Through the Looking Glass

by Kay Hooper

  “One of the tricks to blending in is to consider yourself a part of what’s around you.”

  “I see.” Gideon put his arms around her and pulled her close. “So what are you now?”

  “Carny,” she said innocently.

  He rested his forehead against hers and sighed.

  Maggie giggled, but then sobered. “You know, I’ve had a happy life, but I’ve never felt this alive before. The whole world looks different, brighter and filled with promise. Because of you. I love you, Gideon.”

  “I love you, too, sweetheart.” He kissed her, then uttered a mild oath. “The first time we’ve been completely alone here, and you want to go treasure hunting.”

  “Think of it this way,” she said consolingly. “The sooner we find what we need to find, the sooner we can leave.”

  He brightened. “Is that a promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “All right, then, dammit. Are we going to ransack the wagons?”

  “Gently ransack. We don’t want anyone to know we’ve been searching. And the wagons are most likely; it’s a little tricky to hide something in a tent.”

  “Okay. Who first?”

  Maggie sent a speculative glance over the encampment. “I don’t know that it matters. I have a feeling that wherever the cache is, it won’t be anywhere near the person who stole it. He’d be cautious, and he’d assume there was always the off chance that it might be found.”

  “Jasper’s wagon is empty,” Gideon noted, “but you searched it yesterday.”

  “And didn’t see a thing out of place. We’ll save him for last, I think.”

  Gideon nodded and looked thoughtful. “All the other wagons are occupied. If I were going to hide something in someone else’s wagon, I’d pick the person least observant, and least likely to explore the nooks and crannies.” He frowned suddenly. “Did Merlin have a wagon?”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. “How stupid of me! He did have a wagon. When he was killed, Farley and Lamont drew straws because they both wanted a wagon. Lamont won.”

  “Then let’s start there.”

  Leo accompanied them as far as the wagon, but then, apparently recalling his exclusion from Maggie’s wagon before and not expecting an invitation into this one, he elected to sprawl in the shade underneath it. He was no longer sulky, but appeared resigned rather than delighted.

  Since the carnies only shut their doors at night or when they wanted privacy, the door of Lamont’s wagon was standing open.

  “At least we don’t have to pick a lock,” Gideon said wryly.

  “It does feel like breaking and entering, doesn’t it?” Maggie climbed the steps ahead of Gideon and went inside. “I’m glad he has a window; we won’t have to light the lamp to see what we’re doing.”

  Gideon stood gazing around. As in all the wagons, there was little space. A daybed was against one wall below the single high window, and it was covered with a colorful patchwork quilt of some artistry; there was an overstuffed easy chair upholstered in scarlet velvet worn thin in a number of places; a small wooden table on which sat an oil lamp; a scarred pine bureau; and finally, a card table set up along the wall with a round mirror hanging over it. The table was covered with jars, brushes, three wigs on stands, and a tray of grease pencils, which also held the new noses Gideon had provided so recently.

  In a distracted tone as she looked around thoughtfully, Maggie said, “All of Merlin’s things were shipped to Uncle Cyrus. Balthasar sent them.”

  “Your uncle’s last name isn’t Durant, is it? I mean, if Balthasar knew that—”

  “No, it’s Cyrus Fortune. Merlin’s was Lewis.”

  Gideon nodded. “You realize that we don’t even know what we’re looking for?”

  “I do realize that, yes.” Maggie sat down on the bed, frowning. “If I were something valuable, where would I be?” she murmured almost to herself.

  “You are something priceless.”

  She flashed him a quick smile. “Concentrate, please, on the matter at hand.”

  “If you insist. Something valuable. Something portable. Something easily hidden.” He looked slowly around the wagon. “Gold is heavy. Artworks tend to be too big to be easily hidden. Jewels, maybe. Paper money or the equivalent.”

  “The equivalent?”

  “Stock certificates, bonds, certificates of deposit, things like that.”

  Maggie nodded, then said slowly, “Merlin must have found something. But even if he did, how would he know who the guilty party was? If you find something hidden in your wagon, would you automatically assume it was stolen? And if so, and if you’re an honest man, wouldn’t you just go to the owner of the carnival and say look what I found?”

  “You’re sure Balthasar was clean?”

  “Uncle Cyrus vouched for him. He was clean.”

  “Your uncle’s name keeps popping up in this,” Gideon observed mildly.

  She smiled slightly. “He has a way of knowing things. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that he knows very well who killed Merlin.”

  “Then why on earth put you through this?”

  “His own reasons. Maybe because he couldn’t prove it and knows I’ll do my best to. Or maybe…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Gideon, and her eyes widened.

  “Maybe what?”

  She started laughing. “If he did…and I never suspected a thing…of all the sneaky—”

  “Maggie, what are you talking about?”

  Sobering finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I think we’ve been set up.”

  “By your uncle?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve seen him work, Gideon, he’s really amazing. And he’s been doing it as long as I can remember. My father used to say that if Uncle Cyrus had found a different outlet for his talents, he could have ruled the world.”

  Gideon took a step and sat down on the bed beside her. “Honey, what are you talking about? What talents?”

