I couldn’t think of anything encouraging to say about that, so I simply said good-bye and left. Maybe I should have told him about Tad’s alibi, but I didn’t have the heart. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Just because Tad was with someone other than Faulk at the time of the murder, there didn’t have to be anything shady about it, right? Or maybe Faulk already knew about it and was concealing it. Why? To save face? What were he and Tad really arguing about last night? And how much did I really believe Tad’s alibi, anyway?
Since I still couldn’t get into my booth, I took a quick stroll through the fair, trying to spot anachronisms and force the owners to hide them before the Town Watch levied more of the stiff fines that I still had to talk Mrs. Waterston out of charging. The watchmen had begun posting everyone’s cumulative fine totals on a board beside the stocks, and after glancing at the totals, I could see why morale in the craft fair was spiraling downward so rapidly.
Halfway through my patrol, I found Michael sitting in Dad’s medical tent, along with the sheriff. They were watching Dad do his colonial medicine demonstration for a pair of tourists with a small boy in tow. I could tell the tourists were a little unnerved by Dad’s blood-stained leather apron.
“Of course, in those days far more men died of disease, particularly dysentery, than were killed in battle,” Dad was saying.
“What’s dysentery?” the small boy asked. Fortunately, Dad had turned to greet me and didn’t hear the question.
“Good morrow, Mistress Langslow,” Dad said, bowing deeply. “Do you need a tonic today? A physic, perhaps?”
“I need my booth back,” I said, slumping onto one of the bales of straw he’d set out as seats. “Preferably before the end of the fair; I’d like to at least break even.”
“Perhaps you need to be bled,” Dad said, picking up a jar of leeches from the rough-hewn table that housed his medical exhibits.
“No thanks, Dad,” I said. He was kidding, of course. At least I hoped he was.
“What are those?” the little boy asked.
“Leeches,” Dad said. “Bloodsucking leeches,” he added—which was redundant, of course, but showed his keen grasp of the way to a ten-year-old boy’s heart.
“Real leeches?” the boy asked.
“Of course.”
“Ooh, gross!” the boy said, in awestruck tones.
“Would you like to hold one?” Dad asked.
“Cool! Yes!”
“Justin, no,” his mother said.
“It’s perfectly harmless, madam,” Dad said. “They’re perfectly fresh leeches. We keep the used ones separate.”
“Used ones?” the boy’s father echoed, his eyes following Dad’s gesture to the jar of used leeches sitting on the table. Business had been brisk, apparently; there were over a dozen used leeches in the jar. I wonder if Dad had convinced anyone other than himself to feed them.
“Once they’ve taken blood from one patient, you can’t reuse them on another, for hygienic reasons,” Dad explained. “Of course, they didn’t know about microbes in colonial times, but nowadays physicians are very careful to follow proper procedure when using leeches.”
“Nowadays?” the boy’s father repeated. “You don’t mean to tell me you still use leeches down here?”
“Yes, of course!” Dad said, warming to his subject. “They’ve discovered a host of medicinal uses for them. They’re very useful in cases of impaired venous circulation—with plastic and reconstructive surgery, for example, or cases where limbs have been reattached.”
“I see,” the man said, glancing involuntarily at the bed of sawdust on the ground beside Dad’s authentic period operating table, complete with an authentic period saw and what appeared to be an arm in desperate need of reattaching.
“Of course, even in colonial times, they’d have kept the used leeches separate,” Dad continued. “If you put a well-fed leech back in with a batch of hungry ones, they’d cannibalize it for the blood it contained.”
“Cool!” said the small boy, digging in his feet to resist his parents’ increasingly less-subtle efforts to guide him out of the tent.
“Let’s get one out, shall we?” Dad said, taking up a small pair of tongs.
“Fascinating,” Michael said, watching so closely that his nose almost touched the jar from which Dad was selecting a leech. “For some reason I always thought they were small and round, instead of long and skinny.”
