Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (27 page)

"So much for parallel development."

He shrugged.

"Anyway, I got into the case with your flamingos, and I took some Polaroids, but I couldn't tell much about the finish from just looking. And I figured anything valuable would be locked up, so I'd brought along my tool kit, and it didn't take me five minutes to open that padlock. You really should get a better lock; I could sell you a – "

"Later, Tony. Get back to your burglary."

"I didn't steal anything."

"What did you do with my cash box?"

"I didn't do anything. Just took it out of the case when I was searching. Anyway, I didn't find any papers, so I was starting up your laptop. When I heard someone coming, I dived under one of the tables."

"Just like that?" I said. "You didn't try to hide what you'd been doing?"

"I put the laptop in the case and shut the lid," he said. "I figured anyone who came in would think the flamingo was yours."

"Then what happened?"

"Someone came in."

"Who?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "There was a cloth covering the table that went right down to the floor. I found a crack, but all I could see was his shoes."

"Okay, then what?"

"Then another guy came in, and one of them said 'What the hell are you doing here?' and they argued for a while."

"About what?"

"I couldn't tell. After those first words, I think they tried to keep their voices down, and the tablecloth muffled the sound. I could tell they were angry; that's about all."

"And that they were both men," Michael put in.

"Yeah, definitely both men."

"Go on," I said.

"Okay, so they were arguing, and I heard one of them say something about 'that damned dog.' I could see both sets of feet heading for the back of the booth, and I heard a lot of clanking and grunting, and one of them came back, and I saw the tablecloth on the other table move, so I figured maybe there wasn't enough room for both of them behind the curtain, and the one guy had lost out and decided to hide under the table."

"It's like a French farce," Michael muttered.

"Only they rarely kill people in French farces," I added.

"Anyway, then that little dog came in and started barking, like he couldn't figure out which one of the three of us to attack. You know, the little hairball that's always trying to bite people."

"Spike," I said. "I should have known. Where Spike goes, trouble follows."

"Yeah, well this time that harridan who runs the fair followed."

"Mom?" Michael exclaimed.

"Uh… yeah," Tony said. "I could tell it was her. When she reached down to put a leash on the mutt, I caught a glimpse of her face and that big, white, fright wig. And she dragged him out, still barking. You could hear them all the way out of the fair grounds."

"And you just sat there under the table all this time?"

"I figured if I sat tight, maybe they wouldn't catch me," Tony said. "And a damned good thing, too, considering that one of them turned out to be a murderer."

"So what happened next?"

"The guy under the table came out and looked behind the curtain, and he blew out of there, real fast. I waited a bit, to see if the guy behind the curtain was coming out, and I decided maybe he'd gone out the back of the booth. So I came out, and peeked behind the curtain, and there was this guy, dead, with my flamingo in his back. It was freaky, really, seeing him lying there – I couldn't tell who he was, just that he was wearing a blue coat exactly like the one I was wearing."

"And that's when you panicked."

"Yeah. I figured they'd blame me, you know? I mean, it was my flamingo. So I pulled the flamingo out and wiped the blood off its beak with my handkerchief, and put it in the case with yours. And I saw the knife and I stuck it in his back so they wouldn't wonder how he'd died."

"Great thinking, Tony. Only my knife and your flamingo's beak were just a little bit different in size. They figured out almost immediately that the knife wasn't the weapon."

"Okay, so I wasn't thinking too clearly," he said. "I really was pretty drunk. And do you have any idea what it's like, finding a dead body like that?"

"You seem to forget that Meg found the same dead body a little later on," Michael pointed out.

"Well, she wasn't a witness to his murder," Tony said.

"Some witness you are," Michael said.

"Yeah, Tony," I said. "Once you tell the police all of this, everyone in town will know you were an earwitness to the murder. The killer will probably go after you, just in case you could identify him to the police, which is a real laugh, because so far you haven't remembered a thing that could possibly help identify him."

"I know it's a guy."

"Wow. You just eliminated fifty percent of the human race," I said. "Only – how many billion people left?"

"Give me a break," he said. "I was pretty drunk. And all I saw was his shoes."

"Okay, concentrate, then. Tell us about his shoes."

Tony concentrated.

"They were dark," he said.

"Black or brown?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Or maybe dark blue."

"What kind of shoes?"

"I don't know. They had buckles on them; I couldn't see what was under the buckles."

"Let me guess: one buckle on each foot."

"Ha, ha," Tony said. "Look, I told you I didn't see anything."

"No kidding."

"One of the buckles was kind of odd."

"Odd how?"

"It had a kind of a dent in it," he said.

"Would you recognize that buckle again?" I asked.

"I don't know," Tony said. "Maybe."

"Come on," I said. "We're going to find the buckle."

We went back to Tony's booth, recruited a neighbor to watch it while he was gone, and set out dragging him up and down the aisles of the craft fair.

