Foul Play (A Moose River Mystery Book 4)

by Jeff Shelby

  So it looked to me like she was...on the job.

  She waved at me and started jogging down the aisle toward us. Well, trying to jog – the clown shoes prevented her from making good progress.

  “Is that clown coming toward us?” Jake asked, shrinking into his seat. “Do you know that clown? Daisy? My chest hurts.”

  Will tucked his chin into his sweatshirt so Jake wouldn’t see him laughing.

  “Relax,” I said. “I won’t let the clown get you.”

  “You don’t know how they are,” he whispered. A fine sheet of sweat covered his forehead. “They’re sneaky. They’ll fool you. Oh God. Here it comes.”

  “Daisy!” Olga said. “Thank goodness I found you!”

  “Oh my God. It knows you!” Jake whispered, his voice trembling.

  I dug my nails into his thigh, but focused on Olga. “What’s going on?”

  Her painted mouth twisted back and forth, her eyes flitting back and forth across the theater. “I...well...have you seen Joanne? Claussen?”

  It was an odd question, coming from Olga, dressed as a clown. I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “They told me at the door that she might have run out to get some things they needed backstage,” she said, adjusting her big red nose. “Uh, do you remember what we were talking about the other day? In the drug store?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Make it leave,” Jake whispered. “Please.”

  I dug my nails in harder to his thigh.

  “Well...well...oh my,” Olga said, wringing her white-gloved hands. “I’m working a kid’s birthday party. Out at her home. For her daughter. I’m sort of in charge. And I couldn’t find a blow torch.”

  Things you hope never to hear in the same sentence: “kids birthday party” and “blow torch.”

  “What?” I asked, completely confused.

  She took a deep breath and adjusted her multi-colored jester’s hat. “I couldn’t find a lighter. For the candles on the cake. So I went looking for a blowtorch.”

  A blowtorch for a cake? “Um...okay.”

  “They live on a farm on the east side of Moose River,” she said, her eyes still moving through the theater, searching. “I needed something to light them. So I went out to the barn.” Her eyes found me. “And do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Yes, Olga,” I said again. “I do. But you really aren’t making any sense.”

  The lights in the theater dimmed twice, signaling that the play was about to start again.

  Olga glanced up, panicked.

  “I don’t feel good,” Jake whispered.

  Will’s body shook, he was laughing so hard.

  Olga finally seemed to take notice that I wasn’t sitting alone, and that lots of people were looking at her.

  “Is the play over?” she asked.

  “No, it’s the intermission.”

  She wrung her hands some more.

  Then she leaned down and whispered in my ear.

  I pulled back, staring at her in disbelief.

  “I’m serious,” she said, recognizing the doubt on my face.

  I sat there for a moment, processing what she’d whispered to me into my ear.

  “Did she say she was going to kill you?” Jake whispered.

  I grabbed my coat and my purse. “I have to go.”

  “What? Where? With the clown?!”

  I kissed his cheek and stood. “Yes. With the clown. I’m getting her out of here so you don’t stroke out.”

  “Daisy, wait. Where are you going?” he asked, bewildered. “What about the rest of the play?”

  The lights were dimming.

  “I’ll see it tomorrow night,” I told him. “The real performance. I’ll see you at home.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked again.

  I pulled on my coat and sidestepped past him to get out into the aisle. “I’m going to see if maybe I’m not a terrible investigator after all.”

  FORTY

  “I was just shocked,” Olga said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

  We were barreling down the highway in the hearse that belonged to the mortuary where she worked. All I could think about was how Jake would argue that it wasn’t a coincidence that a clown drove a hearse; it just made it easier for him/her to hide all of the dead bodies.

  “Well, I can imagine,” I said, unsure of what to make of what she’d told me.

  “I just thought the easiest thing would be to confront Joanne,” she said, gripping the steer wheel. “Maybe there was something I didn’t know. Or I was misunderstanding something. I didn’t want to involve the police. I guess I just panicked.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “And I didn’t ask before. Is someone there watching the kids? I mean, since you left?”

  “Arnold,” she said.

  “Arnold?”

  “He’s a college student,” she said. “He’s my C.I.T.”

  “C.I.T.?”

  “Clown In Training,” she explained. “He’s studying business at the U, but he really wants to be a clown. He’s taking classes to appease his parents, but he works with me on the weekends. So he’s there with the kids right now. He can juggle, but really struggles with the unicycle right now. I’ll get him there.”

  “Right.”

  She moved the hearse over into the right lane and we took the exit off of the highway. She turned left from the off ramp and we crossed back over the highway and headed out toward the most remote, rural part of Moose River. There were acres of natural wetlands out in the area, along with a myriad of hiking trails that we’d used before in the warmer months. For the most part, it was open space that couldn’t be developed.

  “Normally, I don’t take jobs this far out of town,” Olga said. “But Joanne was desperate and offered to pay me a little extra to come out. Her son really wanted clowns and she couldn’t find anyone in the area willing to come out this far.”

