Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (20 page)

"I'll talk to my dad when I get the chance," I said, backing away. "He's not a crank, just an avid mystery reader."

"There's a difference?" Monty muttered, to my departing back.

I chose to ignore him, partly because I wanted to hurry over to my parents' house and partly because it was too early for me to remember the exact quote about mysteries being the recreation of the intelligent mind or whatever it was Dad was so fond of reciting.

The neighborhood still slept. I heard nothing but birdcalls, and a persistent tapping that was either a pileated woodpecker hunting for breakfast or Mrs. Fenniman nailing up more campaign posters.

My parents' house was quiet, too. Four out-of-town relatives were breakfasting in the gazebo on the back lawn and throwing scraps to the family peacock flock, which was a bad idea, actually. The peacocks already had their benefactors outnumbered, with more appearing all the time. Had these people never seen
The Birds?

Dad liked to brag about how well the peacocks were flourishing under his care, but in the past several months we'd begun to realize that perhaps they were flourishing a little too well. We'd only acquired them the previous year, as part of some family wedding preparations, but they'd already quadrupled in number, and the neighbors had grown mutinous. Dad hadn't been able to give away any of the flock, and so far, efforts to turn a profit by selling the surplus birds on eBay had proven strangely unsuccessful. He'd already promised Mother that his next project, after the Yorktown Day festival was over, would be spaying and neutering most of the peacocks.

We all tried to ignore Mrs. Fenniman's occasional ruminations on whether .peacocks would taste more like turkey or pheasant. Just to be sure, though, I was planning a brief fling with vegetarianism around Thanksgiving.

Other than the soon-to-be-wiser quartet in the garden, I didn't run into anyone else on my way up to Rob's room. And I was in luck; I could tell from the gentle snoring within that Rob was still home.

Knocking on the door of Rob's room did nothing to interrupt the snoring. Neither did calling his name. I finally had to shake him soundly to get a reaction. Some reaction. He turned over and pulled a pillow over his head.

"Wake up, Rob, I need to talk to you," I said, shaking him again.

"Ohhh," he groaned. "Just let me sleep a little while longer."

"I have to tell you about what happened last night," I said.

"Look, I didn't mean to do it," came his voice, somewhat muffled by the pillow. "I'm sorry."

"Didn't mean to do what?" I asked, and heard a gentle snore. "Rob!"

"I'll go over later to confess," he mumbled.

"Confess?" I exclaimed. "Rob, what the hell do you mean, 'confess'?"

"Confess, apologize, whatever."

"Rob, get up and talk to me now!"

"Why, is she here?" he said, sitting up in bed with an anxious expression.

"Is who here?"

"Mrs. Waterston," he said.

"Mrs. Waterston?" I repeated. "No, she's not here; why would she be?"

"Maybe she doesn't know yet, then," he said. "I'll have time to go and find him and take him back."

"Rob, what on Earth are you talking about?"

"Spike," he said. "I lost him."

"Is that all?" I said.

"Is that all? Mrs. Waterston will kill me."

"She may have other things on her mind," I said. "Someone killed Roger Benson last night."

"Oh wow," Rob said, suddenly wide awake. "Who?"

"They don't know yet," I said. "The sheriff put Deputy Montgomery in charge of the investigation, and he's looking at everybody who might have had reason to dislike the dead man."

"Try the immediate world," Rob said, shaking his head. "I know it probably sounds selfish, but I'm a little relieved that at least now I'm rid of him."

"Unfortunately, the same idea has probably occurred to Deputy Monty," I said. "Please tell me you have an alibi for the time between 9:30 and 10:30 last night."

"Damn that dog," Rob said.

"You were chasing Spike," I said.

"Looking for him, more like," he said. "I don't think it counts as chasing if you have no idea where he is. I spent four hours running all over the neighborhood, looking for the miserable little beast."

"That's just great," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"Meg, how bad is it?" Rob asked. "You don't think they seriously suspect me, do you?"

"I have no idea," I said. "Probably depends on what evidence they find. Maybe we'll be lucky and the murderer will have left his fingerprints on the knife."

"Knife? He was killed with a knife?"

"Yes. My falcon knife."

"The one I was holding yesterday?"

I winced.

"Don't worry too much," I said. "A lot of other people were probably holding it, too. Including me, of course. If it makes you feel any better, I think he suspects me more than you."

"You? Why?"

"It's my knife," I said. "And they found him in my booth."

I decided to leave out the fact that even Michael seemed to think I was more capable than Rob of stabbing someone. Especially since I happened to agree.

"Come on," I said. "Get up and let's go take you over to talk to the police. It'll look better if you go voluntarily than if they have to come chasing you down."

"Yeah," Rob said. "Should I put on regular clothes or do you think I need to wear the colonial – oh, damn."

"What?"

"My costume. It's covered with Benson's blood from when Faulk hit him."

"For heaven's sake, Faulk didn't hit him – "

"Okay, from when he tried to break Faulk's fist with his nose."

I smiled in spite of my anxiety.

"Okay, from when Faulk accidentally hit him," I said. "You're not the only one, though, remember? He probably bled on everyone who was there."

Which meant, of course, most of my friends whom Deputy Monty already suspected. Damn.