“Well, they’re fatter after they’re fed,” Dad said, as he extracted one slimy brown worm and turned, with a flourish, to perform his demonstration. Alas, at the sight of the leech, the father snatched up his son, and he and his wife ran out of the tent. We could hear the boy’s wails of outrage fading in the distance.
“How odd,” Dad said. He looked at the leech, squirming in his tongs, sighed, and placed it back in the jar. He looked rather disappointed. As did Michael and the sheriff.
I tried to imagine what wild tales the tourists would take back home with them, about the mad doctor of Yorktown and his cannibal leeches. Ah, well. Just as long as no one complained to Mrs. Waterston. And at least it wasn’t an anachronism.
Michael came over to join me on the bale of hay.
“I thought you’d be up to your eyeballs in customers by now,” he said, putting an arm around me. “Decided to sneak away for a minute?”
“Everyone else is up to their eyeballs in customers,” I said. “All I have is a booth full of police and unsold iron. I have no idea what they’re still doing. They’ve had all night to search the place.”
“Sorry,” Michael said, and began massaging my shoulders. Which, though I hadn’t yet noticed it, were already knotted with tension, despite the early hour. I still wasn’t sure I liked it when someone else knew how I felt before I did.
“Are the cactus spines still bothering you?” he asked.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “Don’t say that in front of Dad. I’ll explain later.”
“Damn fool way to conduct an investigation,” Dad was saying. “No offense,” he said to the sheriff, who nodded to indicate that none was taken. “But that deputy of yours wouldn’t know a suspect if one came up and shot him.”
“Now, James,” the sheriff began.
“We’ve gone over this half a dozen times already,” Michael said. “How can you possibly be a suspect when you have three witnesses to confirm your alibi?”
“Well, maybe Dad doesn’t want an alibi just yet,” I said. “Maybe he wants to be a suspect for a while, and be saved from the gallows at the last minute by a surprise witness.”
I could tell from the wistful expression on Dad’s face that this was exactly what he wanted.
“Gallows? We don’t have execution by hanging in Virginia,” the sheriff pointed out. “Only electrocution and lethal injection.”
“I was speaking metaphorically,” I said. “What is Dad’s alibi, anyway?”
“He was standing in the middle of the party, talking to the same three people from the time you had that little disagreement with Mr. Benson to the time we got the word that he was dead,” Michael said. “There’s no way he could have slipped away from the party, stabbed Benson, and slipped back without those three witnesses noticing.”
“So who are the witnesses?” I asked.
“First, one of your aunts,” Michael said. “Phoebe, the birdwatcher.”
“She’s no use as a witness,” Dad said. “She never pays attention to anything but birds. Now if you wanted an alibi for a spotted owl—”
“And your Uncle Stanley, the judge,” Michael continued.
“He’s getting along, Stanley is,” Dad said. “His memory could be starting to go, you know.”
“Yes, he’s only a year or two younger than you are, isn’t he?” I said.
“And me,” Michael finished.
Dad sighed. He wasn’t about to say anything negative about Michael. He was Michael’s biggest fan. I could tell, though, that he was disappointed in Michael for spoiling all his fun.
>
“Are you sure you were with him every second of that time?” I asked. “You didn’t leave to go to the bathroom or the bar or anything?”
“You went to fetch us drinks,” Dad said, brightening. “I remember that now.”
“We were standing right beside the bar,” Michael said, giving me an exasperated look. “I seem to remember that we kept right on talking while I was waiting for our drinks.”
“Yes, but you would have been distracted by your interaction with the bartender,” I said.
“Not that distracted,” Michael said.
“Tell you what,” I said. “We could reenact it later. Scare up Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Stanley, run through the whole thing, see if there’s any possibility that Dad could have gotten away with it.”
“Perfect!” Dad said, beaming. “I’m sure when we run through it you’ll realize how flimsy my alibi is.”
