again.'
I briefly felt sorry for the Town Watch.
'I'm holding you responsible for their behavior for the rest of the fair.'
My sympathy for the Town Watch evaporated.
'Anyway, I finally cornered Spike in your booth, barking at something.'
'Probably the murderer,' I couldn't help saying.
'Oh dear!'
'Meg!' Michael exclaimed. 'Mom, it was probably only the body.'
'Oh, that's so reassuring, Michael,' Mrs. Waterston said. 'Not a murderer; only a dead body. How silly of me to be upset.'
'So what happened when you found Spike?' I said.
'I picked him up, and I noticed your cash box, just lying there on the table. I didn't know anything else had been happening; I just thought you'd been careless. So I took it away for safekeeping. I locked it in the safe, where I keep my own jewelry,' she said. 'It was perfectly safe, and I was going to tell you so today. With the murder and all, it slipped my mind.'
'And it never crossed your mind that it might have had something to do with the murder – after all, you found the cash box in my booth, the murder was in my booth.'
She shook her head.
'The booth had been ransacked,' I said. 'Didn't that strike you as odd?'
'It didn't look that messy for your booth,' she said.
'Mom,' Michael said, shaking his head.
'I'm sorry,' she said, looking stricken. 'I didn't mean – '
'Never mind,' I said.
She glanced up at Michael, looking very upset, and for the first time I could remember, I felt – could it be sympathy? For Mrs. Waterston? Yes, definitely sympathy, and perhaps just a little bit of something that might resemble affection. She was so clearly upset by Michael's disappointed tone of voice – more upset by that than by the possibility that she'd barely escaped an encounter with our knife-happy murderer or with his victim. Call me a softie, but it's hard to keep on disliking someone who cares so much about the man you're in love with. Why couldn't she have shown more of her doting maternal side before?
Later, Meg, I told myself. Aloud, I said, 'You'll have to talk to the police, you realize.'
'Oh, dear,' she said. But then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
'We'll go with you, if you like,' I said.
'Thank you, Meg, but there's no need to trouble yourselves, really,' she said, as she began marching off. 'I'm sure you both have a lot to do.'
'Well, I'm going that way anyway,' I called after her. 'I don't have all that much to do until they let me have my booth back, which I hope they might possibly be ready to do. It's almost noon, after all.'
But Michael held me back as I started to follow her.
'Meg – what if they suspect Mom?'
'Don't worry – they may suspect her at first, but she's in no real danger of getting arrested or anything.'
'Why not?' he said. 'She was in the booth around the time of the murder – how can she prove she didn't do it? Spike certainly can't give her an alibi.'
'She has a better alibi than anyone at the fair,' I said. 'See the guy following her?'
'Which guy?' Michael asked, frowning.
'The guy in the blue uniform with the gold trim – the one who's sauntering just a little too casually down the lane behind her.'
'Who's he?'
'One of Jess's men, no doubt – gold trim means artillery, remember? And Jess said he had someone following her around every minute.'
'That's right!' Michael exclaimed, his face lighting up. 'I'd forgotten about that; thank goodness you didn't. I'll just run up to the artillery camp and find out who was following her last night. The sooner we get that straightened out, the better.'
'Good idea,' I said. 'I'll go down to my booth and make sure they don't haul her away to jail in the meantime.'
'Thanks,' he said. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and turned to go. But after about two steps he turned and looked back.
'Meg – I know she's irritating as hell, but she means well,' he said, and then ran off toward the hill where the cannon-crew members were working. At least I assumed they were working; we'd heard the boom of the cannon at irregular intervals all morning, and I doubted they'd try the tape-recording ploy in broad daylight.
I headed back to the town square, where the sheriff again sat in the stocks while Cousin Horace did a brisk business selling half-liquid tomatoes. Today, I noticed, a lot more of the aspiring pitchers were craftspeople – probably reacting to the turmoil the sheriff's underlings were creating throughout the craft fair. Or maybe they thought the sheriff was in charge of the Anachronism Police.
'Hey, Horace,' I said, joining him behind the table. 'How's it going?'
'Your brother Rob's supposed to spell me in fifteen minutes,' he said. 'Have you seen him?'
'He could still be talking to Monty,' I said, pitching in to make change for a customer while Horace handed out the tomatoes. 'Want me to go look for him?'
'Please,' Horace said.
'Okay,' I said. 'But before I do, tell me something. When was Monty going to get around to telling me that my dagger wasn't the murder weapon?'
'How did you –? But that's – No one's supposed to – '
Horace stood, his mouth hanging open, each hand gripping a tomato with such force that the juice was running down into his sleeves.
'Hand the man his ammo, Horace, and stop gaping,'
'I don't want those used-up tomatoes,' the customer complained.
'Two nice, fresh, rotten tomatoes, coming up,' I said.
Horace, looking dazed, dropped the squashed tomatoes and fished out two less-damaged ones.
'Don't try to tell me it's not so,' I told Horace, in an undertone. 'And if Monty finds out I know, you can tell him I deduced it, partly from what the police have been up to all morning and partly from something he said himself, and I'll say that in public if he tries to take it out on you. But just tell me: what makes them think it wasn't my dagger?'
'Shape of the wound,' Horace muttered, as another customer stepped up. 'Coroner said your dagger couldn't have made it.'
'So what did?' I said, out of the side of my mouth, while smiling at a man who handed me a dollar bill.
'Something bigger,' Horace said, while counting out ten tomatoes.
'Bigger how? Longer? Wider?'
'Blunter. like an unsharpened dagger. Unsharpened something, anyway.'
'So that's why they were inspecting everyone's weapons?'
'Yeah, and not getting anywhere,' Horace said, looking a little less nervous now that all the customers were busy pelting the sheriff. 'Some of these reenactors keep their weapons sharp; we found that out the hard way.'
'You'd think cops would know to treat weapons more carefully. Did anyone get seriously hurt?'
'No. Used a few Band-Aids, though.'
'Please tell me Monty is wearing one of them.'
'Most of them,' Horace said, snickering. 'Anyway, that's why they're back to searching the craft fair so hard, especially the blacksmiths. Looking for unsharpened weapons.'
'Thanks, Horace,' I said.
'I didn't say anything,' he said.
'Of course not. Thank you for your eloquent silence.'
