duck eggs and had to replace it with a peacock egg. Did Madame Von Steuben notice?”

  “No, we kind of stood in front of it so she couldn’t get a real good view. Are you serious—a peacock egg? Can I keep the chick if it hatches?”

  “Sure,” I said. “In fact, if you want some peacocks, talk to my Dad in the medical tent. He has a lot of peacocks.”

  “You think he might be willing to sell a pair?”

  “Good chance.”

  “Cool,” Jess said.

  “I just hope Mrs. Fenniman doesn’t have to perch there all night,” I fretted.

  “Heck, no,” Jess said. “We’ve got Mel back on the boss-lady’s trail. As soon as she turns in for the night, we’ve got a bed all made up in the tent for the old lady. She’ll be fine. Wish I could say the same for the rest of us. Lord, would you look at that!”

  He pointed to an area of the battlefield where several veteran reenactors had begun drilling a collection of Mrs. Waterston’s new recruits. Including, to my surprise, Wesley, who normally avoided anything that resembled work. The recruits were marching up and down, holding boards sawed into roughly musket-shaped pieces—three feet long, two inches square on one end, and widening to two-by-four at the other to simulate the stock. I suspect they’d borrowed them from the Victory Center, which used them to demonstrate colonial drill tactics to the tourists.

  “Amazing,” Jess said, shaking his head, as we watched how hard the drill instructors had to work to get the recruits to form two straight lines, one a few feet behind the other. “First time I’ve ever seen a bunch who could figure out more than one way to mess up ‘Right face!’”

  “Are you really going to give those guys muskets?” I asked.

  “If I had my way, we wouldn’t even give them sticks,” Jess said, as the recruits pretended to fire their imaginary muskets, and about a third of the men in the back line managed to whack their neighbors over the head. “They’re sure not getting ammo. Or bayonets, for that matter,” he added, as several fist fights broke out between the front and rear lines. “I’m going to go down and see if I can help out with this.”

  I wished him luck and returned to camp—which had grown even larger; more reenactors had arrived for the rehearsal and tomorrow’s battle. I could hear at least two competing live musical groups playing English folk dances, and the camp rang with laughter and the shouts of people greeting old friends.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a party, so I strolled on past the camp, toward the deserted craft-fair grounds.

  Okay, considering what I found the last time I went back to my booth after dark, maybe it wasn’t a particularly brilliant idea, but I needed the peace and quiet, and I figured it was only in the movies that murderers spent the rest of their lives lurking suspiciously around the scene of the crime. Still, I jumped a foot when I saw movement in one of the aisles I had to pass on the way to my booth.

  So, of course, in defiance of all the rules of common sense, I went to see what was going on.

  Chapter 32

  I crept down the lane, acutely conscious of how much my skirts and petticoats rustled, but it wasn’t as if I had time to go back to the tent and change into more suitable skulking clothes.

  The intruder, whoever he was, had entered Faulk’s booth. Probably someone who figured that Faulk’s incarceration gave him a chance to steal things, I thought, grimly. I took advantage of every bit of cover, hiding one minute behind the canvas that covered a quilt display and the next in the shadow of a tall reproduction corner chest. As I passed by one booth, I spotted a hammer on the counter and snagged it—I felt better with some kind of weapon in my hand. Finally, I darted behind the holly bush just outside one corner of Faulk’s booth. I could definitely see someone moving about in the booth.

  “Stop where you are!” I shouted, leaping out from behind the bush and toward the entrance of the booth, where I ran head on into someone else, trying to do the same thing from the other direction.

  We both shrieked and jumped away. I swung the hammer, missed, and hit myself on the leg just as I landed in the holly bush. The other figure—I could see now that it was Tad—fell with a clatter in a display rack filled with tall iron pothooks and lamp-stands.

  By the time we picked ourselves up and confirmed that our injuries were minor, the intruder had long gone.

  “If there even was an intruder,” Tad said. “Maybe it was just your shadow.”

  “Or your shadow,” I said. “The shadow I saw wasn’t wearing skirts.”

  “We were probably seeing each other’s shadows,” Tad said.

  “No,” I said. “There was someone here, I’m sure of it. We need to search the booth.”

  “I’m not sure I’d notice if the intruder took anything,” Tad said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I think it’s more important to make sure that he hasn’t left anything behind. Like supposedly incriminating evidence.”

  We searched but found nothing that looked suspicious—no bloody handkerchiefs hidden in the trash can, no phony notes making it appear as if Faulk had arranged to meet Benson. Nothing much out of the ordinary.

  In the next lane over, I saw a watchman’s staff lying outside one of the booths, but there was no way to tell how long it had been there. Mrs. Waterston had already chewed me out once about the watch carelessly leaving their staffs lying around.

  “Maybe one of the Town Watch was investigating a suspicious noise and ran off in panic when we jumped out yelling at him,” Tad suggested.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it was just a souvenir hunter.”

  “Probably,” Tad said. “Let’s forget it. I can just pack this stuff up and take the booth down, and it won’t matter if anything’s left behind.”

  “Pack the booth up?” I said. “Why? The
fair’s supposed to be open again from ten to two tomorrow.”

  “Do you really think I want to stand around selling Faulk’s hardware when he’s in jail?” Tad asked.

  “Can you afford not to?” I said. “I thought you guys needed every penny you could get for legal fees. Even more so now.”

  “You don’t think his getting arrested for murder’s going to affect sales just a little?”

  “You’re right, it’ll affect sales a lot,” I said. “We’ve got to change all the price tags tonight. Mark everything up—I think about fifty percent.”

  “You’re crazy,” Tad said.

  “Hey, you said yourself that the intruder could be a souvenir hunter—have you seen my sales today?” I asked. “And my iron was only at the scene of the crime, not made by the hand of the actual suspect. Maybe fifty percent’s not enough; maybe we should double everything.”

  “I think fifty percent should do fine,” Tad said, chuckling.

  He cheered up a bit while we did the marking, and by the time we’d finished, he obviously felt much happier. Of course, I had no idea how much of his improved mood came from my promise that I was going to do everything I could to catch the real murderer.

  While we were marking things, I uncovered something that gave me pause. A large key—it had to be one of the keys to the padlock on the stocks. Had Faulk kept a key? Or was this what the intruder had come to find? Or to plant?

  Tad didn’t even blink when he saw me holding the key. I waited until he wasn’t looking, then tucked it into my haversack.

  “With you on his trail, that poor killer hasn’t a chance,” Tad said, as we put away the pens and price tags.

  “Maybe,” I said, taking a deep breath. “But before I go off chasing the killer, I want you to level with me. Who were you with the night of the murder?”

  “Oh, damn, not you, too,” Tad said, slumping. “That damned deputy had to say just enough in front of Faulk to make him think the worst, and it’s all perfectly innocent, not to mention having nothing to do with the murder.”