Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) (16 page)

“He has a script and a smart wife.”

“And a dog,” she added.

“And a dog,” I agreed. Then there was silence.

“I was with Sell-Floto for ten years,” she said. “Just joined this one last month.”

“And before that?” I pushed. Another silence.

“Five years with the Tom Mix Show, Helig’s, others,” she said, looking away. “I started when I was a real young kid.”

“Right,” I agreed. The frogs rustled behind me. “You happy in the circus?”

“I like the snakes, the ones without legs,” she said with a smile.

“Must get to you after all this time to still be in a sideshow while people like the Tanuccis are under the big top, center ring. Even the lions and elephants get center ring.”

Agnes laughed. I was surprised that I liked the laugh. The little-girl front cracked with that laugh. She shook her head.

“I’m not knocking off animals and people because I got dreams about dragging my snakes into the big top,” she said. “Snakes don’t drive you nuts. They soothe you. You learn from them. You learn to be perversive.”

“Passive?” I tried.

“Very,” she agreed. “Now, if you want to stop trying to nail me for murder and World War II, maybe we could be friends. I’d really like to know about private investigators. I listen to all the shows on the radio. Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes, Richard Diamond, Nero Wolfe. I go to movies.
Charlie Chan at the Circus
was one of my favorites. Nothing like the circus, but like what people think about it. You know?”

The little-girl interest was back, and I liked it. She sort of swayed from hip to hip as she talked, and I felt as if I were being hypnotized. Maybe it was just the darkness, the air in the wagon, and my knowing that snakes named Murray and Abdul and frogs that were going to be swallowed whole were all around me.

“Well,” I said, “maybe we’ll talk again soon.” I backed to the door, reaching for the handle.

“Do you do anything besides talk?” she said, pursing her lips.

“We’ll talk about it,” I said and leaped out into the air, pushing the door closed behind me.

I breathed deeply and looked around. Gunther and his friends were nowhere around, so I headed toward the big top. Gunther intercepted me while I paused to watch a man about fifty walking behind three small boys in green tights and matching blue jackets. The man was shaking his head and shouting to them about looking straight ahead, always straight ahead.

“Funambulists,” said Gunther, looking at the quartet as it passed us. “Rope walkers. Family tradition. The word comes from the Latin
funis
—rope—and
ambulare
—to walk. It goes back thousands of years. Some say the acrobats arid rope walkers are the oldest tradition in the circus next to the clowns, if we acknowledge that the
commedia dell’arte
is, indeed, clearly a part of the circus tradition and not the theater.”

“I acknowledge,” I said. “What did you find out about Hitchcock?”

“He is here,” Gunther said, still watching the receding figures of the rope walkers. “In the big tent, watching. The circus grapevine is fast, and outsiders are sensed like a low-level voltage….”

“Shock,” I said.

Gunther nodded, adding the word to his vocabulary.

“I suppose that includes me, that outside shock?”

“Yes,” he said. “Your presence is felt. Mine is less so because I have been with a circus and for other reasons. Jeremy too, for some reason, is accepted, perhaps because of his wrestling and size. I’d best return to my duties outside the wagon of the reptile woman.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said and went into the big top.

There were streaks of sunlight coming through entrances to the tent and a central opening at the peak of the tent. Some of the lights were on, and people were practicing acts in various rings. In one side ring, the three Tanuccis were standing in a small group. The eldest Tanucci was pointing up to the trapeze and speaking earnestly.

In the center ring, a cage had been set up, a big animal cage, and inside it stood young Shockly and a tired tiger, looking at each other with mutual confusion, or so it seemed to me.

I looked around for Hitchcock, and Elder came to my side, his mustache trim and waxed, his scalp moist, his green sweater snug over his well-muscled chest and only the sag of a cheekbone revealing doubt.

“Tanuccis are trying to put a makeshift act together,” he said. “We have to pull them from center ring, but when word gets out about the murder …”

“Murders,” I corrected, but he went on.

“Murders,” he agreed. “People will want to see them. Things like this have happened before. We pulled Shockly up from an apprenticeship to see if he can handle the cats. We’ve got no show without a cat act. My partner back East is trying to get Beatty, but he’s hard to find. There’s Grunwald in England. Retired. We might get him, but by the time he got here the season would be over and we’d be headed for a home run, headed back to Florida.”

“Someone’s doing a good job wrecking the circus,” I observed, looking around for Hitchcock and spotting him sitting alone and placidly watching, his pudgy hands folded in his lap. He was dressed in a dark suit and seated several rows up in the wooden grandstands. “What’s Hitchcock doing here?” I said.

“He asked to watch,” replied Elder. “He’s a well-known film producer, and he keeps his mouth shut. Maybe it will make some good publicity. Who knows?”

“He’s a director,” I corrected, moving toward Hitchcock.

“What’s the difference?” said Elder, heading away without waiting for an answer.

Hitchcock looked up at me languidly while I climbed the stands. His eyes scanned my clothing. “Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” said I, sitting next to him but not too close.

“I do not wish to be rude,” he said, looking back at the Tanuccis, “but your trousers and jacket do not match. Nor does your shirt.”

“All I have left,” I shrugged, watching the Tanuccis in their huddle.

“I think it essential that one dress carefully and formally when one works,” he said. “It establishes the aura of seriousness necessary in a potentially chaotic situation.”

“Maybe so,” I sort of agreed. “But the world I work in doesn’t seem to be affected by my sense of anything.”

“The difference between life and movies,” said Hitchcock. “I prefer movies. In fact, I have no great affection for the real world.”

The Tanuccis were climbing the rope ladder to the trapeze, led by Carlo. In the center ring, Elder had entered the cage with Shockly and the tiger and was urging the kid on, saying something about how old the tiger was. The tiger seemed to be asleep.