  “Matchmaking talents. Oh, not just simple introductions between people, that’s too easy. Uncle Cyrus arranges things so that two unsuspecting people encounter each other at precisely the right moment. If needed, he steps in at some point to help resolve the occasional problem. But I know of some people who never saw him or knew anything about his intervention and still owed their happiness to him.”

  After a moment Gideon said, “A few days ago I would have said—you have to be kidding. Now I’m willing to accept the possibility. But how could he know that Balthasar would be killed and leave me the carnival? That’s why I came here.”

  A sudden gleam of amusement lit her vivid eyes. “Gideon, I’m surprised at you. Gored by a rhinoceros? That’s the most lunatic thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It takes nerve for you to say that to me,” he said, an answering gleam in his own eyes.

  She giggled. “Well, it is. I thought the whole thing was faked as soon as we got the announcement from the attorneys. I assumed Uncle Cyrus bought the carnival from Balthasar and had him ask me to take over while he dashed off into the sunset. It got me inside here, and everyone accepted it.”

  “Then why fabricate a will and— Oh. To get me here? Matchmaking?”

  “It looks that way now. At the time I just assumed Uncle Cyrus had decided he didn’t want a carnival, and I’d still have time until probate. I should have known better.”

  “It seems awfully elaborate.”

  Maggie nodded. “Definitely. His plans always are. Tell me, did you happen to inherit a 1958 black Caddie?”

  “No, it wasn’t mentioned in the will.”

  “Then that clinches it. Balthasar is very much alive, and probably sunning himself on some island. According to the carnies here who’ve known him longest, he loved that car like a child. Nobody could ever make me believe that he provided for Wonderland in a will and left his baby rusting away in a dockside parking lot somewhere.”

  Gideon stared at her for a moment, then said, “I don’t know whether to thank your uncle or punch him in the
nose.”

  She smiled. “He’ll never admit to it. If either of us pinned him to the wall and demanded the truth, he’d widen his eyes—and you have no idea how innocent that sly old man can look—and say that the hand of man doesn’t guide lovers, destiny does.”

  “He’d say that.”

  “Verbatim.”

  “And mean it?”

  “Sure. But I decided when I was ten that destiny lived in the shape of my uncle Cyrus.”

  “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

  Chapter 8

  “He looked more like Colonel Sanders to me,” Gideon said consideringly. “Of course, I only had a glimpse of him.”

  Maggie laughed, but shook her head. “Wait until you know him better. Look, knowing Uncle Cyrus, he won’t help us out until he’s good and ready, so we’re on our own. If you were something valuable hidden in here, where would you be?”

  “If I don’t know what I am, how can I know where I am?” Gideon held up a hand when she frowned at him. “Okay, okay. I was hidden here when Merlin lived here, presumably. He found me—or some part of me. He wasn’t looking for me, so he must have been doing something else. Moving something, maybe?”

  Slowly, she said, “The thing in here least likely to be moved is the daybed; it takes up too much space anywhere except against this wall.”

  “Then let’s try it.”

  They got up, each of them going to an end of the bed. It wasn’t unreasonably heavy, but the lack of space in the wagon made it awkward to move. Still, they were able to shift it about two feet out from its wall.

  Maggie knelt down on her side and looked carefully. “A piece of the paneling seems a little scarred. Do you have a penknife?”

  “No, but—” He squeezed over to Lamont’s makeup table and found what looked like a putty knife, then managed to get around the bed to Maggie’s side and sat down on the edge as he handed her the knife. “Try this.”

  There was a horizontal seam on one section of the paneling about twelve inches up from the floor, and she picked at it carefully with the knife. The two edges of wood had been tacked down, but a few minutes’ work loosened the two tacks on the upper section. Maggie eased the knife blade into the seam, letting the blade slide upward, and then pulled steadily.

  The tacks came out, the rattle as they struck the floor loud in the silence. She wedged her fingers into the gap and pulled harder, until the section of paneling above the seam gave way completely. A manila envelope, its straining sides bound haphazardly with black electrician’s tape, slid out and hit the floor with a thump.

  “I’ll be damned,” Gideon said.

  Maggie sat back on her heels, holding the package, and looked up at him. “Maybe we should hang out a shingle.”

  “It could just be somebody’s old love letters, you know.”

  “I bet you say ‘bah, humbug’ at Christmas, too,” she said, carefully opening one end of the envelope.

  “I’m a realist,” he said firmly.

  She peered into the envelope, then drew out a sheet of paper, studied it briefly, and handed it to him. “Better check your definition of reality.”

  He stared at the embossed page in his hand. “Bearer bonds. Good Lord, how much is here?”

  Maggie had pulled the remaining pages from the tattered envelope and looked through them rapidly. “It looks like about two million dollars’ worth. Enough to kill for.”

  “Yes…”

  “What is it?” There was a peculiar note in his voice, and it alerted her.

  Slowly, Gideon said, “I’m beginning to believe your uncle might just be destiny—because I don’t believe in the long arm of coincidence. The company that issued these bonds was looking for expansion money about four years ago.”

  “A company in San Francisco?”

