The Alpaca Ate the Only Alibi

How it begins

The alpaca ate the alibi at eleven forty-two.

The fair program promised a relaxing celebration of rural skills. Nora was beginning to question the reliability of its editor.

Nora Quinn knew the time because she'd just checked whether the knitting demonstration had overrun. It had. The demonstrator was discussing heel construction with the urgency of a person negotiating a hostage release.

The note had been in Nora's hand a second earlier.

Now half of it protruded from an alpaca named Biscuit.

"Don't pull," Samir Murray said, arriving at a pace suggesting this was not Biscuit's first contribution to village life.

"It's evidence."

"At present, it's also lunch, which is why I need everyone to stop encouraging him."

He guided the animal away from the stall and checked its mouth with practiced care. Nora stood holding the remaining corner of paper.

At twelve, I was with...

Nothing after that except a blue ink blot and a small brown stain.

The woman who had given her the note had already disappeared into the fair crowd. Nora remembered a red cardigan, a white bag, and the peculiar insistence that she read it somewhere private.

Then someone shouted from behind the produce tent.

The knitting demonstrator stopped mid-sentence. Samir looked toward the sound. Across the grass, the fair organizer's hat lay beside an overturned chair.

Nora put the paper fragment into a clean display bag and called for help.

Later, when the police asked whether she'd seen anything unusual, she looked at Biscuit, now standing behind a secure fence and chewing approved hay with an expression of profound innocence.

"Several things," she said. "I'm trying to decide which happened on purpose."

Samir examined the brown stain without touching the bag.

"That isn't mud."

Nora looked at him.

"And?"

"We only used that feed in one place this morning."

Beyond them, the fair's loudspeaker began announcing a raffle nobody was listening to anymore.