  I pulled my phone out of my purse, thinking I might need it soon.

  And there was no service. We were too far removed from civilization.

  I stuffed it back in my purse. “That was nice of you. Okay, so when you went out to the barn...did you go back and tell anyone you were leaving? Before you drove to the theater?”

  She shook her head, her rainbow wig bobbing in several different directions. “No. I just told Arnold I was going to run and get some candles. I was too flustered and I didn’t think he’d understand.” She snapped her gloved fingers. “And I still don’t have candles. Or a blowtorch.”

  “That may end up being the least of our worries,” I said.

  We passed by a barren field of what I guessed was corn in the summer months, and she turned the hearse left onto a narrow dirt road. The road was dotted with potholes and ruts and she slowed down. It snaked its way around the edge of the field and then cut through a thick grove of bare-branched trees. We crested a small hill and as we descended the other side, I could see an old, two-story country farm house about two hundred yards in front of us, with a massive barn off in the distance, another fifty yards to the right of it.

  She pointed at the barn. “There. That’s where I went looking for the blowtorch.”

  It was straight out of a painting. Red with white trim, big doors in the front, windows on the top floor, just beneath the pitch of the roof. The path from the house to the barn was littered with leaves.

  She pulled the hearse to a stop right in front of the house. “I need to get inside and check on Arnold and the kids. He’s never worked with kids before.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to the barn.”

  “I saw a shovel just inside the door,” she said. “You know, just in case you need a weapon or something.”

  “Why would I need a weapon?”

  She shrugged and adjusted her big red nose. “I don’t know. I don’t know what else is out there.”

  “Good to know,” I said, pushing the car door open.

  I watched Olga s
curry into the house, her big red shoes flapping on the steps as she hopped up the porch and disappeared into the house that was apparently full of kids.

  I turned to the barn and starting walking that way. The cold wind bit at my cheeks and I pulled my hat down again as low as I could, this time for protection rather than going incognito. My boots crunched against the leaves on the path. I pulled out my phone again.

  Still no service.

  I dropped it back in my bag and eyed the front of the barn. I could see the main door slightly ajar, but couldn’t see anything inside. I hesitated for a moment, then headed for the entrance.

  I stood outside and listened.

  Nothing.

  I waited for a moment, but didn’t hear anything.

  I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The walls were lined with bales of hay and the floor was covered with loose straw and sawdust. The faint odor of cow manure mingled with the sweet smell of hay. I could make out a few random tools near the hay bales - a pitchfork, some shovels, one of those hook thingies used to hook the bales. There was an old ride-on mower tucked in once corner, a blue drop cloth half-covering it. The hay looked fresh, but everything else seemed as if it hadn’t been touched in awhile.

  I could see the back wall of the barn and it looked the same as the sidewalls. A few random tools, a few more bales of hay. I moved my gaze upward to the high-pitched roof. There was an overhanging loft three quarters of the way up and I could make out a flight of wooden stairs that led up to it. I squinted. There was something else. A door in the loft that looked as if it was on the back wall. I took a step back to get a better angle.

  It was definitely a door.

  With a light on behind it.

  My heart thumped in my chest.

  I walked over to the stairs and walked slowly up them, waiting for them to creak or crack. But they held firm and I made my way up them silently.

  I stood on the edge of the loft, maybe twenty-five feet above the barn floor. The door wasn’t on the back wall of the barn. It was actually attached to what looked a room, a room that had been built out. The walls looked about fifteen feet by fifteen feet: a decent sized room.

  I stood still and listened.

  I heard a faint voice.

  Yellow light glowed in the doorframe.

  I swallowed a couple of times, then crept over to the door.

  Then I grasped the knob and opened it.

  Amanda Pendleton was stretched out on a bed, watching a flat screen TV attached to a wall, when she craned her neck toward me and said, “Hey.”

  FORTY ONE

  “I’m starving,” she said, sitting up on the bed. “Did you bring dinner, by any chance?”

  She was in a pair of yoga pants and over-sized hooded sweatshirt. Her long black, Snow White-like hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she had thick, pink wool socks on her feet. She didn’t appear to be in any distress.

  Other than her hunger.

  “Uh, no,” I said, staring at her.

  “Is anyone bringing me dinner?” She picked up a phone from the bed. “It’s way late.”

  “Uh, I have no idea,” I said. I took a small step toward her. “Can I ask why you’re here?”

  She stared at me for a long moment. “I’m not supposed to answer that.”

  A faint humming buzzed in the room, courtesy of a small space heater in the corner. There were several piles of clothes stacked neatly beneath the TV. If we hadn’t been in a barn, it wouldn’t have been a reach to assume we were in Amanda’s bedroom.

  “Do you know there are a lot of people looking for you?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I sorta figured.”