"You know what Deputy Montgomery is going to say, don't you," Rob said, glumly. "He's going to say that whoever killed Benson was counting on the blood from the fight to cover up the blood from the stabbing. He might even say that whoever killed him got the idea from the fight, or even started the fight on purpose."

"Don't be silly," I said. "He's not that stupid."

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

"Yes," Monty said, when Rob had handed over the bloodstained clothes. "I'd say this casts a definite suspicion on everyone involved in that fight."

"It wasn't a fight," I said. "It was… an altercation."

"An altercation during which one of the participants received a blow to the face of sufficient force to cause exsanguination."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," I said. "He wasn't exsanguinated; he just lost a little blood."

"That's what exsanguinated means," Monty said.

"No, exsanguinated means drained of blood, like what vampires do," I said. "And I seem to recall Benson had enough blood left to walk around for another six or seven hours."

"She's right, you know," Rob said. "Dad paid me a whole quarter for 'exsanguination' when I was eight."

"He means for learning the word," I explained, before Monty could jump to any incriminating conclusions. "Dad's big on improving our vocabulary. Look – Benson got smacked in the face and had a nosebleed. Big deal. If you ask me, it doesn't cast any more suspicion on the people who were there than on the rest of the world. After all, by nightfall, I'm sure everyone at the festival knew about it, and that means everyone knew there were people walking around with Benson's blood on them, ripe to be set up to take the blame if the police didn't dig deep enough to find the real culprit."

"We'll dig as deeply as we need to, thank you very much," Monty snapped.

"Tell me one thing," I said. "Was he killed here, or just left here?"

The deputy looked at me, unblinking, his mouth fixed in what I suppose he intended as a polite but enigmatic smile. Most guys can't do enigmatic.

"Well, okay, if you haven't figured it out," I said, shrugging.

"Oh, we know all right," he said, continuing to look at me. "But what difference does it make?"

"It makes all the difference in the world!" I exclaimed. "If he was killed somewhere else, then the murderer leaving him in my booth was just a coincidence. And not even a very interesting coincidence, because in case you hadn't noticed, everyone has some storage space for stuff they want to keep out of sight, but my booth's one of the few in the whole fair that has a big enough space to conceal a body in. But if he was killed here, than either he or the murderer came here for a reason, and if you found out die reason, you'd be that much closer to finding the murderer."

"We had managed to puzzle tibat much out, Ms. Langslow," the deputy said. He was still staring at me with that irritating expression on his face. More of a sneer than a smile, really. Or was it a leer? "What difference does it make to you?" he added.

"It's my booth," I said. "I work here. It matters."

He was still staring at me. I suspected it was a technique he'd read about somewhere for breaking down suspects. Well, two can play that game, I decided. I put my hands on my hips and stared back, equally unblinking. We stared at each other for what seemed like minutes on end, and for some reason I found myself imagining a nature documentary, with a voice-over by Marlin Perkins, explaining that this was a common behavior pattern in primates seeking to establish dominance or pecking order or whatever they're always going on about in nature documentaries.

Apparently I got to be alpha gorilla this time. The deputy suddenly glanced down at his watch and exhibited the behavior of a primate who badly wanted to be somewhere – anywhere – else.

"Sorry," he said, with a somewhat less-broad version of the snide smile. "I've got a lot to do today."

"So have I," I said. "And I can't start any of it until you let me have my booth back. I don't suppose you have any idea when you're going to be finished here?"

"We'll let you know," he said, looking smug.

"Yeah, right," I muttered, and turned to leave.

"Ms. Langslow," he called.

I looked back over my shoulder.

"I appreciate you bringing your brother over. But now I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from interfering in my case."

I bit back a sarcastic comment.

"Your dad thinks we're a bunch of bumbling nitwits who need your amateur detective skills to solve all our really important cases."

"I already told you, my dad's a mystery buff," I said. "He loves reading all those books where mild-mannered librarians solve crimes and catch ruthless killers."

"And you don't?"

"Dad's retired," I said. "I work for a living; I don't have time for all that."

"So you're not poking around trying to solve the case?"

I turned and gave him my version of the look Mother always turned on my brother and me when we pulled really stupid, beans-up-the-nose stunts.

"Right now, I'm just killing time, waiting till you finish whatever the hell you're doing in my booth, so I can open up and do my job. About the only thing I can think of to do with myself in the meantime is walk around talking to people, and I'd be astonished if anyone around here wants to talk about anything right now other than the murder. So if that counts as poking around, then yes, I've been poking around, and I'll probably continue poking around. The minute you let me back in my booth, I won't have time to poke around."

He stood there, frowning, for a moment.

"We'll let you know when we're finished," he said, finally.

I found Eileen, delegated the job of replenishing my cash supply to her, and went off to talk to a few people.

I stopped for a minute to watch one of my nieces marching around the town square with the fife-and-drum corps which was rehearsing "The World Turned Upside Down," the tune Cornwallis's musicians had played for the surrender ceremony. Did Cornwallis himself have enough sense of humor to choose that tune, I wondered? Or was it the musicians' in-joke? Either way, it perfectly described my mood as I headed for Faulk's booth to begin my forbidden poking around. Faulk looked like hell.