The Hen of the Baskervilles (29 page)

When we finally had the flamingos ready, Michael and I collected the boys from the nearby pen where they'd been napping, and we all set off for the show ring.

There were more llamas competing in the costume contest than there had been in the obedience trials. Did people really enjoy dressing up their llamas—and themselves? Or was it merely easier than obedience training?

There were several llamas dressed in brightly colored serapes and sombreros, to pay homage to their South American roots. One golden-brown one was rigged out as a bumblebee, completed with black stripes on his body and huge gossamer wings. One exhibitor dressed each of his four llamas and one alpaca in the uniform of a different branch of the armed forces. I hoped no one in the audience took offense at the fact that he chose the diminutive alpaca to wear the Marine dress blues—although from what I could see, the alpaca was certainly the feistiest of the five. And there were the bride and groom llamas. A dragon llama being led by a helmeted Viking. A llama dressed as Santa, pulling a small, present-filled sleigh. A headless horseman llama. A
QE2
llama led by his tugboat owner. A llama dressed in a black-and-white–striped prison suit, dragging a Styrofoam ball and chain behind him. A llama dressed as a bunch of grapes, featuring dozens of purple balloons.

Michael and the boys and I cheered Rob on to a third-place ribbon, behind the bumblebee and the bunch of grapes. I decided not to depress Rob by saying that they probably wouldn't have placed at all without the third head bobbing maniacally on Groucho's back.

“Silly judges,” Josh said, when we met Rob outside the ring. “Groucho is the best llama.”

“Yeah, but your uncle Rob isn't the best costume designer,” Rob said. “Meg, you think next time you could help me plan it? Your head totally won us the yellow. Maybe if we'd enlisted you earlier, we'd have scored a first.”

“I have some ideas,” I said. “Let's talk after the fair is over.”

“Awesome!” Rob turned to the boys. “Come on, junior llama wranglers. Let's go back to the barn and celebrate. But you've got to help me hold on to Groucho.”

He waved and strolled off with both boys clinging fiercely to the lead rope.

“Do you really have time to take up llama costuming?” Michael asked.

“No, but if I play my cards right, I can get Mother interested in it,” I said. “And if she balks, I can probably enlist Rose Noire.”

“Good plan,” he said. “Incidentally, Rob agreed to babysit for a few hours if I helped him with Groucho's costume, so now we have some time off. Want to go someplace nice for dinner?”

I didn't even have to think about it.

“No,” I said, with a sigh. “We'd have to clean up and drive somewhere and mind our manners while we wait for our food. I don't have the energy for that. I just want to go over to the Midway and have an Italian sausage topped with a mountain of onions and green peppers and then skulk around for a while to see if I can catch any of the Clay County deputies in the act of extorting from the Midway vendors.”

Michael blinked.

“Okay,” he said. “I like those Italian sausages, too, and I have to admit it will be easier. But do you seriously suspect the Clay County deputies of committing extortion, or have they just been getting on your nerves lately?”

“Both, actually. I'll fill you in on the way there.”

By the time we reached the Italian sausage booth, Michael was just as outraged at Deputy Plunkett as I was. Just as outraged, but a lot less sanguine about our chances of bringing him to justice.

“You can't solve everyone's problems, you know,” he said, as we strolled along, trying not to wolf down our sausages.

“Right now, it feels as if I can't solve anyone's problems.”

“You've helped Molly.”

“I've helped her find a divorce attorney and a defense attorney,” I said. “I wish I could find a way to help her that wasn't going to cost her a lot of money. I can't track down the missing chickens. Chief Burke would have my head if I tried to barge into his murder investigation. But this I might be able to do something about.”

So we strolled up and down, chatting up the vendors as we bought food and played games. Michael won a stuffed penguin. We spent way too much money trying to win a matching one before giving up and deciding to give it to Rose Noire, who was fond of penguins.