  “Were you kidnapped? Or what?” I shook my head. “I’m totally confused here.”

  “Who are you anyway?”

  “I’m Daisy Savage,” I said. “My daughters are in the play with you. Were.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Why are you here?”

  “Because...wait. Answer my question first. Were you kidnapped?”

  She thought hard for a moment. “Technically, yes. It was the flowers.”

  “The flowers?”

  She sighed, like she’d told the story a million times already. “I answered the door at my house. It was a flower delivery lady. She had flowers for me. She told me to smell them. I did and totally passed out.” She frowned. “I think it was chloroform.”

  “Flowers knocked you out?”

  “They were covered in the chloroform. I took a deep breath.”

  “And you ended up here?”

  She looked around. “Yeah. But I’m only here for like two more days.”

  “So you aren’t being held against your will?”

  She messed with her ponytail. “I guess that’s what you’d call a gray area.”

  “I don’t think there are gray areas when it comes to kidnapping.”

  “Well, this is just...different.”

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled. I was utterly confused. This hadn’t been at all what I’d expected to find.

  “Okay,” I said. “How about if you start from the beginning?”

  She sighed again, like starting from the beginning was a huge effort. “I told you. I smelled the flowers.”

  “Who brought you the flowers?”

  She sighed again. “Mrs. Claussen.”

  “Joanne?”

  “If she’s the one who owns the farm then, yeah, I guess.”

  “Okay. Then what happened?”

  “Well, I guess I fainted,” she explained, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Because I totally don’t remember the drive out here. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on this bed.”

  “Alone?”

  “No. Mrs. Claussen was here. She had a bottle of water and a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Which I could totally use right now.”

  She glanced around the room, as if expecting a bag would somehow magically appear.

  “Was she the one who brought you here?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. She had like a delivery uniform and a baseball hat on when she brought the flowers. Plus, I didn’t really know her, anyway. But, yeah.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, then I freaked out.”

  Finally. Something that made sense.

  “I mean, freaked,” she said. “I mean, I was cool with the Sour Patch Kids, but I didn’t know where I was or what was going on, you know?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So Mrs. Claussen apologized to me,” Amanda continued. “For the flowers. And then she asked if I was interested in striking a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  She nodded, her ponytail bobbing behind her. “Yeah. She’d pay me five hundred bucks if I’d just stay here until the play was over. At first, I wasn’t too cool with that. Because I also had a cheer competition. But then she offered me six hundred so I said, cool, whatever.”

  My temples throbbed as I processed her words. So she had been kidnapped. She hadn’t run away. But she’d been in on it? Sort of?

  “So she’s paying you,” I repeated. “To stay here.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Why?”

  “No clue.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “She’s paying me six hundred bucks and I got to miss school,” she said. “It’s been kinda cool.”

  “But you also missed the cheer thing,” I said. “And the play. And everyone’s been worried about you.”

  She considered that for a moment. “The cheer thing, I didn’t even care about, to be honest. My coach is kind of insane and I should’ve quit that like a year ago. I don’t even like it.”

  Having met Greta Mathisen and seen the level of insanity she’d exhibited, I didn’t doubt her coach might fall into the same category.

  “The play, yeah, that was kind of a hard thing,” she continued. “I really wanted to be Snow White, you know? But I knew they�
��d find someone else to do it. And six hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

  “And what about the part where everyone was worried about you?” I asked.

  She made a face, like she wasn’t terribly concerned about that. “I figured my family would just think I took off again. I’ve done it before. And I just figured it would be cool when I got home. They’d be mad, but I’d be back and they’d get over it. Like before.”

  I didn’t know the Pendleton family, but her reasoning seemed extremely flawed to me.

  “Okay, so here’s the...six hundred dollar question,” I said. “Why? Why did Joanne do this? Set this up?”

  “You should ask her.”

  “Oh, I’m going to,” I told her.

  “No, I mean you should ask her right now,” Amanda said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Joanne Claussen said. “Ask me.”

  I turned around.

  Joanne was standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, looking very, very unhappy.

  FORTY TWO

  “I saw you leave the theater,” Joanne said. “With Olga.”

  “Is that the clown lady?” Amanda asked. “I think I saw her earlier.”

  “I put two and two together,” Joanne said, ignoring her. “You’d been asking questions about Amanda and she was here at the farm. Alone.”

  She didn’t have anything in her hands. That was good. Because I’d been imagining her harboring a pitchfork and stabbing both Amanda and me.

  “She saw Amanda out here,” I told her. “She actually came to find you, but didn’t know where you were.”

  “I had to go pick up the candy,” she said. “For the concessions. Tomorrow.”

  “Ah.”

  We stood there awkwardly while Amanda went to work on her ponytail again.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Joanne blurted out.

  “Joanne. I can’t not tell anyone. You kept her here against her will.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Because you were paying her to stay?” I said. “You showed up at her house and knocked her out.”