“We’ll see,” Michael said. He was obviously still convinced of Dad’s alibi, but somewhat mollified by the word “reenact” and the dramatic possibilities it suggested.
“Meanwhile, I hate to change the subject, but I have a question,” I said, turning to the sheriff
“I can’t tell you what’s going on with the investigation,” he said, nervously.
“This has nothing to do with the investigation,” I said. “At least I hope it doesn’t. What does Wesley Hatcher have on you that he thinks would swing the election if he published it?”
Chapter 23
The sheriff flinched.
“That’s … that’s personal,” he said, finally.
“Well, I assumed it was personal,” I said. “I couldn’t imagine anything job-related he could possibly hold over you.”
“Thank you, Meg,” he said, patting my hand. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”
I decided it would spoil the good impression I’d made if I explained that I knew it couldn’t possibly be job-related because the whole county knew he never did any police work at all if he could help it.
“Okay, so it’s personal,” I said instead. “What is it? We’d like to help you, but we can’t if we don’t know what’s wrong.”
“That young man had evidence of an unfortunate … lapse in judgment I made a while back,” the sheriff said. “Nothing illegal, nothing unethical or immoral. Just … well, stupid. Something stupid I did that would look bad if folks found out about it. He’s been trying to hold it over my head, trying to get me to tell him something he could use in a story.”
“What did he want to know?”
“I don’t think he had anything in particular in mind,” the sheriff said. “‘Something juicy,’ that’s all he said. I told him I didn’t know anything juicy, and I wouldn’t tell him if I did. Of course, now he wants all the details about the murder. That’s why I’m staying so far from the investigation. I can’t tell him what I don’t know.”
“Of course, he may not believe you.”
“Well, if he doesn’t, I’ll just have to live with that. I’ll just have to tell him to—to—”
“Publish and be damned!” I suggested.
“Yes, that’s the ticket,” the sheriff said. “You have such a way with words. Only … do you think it’s all right to say ‘damn’ with the election and everything?”
“Mrs. Fenniman says much worse,” I said.
“That’s true,” he said. “But she’s not actually carrying the burden of public office. I’ll say ‘publish and be darned,’ just to keep on the safe side.”
Just then Cousin Horace stuck his head through the flap of the tent.
“The fresh tomatoes just arrived,” he said.
“Not too fresh, I hope,” Dad said.
“Oh, no, they’re plenty squishy,” Horace said.
“I’d better go, then,” the sheriff said. “Got to keep up appearances while I can.”
He got up, put his tricorn hat on, and ambled out.
“The burdens of public office,” I said, shaking my head.
“So what are you up to while Monty’s occupying your booth?” Michael asked.
“Doing Monty’s job for him,” Dad suggested. “Solving the crime.”
“Oh, no, Dad,” I said. “Monty very specifically warned me against trying to do that. I’m just walking around, hunting down anachronisms, and talking to people.”
“I don’t suppose the topic of the murder ever comes up, does it?” Michael asked.
“Strangely enough, it does,” I said.
“Well, Monty’s doing the best he can to make sure no one forgets it,” Dad said. “He came through here just after I opened, demanding to search the place, and confiscated a lot of my instruments. Then he brought them all back, about a half hour ago.”
“That’s odd,” I said. “Did he say why?”
“Not a word,” Dad said. “Of course, not being from around here, I don’t suppose he understands how valuable the insights of the local population can be in solving a case like this.”
“Probably not,” I said. “So, Michael, want to stroll around with me and tap the keen insights of the local population? Unless your unit has something planned.”
“Not really. Remember what Jess said last night about some units being more gung-ho than others?”
“Don’t tell me your unit is one of those that just shows up to fire off your guns and drink beer?”
“I beg your pardon! The Gatinois chasseurs are not anything like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’re French; we just show up to wave our swords around and drink champagne.”
“Much better,” I said. “When will you be opening the champagne?”
