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.
'What happened to you?' I asked, seeing Faulk's bruised face.
'You should know, you were there,' he said. 'Although the late and unlamented Mr. Benson's nosebleed was so dramatic, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that no one remembers me falling down face first on a set of andirons.'
'Ouch,' I said. 'I do remember, actually. I bet Monty found it fascinating, though.'
'Monty,' Faulk growled. 'The man's not quite an idiot, but he's working on it.'
'Please tell me you have an alibi for the time of the murder.'
'I wish,' he said. 'I can't even tell you exactly where I was, and mere sure as hell wasn't anyone to give me an alibi. Did you know there's a lake over there, beyond those trees?'
'A pond, actually,' I said. 'Wormley Pond. What about it?'
'I fell in it,' he said. 'I was so mad I didn't look where I was going when I left the party. I just took off walking, and eventually I fell into the lake – '
'Pond.'
'Whatever. Although I think any body of water deep enough for me to almost drown in deserves to be called a lake. Anyway, when I pulled myself out, I realized I had no idea where I was, and I was standing at this intersection of three dirt roads. I took one, and after about an hour and a half, I came out on Route 17, and I figured out where I was. Took another hour or so to walk back to the camp by way of the highway.'
'If you fell in where I think you did, either of the other dirt roads would have brought you back here within fifteen or twenty minutes.'
'You have no idea how much better that makes me feel,' he said. 'Tad came in a little after I did. Said he went down to the river by himself with his laptop and played Doom until his battery ran low, then came back.'
'Sounds normal for Tad,' I said, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. What possible reason could Tad have for concealing the fact that he had an alibi – unless he had some reason for not wanting Faulk to know about the alibi.
'Yeah, very normal for Tad,' he said. 'Monty doesn't believe it, though.'
I shrugged, wondering how recently Faulk had talked to Monty.
'What were you and Tad arguing about, then?' I asked.
'Don't tell me the whole camp heard us. I was trying to keep it down.'
'Michael and I were passing by.'
Faulk sighed.
'We were both accusing the other of acting like an idiot about Benson, giving him stuff he could use for the lawsuit,' he said. 'Wish we'd known he was dead already. We could have stopped worrying about the lawsuit and started worrying about getting arrested for murder.'
'Maybe it won't come to that,' I said.
'Maybe,' he said. 'But I wouldn't count on it. And even if we don't, the papers will probably have a field day, chewing over all the suspects.'
'And there goes your attempt to keep a low profile till your father gets used to things.'
'It's okay,' Faulk said. 'He'll disown me, but he's already done that about once a year for the past two decades. He'll get over it when all this dies down.'
'I wish I believed that was going to happen sometime soon,' I said. 'The police don't seem to be making much progress. All I've seen them do is loiter around my booth.'
'And search everyone else's booth,' Faulk said. 'They seemed to spend a lot more time in mine than any of the other booths nearby, too. Wish I thought that was a good sign.'
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 aproix.
'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.
