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birds in movies and on television and once in person when he went to Atlantic City for a lawmen’s convention. The seashore was represented by a smooth, wavy piece of wood with the birds stuck on it by their wire legs. It had five birds, one with its beak driven like a nail halfway into the wooden seashore. Nice, but not as nice as the lion.
    Beyond the lion, at the end of the table, was a little clear-plastic holder with a couple dozen business cards reading ROBERT MCFEY, ARTIST IN WOOD, with a post office box and an email address. Mike wrote that information down in his notebook.
    Surrounding the holder were a dozen small carved pieces, some knocked over, that were different from the serious pieces. They were like from a cartoon. A wolf, a crow, a possum, and other little animals, all standing up and dressed in human clothes with human expressions on their faces. Comical, clever. Mike would have liked to pick one up for a closer look, but he had better get on with the more important piece of information waiting farther back in the tent. Booth.
    That’s what the murder victim was now. A source of information. Mike braced himself with that thought and went for a look.
    The dead man was thin, medium-height, with graying brown hair pulled into a pony tail and a graying light brown beard trimmed rather long. He was lying in an uncomfortable-looking position, halfway to face up, one foot across the other ankle. He had on a big, loose navy blue T-shirt with LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY printed in white letters on it, faded blue jeans, and an old pair of penny loafers that might have cost a lot when new. And his watch was a Rolex, though not the famous Oyster. Possibly significant that it hadn’t been stolen. But too bad it was not helpfully broken by his fall to record the time of death. Mike checked it against his own Timex: eleven twenty-three, right.
    The man had very obviously died from a big cut that slanted crookedly across his throat. From it, his life’s blood had spilled onto a kind of floor on which he lay. He, or someone, had laid down the big square of plywood—no, two pieces of plywood, side by side, to make the floor, and there were a great many gory footprints made by the first responders anxious to save him. The floor didn’t cover all the inside of the tent; there was a border of grass around it that was widest at the back. A tipped-over director’s chair was surrounded by tiny pieces of wood—the chips mentioned on his T-shirt—and a partly finished cartoon animal was under the table. It looked like a shaggy dog, the kind whose ears tipped over at the ends, the kind who herded sheep, what breed was that? He couldn’t think, though he recalled that they made bad pets because they always had to have something to do. Oddly, the fur on the back of the dog looked like it had been braided. He frowned at that and then suddenly thought, That’s supposed to be Deb Hart . And he smiled, because it gave him an insight into her personality, or what the artist had thought of her personality. Then he looked at the lifeless hands of the clever man who had carved it and felt a stir of anger. The little carving knife he’d apparently been using had been taken and used on him, then left beside him on the plywood. It had a curved handle and a darkly clotted, not-long blade. But long enough.
    Though Ms. Hart’s identification didn’t really count, legally, since she wasn’t a relative, Mike was satisfied that this was almost certainly Robert McFey, whose name appeared on the business cards, the man who had carved the statues on the table and on the shelves back here. That one on the bottom shelf, of the fox with its front feet on a log, that was another nice one. The look on its face was alarmed, as if it thought it heard dogs barking in the distance.
    Mike bent forward. In front of the fox statue, on the plywood floor, was the cash box. It was of gray-enameled steel with a little key-operated lock on it. He’d