CHAPTER 5
The smell of cotton candy and hot dogs and horseshit; the groan of the Ferris wheel; the squeals of fear and delight from the Roto-Rama; and the cries of a dozen butchers and talkers hawking their games and gimmicks.
Home sweet home.
The circus was set up in a field just south of town. Maybe it had once held corn, but it looked like it hadn't been seeded in years. Instead it had sprouted H&H's games, rides, and booths, all of it centered around the single-ring big top. An eight-foot canvas fence encircled the entire affair.
Sam Lee parked the truck right outside the front entrance, where people were exchanging greenbacks for passage under the giant archway, the circus's name painted on it in letters big enough to be seen from passing airplanes.
After asking one of the parking attendants to keep an eye on the truck and the suitcases in back, he led us inside, where we were allowed to bypass the great unwashed and enter gratis.
Not that there was much of a line worth cutting. It looked like a sparse turnout, even for a Thursday afternoon.
"Big Bob should be getting ready in his trailer," Sam Lee said. "Hopefully we can catch him before he goes on."
He led us on a meandering path that took us past Sideshow Alley, where a sign proclaimed DOORS OPEN AT 1:30. ONLY THE BOLD MAY ENTER!
The sideshow always started a little late, it being a tough sell for early crowds. It was one thing being confronted by the Alligator Boy or the Human Blockhead under the strings of electric lights. It was another to see them under the noonday sun, with all the mystery burned away.
We bypassed the midway and its alley of games and slipped around the much smaller side tent that hosted the acts that worked best in close-up. I caught a strain of Mysterio warming up the crowd¡ª"Nothing up my sleeves. Oh, what's this!"¡ªfollowed by a lazy smattering of applause.
On the southwestern edge of the grounds we found the crew trailers. Sam Lee walked up to the smallest of the bunch and knocked on the door.
A familiar voice called from inside.
"Come in!"
Sam Lee held the door for us as we stepped up and in. As I passed, he handed me the keys to the truck.
"Big Bob said the jalopy's yours to use as long as you're here," he told me.
"Thanks. I'll try not to scratch the rust."
"It was real good meeting you both," he said. "If you need me for anything, you just yell my name and either I'll hear it or someone will come find me."
Then he ran off to attend to whatever duties the bottom man in the circus dog pile got stuck with.
The trailer had about half the square footage of my tiny bedroom back in Brooklyn. Despite that, Big Bob had managed to squeeze in a sawed-off bed, dresser, desk with typewriter, filing cabinet, and a full-length mirror. The walls were papered with old show posters and handbills: two decades' worth of diving acrobats and prancing clowns, roaring tigers and smiling showgirls.
Their paper eyes stared out at me and made the trailer feel even smaller. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
However, it was just the right size for Big Bob Halloway. Topping out at about four and a half feet, the owner, operator, and ringmaster of H&H was at that moment standing in front of the mirror and putting the final touches on his ensemble.
He liked to say that, as he was the lone dwarf still employed at the circus, it was only right he take the smallest trailer. That made it a lot harder for anyone else to complain about their own digs.
Bob was decked out in his usual costume: a bright red tux and tails over a black shirt and pants, and a bright red bow tie. His shoulder-length hair was dyed the same color as his patent-leather shoes and was pulled back at the nape of his neck with a silver clasp. I noticed that he'd let the gray start showing in his Vandyke.
He was applying black makeup underneath his eyes¡ªan old showman's trick so his face didn't get washed out by the spotlight. Also, he thought it combined with his beard to give him a Machiavellian air.
He wasn't wrong.
"Sorry, ladies. If I fumble this, it gets in my eyes and I'll be blinking tears by the second clown break. If you can find a clear spot on the bed, feel free to take a load off."
My boss pushed a pile of clothes aside and took a seat, while I stayed standing. Scraping off an errant bit of makeup with his fingernail, Big Bob took a last look in the mirror. Satisfied with what he saw, he turned and took in his guests.
He held out a hand to Ms. Pentecost. This time it was her fingers that did the swallowing.
"A pleasure to see you again, ma'am," he said.
"The pleasure is mine, Mr. Halloway."
"What did I say last time? It's Bob. Or Robert, if you absolutely must."
The two had met back when Ms.?P had plucked me for the gig as her assistant. I hadn't been around for the meeting, having been in jail at the time. So I watched this exchange with a certain amount of fascination.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Robert. I hope we can be of assistance."
"I hope so, too."
Big Bob turned to me.
"Parker," he said, making a show of looking me up and down. "You look good. Showering regular these days?"
"Alternate Wednesdays," I replied. "Still buying your briefs in the toddler department?"
"Nope," he said. "Stopped wearing 'em entirely."
