Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

'Yeah, you did a great job of matching the color of my flamingos,' I said. 'Pink's just like red for you, isn't it? And I bet you're a little shaky on anything even close to red or green. Admit it,' I snapped, giving him another good shake.

'Okay, maybe I could be wrong on the color, but they were definitely plaid,' he said. 'How many people were wearing kilts at that party? Just Faulk.'

'Yeah, but there were plenty of people wearing plaid underneath their costumes,' I said. 'Plaid shorts, plaid socks, all kinds of things. And the killer could have changed out of his costume by the time he went to my booth. Maybe the killer wasn't even at the party in the first place. It could be anybody, you idiot.'

I let go of his shirt. Okay, I shoved him a little while I was doing it. He landed hard on his backside, then rolled over and scuttled into his tent.

'It could be anybody,' I repeated. I should have felt relieved – surely this would clear Faulk, or at least cast serious doubt on the case against him. Why did I have such a nagging feeling of anxiety?

Maybe because I was in close proximity to the real murderer. Tony had lied time and again about what he'd done on the night of the murder. Why was Monty so unwilling to consider him as a suspect?

Well, if Monty wouldn't tackle him, I would.

'Damned mutt,' came a mutter from inside Tony's tent.

Spike scrambled out through the tent flap, dragging a muddy piece of cloth. No, not just a piece of cloth. A British flag. The one stolen from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, perhaps?

I bent down and opened the tent flap. The odor hit me first – a mixture of beer, sweat, and vomit, like a frat house. Holding my breath, I peered in to see Tony, sitting on a tangled wad of blankets, gulping something from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.

'You want me to take this flag back before they catch you with it?' I asked.

He raised his head, looked at the flag, and frowned.

'Damn,' he said. 'Where'd that come from?'

'The whole camp was buzzing this morning about a series of daring midnight robberies.'

'Daring midnight robberies?'

'A flag, a cannonball, some poor woman's stays run up the flagpole.'

'Oh, yeah,' he said, with a sickly smile. 'That's right. Hell of a prank. But don't tell anyone. You don't want to get us in trouble.'

'Us?'

'Me and Wes.'

'You and Wes?' I said. 'Since when did you guys get to be such buddies? I thought you hated him.'

'He's not so bad,' Tony said. 'He agreed not to write the article about me. And I apologized for locking him up. So we had a few drinks together.'

Quite a few, from the look of him, but I held my tongue.

'So all is forgiven and you're friends now.'

'I have to get to the battlefield,' he said. He started to sit up, but I shoved him down again. Something bothered me.

'Tell me one thing, Tony,' I said, fishing in my haversack. 'And then I'll leave you alone.'

'Yeah, right,' he said.

'What did you do with the key?'

'What key?'

'The key to the padlock. This key,' I said, holding up the key I'd found in Faulk's booth. 'This key. The one you used to lock Wesley in the stocks.'

'I never had that key,' he said.

'Then how'd you lock him in?'

'It was a padlock, for Pete's sake,' Tony said. 'You don't need a key; you just snap it shut.'

With that, he pushed past me and staggered toward the battlefield.

Tony never had the key. He hadn't even known that the padlock needed a key.

But Wesley had. He'd known it since Thursday night, when he'd tried to play his prank and lock me in the stocks. He knew about the padlock, and he even knew we kept the spare key on a nail under the platform. The spare key that wasn't there when I found him. The spare key he'd used to lock himself in to fake an alibi.

If Tony had left the town square to go to my booth, why not Wesley? And then, back at the stocks, all he had to do was loosen a few bolts and slip in after securing the padlock. I'd checked that the padlock was locked – I'd never thought to see if the other end was loose.

'Come on,' I told myself. 'You're not going to accuse your own cousin of being a murderer, are you? What possible motive could he have?'

Good question.

I pulled Spike behind me as I strode through the camp to Wesley's tent. When I found it, I tied Spike's leash to a tent peg and crawled inside.

It smelled strongly of unwashed Wesley, with grace notes of stale grease, thanks to a stash of fast-food bags crumpled in the corner. And a tantalizing hint of a scent I couldn't identify but knew I'd smelled recently.

I began to search – hastily. He was supposed to be in the British lines, but then Wesley wasn't famous for being where he was supposed to be. I was looking for discarded plaid, which wasn't as easy as it sounded. Dirty clothes – most, I suspected, on their fourth or fifth reuse – covered every surface. I lifted one pair of graying briefs and uncovered a file folder. I was about to put the underwear back when I noticed the name 'Cooper' on a piece of newsprint sticking out of the folder.

I opened the folder. It contained a small collection of articles on Roger Benson and his works. I scanned them, briefly. Most were about the fall of Cooper and Anthony, and I nodded without surprise when I realized that Cooper and Anthony had owned the Virginia Commercial Intelligence, whose closing had cost Wesley his dream job and, as he'd said himself, destroyed his journallism career.

'That's a good enough motive for me,' I murmured.

The last article in the folder came from the York Town Crier a few weeks ago – a puff piece about Rob and Lawyers from Hell, mentioning Benson's firm as one of those vying to market the game. No wonder Wesley had suddenly reappeared in Yorktown.

Finding the orange plaid socks stuffed into one of the McDonald's bags was just icing on the cake.

I grabbed the bag, planning to take it, with the file folder, straight to Monty – better yet, the sheriff. I still didn't trust Monty – and ducked out of the tent.

But as I stood up, the greasy paper of the bag gave way and something heavy landed on a sensitive part of my foot. Several somethings.

'Damn!' I said, jumping back. Spike gave chase to one of the small objects as it rolled in front of him, and growled when he found that musket balls are inedible.

Musket balls. Four of them. And a trickle of black powder followed them out of the bag. That was the half- familiar scent, I realized; the strong, acrid tang of old-fashioned gunpowder. What was Wesley doing with the missing musket balls and a residue of gunpowder? I didn't remember him seeming that interested in black-powder shooting when Jess and his crew had shown us how to make cartridges. Then again, he'd helped; he knew how to make cartridges.

'And how to make live ammo,' I said, aloud; and suddenly I remembered how Wesley had looked at Michael last night, when he'd gotten the false impression that Michael was the witness Monty was talking about.

'Michael,' I exclaimed. 'He's going after Michael.'

I set off for the battlefield at a dead run, with Spike charging ahead of me, clearing a path by barking and snarling furiously at everyone we passed. Unfortunately, when I reached the barriers that separated the battlefield from the spectators' area, I ran afoul of the safety monitors.