“Absolutely fascinating,” sighed Hitchcock.

“I thought you were going back to Los Angeles,” I said.

“I am,” said Hitchcock evenly. “My friend was good enough to put me up for another night so that I might discover something more of the events of the last day. You have not, I may presume, discovered a murderer or a motive?”

“Nope,” I said, searching my pockets for something without knowing what, maybe Abdul the snake. Instead, I found a single peanut. I offered to share it with Hitchcock, who refused politely.

“Pity,” he said. “I’ll have to depart nonetheless. Might I suggest that you are searching for someone who is quite mad? When you discover the nature of that madness, the key to it, what obsession moves this man or woman, you will discover your killer.”

“Great,” I said, munching my peanut as the youngest surviving Tanucci, Tino, swung out on the trapeze. “Now all I need is a psychiatrist. You know a lion was let loose last night?”

“I am aware of that,” he said, his eyes watching Tino without moving his head.

“You were near the cage just before it happened,” I said, fishing some peanut from between my teeth.

Hitchcock glanced at me and made it clear, though he tried not to, that he did not approve of people picking their teeth in public. “May I assume, therefore,” he said, “that I am a suspect?”

“No,” I said. “You’re not a suspect. You’re a possible witness.”

“I was rather hoping for something grander than that,” he said, “but then it might mean an encounter with the police, a situation which I would do very nearly anything to avoid.”

The Tanuccis were trying some switches and routines tentatively, with the older Tanucci shouting changes, suggestions in Italian, encouraging, discouraging, supporting.

“Did you see anybody near the cage?” I went on.

“The keeper who has such great difficulty with the human language,” said Hitchcock, “and one other person, a woman. A red-haired woman with a gaudy costume. She stood beside me watching the lions. We exchanged no conversation.”

Agnes again, thought I.

“I left before she did,” he added. “There certainly may have been others. I left just in time to see the show.”

“Well,” I said, getting up, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Hitchcock put out his pudgy right hand, and I took it. It was deceptively firm. “Perhaps we will encounter each other again,” he said. “If you are in the directory, I may call you, if you have no objection.”

“None,” I said. “And thanks for the theory.”

Elder was still trying to introduce the shy Shockly to the weary tiger when I went into the light. I’d have to talk to Agnes again, but I wasn’t sure of how it would go. I didn’t have enough to turn her over to Nelson, and I wasn’t sure I could break her down. It would take a little thought. I headed for the animal tent. It was dark but full of sounds.

Gargantua eyed me lazily when I came in. He was standing and trying to see beyond the bars to whatever strange events were taking place to his left, just out of sight.

Peg and Shelly came toward me with the doctor. Behind them I could see Puddles lying in her cage while the other lion leaned over her with what looked like concern.

“Did he kill her?” I asked Peg, whose hair was down completely.

“Kill her?” said Shelly. “I saved that animal’s jaw alignment. Filed down the left number three and evened them. Damn, Toby, wait till I report this to the county society.”

“He did a good job,” nodded the old doctor in what sounded like astonishment.

“He’s used to working with animals,” I said. “Puddles is probably one of the tamest patients Shelly’s had in months.”

“Just put her to sleep,” said Shelly with a gloat. “Easiest thing I’ve done. I’d like some of that stuff to put my patients out.”

“It’d kill a human,” said the doctor.

“Well,” gloated Shelly, “I could control it. Temper it, you know. Be careful.”

“I’d advise against it,” said Doc Ogle, but I could see Shelly considering a nice dose of whatever it was for Mrs. Ramirez and Mr. Stange. We would need a long talk at some point in the near future.

Shelly put an arm around the old doctor, who tried to shrink away, but Shelly wasn’t having any. Cigar in mouth, Shel was describing to the old man what he had done in terms which were far from technical.

“You see the way I sawed that damn thing down? Then all it took was the file and a tape measure. If you know what you’re doing, it comes easy. Now, about that fifty dollars …”

Peg, at my side, took my arm. “I’m sorry about last night, Toby,” she said. “It’s just that I’m …”

I gave her a squeeze and suggested that we forget about it and find a killer. It seemed a good idea to both of us.

Peg had to locate Elder. I told her where he was and left Shelly oppressing the doctor. I headed back for Agnes Sudds’s wagon, working out a plan. I didn’t have one quite worked out when I got there. I seldom did, but as it turned out, I didn’t need one.

I started to open the door to the wagon with the snake’s face on it and heard a cry behind me.

“No, Toby,” came Gunther’s voice. I turned to face him as he stepped out from behind a nearby wagon, but it was too late.

“Ah, Mr. Peters,” came a voice which was far from back home or friendly. “Perhaps you could just step in so we can settle a few things.”

I considered running, but I knew I’d get a bullet in my back. The thought made my tender spine tingle. So I stepped into the wagon and grinned at Sheriff Nelson and Deputy Alex. Agnes stood back in the corner, drinking something clear and cool-looking.

“Venom?” I asked, glancing at her glass.

Agnes gave a nasty smirk. Alex and Nelson wouldn’t even give that.

“You will hold out your hand,” said Nelson, adjusting his dirty white hat with one hand and leveling his pistol at me with the other. “Alex will affix a handcuff to your wrist, and we will go back to Mirador on this lovely morning to have that little talk that was interrupted yesterday.”

“She did it,” I said, nodding at Agnes.

Nelson sighed enormously. “Your hand, Peters, or I shall be forced to shoot you before Alex has the opportunity for further discussion.”

I looked at Alex, who touched his right hand to his neck. Maybe a quick bullet or two would be better than a few minutes with Alex.

Agnes, however, was more interested in what I was saying than what Nelson was going on about. “Me?” she said, plunking her now empty glass on the table. “I did it? I did what?”