Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

by Donna Andrews

  Good question.

  I pulled Spike behind me as I strode through the camp to Wesley’s tent. When I found it, I tied Spike’s leash to a tent peg and crawled inside.

  It smelled strongly of unwashed Wesley, with grace notes of stale grease, thanks to a stash of fast-food bags crumpled in the corner. And a tantalizing hint of a scent I couldn’t identify but knew I’d smelled recently.

  I began to search—hastily. He was supposed to be in the British lines, but then Wesley wasn’t famous for being where he was supposed to be. I was looking for discarded plaid, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Dirty clothes—most, I suspected, on their fourth or fifth reuse—covered every surface. I lifted one pair of graying briefs and uncovered a file folder. I was about to put the underwear back when I noticed the name “Cooper” on a piece of newsprint sticking out of the folder.

  I opened the folder. It contained a small collection of articles on Roger Benson and his works. I scanned them, briefly. Most were about the fall of Cooper and Anthony, and I nodded without surprise when I realized that Cooper and Anthony had owned the Virginia Commercial Intelligence, whose closing had cost Wesley his dream job and, as he’d said himself, destroyed his journalism career.

  “That’s a good enough motive for me,” I murmured.

  The last article in the folder came from the York Town Crier a few weeks ago—a puff piece about Rob and Lawyers from Hell, mentioning Benson’s firm as one of those vying to market the game. No wonder Wesley had suddenly reappeared in Yorktown.

  Finding the orange plaid socks stuffed into one of the McDonald’s bags was just icing on the cake.

  I grabbed the bag, planning to take it, with the file folder, straight to Monty—better yet, the sheriff. I still didn’t trust Monty—and ducked out of the tent.

  But as I stood up, the greasy paper of the bag gave way and something heavy landed on a sensitive part of my foot. Several somethings.

  “Damn!” I said, jumping back. Spike gave chase to one of the small objects as it rolled in front of him, and growled when he found that musket balls are inedible.

  Musket balls. Four of them. And a trickle of black powder followed them out of the bag. That was the half-familiar scent, I realized; the strong, acrid tang of old-fashioned gunpowder. What was Wesley doing with the missing musket balls and a residue of gunpowder? I didn’t remember him seeming that interested in black-powder shooting when Jess and his crew had shown us how to make cartridges. Then again, he’d helped; he knew how to make cartridges.

  “And how to make live ammo,” I said, aloud; and suddenly I remembered how Wesley had looked at Michael last night, when he’d gotten the false impression that Michael was the witness Monty was talking about.

  “Michael,” I exclaimed. “He’s going after Michael.”

  Chapter 34

  I set off for the battlefield at a dead run, with Spike charging ahead of me, clearing a path by barking and snarling furiously at everyone we passed. Unfortunately, when I reached the barriers that separated the battlefield from the spectators’ area, I ran afoul of the safety monitors.

  “We’re sorry, ma’am, but we can’t let you out on the battlefield,” the man kept repeating, ignoring my attempts to explain. “Only participants allowed on the battlefield.”

  “There’s someone on the battlefield who’s got live ammo,” I said.

  “Impossible,” he said. “We did a safety inspection before the battle began. Took an hour and a half, with this many participants. I guarantee you, no one took any live ammo out by accident.”

  “It’s not an accident,” I said. “He’s trying to kill someone!”

  But he wasn’t listening. I saw him gesturing for several other monitors to haul me away, and I decided to retreat while I could still do so under my own steam.

  By this time, of course, all the safety monitors up and down the line had me flagged as a possible troublemaker. As I strolled along the barrier, seeking a more sympathetic ear, I could see other monitors coming to attention as I approached.

  Okay, I thought. You’re only letting participants past; I’ll become a participant.

  I picked up my skirts again and jogged over to Mrs. Tranh’s costume booth. I found her fitting Horace with a hat.

  “It’s too big,” he complained, as it fell over his eyes.

  “Only hat I have left,” Mrs. Tranh said. “You want hat, take this one. You want hat that fits, come here two hours ago.”

