“And you trust your instinct even with no evidence?”
He leaned back in the recliner and looked thoughtful.
“In my experience,” he said, “instinct is your subconscious adding up the evidence before you even know you have it. I trust my instinct, absolutely. I’d be long dead by now if I didn’t.”
I was tempted, briefly, to repeat the words I overheard Fisher say. Maybe he could make more sense of them than we could.
And maybe I should wait until we were a little more sure what side he was on. After all, we only had his word for it that anyone had taken a shot at him at all.
“Any objection if I stay here in your tent tonight?” he asked. “I don’t much fancy going home—or anyplace else where FPF knows where to find me.”
“Bad idea,” I said. “The whole town square is swarming with tourists, townspeople, police, and Flying Monkeys. You couldn’t take two steps out of the tent without being spotted.”
“Then I’ll stay here in the tent.”
“Apart from the lack of a bathroom, what are you going to do when all the performers and craftspeople start showing up in the morning? I can’t swear that they’ll all keep your secret.”
“Hide under the bandstand?”
“Where half the women stow their purses, and the tech crew from the college spends half its time crawling around trying to fix the antiquated sound system? No, actually, you won’t have to worry about the people showing up in the morning. This place will get pretty busy when that wretched band finally knocks off, and you can’t hide under the bandstand because they had so much crap I made them shove half of it in there. You might as well hide up there onstage.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” he said.
I thought for a few moments.
“Michael and I have plenty of room,” I said finally. “You can come home with me and hide in one of our spare rooms.”
“And just how am I going to get out of the tent now without being spotted?”
Good question. The rolling box I’d used for the evidence bags was a little small. Maybe in one of Rancid Dread’s humongous speaker boxes?
Then inspiration struck.
“I have just the thing.” I ducked into the crawl space and plucked Horace’s gorilla suit down from where Rose Noire had hung it up to air.
Denton studied it dubiously.
“I just put this on and walk out?”
I nodded.
“No offense, but that doesn’t exactly sound like the most unobtrusive way to get around.”
“Trust me,” I said. “If you walk out of here beside me wearing that, no one will give it a second thought. A few people might say “Hi, Horace!”
“Your cousin wears this?” Denton took the suit and held it out at arm’s length.
“Not all the time, just when he needs to relax.”
“Been wearing it quite a bit today, apparently.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Not since yesterday.” I reached out to touch the fur. No longer still sopping wet, but still a little damp. Not surprising. The suit took forever to dry under optimal conditions, and a humid Virginia heat wave was about as far from optimal as you could find. “Look, it’s scruffy and smelly and more than a little weird, but it’s the best way I can think of to get you out of this tent without anyone being the wiser. You want to stay here until someone with no reason to keep your secret shows up?”
Denton opened the suit’s zipper and began to step in.
“Just one thing,” he said. “What if we run into your cousin while I’m wearing this?”
“Last I heard, he was down in Richmond delivering some evidence to the crime lab,” I said. “And he’s only on loan to Caerphilly—his real job is in Yorktown, and he’ll be on duty there tomorrow, doing crowd control at their Fourth of July celebration. And if anyone who knows his schedule spots you, both places are only about an hour away—he could easily have popped back for some reason.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just stick close so I don’t have to pretend to be Horace if anyone comes up to us.”
“Slouch a bit, and I’ll explain that you’ve had a very long day,” I said. “Horace often goes nonverbal when he’s wearing the suit. But I vote we don’t stay for the end of the concert. Let’s take off as soon as you’re ready.”
I called Rob and asked him to take over for me at the tent. Then Denton and I slipped out and hiked to my van. The rest of the town was curiously deserted, as if everyone not actually attending the concert had either fled to the surrounding countryside or retreated to the most soundproof portion of their houses and hunkered down to ride it out.