“Not till after the 4 P.M. skirmish,” he said, offering his arm. “Until then, I’m at your disposal.”
“We’ll see you later, Dad,” I called, as Michael and I strolled out of his tent.
“Come back and tell me what you find,” Dad called. He sounded a little forlorn, so I was relieved when we ran into a couple of reenactors outside, working up their nerve to enter.
“Is this the doctor’s tent?” one asked. “I mean, he’s a real doctor, right, not just doing an impression of one?”
“Oh, he’s real, all right,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Poison ivy,” the man said.
“I’m sure he’ll have something for that,” I said, and watched as the patients ventured inside.
“Of course, with the festival on, he’ll want to give them an authentic period salve,” I remarked to Michael when they were out of earshot. “That’s why I didn’t want him to know about the cactus spines.”
“The authentic period salve wouldn’t work on cactus spines?”
“The authentic period salve is lard and sulfur ointment, which works just fine if you don’t mind me smelling like a crate full of rotten eggs for the next two days.”
“I see your point,” he said. “I’ll try to keep my face out of the shrubbery until he’s back in the twenty-first century. Enfin, ma chérie, où allons-nous?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds nice,” I said. “Feel free to say more charmingly incomprehensible things to me as we stroll around interrogating suspects.”
“Actually, what I said was—”
“No, no! Don’t spoil my illusion that you just said something witty, complimentary, and ever-so-slightly risque! Haven’t you ever experienced the letdown of hearing a favorite opera sung in English? Besides, there’s Mrs. Fenniman; let’s go interrogate her.”
“Is she a suspect?”
“Of course, and even if she wasn’t, she knows more about what goes on in town than anyone other than Mother.”
Mrs. Fenniman stood at the edge of the town square with a frown on her face, watching the sheriff.
“I need a better campaign platform,” she complained. “He’s killing me with those damned tomatoes. I thought you were going to think of something, Meg.”
“Just because they’re throwing tomatoes at him
doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for him,” I said. “Could mean just the opposite, in fact.”
“Maybe,” she muttered.
“I think public opinion’s more likely to hinge on how his department handles this murder investigation,” I suggested.
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Because, if you ask me, that Monty fellow isn’t handling it worth a damn. Be a lot different when I’m elected.”
“Just what is he doing, anyway?”
“He’s got his troops searching all the booths for your cash box,” she said. “Didn’t occur to them that all these folks have cash boxes of their own, so they got a little overexcited, first half-dozen booths they searched. Don’t see what he thinks he’s accomplishing; cash is cash. And do they really think a thief would keep around any checks made out to you?”
“I doubt it,” I agreed.
“Seems to be searching for something else, too, but he’s not letting on what,” she added. “Something smaller than a cash box, anyway. And he’s got a bee in his bonnet about weapons. Some of those reenactors complain that they can’t walk ten feet without some cop wanting to see their swords and bayonets.”
Now that was interesting. They already knew my dagger was the weapon—so why were they so interested in other peoples’ swords and bayonets? There was something fishy going on, but I didn’t think Deputy Monty was going to give away any details. I wondered if I could pry anything out of Cousin Horace.
“I swear,” Mrs. Fenniman said, shaking her head. “If you’d told me Roger Benson would cause more trouble dead than alive, I’d have called you a liar. But that’s what’s happening.”
“Just what trouble did he cause you when he was alive?” I asked.
“What makes you think he caused me some particular trouble?”
“Horace said you called him a no-good sneak thief who should be shot like a rabid dog.”
“I did, and I meant every word of it,” she said. “But it wasn’t something he did to me in particular. Before he went into the computer racket, he was one of those merger-and-acquisition crooks. I had some money in this pulp mill company up near Richmond. Cooper and Anthony. It was starting to diversify, might have gone someplace, except that Benson and his crooks engineered one of those slash-and-burn leveraged buyouts.”
Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos Page 15