  “Mrs. Tranh,” I said. “Do you have any uniforms left? Any at all, I don’t care what unit. I don’t even care what army.”

  “Sorry, all out of uniforms,” Mrs. Tranh said, frowning. “You should have told me you need uniform.”

  “I didn’t need it until just now,” I said. “Horace, take off your uniform. I need to borrow it.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m wearing it.”

  “Horace—”

  He turned to walk away, and I grabbed his arm.

  “Hey, girlfriend, what’s wrong?” Amanda said, strolling up. “You look all hot and bothered.”

  “Horace, take off the uniform,” I repeated.

  “Leave me alone,” Horace whined.

  “I’d stick with blue-eyes, hon,” Amanda said.

  Horace continued to squirm, trying to free his arm.

  “I need his uniform to save Michael!” I said.

  “What wrong with Michael?” Mrs. Tranh demanded.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place,” Amanda said, grabbing Horace’s other arm.

  “Sorry,” Mrs. Tranh said to Horace, and deftly tripped him. Amanda sat on him while Mrs. Tranh and I stripped him of his uniform and began stuffing me into it.

  “You can’t do this,” Horace said, looking miserable in his cotton boxers and sleeveless undershirt.

  “Here,” I said, handing him Spike’s leash. “Go find Monty and the sheriff, Horace. We’ll need them.”

  Fortunately, Horace and I were much the same height, and he was pudgy enough that I could fit into his uniform, despite the differences in our shape. The trousers were a tight fit, though.

  “Don’t sit down,” Amanda advised.

  “Here,” Mrs. Tranh said, tying back my hair with a bit of ribbon while Amanda jammed Horace’s tricorn on my head. “Pull hat low.”

  “And keep the musket in front of your chest,” Amanda added.

  “Right—oh, and could you hang on to this file folder and the McDonald’s bag?” I said, cramming them into my haversack as I spoke and handing it to Amanda. “Give them to Monty and the sheriff when Horace finds them. But not unless they’re both together.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, hanging the bag over her shoulder.

  I set out again for the battlefield.

  This time, the monitors let me pass, after inspecting Horace’s musket and cartridge bag, and told me to hurry—the skirmish was already beginning. I kept the brim of my hat pulled low, nodded my thanks, and trotted off in the direction they’d pointed. And hit the ground almost immediately when a volley of musket fire rang out somewhere to my left.

  “Only blanks,” I told myself, as I scrambled up. “Pay no attention to them. They’re only blanks.”

  Except, if I was right, for one gun, and I didn’t think Wesley knew he had any reason to shoot me. Yet.

  I began working my way through the outskirts of the battlefield, trying to figure out what was going on. Damn, I thought, if only I’d paid more attention to the rehearsal skirmish last night. All I could see around me was a milling herd of sweating, panting men in uniforms whose color the ubiquitous dust was slowly but surely trying to obscure.

  “At this point in the battle,” came Mrs. Waterston’s voice over the bullhorn. “The colonial forces on the left wing begin massing for a sortie. I repeat, the colonial forces on the left wing begin massing for a sortie.”

  “Who the hell does she think she is?” a nearby soldier fumed. “Napoleon?”

  “Aunt Margaret says to stay put,�
� announced another soldier, joining him. “She’ll just wave her handkerchief when we’re supposed to make our sortie.”

  He pointed to something behind us, off the battlefield. Mother was sitting in a Chippendale chair, surrounded by a bouquet of different-colored uniforms. She seemed to be issuing orders. In the few seconds I watched, several soldiers ran off and others arrived.

  “Left wing, were you planning on doing anything soon?” the bullhorn blared.

  The soldiers (I recognized one as a cousin) glanced back at Mother and stood their ground.

  I moved on.

  I came abreast of some soldiers crouching behind some bushes. Instinctively, I crouched with them.

  “Third Virginia State Legion troops are over there,” one said, pointing.

  “I know,” I lied. “Courier. Where are the Gatinois chasseurs?”

  “The what?”

  “Left wing, get a move on!” came the bullhorn.