  “Yes, and they came to my bank. I spent several days at their offices, going over their plans. A week before the deal was due to be finalized, there was a robbery. Two point three million in bearer bonds just waltzed out the front door; it was an inside job.”

  Maggie waited silently, watching him.

  “The employee had faked all his identification well enough to get by their security checks—minor ones, at his level. He worked there a few months, made friends with the guard at the vault. And then one day he doped the guard’s morning coffee and somehow got the vault open. He vanished like smoke. They never found him.”

  “Did you see him there?” Maggie asked. “Before the robbery, while you were working at their offices?”

  Gideon shook his head slightly. “It was a big company with a lot of employees. He’d had a photo taken because it was company policy and the newspapers ran it later. I might have glanced at it then. Hell, I could have seen him a dozen times while I was at the offices and never really looked at him.”

  “Don’t think about him there,” she said. “He probably doesn’t look like that now. Think of the people here. One at a time. Just the faces. The eyes. The way they move.”

  He went still suddenly, his gaze fixed on the wall. Then he looked at Maggie, the connection made in his mind. “Damn. I did see him there. He brought me some files at least twice. But he wasn’t wearing a kilt. Or a garland of flowers in his hair.”

  Sighing softly, Maggie said, “I never really believed it could be Lamont. So it had to be Farley. No wonder you’ve been a threat to him. He knew you could remember. No one else could have connected him with a theft in San Francisco. He joined Wonderland in Little Rock.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie.”

  “So am I.” She smiled. “It would be easier if he seemed more of a villainous kind of person.”

  Gideon was silent for a moment, then said, “The police can definitely get a conviction on the theft. It’ll put him away for a long time, honey.”

  She knew what he was saying, but shook her head. “He killed Merlin. He has to pay for that, too. If only—if only someone could tell me at least part of what happened that night, enough to convince him someone had seen or heard—”

  “Maggie?” She looked startled, he thought, as if something had suddenly occurred to her.

  “Bear pond,” she murmured. “Someone named Merlin found a bear pond.”

  “What Sean told me? Bear pond…” Then he realized, and it made perfect sense once you thought like a six-year-old. “Of course. Bearer bond. Merlin found a bearer bond.”

  “He heard it and didn’t understand. So he turned it around until it made some kind of sense to him. Gideon, Sean’s our witness. You said it yourself, he sees and hears everything around here. Even what he isn’t supposed to. Even what he doesn’t understand.”

  “Will the police believe a six-year-old?”

  Maggie frowned. “Maybe they won’t have to. If Sean can tell me enough of what happened that night, I might be able to convince Farley there was a witness without telling him who it was.”

  “It’s dangerous, Maggie.”

  She looked up at him steadily. “I don’t think Farley would hurt me. But we’ll set it up carefully, just to be on the safe side. You’ll be near. And then it’ll be over.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and said, “I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”

  “You probably could,” she admitted. “But I’m asking you not to try. I need to do this, Gideon.”

  “All right. What first?”

  “First,” she said, getting to her feet, “we put this bed back where it belongs. Then we get a bottle of wine and those snacks Tina left for us and go back to my wagon. Until the others return late this afternoon, there really isn’t much for us to do. Except enjoy the time alone.”

  “You’re just trying to take my mind off this,” he said.

  “Will it work, do you think?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  It worked.

  It was after five when the carnies returned to the encampment, and the quiet was broken by the natural conversation, laughter, and squa
bbles of people who had spent the day enjoying themselves. The teams were unhitched, supplies and individual purchases sorted and put away, and everyone began to settle down.

  Maggie had no difficulty in speaking to Sean alone, because he wanted to tell her all about the movie he’d seen in town. She sat on the steps of her wagon talking to him awhile. Nearby, Gideon took down his barely used tent—with the enthusiastic help of Leo, who’d finally cheered up—and kept an unobtrusive eye out to make sure no one overheard what Sean had to say.

  Smiling, Maggie listened as the boy minutely described the movie, whose special effects had won his admiration. When he finally ran out of wows, she spoke to him in a careful tone that was serious without being at all threatening.

  “Sean, I need to talk to you about something very important.”

  “What?”

  Understanding children, Maggie knew that she’d never get anything out of Sean until he was certain he wouldn’t be punished for having been where he shouldn’t have been. She also knew that Sean loved secrets.

  “It’s a secret,” she said gravely.

  His eyes brightened.

  “The thing is, I only know part of the secret, and I think you know part of it, too. I think that one night when you were supposed to be in bed, you sneaked outside.”

  “Ma won’t let me do that,” he said innocently.

  “This time,” Maggie said sincerely, “she’s going to be proud of you for doing it. Because you discovered a secret. And you were smart enough not to tell anybody about it.”

  His brow furrowed. “What secret did I find, Maggie?”

  “You found out that Merlin had found a bear pond, didn’t you?”

  Sean studied a grubby thumb for a moment, then looked at her from underneath his lashes. “Ma won’t be mad at me?”

  “I promise. When you and I put our heads together and figure out all of the secret, your ma will be very proud of you.”

  After a moment he said with a slight air of grievance, “Well, I didn’t actually see the bear pond. I just heard Farley and Merlin talkin’ about it.”

  “When was that, Sean?”