“Don’t most of your people have secrets?” Finn asked. He watched the trapeze artists, as mesmerized as I’d been. “I mean, isn’t that why they run off and join the circus?”
Fatone smirked around his cigar. “Everyone has secrets. I’m just saying Reed seems to have had more than his fair share.”
Fatone pointed up as the acrobats did a particularly spectacular maneuver that involved Tessa standing on one of the trapeze bars, very still for twenty or thirty seconds, and then she swooped down toward the other three acrobats and they bounced up, like startled birds.
“You know, every single one of these moves has a name,” Fatone said.
“Really?”
He nodded. “That one they just did? That’s called Scaring the Crow.”
I laughed uneasily, thinking about Scarecrow Road.
“Uh-huh,” he continued. “She stands still, you see, almost frozen, and then tumbles down like a falling scarecrow and the artists are the crows, surprised into flight. It’s the moment the decoy-the scarecrow-comes to life.”
“Like the other circus acts, sort of an illusion?” I asked.
“Magic, illusion, call it whatever you want. You see something, and you think you know what’s going on and all of a sudden the universe shifts and reveals it to be something completely different,” Fatone said. “And that, my friends, is the story of life, isn’t it? You think you know.”
He stuck the unlit cigar back in his shirt pocket and gazed up at the artists as they hooted and hollered and fell, one by one, into the big green net.
They bounced up and down a few times, laughing, then rolled to the edges of the net and jumped down to the floor. All but Tessa headed to a table in the corner, where a watercooler and paper cups waited. Instead, she looked at us and then walked over, removing her eye mask.
“Hiya! Like the show?” she asked. She leaned back, stretching with her hands on her hips, and I saw Finn give her the once-over. He seemed to have gotten over his anger at her departure from the sheriff’s station yesterday.
The black costume was a basic long-sleeved, long-panted leotard that hugged every curve and muscle on her compact frame. Finn was practically drooling.
I said, “That was amazing, Tessa. Really magical.”
She smiled and looked at Fatone. “Papa Joe?”
“You did good, kid, real good,” he said.
She high-fived Fatone and then turned to Finn. “Hey, it’s Mr. Nowlin, right? Sorry for how I acted yesterday. I was really upset.”
“These things happen. No big deal,” Finn said with a slight shrug. He smiled at Tessa. “And call me Finn, everyone does.”
Fatone stood and excused himself. I waited until he was out of hearing distance and then turned to Tessa.
“Tessa, last night… did you come back? To my house, I mean?”
I watched her carefully but her expression didn’t waver. “Huh? What do you mean, come back? I left, don’t you remember?”
Finn was watching me with narrow eyes but he stayed quiet. I’d have to catch him up on Tessa’s visit later.
I nodded. “Yes, but later, you didn’t… never mind.”
“No, what is it?” she said.
She looked at me with genuine concern and I began to think I’d been mistaken in suspecting her. Why would Tessa have left that message scrawled on my bathroom mirror? She had no ties to Cedar Valley, no connection with Nicky Bellington other than knowing him, and dating him, as Reed Tolliver, not Nicky.
“Nothing. I found a hat and thought maybe it was yours,” I improvised. “But I just remembered, you weren’t wearing a hat, so forget it. Hey, when’s the real show?”
She gave me a squinty-eyed look, and then answered. “Twenty minutes. You guys should stay and watch, it’s going to be great. We’ve worked out this whole new routine to this really cool Spanish-funk music, to go with the Zorro outfits. And, for the show, we’re using swords!”
Finn looked impressed. “Real swords? Up there?”
Tessa nodded and clapped her hands together and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Uh-huh. Very, very cool.”
“Sure, we’ll stay. But then I want to talk to you again, after, okay?”
She nodded and then bounced away toward the other trapeze artists. The male acrobat, Doug Gray, grabbed her by the waist and, lifting her in the air, spun her around until her squeals were so loud we could hear them from across the tent.
“I don’t like that guy.”
“You don’t even know him. Or her,” I said, and turned Finn by the shoulder until he faced me. “I’m serious. She was Reed’s girlfriend. Her roommate, a redhead named Lisey, is in love with her. You heard Tessa at the station yesterday-she practically accused Lisey of murder. Last night, she was in my house offering back rubs. It’s all a bit messy.”
“Yeah, yeah… wait, what? She has a lesbian girlfriend? That’s kind of hot…”
I rolled my eyes and dragged him out of the tent. “If we’re going to watch the show, I’m going to need that hot dog.”
We ordered and ate at a picnic table under an awning, next to a teenage couple with their hands in each other’s back pockets, and a harried-looking mother with five children. Blond hair stuck out of her ponytail like pieces of straw, and she’d lined up the buttons on her pink shirt wrong, so that the shirt hung slightly crooked on her small frame.
Three of the kids, towheaded boys with light eyes and fair skin, were definitely hers, but the other two must have been friends of the family. The mother was nicer to those two.
My hot dog was delicious and I chased it down with a freshly squeezed lemonade. A breeze blew over us and in the shade, my hunger satiated, I could almost imagine a decent conversation with Finn.
“So, Finn, three years ago. The Nicky Bellington case: round one. You were lead, right? With Moriarty?” I asked.
He leaned back, pleased to be asked. “We got the call around one in the afternoon. One of the kids had run down the trail until he was in cell phone range, and he’d called his parents. They’d called us. We hit the trail hard and got to the overlook around four. It was a mess. Kids crying, Paul Winters in shock. He’d just started up that youth group, the Forward Foundation, remember? It seemed like it was going to be the hottest thing in town. Annika was there, too, of course. She looked different back then, kind of chubby. Not so pretty.”
“Were the Bellingtons there? The mayor, or Ellen?”
“No, while we were hiking in, Chavez drove over to tell them in person. The first time we spoke to them on record was a few days later.”
“When you searched his room, right? What made you do that? Wasn’t it clearly an accident?”
Next to us, the teenagers had left, and the mother was packing up the five kids. Another breeze blew in, stronger than the first, and suddenly napkins and plates were flying all around us. The kids laughed and jumped about for paper goods and the mother sat down and sighed.
I gave her a smile and she rolled her eyes and then smiled back and shrugged.
Finn continued. “It was Moriarty’s idea. We were pretty sure by then the whole thing was just a tragic accident, but he wanted to be certain, if he was going to sign off on the report, that there wasn’t a suicide note. Plus, you know, he was pals with Frank Bellington, Nicky’s grandfather. I think he felt a responsibility to cross every T and dot every I. So, we did the whole enchilada. We inventoried every damn thing in the kid’s room while his mom’s standing in the doorway, sobbing hysterically.”
“When we were at the house yesterday, it seemed like you all hadn’t met.”
“C’mon, Gemma. Like they’re going to remember the cops who searched their dead kid’s room three years ago?” Finn said.
He leaned forward and ate the last bite of his hot dog. His suit was spotless, as usual, while I’d managed to sprinkle my sundress with tiny drops of mustard. A couple of crumbs from the bun rested on my tummy and I brushed them away. They fell to the ground silently, joining dozens of other crumbs and bits.