The female passenger in the adjacent pickup truck looked down and smiled. Her hair was blonde, her full lips were red, and she was smoking a cigar.
Lane smiled back. I’m talking to myself. The doctor is right, I do need a shrink. That’s on the to-do list, right after Arthur beating cancer and finding out who killed Andelko Branimir.
The light turned green. The pickup roared ahead, leaving behind a cloud of diesel smoke. Lane changed lanes before turning left. Towering condos and hotels gathered along the south side of the Bow River around an upscale enclave called Eau Claire. It was the area of the water park, the bridge to Princess Island, and the concourse in between that Lane was headed for.
He parked the car in front of a hotel across the street from a restaurant that had, at one time, been home to a lumber mill. It was ten in the morning and the sun was forcing its way through the clouds, promising a rare warm, summery day. Glad I didn’t wear a sports jacket, Lane thought as his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. “Hello.”
“Where are you?” Christine asked.
“Eau Claire, looking for street performers.” Lane looked around at the people on bicycles and rollerblades weaving around the walkers and joggers and wheelchairs.
“We’re coming too.” Christine hung up.
At the wading pool, kids aimed water guns at one another. Adults dressed in shorts or rolled-up pants were bent over, holding the arms of toddlers who splashed the water with their feet.
A trumpet blasted a saucy salsa tune. Lane looked toward the source of the sound. The trumpet player leaned on one crutch. He wore a red T-shirt, shoes, and shorts. His red cap was turned backwards.
“It’s Leo,” Lane said under his breath.
The Latino music turned heads. A pair of toddlers began to dance. Lane smiled at their natural grace and total lack of self-consciousness.
Lane spotted a juggler. He was taller than Leo, but close to the same weight. He was black-haired, and wore a white loose-fitting shirt and knee-length shorts. He began to juggle four knives. The sun flashed on the metal blades as each knife spun to the top of its arc before falling back into the man’s hand, only to be launched again into the sky. The knives and the juggler moved to the trumpeter’s beat.
Soon the music stopped. The knives fell. The juggler caught them neatly and stashed them in his equipment bag. He looked around at the crowd. “I need a young assistant.”
Parents looked at one another. Children waited for the music to start up again so they could dance. A teenaged brother pushed his little sister – she was about five and wore a blue jumper and running shoes – out into the open. Lane noted the butterfly painted on her face.
The juggler bent down to her. She whispered something to him. “This is Katie, my new assistant!” He walked her to the edge of the crowd. “Show your appreciation for Katie!”
Katie’s brother stood and encouraged the crowd to clap and cheer. Leo played a tune that sounded like it belonged at a bullfight. Katie smiled and walked a little taller.
The juggler bent over his bag and pulled out a sword. “Katie?”
She looked up at him. Leo played louder, faster. Now it was the music of a warrior.
“Would you hold this for me?” The juggler handed her the sword. “Here, with two hands.” He showed her how to hold the sword so that it was at a right angle to the ground. Then he turned, reached into his bag, and pulled out a basketball. He spun it on his finger as he walked around Katie. He spun the ball one last time and placed it on the tip of the sword before bowing to Katie and backing away.
She stood there for a full thirty seconds with the ball spinning and the crowd cheering. The ball fell off. The juggler caught it after the first bounce. “Everyone! I give you Katie!”
Leo blasted notes of triumph from his trumpet. Katie handed the sword to the juggler and walked to join her brother, who put a proud arm around her shoulder.
The juggler put the basketball into his bag and pulled out a blue glass ball the size and irregular shape of a cantaloupe. He held the glass in the air, allowing the audience to appreciate its fragile beauty. He reached for a unicycle made ready by Leo. Once balanced on the bike, the juggler walked the lopsided ball from the palm of his right hand to the back of the hand, up his forearm, across his shoulders, and down his left arm as Leo’s trumpet sang a saucy number.
A flash of sunlight on metal caught Lane’s eye. He stared at the juggler’s right leg. Just below the man’s knee was a flesh-coloured cup connected to a shaft of metal reaching a plastic foot. He’s doing all of this on one good leg!
The audience clapped as the juggler pretended to lose his balance. He fell off the bike, flipped the glass melon in the air, recovered, and caught the lopsided globe mere millimetres from the concrete. He stood, raised the globe over his head, smiled, and threw it to the ground. It bounced into the hands of a surprised woman in the front row.
Applause and laughter erupted.
Leo took off his cap to lay it on the ground at the juggler’s feet. Bills and coins dropped into the cap. Lane waited for the crowd around the hat to thin before he dropped in his contribution. He studied the juggler more closely. The man looked to be about twenty-five. He drank from a bottle of water and wiped his face with a towel. The juggler sensed Lane’s interest and returned the detective’s stare.
“Detective? That you?” Leo leaned on his crutch with his right hand as he swept up the cap with his left. The trumpet hung from a strap around his neck in much the same way his withered right leg hung a few centimetres above the pavement.
“How are you, Leo?”
“Mladen and I are doing really well as long as the sun keeps shining.” Leo handed the cap to the juggler, who emptied the money into a cloth bag, which he pulled closed with a string before dropping it into his equipment bag.
Lane kept his attention on Mladen. “Do you have time to talk between shows?”
Leo looked at Mladen. “What’s it about?”
Mladen shrugged. “I was going to grab a coffee.” He looked over to the terrace near the coffee shop, where tables sat under faded green umbrellas.
His accent sounds like Spanish mixed with something else. “Works for me.”
“Okay.” Leo didn’t sound convinced. “What’s this about?”
“A murder.” Lane waited for the pair to gather their equipment. We must look odd - me pushing a unicycle, Leo with his crutch and trumpet, and Mladen with his bag of tricks and artificial leg. Somehow, though, it feels about right.
Lane leaned the unicycle up against the red brick wall next to an empty table. He waited and watched over the equipment until the two performers returned with their coffees. Then Lane went off to buy his own. All of this done without a single word.
Mladen sat with his back to the brick wall. He sipped his espresso while studying the crowd.
Leo had his crutch propped up against the table and was watching Lane as if challenging the detective to speak first. Lane attempted to look where Mladen was staring. The detective squinted at the glare of the sun upon the water in the wading pool.
“What murder?” Mladen asked.
“A body was found in the northwest in a slough at the edge of the city. The man’s name was Andelko Branimir.” Lane turned to study Mladen’s face.
Mladen met the detective’s gaze. “Don’t know him.”
Try a different approach. “How do you and Leo know each other?”
“We met at the doctor’s office,” Leo said. “We go to the same specialist. We got talking about street performing and decided to make some extra money on weekends.”
Lane turned to Mladen. “Where did you learn to be a juggler?”