“I think he may have had something to do with it.”
I didn’t need to remind her that Denton and Marian formed a duo. One of them could have killed Conrad while the other drove his car away with Reggie inside. I could see on her face that she had already figured that out for herself, but she didn’t want to believe it was possible.
Her eyes suddenly blazed with tears. “I feel like I’m in a bad dream that won’t stop.”
“Stevie, is there anything I can do?”
“There’s one thing. Wait a minute.”
She hurried out again, and came back carrying a long swallowtail coat on a padded hanger. The coat was made of squares of satin and velvet in brilliant stained-glass colors, with wide red satin lapels and fist-sized plastic chrysanthemums for buttons.
“Conrad was going to wear this at a meeting to explain the details of the new retirement home to the circus community. He was looking forward to it so much …” She fought back tears and turned to me with steely control. “It should be returned to the people who made it. Somebody else should have a chance to enjoy it.”
It was an oddly irrelevant thing to be concerned about right then, but I understood. When the mind has been shattered, it scrambles to find familiar things to do, little details to obsess over, bills to pay, appointments that must be canceled.
I took the coat from her. For so much material, it was surprisingly light.
I said, “Did the Metzgers make this?”
“You know them?”
“They have a couple of cats I take care of sometimes.”
“You’ll explain to them? Why Conrad can’t wear it? And tell them Conrad loved the coat.”
“I’ll tell them, Stevie.”
If Stevie Ferrelli didn’t know her husband’s murder was front-page news, she was still in shock.
7
Before I pulled out of Stevie’s driveway, I put in a call to Guidry at his office, noting as I did that my phone showed three little batteries on its face, a gentle reminder to charge it. I got his mailbox and left a message that I had information about Conrad’s murder. He called back while I was brushing a black Persian named Inky. When the phone buzzed, Inky gave me an annoyed frown and jumped off the grooming table. Even before I looked at the caller ID, I knew it had to be either Guidry or Michael or Paco, because nobody else has my cell number.
I said, “Hello, Guidry.”
“You said you had information?”
“Two things. Denton Ferrelli was ashamed of his brother and hated his involvement with circus people. Also, they have a cousin, or a man who claimed to be a cousin, who came to see Conrad about a year ago demanding money. Conrad threw him out, and the guy told him he would be sorry. He runs a telemarketing firm here. Name is Brossi.”
“Who told you that?”
“Stevie Ferrelli. While we were drinking coffee. There’s something else too. Not exactly information, just something I forgot to tell you yesterday. About seeing Conrad’s car before Mame found the body.”
“Mame?”
“The dog. Not Conrad’s dog, another dog.”
“So what did you forget?” Guidry sounded like he might be talking through his teeth, so I hurried.
“I waved hello to him. To the driver of the car. I thought it was Conrad because I saw Reggie in the backseat. Reggie is Conrad’s dog—was—so I waved. And I think I said Hey!”
The line was silent a moment.
“You’re telling me the killer probably thinks you got a good look at him.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
I took a deep breath. “That’s all.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later. In the meantime, be careful.”
He clicked off and left me holding a dead phone.
I said “Damn!” but under my breath, because I don’t like to cuss in front of my animals. I dropped the phone in my pocket next to the .38 and coaxed Inky back for the rest of his grooming. But our rhythm was off, and it wasn’t very satisfying to either of us.
Josephine and Will Metzger’s street is only about a mile from the verdant beauty of Secret Cove, but the people who planned it must have decided to uphold the virtues of ugly. There’s not a tree in sight, and its sun-bleached frame houses squat gracelessly behind salty bald yards. It was about ten-thirty when I parked in the Metzgers’ shell driveway and walked to the front door, holding Conrad’s coat high above my shoulder so the tails wouldn’t drag.
In their younger days, Josephine and Will had been aerialists with the Ringling Circus, but after they’d both broken and rebroken most every bone they had, the glamour of flying through the air without a net had lost its allure. Now they had a business making clown costumes. Will had a workshop over the garage where he made custom-designed clown shoes, while Josephine and a string of short-term helpers sewed baggy suspender pants and swallowtail coats made of outlandish polka dots and plaids.
Josephine’s newest helper, an impossibly young mother named Priscilla, answered the door when I rang. I had never heard Priscilla speak, and I didn’t know whether she was mute or just painfully shy. She didn’t speak this morning either, but gave me a sweet smile with black-lipsticked lips. Priscilla had bright pink hair cut in a feathery halo and wore at least a half dozen rings around the rim of each ear. A diamond stud flashed at the edge of one nostril, and more diamonds, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, decorated her long emerald fingernails. A couple of gold rings flashed at her navel. Low-rider white Levi’s sat on her narrow hips, and her cropped top hugged breasts the size of tangerines. Her shoes had soles a good four inches thick, with heels slightly higher, so that she tilted forward at a precarious angle. If it hadn’t been for the fading yellow bruise high on her right cheekbone, she would have looked like any other teenager trying out a new identity.
She led me down the hall to a large square room that always made me feel like a visitor in an off-brand church. Sunlight streamed through ceiling-high windows, and bolts of fabric stacked on deep shelves absorbed the sound of two sewing machines that faced each other like dueling altars. A cloth tailor’s dummy stood in the corner wearing a red-and-yellow-plaid cutaway with zoot-suit lapels and formal tails. A playpen sat next to Priscilla’s sewing center, with a big-eyed baby girl clutching its mesh sides and doing bouncy knee bends.
Josephine was at an ironing board steaming open a seam. She looked up long enough to grin at me and then went back to steaming. Like her neighborhood, Josephine had given up on pretty a long time ago. Her long gray hair straggled over her shoulders, and not a smidgen of powder or blush colored her face. She didn’t even bother to wear her bridge anymore, just flaunted all the gaps between her teeth.
She said, “’Cilla, do you see somebody in this room that looks like Dixie Hemingway? You remember her, the one we haven’t seen in so long I can’t remember. Could it be that she has come to see us?”
I hung Conrad’s coat on a metal clothes rack and helped myself to a stick of chewing gum from a selection in a hat box on a table.
I said, “It’s been several weeks, hasn’t it?”
“You been busy with your cats and dogs, I guess.”
“I really am, Jo. About all I do is get up and walk dogs and clean kitty litter, and then it’s time to go back and do it all over again.”
“Well, we love you anyway, even if we never hardly see you.”
I chomped down on the gum and tasted its sweet juices flowing over my tongue. I hadn’t chewed gum since high school, and I wondered why I’d ever stopped. The baby gave me a toothless grin, and I went over and fluffed the blond floss on the top of her head.
I said, “Have you heard about Conrad Ferrelli?”
“About a million times. His brother sending his coat back?”
The baby squealed and bounced her bottom up and down, looking up at me with wide trusting eyes.