  “Like hell we will,” the soldier muttered. “We’ve been fighting this war since before you ever heard of Yorktown, lady! We’ll move when we damn well feel like it! Sorry,” he said, turning back to me. “Who were you looking for?”

  “Gatinois chasseurs. The French who’re supposed to storm Redoubt Nine,” I added, seeing from his puzzled face that either he hadn’t heard of them or I still wasn’t pronouncing them right.

  “Outside the redoubt already, I think,” he said. “At least that’s where they’re supposed to be. Who knows? Madame Von Steuben there has managed to screw up the whole thing already. No one’s where they’re supposed to be at this point in the battle.”

  “No, actually we’re fighting the Battle of Cowpens, only she forgot to tell us,” another soldier said.

  They all laughed.

  Great. There were three thousand men on this field, none of them where they were supposed to be; not that I knew where they were supposed to be anyway. How on Earth was I going to find one homicidal redcoat?

  Well, I could start by going where Michael and his unit were supposed to be. And at least, having grown up around the battlefields, I knew where Redoubt Nine was. More or less, anyway. I stood up, got my bearings, and began trotting toward it.

  I quickly gathered that it wasn’t quite the thing, even in a reenacted battle, to just take off across open ground toward your destination. Open ground is open for a reason—usually that people are firing across it. And even when they’re shooting blanks, muskets produce a remarkable amount of smoke. I got turned around several times, and found myself near a group of Hessian mercenaries, from which I deduced that I’d managed to wander behind enemy lines.

  “You’re a casualty, soldier,” someone told me, as I passed his unit. “I just shot you.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m shot; I’m a ghost; I’m going over to haunt Redoubt Nine for a while. Which way is it?”

  The Hessians pointed, and I corrected course and set out again. But my erratic pilgrimage had not gone unnoticed.

  “Someone tell that soldier in the green coat to stay with his unit,” Mrs. Waterston snapped over the megaphone. “And get those animals off the battlefield!”

  I turned, curious, and saw that Horace, deprived of his uniform, had donned his beloved gorilla suit and was loping across the battlefield in my wake, shaking his fist. At me, probably. He still held one end of Spike’s leash, though, and Spike was having a fine time, barking his head off and trying to bite passing soldiers.

  I could hear tittering from the bleachers.

  “Get my dog off the field of battle, you moron,” Mrs. Waterston screeched, so loud that she set off a small shriek of feedback from the bullhorn. She then treated us to a pungent summary of Horace’s intellectual status and ancestry—well worded and effective, no doubt, but not something I’d have shouted in public through a bullhorn.

  Some of the soldiers were smothering laughter as well.

  I decided it would be the better part of valor to lose myself in a crowd, so I took off running for the nearest mass of men, only to realize, when I had nearly reached them and they all began shooting over my head, that I was approaching a group of redcoats. Tony Grimes might have trouble spotting me, but I wasn’t going to fool Mrs. Waterston.

  “Meg! I didn’t know you’d joined a unit.”

  I turned to find Dad standing behind me, holding on his shoulder what looked like a small barrel. I wondered, briefly, why anyone would run around in the middle of a battle carrying a powder keg, then I saw the flash of the videocamera lens through a hole in the front of the barrel.

  “Your unit’s over there,” he said, pointing. “You should—”

  “Never mind that now,” I said. “Where’s Michael? I’ve got to find Michael! Where’s Redoubt Nine?”

  “Relax, you’re in Redoubt Nine,” Dad said. “Michael’s unit is going to be storming us in a few minutes, so just stay here with me and—”

  I took off running again, and began scanning the faces of the redcoats for Wesley. Some were lying down, pointing their guns through the gaps in the redoubt, where they could shoot, while others, from the direction they were looking, seemed to be waiting for something to come over the top of the redoubt.

  “Meg, what’s—”

  “Find Wesley, Dad,” I called over my shoulder. “Quick!”

  I started as a volley of musket fire rang out, and I heard shouts from outside the redoubt. I continued to search for Wesley, earning more than a few curses when I grabbed soldiers and turned them around to see their faces.

