Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos by Donna Andrews Page A

wake as her long skirts trailed on the ground.
    "I just hope she comes by early, before there's much of a crowd," I said. "I do not want a whole lot of people to see the damned things."
    "Are they that bad?"
    "Wait till you see them, gently glowing in the twilight," I said. "Or maybe not so gently. They rather remind me of the special effects they use in bad sci-fi movies to indicate lethal levels of radiation."
    "They sound perfectly charming to me," Michael said. "I bet you could sell a lot of those."
    "Quite apart from being glaring anachronisms, they're perfectly hideous, and I have no intention of selling a single one after Mrs. Fenniman claims her collection," I said. "It's hard enough for a woman to get people to take her seriously as a blacksmith; the last thing I want is for people to start thinking of me as that lady blacksmith who makes those cute pink flamingos."
    In the distance, we could see Mrs. Fenniman, haranguing people and shoving campaign flyers into their hands.
    "Odd," I said. "On her, that outfit makes me think more of Salem than Yorktown."
    "Or the Wicked Witch of the West," Michael said, as we resumed walking. "I keep looking over my shoulder for falling farmhouses. So is that why she's running for sheriff? Because they outlawed her flamingos?"
    "Yes," I said. "That and the fact that she thinks the incumbent sheriff is an incompetent fool and it's time for a change."
    "Well, she may have a point there," Michael said. "But does Mrs. Fenniman have any relevant experience?"
    "According to her, after raising two children and keeping her no-good rascal of a husband in line for forty-five years, policing the county should be a piece of cake."
    "And what do the county voters think about that?"
    "The sheriff's running scared," I said. "His campaign platform seems to be that he's hired a new deputy with big-city police experience and we don't need a new sheriff."
    "So who's your mother's family supporting?" Michael said, showing his keen grasp of the realities of small town politics.
    "Undecided, so far, since they're both relatives," I said. "Which is why they're both campaigning so hard. See, there's the sheriff now."
    We were passing the town square. where the sheriff was just easing himself into the stocks and Cousin Horace was placing a board across two ramshackle sawhorses to make a crude table. As the sheriff settled in, shifting his arms and head in the holes to find a comfortable spot, Horace made a big show out of locking him in with an enormous reproduction padlock Mrs. Waterston had commissioned Faulk to make. Only a show, of course, since the padlock was the old-fashioned kind that needed a key to lock or unlock it, as Wesley had found out to his surprise the night before, when, during his tour of the fair, he'd tried to lock me in the stocks as a joke and I'd easily shaken the padlock open and then off the hasp. For that matter, I could probably have shaken the stocks themselves to pieces in time. They were never designed to be moved fourteen times to suit Mrs. Waterson's evolving notions of how the fair should be arranged, and I hoped Horace had remembered to bring a wrench to tighten the bolts periodically. Still, it looked impressive, and a crowd had already started to gather by the time Horace put out a sign saying, TEN PENCE A THROW and began carefully unloading a bushel basket of rotten tomatoes onto the table.
    "Interesting method of campaigning," Michael remarked.
    "Meg?"
    I looked down to see my nephew Eric tugging at my dress.
    "Can I have a dime? Huh?"
    "I can probably find a few dimes to fund Eric's participation in the electoral process," Michael said. "We can finish this later."
    Preferably after the craft fair is over, I thought, but I smiled and waved as Eric tugged Michael down the lane.
    "Damn that man!"
    Mrs. Fenniman stood beside me, frowning at the crowd that was starting to gather around the sheriff.
    "Who the hell do you think gave him that idea?" she muttered. "Know damn