We didn't find any carnies ready to give evidence against Plunkett and the other rogue Clay County deputies, but we did find a few people who said they'd think about it. We got a lesson from a friendly barker on which games were least stacked against the customer, and a tutorial on running the Ferris wheel from the carny in charge of it. I took dozens of dramatic shots of the nighttime Midway—especially the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round—for possible use on the fair Web site. At about eleven or so, we both hit the wall.

“I think that's as far as we'll get tonight,” Michael said. “And I just had a horrible thought—are we going on patrol after this?”

“No,” I said. “I gave us the night off. After all, we were up most of last night.”

“Not to mention how you've been running yourself ragged all day.” Michael stifled a yawn. “But who's going to supervise the patrols?”

“Vern,” I said. “Who is also off duty tonight, but doesn't mind having an excuse for hanging around.”

“Good man. Want to split a funnel cake before we head back to the barn?”

“You're on,” I said. “But you're going the wrong way—funnel cake's this way.”

“Are you sure?”

I was. And I was right. By now, I had a pretty good mental map of the Midway in my mind. It was actually pretty small: three rough lanes lined with booths and rides, anchored at one end by the merry-go-round and on the other—the end farthest from the fence—by the Ferris wheel. Either by accident or design, the lanes were crooked enough that you couldn't see all the way up or down any of them. The little zigs and zags meant you were constantly turning the corner to see new vistas, and gave the impression the place was a lot bigger.

Michael was impressed that I led him unerringly to the funnel cake concession. I thought it was a lot more impressive that I could, if asked, tell you exactly what, if anything, we'd learned from every carny we'd talked to and where they stood on the question of testifying against Plunkett. Ringtoss? Played dumb. Taco stand? Mad as hell but afraid of talking. Funnel cake? Thinking about it.

I'd figured out that some of the booths were owned by the company we'd hired and staffed by their employees, while others were independent contractors. The independents seemed more willing to consider speaking up—probably because they could choose not to come back to an event in Clay County, while the employees might have no way to refuse an assignment if they wanted to keep their jobs. Would it help if I contacted the company and let them know what I suspected? I decided to talk it over with Randall first.

Michael and I saved a small bit of funnel cake in case the boys spotted the telltale splashes of powdered sugar and demanded their share. When we arrived back at the barn, we found that Rob had already tucked them in bed in our stall. We let them nibble their bits of funnel cake as a bedtime snack, and after a quick toothbrushing, they drifted off to sleep, with Spike and Tinkerbell curled up beside them and the llamas leaning over the fence to watch.

Then we tried to settle down ourselves. As usual, Michael dropped off to sleep almost immediately. I lay there, listening to his not-quite-snores and the quiet breathing of the boys, the dogs, the llamas, and the countless sheep in the stalls surrounding us. My eyelids were so heavy I couldn't keep them up. My body ached with tiredness. My brain was foggy from lack of sleep.

Why couldn't I sleep?

I tried to toss and turn quietly, to avoid waking all the sleepers around me. I lay there, thinking about the events of the day. No, not thinking: fretting.

“This isn't going to work,” I told myself.

I got up and tore a page out of my notebook. I scribbled “Checking on the patrols,” on it and put it on my pillow, so Michael would see it if he woke and not worry. Then I set out to walk the fair.

 

Chapter 32

I ran into some of my patrol volunteers almost immediately, just outside the pig barn. I turned on my flashlight and saw that three of them had arranged folding lawn chairs in a semicircle around a large cooler. They all had beers in their hands and their feet propped up on the cooler.

“I thought you guys were on the early patrol,” I said.

Two of them shifted uneasily, but the third just shook his head.

“We're going to keep watch from here,” he said. “No sense prowling up and down the whole fair. From what I hear, chicken thief's got his comeuppance.”

“You think he deserved to die for stealing a few bantams?” one of the others asked.

“No,” the first one said. “But sounds like that wasn't the only thing he got up to.”

“He's getting a bum rap, if you ask me,” the third one said. “She's the one who stole the chickens.”

“His wife?”