  The first white-clad French soldiers began appearing over the tops of the redoubt. The British shot at them, though I could see that they were actually careful to aim over their heads.

  “Allons, mes amis!”

  I looked up to see Michael standing on top of the redoubt, looking impossibly tall, waving his sword, urging on his men.

  I looked down at the redcoats below him. I could see several aiming over his head. And one aiming much too low … .

  “No!” I shrieked and launched myself at the redcoat in a flying tackle.

  The gun went off about the time I hit him, and I could tell that he was driven not only sideways from the impact of my tackle but also back from the recoil of the gun. Which shouldn’t have happened, of course, since you don’t get recoil when you fire a blank, so he’d definitely been firing live ammo.

  As I hit the ground, I looked up to see Michael, clutching his chest. The growing red stain looked incredibly vivid against the white of his uniform. Then he fell to the ground coughing.

  Chapter 35

  “Killer,” I snarled at Wesley. I kicked him in the face, quite deliberately, while scrambling up, and shoved my way through the mass of white- and red-clad soldiers to throw myself down at Michael’s side.

  “Michael!” I cried. “Can you hear me?”

  “Ma’am, we’re trying to have a battle here—”

  “Call an ambulance!” I shouted. “Dad, put that thing down and get over here. Dammit, Michael, hang on!” I cried, as I tried to figure out whether I should cradle his head or whether moving him was a bad idea. “I’m sorry; I’ve been awful to you. Just hang on, please. I promise if you just hang on—”

  He opened his eyes. This was a good sign, right?

  “Meg, will you do something for me?” he gasped.

  “Anything, Michael, but don’t try to talk now,” I said. “Dad, where the hell are you?”

  “Meg, you’re spoiling the filming,” Dad said, looming over me with his camera-filled powder keg.”

  “You’re filming this!” I said, looking up at him. His videocamera was whirring away. He didn’t seem upset. I noticed that a couple of the soldiers around us were smothering giggles. I looked down at Michael. The red stain didn’t seem to be spreading. And it looked very red. Almost unnaturally red.

  “Michael?”

  He opened one eye and winked at me.

  “You’re all right?”

  He opened his hand to reveal a plastic bag that st
ill contained a few drops of stage blood.

  “Do you want me to keep filming this?” Dad asked.

  “Shh,” Michael said, closing his eyes again. “I think she’s about to say something I want to hear.”

  “Michael, you jerk!” I shouted.

  “No, that’s not it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I thought you were dead!” I shrieked, snatching off my cocked hat and hitting him with it. “I thought the little weasel had killed you!”

  “And you came running to save me,” Michael said, pulling me down on top of him. “I’m overwhelmed.”

  “You’re overwhelmed!” I said. “I’m furious. Do you realize—”

  “Hey, you’re in my light,” I heard Dad say to someone. “I’m trying to film.”

  I looked up to see Dad’s powder keg pointed at Michael and me.

  “We can discuss how grateful you are later,” I said, pulling myself up again. “Right now—”

  “Meg Langslow!” came Mrs. Waterston’s voice through the bullhorn. “Why are you ruining my battle? Get out of there immediately!”

  “Ma’am,” a nearby soldier said, obviously fighting laughter. “If you’re finished having hysterics now—”

  “Laugh all you want,” I said, standing up and dusting off my uniform. “But one of your soldiers—make that someone pretending to be one of your soldiers—is using live ammo here. He tried to kill Michael.”

  “Meg Langslow! Get off my battlefield this minute!”

  “Her battlefield,” someone muttered.

  “She’s not kidding,” another soldier said. “I’ve been hit! Someone put a round right through my canteen!”

  “There he is,” I said, pointing to the other end of the redoubt, where Wesley was trying to slink away. “He killed Benson and now he’s trying to kill the only witness! Catch him!”

  Fortunately, Wesley did his best to convince them I was telling the truth by bolting out of the redoubt the second he heard me. And I gather even the suspicion of live ammo on the field really ticked people off. The soldiers gave chase—a few at first, and then both units of French and British, when the word of what Wesley had done had made the rounds.