We burst into simultaneous grins, and he stepped forward and hugged me, squeezing and bending backward to lift me a good two inches off the floor. Bob might have been small, but he had been a roustabout long before he was a ringmaster and could still sling a sledgehammer with the best of them.
He set me back down and retrieved his bright-red top hat from its perch on the bed frame.
"I got a show to do," he said. "We can have a sit-down later, but I can give you the skinny now if you don't mind walking and listening at the same time."
"I think we can manage," my boss said.
We hopped down out of his trailer and headed in the general direction of the big top, weaving through the hawkers, the scurrying performers still adjusting bits of costume, and the afternoon crowd, who gawked at everything in sight. That included the dwarf in top and tails, the woman in the bespoke suit with the cane, and what they probably thought was somebody's secretary in her third-best slacks, hurrying to keep up.
"Here's the deal," Big Bob was saying. "We were in Pittsburgh through Saturday night, made the jump to Stoppard on Sunday, got in too late to do much, set up Monday, opened Tuesday. Opening day goes off without a hitch. Around eleven that night, last call sounds and the girls go to get Ruby from her booth so they can all go back to their trailers and get prepped for the late show in the side tent. Ruby ain't got a lot of costuming for that show, so she usually lends a hand with everyone else. She tells the girls to count her out of the show that night. Said she¡ª"
A girl of seven or so wandered into his path, her view impeded by a cone of cotton candy as big as her head. Big Bob pirouetted around her, doffed his hat, and executed a simultaneous bow that sent the girl into a fit of giggles, then kept moving without dropping a syllable.
"¡ªhad to see me about something. She heads out of Sideshow Alley and that's the last anyone saw of her until she turned up dead. Hang on."
We made a quick zig and zag and slipped around the back of the side tent where we'd heard Mysterio performing on the way in. Big Bob stopped at a rear entrance, its flap tied loosely back. Inside the tent, the crowd was filing out the other side and Mysterio and his assistant were clearing up stage props.
The last few years hadn't been kind to the magician. His face¡ªonce all hard planes and dramatic shadows¡ªhad started to swell and sag. His tuxedo looked threadbare and it was straining a little around his midsection.
He glanced up and we locked eyes. I tossed him a smile, but he didn't return it. No smile, no surprise, not even a nod. Just a half-second pause and he went back to picking up paper flowers.
I decided not to take it personally.
"This is where they found her," Big Bob said, gesturing at a bare patch of sawdust and dirt just to the side of the flap.
"Who found her?" my boss asked, a little out of breath from the double-time walk.
"Mysterio's assistant. Annabelle." He nodded at the tall brunette in the glorified swimsuit picking up playing cards. "She was on her way to her trailer to get changed for the late show. Nearly tripped over the body on her way out."
"This doesn't seem to be a public path," Ms. Pentecost observed.
"No. This is what we call the Loop. It's basically an alley that circles most of the lot. It runs between the outside fence and the tent and booths, and lets employees move around without having to jostle elbows with the public."
"So it's not strange that Ruby came this way?"
Big Bob cocked his head side to side. "Sorta yes, sorta no. It's a straight shot from the front entrance of Sideshow Alley to the trailers. Even with the crowd filing out, she could have gotten to me a lot quicker going that way."
My boss tossed me a glance and I returned it. We were both thinking the same thing. Maybe she wasn't avoiding the crowd in general, but one ticket buyer in particular.
"Do you know why she wanted to see you?" Ms.?P asked.
"No idea," Bob said.
"Had there been any change in her behavior prior to her death?"
"Well...she'd been pretty low since Bertha died."
"Bertha? A friend?"
I chimed in. "Her boa constrictor. Well, not hers. It's really Ray's. He's the creepy-crawlies guy. But Ruby used Bertha for her act."
I thought back to the first time I'd seen Ruby pick the snake up and drape it over her shoulders, giggling when it tickled her ear with a flicking tongue. Ruby was something to see. But Ruby with a six-foot boa wrapped around her could stop your heart.
"Ruby found Bertha dead in her cage Saturday morning. She was all kinds of upset," Bob said.
"How did the snake die?" my boss asked.
"Natural causes, as far as I know. She was getting up in years."
"If Ruby was upset, I bet Ray's a mess," I said. "Assuming he's still on the payroll."
"Oh, yeah," Bob said. "Ray's not going anywhere. This place ever folds, they'll have to roll the two of us up with the tents." My boss pulled us out of the conversational cul-de-sac. "How many visitors did you have Tuesday evening?"
Bob shook his head. "Can't say exactly. I can check the books tonight."
"We can ask Dee," I said. "Does she still keep a table set up at the chow tent?" Dee was the retired showgirl who did the circus's books and injected a regular dose of common sense into Big Bob.
Another headshake, sadder this time. "Sorry, kiddo. Dee jumped ship not long after you left. Lives in Florida now. Setting up some kind of sideshow museum in the Keys."