The blond woman finally got the kids corralled and marched them off to a trash can, their small hands full of wayward napkins and paper plates. They stuffed the trash into the can and then ran off toward one of the game booths, and I remembered the term for the guys that ran them: peddies.
As in peddlers. Or pedophiles. I shivered.
“It was strange, though,” Finn said. He traced a circle on the picnic table with his finger.
“What?”
“How insistent Moriarty was that we search the kid’s room. I understood his concerns. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing that pointed toward a suicide. I tell you, if we’d have found a note, I’d have immediately suspected it was planted and that the whole thing was murder,” Finn said. “Everything about that day screamed accident.”
“Huh. Sure doesn’t anymore, does it?” I stood and tossed my trash and picked up a napkin the kids had missed, a smear of dried ketchup staining the center of it like a bloody thumbprint. “We should get back, the show’s going to start any minute.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
The tent was packed and we found seats toward the back, up high in the stands. Colorful flamenco music competed with the chatter of the crowd, and all around us, families shared popcorn and cotton candy and peanuts. I watched as more than one person cracked a peanut and then tossed the fibrous shell onto the ground.
In the front row, slightly to my left, I saw a familiar head of red hair: Lisey, Tessa’s roommate. She sat next to another young woman, a blonde in a white tank top. The two were speaking to each other and although I was too far away to make out any words, the conversation appeared heated. Lisey’s posture was rigid, and her hand repeatedly rose as though to dismiss her companion. Finally, with a look of disgust, Blondie stood and stormed out of the tent.
Lisey watched her go and then shook her head and turned her attention to the ring in the middle of the tent, where a tall man in a black tuxedo stood. His height was exaggerated even more by a top hat and cane that he bandied about before him.
I nudged Finn and pointed to the back of Lisey’s head and said her name. He lifted an eyebrow.
“The lesbian?” he whispered, and I rolled my eyes and nodded.
The music died and the ringmaster said, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, may I be the first to welcome you to the most impressive, the most incredible, the most amazing death-defying show on Earth.”
He had to be almost seven feet tall, all arms and legs, like an enormous alien insect. He bandied about his cane and the crowd cheered in response.
“What you are about to see might shock you… it may surprise you… but it will stun you,” he roared and the crowd roared back.
The man next to me had just tossed a handful of popcorn in his mouth and when he shouted his approval at the ringmaster, he sprayed the back of the head of the woman in front of him with a fine mist of butter-tinged spittle.
I winced and scooted closer to Finn.
“Put your hands together for the greatest group of acrobats on Earth, the Fellini Brothers’ Amazing Trapeze Troupe!” he said. With another flourish of his cane and a tip of his hat, the man bowed to the audience and stepped out of the spotlight. The music came back on with a vengeance, louder and more pulsing than before.
From the four corners of the tent, the acrobats emerged like boxers at a match, each sprinting to the center and doing a jig to pump up the crowd. They wore the black leotards we’d seen during practice, but true to Tessa’s word, they each carried a long saber with a wicked-looking tip. Red sashes held the swords to their waists, and as before, each acrobat wore a black Zorro-like mask.
The crowd went wild with cheers and applause and the performers strutted before the audience like court jesters, high-fiving the children in the first row. After a few minutes, the four met back in the middle and huddled, then broke apart in pairs and climbed the long ladders at either end of the tent.
There was something different from what we’d watched in rehearsals but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Once on the platforms, the four drew their swords and began their daring dances on the narrow planks. To the right, Tessa and Doug teased and taunted each other. Tessa danced backward, Doug’s sword at her belly, and then she lunged forward, pushing him back toward the ladder, away from the plank’s edge. The audience gasped as he feigned a slip and fell to one knee, then cheered as he regained balance and resumed his attack on Tessa.
On the opposite plank, the sisters, Onesie and Twosie, fended off imaginary assailants. They stood back to back and slashed their swords at the air, moving to and fro along the platform as one unit. The silver weapons flashed in the spotlights like strobes and I closed my eyes, feeling the beginnings of a migraine. Between the late night, my lack of sleep, the heat of the day, and now the pulsing lights and music, plus my hormonal swings, I knew I didn’t stand a chance against the vise slowly tightening around my forehead.
As the music switched from the flamenco guitar to a steady, throbbing Latin dance beat, the acrobats laid down their swords and shook hands and hugged. As in rehearsals, Tessa was first off the plank. This time, though, she did a stunning dismount that involved a backward flip that left the audience gasping. She grabbed the first bar and the audience sighed with relief and the show went into full swing. The other three acrobats joined Tessa and soon they were jumping and twisting and diving with, literally, the greatest of ease.
In front of me, a child whispered to his father, “What if they fall?” and the father whispered back, “They won’t, honey, they’re professionals,” and I realized what was different from the rehearsal we’d watched earlier.
The green safety net had been removed.
If someone did fall, it would be a forty-foot drop straight to the ground. I gulped and felt the hot dog I’d eaten turn inside me on a wave of nausea.
“What’s a pofresshunal?” the child whispered, and the father answered, “It means they are so good at their job, they won’t fall.”
With the realization the net was gone, watching the acrobats was suddenly a nerve-racking event. I held my breath through the next ten minutes, until finally they swung themselves, one by one, back to the platforms. They paused, panting, on the planks as the audience gave them a standing ovation.
As Finn and I stood and clapped, I looked down to the left. Lisey was gone. Scanning the room, I saw a flash of red at one of the side exits. “C’mon,” I said, and grabbed Finn.
“Don’t you want to talk to Tessa again?” he asked, and followed me as we made our way through the stands. Every second person had to turn sideways or stand back up to let us by.
“Yes, but she can wait,” I said. “I want to talk to Lisey first.”
I wondered if Lisey was the second person in Tessa’s car last night. If so, maybe she had come back to my house on her own, later, and left the message. But really, what would have been the point? I was finding it harder and harder to believe that anyone from Reed’s life had been involved in his murder, especially given the wording of leaving the past alone.
Everywhere I turned seemed to point right back to the past… to the McKenzie boys, and the Woodsman.
To this town.
Outside, I threw up an arm against the glare of the bright sunshine. I’d left my sunglasses in the car, and as I squinted and waited for my eyes to adjust, the throbbing in my head increased. I slowly turned, scanning the throngs of people that milled on the midway between the various booths and tents and food stands and Porta-Potties and rides.
All I could see for miles was kid after kid, clown after clown.