Pete said, “We don’t use whipping cream for pies because it makes such a mess.”
He turned to the audience. “Speaking of making a mess, anybody know why we don’t throw confetti in the circus anymore?”
He waited a beat and answered himself. “Because it sticks to hot dogs and falls in people’s drinks, and when the circus moves on somebody has to clean it up. We use popcorn now. Nobody minds getting hit with popcorn, and when the tent comes down the birds eat it.”
Pete ducked behind the screen again, and it suddenly hit me that the pain-forgetting laughter that had filled the room was the whole point of clowning. That’s why clowns are called holy fools. The Albert Schweitzers and Mother Teresas of the world are revered for their work with the sick and dying, but clowns do it anonymously. They put on funny faces and crazy costumes and do rib-tickling skits for no reason other than to make people forget their troubles for a few minutes.
The egomaniacs who kill and rob and destroy think themselves powerful, but any idiot can create destruction. The truly powerful are the men and women who use imagination and hard work to create moments of innocent laughter. For the first time, I understood why Conrad Ferrelli had wanted to give clowns and other circus professionals their own retirement home. They deserve it.
In a few seconds, Pete came out looking like himself again.
To the class, he said, “I want you to watch a video now of some famous clown skits. Watch closely. Take notes. This is something I’m going to want you to do for the rest of the course. The skits look easy. They look unrehearsed and spontaneous, but every move is carefully choreographed. Every skit has been rehearsed hundreds of times. You have to know all these gags and be able to perform them smoothly before you graduate. When the video ends, take a break and meet back here at one o’clock.”
I looked at my watch. It was eleven-fifteen. With luck, I could pick Pete’s brain until one o’clock.
He headed toward me with an enormous grin. “What a nice surprise.”
“Pete, would you have breakfast with me?”
“Honey, I had breakfast five hours ago, but I’ll have lunch with you. And I was just kidding about women saying I’m too small.”
“I’m sure you’re a titan among men, Pete, but that’s not why I want to have lunch with you.”
“You want to ask me questions about Conrad Ferrelli, don’t you?”
“Do you mind?”
“Hell, no, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But I’ll bet people looking at us will think I’m your hot honey.”
I laughed. “If I’m lucky, Pete, that’s what they’ll think.”
“Come on, I’ll take you to a place that has the best hot Cubans in town.”
In Florida a hot Cuban is a sandwich made of thinsliced ham, spicy pork, baby Swiss cheese, and sliced dill pickles. It’s called a Cuban because it’s stacked in a split Cuban roll, which gets its crispy crust from being baked in palmetto leaves. The whole thing is smashed flat in a hot buttered plancha—sort of like a waffle iron—and grilled until the cheese melts and the pickle juice steams into the meat. I only eat about one a year, because one gauge of how much time you have left before your arteries clog up is the number of Cubans you’ve eaten in your lifetime.
I followed Pete to a hole-in-the-wall café, and the deputy followed me. I wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for having lunch while being tailed, but when I got out of the Bronco, I gave him a wave and pointed inside. He must have been given orders not to talk to me, because he pretended not to see my hand signals.
Pete gallantly held the door open for me, and we gave our Cuban orders to a fat man in a white apron, then moved down the counter to pick up our drinks from an open cooler. Pete got a beer and I pulled out unsweetened iced tea. We carried them to a dark plastic booth and slid in to wait.
18
Up close, Pete’s face was a lot more reflective than he had seemed. Deep laugh lines fanned at the corners of his eyes, but the eyes were intelligent and watchful.
I said, “Josephine said you had something to tell me about Denton Ferrelli and Leo Brossi.”
“Yeah, the name rang a bell, so I made some calls. Brossi owned a fleet of casino ships that operated under the name Moon Surfer. Had about fifteen of them going out of different ports. Another company owned by a guy named Samson started sending casino ships into the same ports Brossi was using. Samson was gunned down on his way home one night. Papers called it a gangland-style killing, but nobody was ever arrested.”
