Cutwork Read Online Free

squishing a bit in the sodden turf.
    Mike reviewed his notes. Okay, the dead man was Robert McFey, one of the artists selling his stuff here at the fair. His throat had been cut, probably by one of his own carving knives. His money box had been emptied, which probably meant this was about robbery. On the other hand, this guy wasn’t selling gold jewelry like the guy up the way, and had maybe fifty dollars, max, in cash, so why pick on him?
    Maybe because not many people were around when the robber was looking for a mark. Or maybe because the robber was an amateur. Mike didn’t like amateur murderers for the same reason he didn’t like amateur sleuths: They don’t play by the rules. Like here. Only an amateur would go after a man in a place crowded with people, and so unprepared he had to borrow the murder weapon from his victim.
    Of course, it was possible the victim was out of his tent—booth—for a while and came back in time to surprise someone getting into his cash box.
    Poor schnook, with the accent on poor. After all, selling wood statues out of a tent, that wasn’t any way to get rich. Harmless guy, probably, without an enemy in the world, who didn’t deserve to die like this.
    Which might mean this would be difficult to solve. Such a dumb amateur as this murderer could be hard to find, because he was so far off the pattern most perps followed.
    Truth be told, Mike preferred his victims also to be criminals. Dope dealers, for example. Pimps. Burglars. Loan sharks. The kind of pro with obvious enemies—and friends and associates who didn’t know what loyalty meant—all of them willing to drop a dime on the perp.
    (Funny how slang sometimes got stuck in a time warp, he considered. Snitches still dropped a dime on people, even though pay phone prices had long since gone trotting past fifty cents in the Twin Cities.)
    Of course, amateurs were sometimes careless about leaving clues behind and, once confronted, tended to blurt out incriminating details. So maybe this would be one of those times.
    It would have to be crazy Irene who found the body. Her bright but careless embroidery—to Mike, any decorative stitchery was by definition embroidery—had been pronounced Important Art, which only confirmed Mike’s opinion that the smoke in her chimney didn’t go all the way up. Most artists were at least a little crazy, weren’t they? She hadn’t helped her case by asserting that he ought to send for Miss Nemesis.
    Deb Hart, Mike knew, owned an art supply store that catered to artists, but she wasn’t one herself. Also, she had run the art fair since it began twenty years ago, and both the store and the show did well, so it all went to show, right? Not an artist, not crazy.
    She had said this McFey fellow was from one of the Minneapolis suburbs. He had written that down, gratefully certain there weren’t many Robert McFeys in the phone book. Now, if he’d been Robert Larson, that would have made his life miserable. The Twin Cities was lousy with Larsons.
    About then, Sergeant Cross came back and said the police photographers had finished making their record of the scene on film and tape. Mike thanked her and walked slowly along the table, looking into the white tent. Booth.
    It was just like all the others at the fair, square, the size of a kid’s bedroom, straight-sided, and so tall you could stand up in it, with metal bracing under its peaked ceiling that made it look like it went up easy, like opening an umbrella. A heck of a deal, he thought enviously, having camped for years in a low, slope-sided, rip-stop nylon tent that was hard to put up and easy to blow down. He looked back up the aisle. Not one tent—booth—had blown down in the storm just over. Heck of a deal.
    On the table were wood statues, one of a lion about to take down an antelope that was very nice, very nice. And beside it was another one, of those little birds that chased and were chased by the waves on the seashore. Mike had seen those