At first, we tried to be subtle. We'd wander into peoples' booths, and I'd stand chitchatting with the owners while Michael and Tony inspected their shoes and the shoes of anyone else in the booth. If the crafter was behind a counter, we'd think of some stratagem to lure him out where we could see him.

Dad joined the party after we passed through the medical tent, and after that, all hope of subtlety went out the window.

We walked up and down the lanes, our eyes fixed on passing shoes, and we spent a lot of time apologizing to the people we bumped into. Four or five times, when we were all waiting for Tony to make up his mind about a shoe, people jumped to the conclusion that one of us had lost a contact, and within seconds we had a swarm of eager helpers combing the ground.

Although we gave Dad the gist of what Tony had said, so he knew that we were almost certain to find the buckle on a man's shoe, he kept getting carried away. After the third time he managed to get slapped or swatted for trying to twitch up some poor woman's skirts, we invented an important job for him – keeping a list of who had already passed inspection, which kept his hands busy scribbling and prevented him from being hauled away on some kind of morals charge.

The list was already lengthy when we left the fair grounds and moved over to the encampment, roaming up and down the ad hoc streets, peering and scribbling.

By the time we'd been at this for an hour, everyone had figured out something was going on. Dad invented a cover story that Tony and I were trying to find a buckle that we both wanted to use as a model for our own work, which was pretty flimsy, but after that we were stuck with it. Most of the crafters we met thought Michael and I were inflicting some obscure penance on Tony for his well-known plagiarism of my best designs, and the reenactors had gotten so used to strange behavior from the locals that they didn't really seem curious.

Of course it was only a matter of time before Monty found out what we were up to, jumped to the unfortunately accurate conclusion that it had something to do with the murder, and sent out a couple of officers to bring us back to the operations tent where he'd set up his on-site headquarters.

He wasn't in a good mood.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't arrest you for withholding evidence and obstructing justice," Monty said.

I decided to assume this was a rhetorical question and changed the subject.

"We've found an important new piece of evidence for you,"

I said.

"Yes, and you've been running all over the fair, looking at people's belt buckles, and concealing this evidence from the police for how long?" Monty demanded.

"Shoe buckles," Dad corrected him.

"We wanted to bring you complete information," I said.

"Wanted the glory of solving this yourself, you mean," he said.

I bit back my quick answer, which would have been that, no, I just didn't want to give the information to someone I feared would misuse it to build a stronger case against one of my friends – especially since I wasn't quite sure I trusted Monty. So I sat, trying not to interrupt, as Monty took Tony through the same catechism I had been through. No, he didn't remember any more about what the shoes looked like. And, no, he hadn't seen the odd buckle anywhere around the fair.

"So you don't remember anything else?" Monty asked.

"Not about the shoes, no," Tony said.

"Do you remember anything that's not about the shoes?" Monty asked.

Tony thought.

"I remember the socks a little," he said. "I think it was the socks, anyway."

We all sat upright.

"What about the socks?" Monty demanded.

Tony thought again. Or maybe just paused, for effect.

"Red plaid," he said, finally.

"He was wearing red plaid socks?" Monty said.

Tony nodded.

"You didn't see any pants cuffs?"

"No, just a glimpse of red plaid," Tony said.

"You idiot," I exploded. "You dragged us all over the fair looking for slightly dented buckles, and didn't think to mention that the guy was wearing red plaid socks! We could have searched people's tents for the socks!"

Tony looked at me and smirked.

"You didn't ask about his socks," he said. "Just his shoes."

"I think that just about settles it," Monty said. "And don't be too hard on Tony here," he added, turning to me. "We'd have figured it out sooner or later anyway."

"Figured out what?" I asked, although I had a sinking feeling I knew.

"Well, there were a lot of interesting costumes at that shindig," Monty said, looking at me with one eyebrow raised, as if to imply that he'd found my costume particularly interesting. "But I only remember one red plaid costume, and by an odd coincidence, the person wearing it was the person I was planning to arrest anyway. So don't be too mad at Tony here, Ms. Langslow. His evidence was just one more nail in the coffin. Ah, here we are."

Faulk walked in, followed by two of the deputies. He glanced at the rest of us, then looked at Monty.

"You wanted to see me?" he said.

"Oh, no," I murmured.

"I certainly did," Monty said. "Read him his rights, Fred."

"He was the one in the kilts," Tony said.

"And red plaid socks," Monty said. "Which you saw."

"Yeah, or it could even have been part of the kilt," Tony said. "I was looking through this really small hole."

"You're arresting me for wearing a kilt?" Faulk said, pretending a lightness I could tell he didn't feel. "May I call the Celtic Antidefamation League now?"

"No, actually we're arresting you because your fingerprints are on the murder weapon," Monty said.

"The flamingo," Faulk said.

"Aha!" Monty said.

"Aha, yourself," I said. "It's all over the fair that the flamingo was the murder weapon. Even the tourists are talking about it."

"But none of the tourists managed to leave their fingerprints all over die flamingo in question," Monty said. "Bloody fingerprints."