“What’s Brossi’s connection to Denton Ferrelli?”
“Well, that’s what’s interesting. Turns out Brossi got the money to buy his casino ships from the trust that Denton Ferrelli manages. It was supposedly a way to stimulate the economies where Brossi’s boats operated.”
I said, “The property where Conrad planned to build the circus retirement home was originally bought to dock a casino ship. Denton bought it, and Conrad took it away from him.”
Pete’s eyebrows rose, and the cook in the apron hollered, “Cubans up!”
Pete jumped to his feet, hurried to the counter, and carried back plastic baskets holding Cubans and french fries, with little tubs of mustard and ketchup on the side. We busied ourselves for a minute pulling napkins from a stainless-steel holder and turning our baskets until they faced us to our satisfaction.
Floridians take their hot Cubans seriously. Fights sometimes break out over whether it’s okay to add mayonnaise or tomatoes to them. When I dipped mine in the tub of hot mustard, Pete winced.
I said, “Pete, somebody is trying to kill me, and it has to do with Conrad’s death. I can’t prove it, but I think it’s Denton Ferrelli.”
He said, “Denton’s always been twisted. When they were growing up, Conrad was a sensitive kid, maybe too sensitive, and Denton was a bully. Angelo gave Denton hell if he caught him tormenting Conrad, but Denton made the boy’s life miserable.”
He gazed over my head for a moment, looking into past memories.
“To be fair, there were people who made Denton’s life miserable too. Nearly every town we went to, some fool would say something about his birthmark, call it the mark of the devil or ask him if he was one of the circus freaks.”
He shook his head like a dog shaking off water.
“One of the clowns had a monkey act. This little spider monkey would play like he was exposing all the tricks, you know, running around and seeming like he was screwing everything up for the guy doing the gag. It was all rehearsed, of course, but the audience loved it.”
He gave me a stern glare.
“The monkey loved it too. All that propaganda those PETA people put out about how circus animals are mistreated is a bunch of crap. We probably took better care of our animals than they take care of their kids. That monkey lived in the train car with the clown, sat in his lap at the table, rode on his shoulder half the time. Anyway, Conrad made friends with the monkey, and Denton teased him about it a lot, called the monkey Conrad’s girlfriend, things like that.”
A pained expression crossed his face, and he took a long swallow of beer. When he looked at me, his eyes were suspiciously shiny.
“Denton sneaked in one day and broke the monkey’s legs. Snapped them like twigs. It broke Conrad’s heart. The kid was never the same after that. He went quiet and stayed to himself.”
My throat closed, and I laid my Cuban down. I can’t stand to hear about kids or animals being hurt, especially when it’s on purpose.
Pete said, “It wasn’t the first time Denton hurt an animal, but everybody had felt sorry for him with that mark on his face and they’d cut him a lot of slack. But when he hurt the monkey, that was it. It nearly killed Angelo. I mean, how could you live with something like that, knowing you had a kid that vicious?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could live with that. I couldn’t even breathe, thinking about it.
Pete said, “You know what the worst thing was about Denton hurting that monkey? He took it home t
o Angelo’s train car and laid it on the doorstep. Then he yelled to Conrad to come out. Acted real friendly, like he wanted to do something with him like a big brother. He was about ten, and Conrad was around five. Conrad fell for it and opened the door. There was the little monkey crying in pain, and Denton doubled over laughing.”
I thought of the kitten with broken legs, the last thing Conrad had seen before somebody shot him with a drug that paralyzed his lungs. Perhaps the last thing he saw before his heart stopped beating had been Denton laughing.
Watching me closely, Pete said, “I’ve thought Denton was a killer ever since his mother died. She worked with the horses, rode standing up on a white stallion, God, it was beautiful. She had a kind of psychic communication with those horses. I’ve seen her stand on one side of the ring and them on another, and I swear they read her mind. They would all move in unison, like a dance troupe.”
He took a swallow of beer and set the bottle on the table with a sharp thud.