“No, the girlfriend. And she tucked her tail between her legs and ran home, so we don't need to worry about her.”

“She was the one who wanted the chickens,” the first one said. “And maybe she egged him on to do it. But if you think she did it herself, you're crazy. No way she'd pull it off.”

“She prefers to delegate,” I put in.

“That's it,” the first one said, nodding. “She doesn't do what she can delegate. And she doesn't have anyone around here to delegate to anymore, so the birds are safe.”

“And our pigs,” the third one added.

“And we aim to keep them that way,” said the second.

“You did hear that there was another theft in the chicken tent late this afternoon, didn't you?” I asked.

They paused to consider that for a few moments.

“Could be an inside job,” one said. “You might want to see if they have the birds insured.”

“Or maybe it was a friend of that Riordan guy,” another said. “Someone who didn't want to see him blamed for the thefts. What better way than to stage another theft that his dead friend couldn't possibly have pulled off?”

“Yeah, death's the ultimate alibi,” the first one said.

“It was another chicken theft, right?” the third asked. “Seems pretty clear to me the thief's after chickens.”

“They're a lot easier to steal than pigs or cows,” the first said.

The other two nodded and mumbled agreement.

I was annoyed but after talking with them for a few minutes, I could tell that they'd been working on the contents of the cooler for a while. Better to have a few sober patrols than a whole herd of drunks careening around the fair. So I bit back both the recriminations I wanted to hurl at them and the pep talk I'd considered administering. I turned off my flashlight, wished them a good evening, and moved on.

I ran into another group of volunteers taking an extended coffee break in one of the vacant tents by the food stands. Another bunch were playing poker near the front gate. It was bridge at the back entrance to the chicken tent, and a tape of
A Prairie Home Companion
show at the front entrance. More beer drinkers and a Monopoly game outside the duck and goose tent.

I had to admit, things seemed peaceful. Of course, things had seemed that way last night, up to the point when Brett had been murdered. And this had been my original idea. Instead of having the patrols wander around, station them at every entrance to every building we wanted to protect and couldn't lock up tight. Maybe I should have stuck to it. The pig farmers weren't going anywhere, and they weren't going to let any unknown person pass.

I felt a little better.

But no sleepier than before.

So I continued to prowl. We'd chained and padlocked the arts and crafts barn and the farmers' market barn, so I tested all the padlocks. And then I continued making the rounds, checking to see that there was at least one wide-awake volunteer at the front and back doors of each barn and tent.

It suddenly occurred to me that while the barns were solidly built, with no windows and only the two doors, the tents were … well, tents. Wouldn't it be possible for someone to slip into a tent by ducking under the side, or maybe even cutting a slit in the canvas?

I was passing the chicken tent when this thought occurred to me. I nodded to the volunteers, who were singing along with Garrison Keillor, and turned down the narrow space between the chicken tent and the duck and goose tent.

Of course, maybe the chicken tent wasn't the best place to test, because the volunteers here should logically be on high alert. The pig farmers might be complacent, but the chicken owners had just had a graphic demonstration that their birds were highly vulnerable. Maybe I should test someplace else.

But I was here already. So I stopped at the middle of the tent side, or as close to it as I could calculate. As far as possible from the volunteer guards on either end. I tested the canvas.

It wasn't fastened down, and it was loose. Loose enough to crawl under?

I got down and tried. It was a tight fit, but I made it.

I stood up inside the tent, fully expecting to be pounced on by volunteers from one or both entrances.

Nothing happened.

I could hear an occasional cluck or squawk, and one soft human snore, over to my right.

So much for relying on the guards at the tent entrances. The tents were vulnerable, unless some of the owners had decided to set up an ambush for potential thieves. I had to stifle a giggle at the thought of the Bonnevilles, still wearing their elaborate mourning, crouching in the dark behind the bantam cages in hopes of pouncing on the returning chicken thief.

I stepped a little farther into the tent, still expecting—or at least hoping—that someone would tackle me or shine a flashlight beam into my eyes.