Tessa shook her head.
“Never? He never mentioned her?” I asked again.
“No. You know how some kids won’t talk about their parents, if something’s happened to them? I got the impression she was dead, like maybe she’d died when Reed was real little and he didn’t like to talk about it, so I never pushed him,” she said.
I nodded. “Tessa, I know this is difficult, but can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Reed?”
She shook her head emphatically, her eyes filling up again with tears. “No way. Reed was just the nicest guy you can imagine. I’ve never met anyone before who treated absolutely every person they met the same, no matter if it was a freaky performer, or a gasser, or a little kid in the audience.”
“Gasser?”
“The guys who fill the balloons with helium. We call ’em gassers because they inhale so much of it their brains are, like, filled with gas. They’re pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole, if you know what I mean,” she said.
“But not to Reed?”
“No. He talked to everyone and anyone. He was always asking where are you from, who do you know, where’s your family, stuff like that. And around here, that’s pretty ballsy. Lots of folks don’t want their business known, that’s why they join up,” she said.
Tessa lay back on the sand, pulled her knees to her chest, and rolled first to one side and then the other. I heard a loud pop and winced. She just laughed.
“Oh, that’s better. I have to crack my back a few times a day now. It gets so stiff.”
I hated to think what her back would be like in another fifteen years.
“I’m not always going to do this, you know,” she said. “I’ve been taking online courses and I’m about three credits short of my business degree. I’ve done a lot of research, too, into accounting, finance, that sort of thing. I’m aiming for what you might call ‘well-rounded.’”
“That’s great.”
She nodded in agreement. “I want to work for corporate. Fellini’s main offices are in Seattle. I talked to a lady there and she said they’d hire me, as soon as I fax them a copy of my diploma.”
“Was Reed planning to go with you?” I asked. “To Seattle?”
With his multitude of facial piercings and tattoos, I thought it unlikely Nicky had any plans to go white collar. But hell, Seattle had its fair share of alternative lifestyles. Tessa’s face darkened for a moment, but then as quickly as it had come, the shadow passed and she gave me another brilliant smile.
“I don’t know. We’d talked, you know, like we’d talked about having kids, but sometimes I didn’t know when Reed was serious and when he was messing with me. Like, not to be mean, but sometimes, what he thought was playful kind of hurt my feelings.”
I thought of Brody, and the way that those we love the most can rip open our hearts like no one else.
She started crying again. “I can’t believe he’s gone. Fuck. One minute I forget and then the next, it’s like Papa Joe is calling me all over again, telling me something bad had happened to Reed.”
“I know this is hard to understand, but it will get easier, Tessa. Not right away, not anytime soon, but it will get better.”
She nodded and helped me up off the sandy beach. “Hey, why are you in charge of this case, anyway? I thought detectives investigate murders, not officers or whatever.”
“Well, in the bigger cities, that’s true. But in some towns, like Cedar Valley, we don’t have the manpower to have a separate unit. So, we’re all sort of cross-trained on everything from parking tickets to, well, to this,” I said. “Burglaries, assaults, rapes… you name it, we do it. I’m an officer and a detective.”
“Oh. Okay.”
We made our way back to the cabin in silence. We shook hands and I handed her one of my business cards.
“Tessa, I asked Joe Fatone to keep the circus in town for a few extra days, all right? I’d like to talk with you again, maybe tomorrow? Would that be okay?”
“Sure. If Papa Joe’s not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere,” she said. Something caught her eye at the cabin and when I turned, I saw Red staring at us from the window with the same furious expression she’d worn an hour earlier.
Tessa sighed.
I tilted my head toward the cabin. “She seems mad.”
Tessa stared another few seconds at Red and then looked back at me. “Lisey doesn’t know what to feel. She was in love.”
“With Reed?”
“With me,” she replied, and walked toward the cabin. “Give me a call, I’ll be around.”
Chapter Fifteen
The station was quiet when I returned. Sam Birdshead sat typing at one of the computer terminals; he had split the workload with another officer and finished interviewing most of the circus employees from the list of names Joe Fatone had prepared for us.
The window shades were drawn against the glare of the southern afternoon sun and the old wooden ceiling fan was on, creaking and groaning and looking as though it might fall at any moment. The fan made a rhythmic whoosh every few seconds that slowed my pulse, syncing it with the scalloped blades. The room was cool and dark and empty, save for Sam and I.
I’ve often thought being a police officer is akin to being a clergyman, and at that moment the station felt like the hallowed sanctuary of a church.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Sam. I sat down and leaned back and lifted my legs up until my feet were on my desk. With my belly, it was an awkward maneuver and for one horrible moment I thought Sam was actually going to grab my ankles and hoist, but he had the good sense to just watch.
“Armstrong and Moriarty took a call on an accident in Pine. I don’t know where Nowlin is,” Sam said. “I think the chief is in his office.”
I nodded. “Get anything good?”
Sam shook his head. His expression was so hangdog I had to laugh.
“Don’t worry about it, that’s part of the deal. For every hour you spend on a case, you might get a minute of gold. Just remember that gold makes those fifty-nine other minutes of sweat and tears and blood and bullshit all worth it.”
“I guess. It’s strange, I get the impression that Fellini’s is like its own little society, and everyone belongs to a class, and the classes don’t mix,” Sam said. “For example, the grunts and the glitter don’t ever get together.”
“The grunts and the glitter?”
“Yeah, the performers like the clowns and the acrobats, the showmen. They’re the glitter, and the grunts are the guys like this Pat Sheldon I talked to, the cooks and the mechanics and the trainers,” Sam said. “The grease in the wheels of the big machine that is the circus.”
Hadn’t Tessa said something about that? She’d said it was like a totem pole, with the gassers on the bottom.
“Did this Sheldon mention the gassers?” I asked.
Sam nodded with surprise. “How’d you know about them? They’re the worst, apparently. The gassers, and the guys who run the kiddy booths; Sheldon called them the peddies.”
“The peddies?”
“Yeah, as in peddlers, or pedophiles, depending on if you think they’re just selling wares or if they’re manning the booths to get up close and personal with the kiddos.”
I winced.
“Well, after I called you from Fatone’s, I went and saw Reed’s girlfriend, Tessa,” I said. “We ought to take a look at her roommate, Lisey. Seems there was a bit of a love triangle.”
Sam perked up. “Oh yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but not the way you’re thinking. Lisey apparently has a thing for Tessa.”
“You thinking this Lisey killed Reed in some kind of jealous rage?” Sam asked. “That’s pretty violent for a crush.”
He stood and stretched and handed me an open bag of peanut M &M’S.
“You’d be surprised what can happen when love’s involved,” I said. I knocked back a handful of the chocolates and noticed they were all brown, red, or green candies. “The worst things I’ve seen were between people who loved each other. Did you pick out all the blue and yellow M &M’S?”