“That’s how she died, with the horses. They were in a ring around her, standing on their hind legs, and somebody shot a dart into one of them. He stumbled and they all fell on top of her, kicking and hitting one another. She was trampled to death.”
I shuddered. “What an awful way to die.”
“Awful to watch too. The horses were screaming, the audience was screaming, little children were shrieking. The horses had to be put down. She would have hated that.”
“You think Denton—”
“He was there that night, watching, but I never saw the kid shed a tear. Conrad was hysterical, poor kid, but not Denton. I don’t think it even touched him.”
He snapped his mouth shut as if he didn’t want to let out what he was thinking and then said it anyway.
“They never did find out who shot the dart into the horse.”
I thought about what Guidry had said, about elephants being shot with dart guns from helicopters. But those darts had been filled with deadly drugs.
Pete fixed me with a keen blue stare. “Denton was there when Angelo died too. They were alone on Denton’s boat, and Angelo supposedly fell overboard and drowned. Angelo never even liked boats. That makes two deaths when Denton was present. Three, counting Conrad.”
“Denton wasn’t actually around when Conrad died.”
“You know that for a fact?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anything for a fact, Pete.”
“Well, that’s good, honey. People who know things for a fact are among the stupidest people on the face of the earth. You keep not knowing, and you’ll be a lot smarter.”
Maybe it was because the hot mustard had gone to my head, but I understood what he meant.
Pete looked at my face. “I shouldn’t have told you that. It’s enough to make anybody sick. Let’s talk about something else. Like how you probably need an older man in your life.”
My mouth was so dry I had to take a long drink of iced tea before I could speak.
I said, “Pete, did Denton ever have anything to do with snakes?”
“Snakes? Not that I know of.”
I rotated my iced tea on the tabletop.
I said, “When I was at Josephine’s this morning, Priscilla said she knew somebody who drives a truck like the one that chased me. She wouldn’t tell me who it was, but you know, don’t you?”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back in the booth. “Priscilla’s a good girl, Dixie. She was on the street for a while, bad family, abuse, the whole nine yards. But she’s trying really hard, you know? She’s not but sixteen and she’s got that baby, and she’s a good little mother. I’ve helped her all I can, gave her a room over my garage, sent her to Josephine for a job, I don’t want to rock her boat.”
“Somebody put a rattlesnake in my apartment last night. Two of them, in fact. One was under my mattress. I slept on it.”
He flinched as if I’d stuck a knife in him. “Good God.”
“I’m sorry to put you in the middle, Pete, but there’s a deputy outside tailing me because my life is in danger. There are law-enforcement people at my apartment right now, going through it inch by inch, looking for other snakes or poisonous spiders or whatever. Somebody tried to run me down with a truck, and if Priscilla knows who it is, she’d damn well better tell me or she’s going to have to talk to the sheriff’s department.”
“Did you tell Priscilla about the snakes?”
“Just the truck.”
“I’ll talk to her, Dixie. I think she probably doesn’t understand how important it is. But any information needs to come from her, not from me.”
“I’ll wait a few hours, Pete, but that’s all.”
His mouth tightened into a grim line. “I’d like to make sure Priscilla is safe before she tells you anything. Your life may not be the only one in danger.”
I wadded my napkin and tossed it on top of my partially eaten sandwich.
“I have to go. Thanks for the Cuban.”
I leaned down and kissed his forehead before I left, causing his woolly eyebrows to waggle. Pete Madeira was a sweet man. Sexy too. I wondered if he would like to meet an older woman with lavender hair.
On the way out, I stopped and bought a Coke and a cold Cuban wrapped to go, and took it out to the guy tailing me. He was parked in the shade of a pin oak, but his car was a furnace and his face was red and covered with beads of sweat.
He tore off the wrapping and crammed half of it in his mouth. “Thanksh,” he said. “I was shtarving.”
I said, “You didn’t have to cook out here, you could have come inside. It’s not like I don’t know you’re following me.”
He swallowed, a visible lump going down his throat like a boa constrictor’s.
