'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.'
'Well, of course my fingerprints are all over it,' Faulk said. 'I handled it.'
'Aha!' Monty said again. Irritating habit.
'It had nothing to do with the murder,' Faulk said. 'I waited till he was away from his booth and I went over and snooped around, after that dustup with Benson. So I guess I did have some blood on my hands. And I found the flamingo.'
'Why didn't you tell me?' I exclaimed. 'If you saw the flamingo and knew he was copying it – '
'Dammit, I'm asking the questions here,' Monty said. 'Why were you snooping around, anyway? What business was it of yours?'
