I was about to follow her to find out when I ran into Jess, from the cannon crew.
'Hey, thanks for sending the kid with the duck,' he said. 'Looks like we might all get another good night's sleep after all.'
'So Madame von Steuben bought the eggs as a reason not to fire the cannon.'
'Hell, no,' he snorted. 'She was for making an omelet right then and there, and maybe duck
I followed him upstream, against the departing crowd, and onto a small rise, where he stopped and pointed toward the cannon emplacement.
I could see Duck, comfortably settled on the back end of the gun, with her head tucked under one wing. Perched on the muzzle of the cannon, like a living gargoyle, was Mrs. Fenniman. In her right hand she held one of my pink flamingos – well, okay, I suppose they were her flamingos now – and I could just make out a sign dangling from its beak.
'And the sign says…?'
'save our feathered friends,' Jess said. 'Hell of a nice old lady, even if she is a bit of a fruitcake.'
'Most of my family are.'
'I was only kidding about the fruitcake bit.'
I shrugged.
'Just one thing,' he asked. 'What is the other egg, anyway?'
'Other egg?'
'Yeah, I can tell one of those eggs the duck is sitting on is hers, but the other's way too big. What is it?'
'Ah,' I said. 'I bet Eric broke one of the duck eggs and had to replace it with a peacock egg. Did Madame Von Steuben notice?'
'No, we kind of stood in front of it so she couldn't get a real good view. Are you serious – a peacock egg? Can I keep the chick if it hatches?'
'Sure,' I said. 'In fact, if you want some peacocks, talk to my Dad in the medical tent. He has a lot of peacocks.'
'You think he might be willing to sell a pair?'
'Good chance.'
'Cool,' Jess said.
'I just hope Mrs. Fenniman doesn't have to perch there all night,' I fretted.
'Heck, no,' Jess said. 'We've got Mel back on the boss-lady's trail. As soon as she turns in for the night, we've got a bed all made up in the tent for the old lady. She'll be fine. Wish I could say the same for the rest of us. Lord, would you look at that!'
He pointed to an area of the battlefield where several veteran reenactors had begun drilling a collection of Mrs. Waterston's new recruits. Including, to my surprise, Wesley, who normally avoided anything that resembled work. The recruits were marching up and down, holding boards sawed into roughly musket-shaped pieces – three feet long, two inches square on one end, and widening to two-by-four at the other to simulate the stock. I suspect they'd borrowed them from the Victory Center, which used them to demonstrate colonial drill tactics to the tourists.
'Amazing,' Jess said, shaking his head, as we watched how hard the drill instructors had to work to get the recruits to form two straight lines, one a few feet behind the other. 'First time I've ever seen a bunch who could figure out more than one way to mess up 'Right face!''
'Are you really going to give those guys muskets?' I asked.
'If I had my way, we wouldn't even give them sticks,' Jess said, as the recruits pretended to fire their imaginary muskets, and about a third of the men in the back line managed to whack their neighbors over the head. 'They're sure not getting ammo. Or bayonets, for that matter,' he added, as several fist fights broke out between the front and rear lines. 'I'm going to go down and see if I can help out with this.'
I wished him luck and returned to camp – which had grown even larger; more reenactors had arrived for the rehearsal and tomorrow's battle. I could hear at least two competing live musical groups playing English folk dances, and the camp rang with laughter and the shouts of people greeting old friends.
I wasn't in the mood for a party, so I strolled on past the camp, toward the deserted craft-fair grounds.
Okay, considering what I found the last time I went back to my booth after dark, maybe it wasn't a particularly brilliant idea, but I needed the peace and quiet, and I figured it was only in the movies that murderers spent the rest of their lives lurking suspiciously around the scene of the crime. Still, I jumped a foot when I saw movement in one of the aisles I had to pass on the way to my booth.
So, of course, in defiance of all the rules of common sense, I went to see what was going on.
I crept down the lane, acutely conscious of how much my skirts and petticoats rustled, but it wasn't as if I had time to go back to the tent and change into more suitable skulking clothes.
The intruder, whoever he was, had entered Faulk's booth. Probably someone who figured dial Faulk's incarceration gave him a chance to steal things, I thought, grimly. I took advantage of every bit of cover, hiding one minute behind the canvas that covered a quilt display and the next in the shadow of a tall reproduction corner chest. As I passed by one booth, I spotted a hammer on the counter and snagged it – I felt better with some kind of weapon in my hand. Finally, I darted behind the holly bush just outside one corner of Faulk's booth. I could definitely see someone moving about in the boom.
'Stop where you are!' I shouted, leaping out from behind the bush and toward the entrance of the booth, where I ran head on into someone else, trying to do the same thing from the other direction.
We both shrieked and jumped away. I swung the hammer, missed, and hit myself on the leg just as I landed in the holly bush. The other figure – I could see now that it was Tad – fell with a clatter in a display rack filled with tall iron pothooks and lamp-stands.
By the time we picked ourselves up and confirmed that our injuries were minor, the intruder had long gone.
'If there even was an intruder,' Tad said. 'Maybe it was just your shadow.'
'Or your shadow,' I said. 'The shadow I saw wasn't wearing skirts.'
'We were probably seeing each other's shadows,' Tad said.
'No,' I said. 'There was someone here, I'm sure of it. We need to search the booth.'
'I'm not sure I'd notice if the intruder took anything,' Tad said.
'That's okay,' I said. 'I think it's more important to make sure that he hasn't left anything behind. Like supposedly incriminating evidence.'
We searched but found nothing that looked suspicious – no bloody handkerchiefs hidden in the trash can, no phony notes making it appear as if Faulk had arranged to meet Benson. Nothing much out of the ordinary.
In the next lane over, I saw a watchman's staff lying outside one of the booths, but there was no way to tell how long it had been there. Mrs. Waterston had already chewed me out once about the watch carelessly leaving their staffs lying around.
'Maybe one of the Town Watch was investigating a suspicious noise and ran off in panic when we jumped out yelling at him,' Tad suggested.
'Maybe,' I said. 'Or maybe it was just a souvenir hunter.'
'Probably,' Tad said. 'Let's forget it. I can just pack this stuff up and take the booth down, and it won't matter if anything's left behind.'
'Pack the booth up?' I said. 'Why? The fair's supposed to be open again from ten to two tomorrow.'
'Do you really think I want to stand around selling Faulk's hardware when he's in jail?' Tad asked.
'Can you afford not to?' I said. 'I thought you guys needed every penny you could get for legal fees. Even more so now.'