“Lieutenant Guidry would have my balls for lunch if I did that.”
“I’m going back to Secret Cove and the Ferrellis’ house. Just so you know.”
His mouth was full, so he waved his Cuban at me and nodded.
While I waited for the AC to cool the steering wheel enough to touch, I called Guidry.
This time he answered by snapping out a curt “Guidry here.”
I said, “I just talked to the clown I told you about. Pete Madeira.”
“You’ve been talking to a lot of people.”
“Pete said Denton broke a monkey’s legs, when he was ten and Conrad was five, and then showed it to Conrad. He said Conrad was never the same afterward.”
A beat went by, and Guidry’s voice suddenly became very military.
“Repeat, please.”
“Conrad had made friends with a spider monkey a clown used in his act. Denton broke its legs and laid it on the doorstep of the Ferrellis’ train car for Conrad to find. Then he laughed. Pete even thinks Denton may have had something to do with both his parents’ deaths. His mother died when somebody shot a dart into a horse she was working with, and all the horses went berserk and stomped her to death.”
“A dart?”
“He broke a monkey’s legs, Guidry, just like the kitten’s legs were broken. It’s connected. I know it’s connected.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He clicked off as if he had someplace important to go. I wished it was to arrest Denton Ferrelli, but I knew he had to have something more concrete than the story of a child’s sadistic act.
I backed the Bronco out of the parking space and headed back toward Secret Cove. The Cuban sat heavy in my stomach, the pain in my ribs was worse, my scraped knees stung, my head was sweaty, and my right eyeball was scratchy. I needed a shower and a nap. I needed to charge my phone. But I was afraid if I went home I’d imagine snakes leaping out at me from every corner. I wasn’t even sure I could sleep there again. I told myself that Stevie might need me, but the truth was that I wasn’t ready to be alone with myself yet.
There were no cars at Stevie’s house and no signs of activity. When I got out of the Bronco, I heard Reggie’s muffled barking from somewhere inside. I rang the doorbell and waited. The barking
continued, rapid and agitated. Not from the other side of the front door but from somewhere farther back. From the muffled sound, I thought he must be in a closed room.
I rang again and rapped on the door. “Stevie? It’s Dixie Hemingway.”
I waited some more. The barking became even more agitated. Reggie could apparently hear the doorbell and was responding to it.
I looked over my shoulder at the deputy in the driveway. The Cuban must have got to him, because he had slumped down in his seat, head resting on the headrest, chin tilted up and eyes closed. I left the front door and walked briskly around to the side of the house where a jalousied breezeway connected house and open carport. Conrad’s silver BMW had been impounded for forensics, but his Jeep Cherokee was inside, and so was Stevie’s Mercedes. From the sound of Reggie’s barking, I was pretty sure he was locked up in the laundry room between breezeway and kitchen.
I trudged back to the front door, looking toward the deputy as I went. His mouth had fallen open, and I could hear his snores. If Guidry caught him sleeping on the job like that, he’d cover him in honey and roll him in an ant bed, but I was sort of glad he was asleep. He wouldn’t see me use my door key to open the Ferrellis’ door.
Stevie hadn’t exactly hired me to take care of Reggie, but she had asked me to come by. Well, she hadn’t exactly asked me, but she’d said she appreciated it when I did. She was a woman stunned by grief. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She must have left the house with somebody and unintentionally left Reggie closed up in the laundry room. If I could call and ask her, I was certain she would tell me to go inside and rescue Reggie. She would tell me to make sure he’d been fed and that he had water and to take him for a walk if he needed to go to the bathroom.
I gave one last look at the deputy and got my key ring and code book from my backpack. I looked up the security code, selected the Ferrelli key, and unlocked the door. Inside, I started to punch in the security code on the keypad, but it wasn’t activated, so I hurried toward the source of Reggie’s barking. Through the living room and dining room, through the kitchen to the closed door to the laundry room. On the other side of the door, Reggie was having hysterics and clawing at the door.
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund Page 15
