“Drop the knife,” Lisa demanded, “or I'll break her arm.”
Wow. Get her, I thought. My secretary was going to be insufferably pleased with herself for weeks. I was delighted. I wanted to cheer, and would have, had it not been for the life and death situation. Even an uncouth washed-up detective can muster some decorum. I gave her a wink instead and turned back to the chauffeur. Rudy sneered and threw his knife to the floor.
Bless her heart, Lisa had saved me from having to shoot Rudy. I made up my mind then and there not to hold it against her that, in doing so, she had also saved Wenders' life. Sometimes you had to take the bad with the good; beggars couldn't be choosers.
Though I hated to do it, still targeting Rudy, I stepped up and unpinned Wenders. He caught himself from falling then made long work of groaning, stretching, coaxing his circulation back, catching his breath, and tamping his bleeding throat with a hanky. Then he made short work of calling the suburban patrol, and his slow-moving partner, Dave Mason, in from their lounging positions outside. He put a couple of guys on Rudy and asked the lone female officer among them to rescue Alida's arm from Lisa. The acrobat thought she'd be feisty but vetoed it when Wenders growled.
Everybody took a breath. Then Wenders turned to me like the village idiot in a tornado. “Aw-right, Blake. What the hell is goin' on here? Who are these people?”
“You don't know them?” I admit I was aghast. The list of people, places, and things Wenders didn't know would probably have stretched to the moon and back. But for the lead investigator, even one as slipshod and lazy as Wenders, to be unaware of all the possible suspects in a multiple homicide he was working; that I couldn't believe. “That's Rudy Ace. Mrs. Callicoat's chauffeur. And that's Alida Harrison, the aerial acrobat and contortionist. You really don't know them?”
“I seen her act from a distance,” he said, jutting a fat thumb. “It was okay, if you like the circus. I don't. I read a report; one of my detectives interviewed her. It was a nothing burger.” He turned the thumb on Rudy. “Him I never seen before.”
“Some cop!” I shouted. “How were you investigating this case? With your television clicker?” I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Wenders reddened and gritted his teeth. “Yeah, yeah,” he barked. “Like always, Blake, you're talkin' but you're not sayin' anything. What's the owner's chauffeur got to do with anything? And why's he throwing knives at me?”
“He's your murderer.”
“Why? What's he got against circus performers?”
“I should have said one of your murderers.” I pointed at Alida. “She's the other.”
“Okay,” Wenders said without enthusiasm. “She at least gets us into the circus.” But as he stared at the acrobat, all one hundred and five pounds of her, rough but fetching in tight jeans and sweatshirt, he didn't appear convinced. Not that Wenders was seeing what I was seeing. Sexy to the lieutenant was a hoagie with melted cheese. And a killer, in our experiences together, looked like whatever I handed him. “My guys talked to her. Or tried to. They said she's always up in the air; at least her nose was. What's she got to do with a janitor and a couple of Freak Show performers? What have either of them to do with it?” He glared at me. “I'm askin'?”
“All right,” I said. “I'm telling.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The tale that needs to be told is remarkably twisted,” I said. “To begin to untangle the murderous mess, we need to go back to another time, long before the Big Top came to Navy Pier; over three years ago. To another place, Cape Girardeau, Missouri; the north boundary of the southern circuit for circus entertainment. Back to the last days of the small, now defunct, Kessler Traveling Circus.”
The chauffeur shot a quick hard glance in Alida's direction. “You see,” I said. “Rudy knows the name.” The acrobat didn't see the look or pretended not to. She continued to stare a hole through me. “So does Alida but she's keeping it to herself.”
“Well I don't,” Wenders growled. “So fill me in.”
“The Kessler Traveling Circus is a name lost now to history. But once, for a short while, it had its own genuine claim to fame, a trapeze act featuring an acrobat advertised as 'Elegance in the Air' and known as The Canary.
“Her real name was Aurelia Marx Herman. She was an unequaled talent, a stunning beauty and, with her husband, Gunther Herman, made up an act known as 'The Hawk and The Canary'. They were a smash. But it didn't take a genius to see Aurelia was the reason for their success. The spotlight shown far brighter on her than her husband and Gunther, being a business minded fellow above all, chose not to fight it. The act remained the same but their name was changed. Soon they were wowing audiences as Kessler's star attraction, 'The Canary'.
“Gunther didn't mind. Both on stage and off it was a situation that came up occasionally; his taking a back seat. He anchored their act as he anchored their marriage. He was a marvel of physical strength and prowess, but he was also much older than Aurelia. From their first meeting the couple hit it off. They worked well together, enjoyed each other intimately, and had a great deal in common. Both were strong, handsome, dazzling performers. Both were successful. They shared a similar world view. Both were narcissists. And both, they discovered, had severe kinks in their personalities, particularly in regard to their sexual tastes. Aurelia and Gunther were voracious sluts. It was a match almost made in heaven. I stress the word almost. Because it was this particular attribute, their lusts, that led to a crisis.
“Some of what follows is conjecture. But it is intelligent conjecture supported by fact. An event occurred; a bad thing happened… in one of three ways. Either Gunther did the bad thing. Or he and his wife did the bad thing together. Or Aurelia acted on her own. The third option is the more likely of the three. As mentioned, it's a matter of rumor and record the couple were sexually ravenous. But Gunther was two decades older and no match for his young wife in the libido department. Despite the will he had no way to keep up with Aurelia. He wasn't a fool. He recognized the situation for what it was and, as with the name of their act, knew better than to fight reality. When Gunther reached his sexual limit, he was forced to stifle his jealousies and temporarily bow out of the game. His wife played on without him. But, as surely as Gunther was the anchor, Aurelia had control problems. Things sometimes got out of hand; also a matter of record. On those occasions when Aurelia's activities got her into trouble, and there were several, Gunther had to come to her rescue.
“The circus didn't like it. They were a family entertainment. But she was The Canary. And Gunther was at least as good a fixer as he was an acrobat.”
Wenders growled. “Is this history lesson about people we never heard of goin' anywhere?”
“It is,” I assured him. “It's arrived. One of their playmates, Aurelia's last playmate, was an equestrian performer, a Russian trick bareback rider about her own age, and very much her own build, called Luna Blaženovic. Records show she'd only been with the Kessler Circus for a few weeks. At first sight, the Hermans thought Luna a tasty-looking morsel. They wanted her and they pursued her.
“As I said, the acrobats' marriage was a match made in heaven… until one day from hell. One day, when Gunther had taken himself out of the game, and The Canary was playing alone, Aurelia caught Luna. One way or another the two young ladies met for an afternoon of sapphic amor.”
“They met for what?” Wenders asked.
“They hooked up,” I told him. “The girls, they got it on.”
“Oh, that,” he said dully. “How the hell do you know? And why do we care? Is this necessary, Blake, in mixed company?”
“The details of their encounter? No. They might make a juicy page turner of a novel, but they're not vital to our purpose. What is vital is the fact the encounter took place. Because it was during their tryst that Aurelia, as she had a tendency to do, lost control. Luna Blaženovic was accidentally killed.”
Though by the looks a minor shock went around the pavilion, not a word was spoken.<
br />
“When she got control of herself and realized what had happened, as she always did, Aurelia called on her husband. He may have been alarmed by what he saw. He might even have been sickened. But ever and always he was devoted to (if not obsessed with) his wife and he did as she demanded. She demanded he get rid of the body.
“Gunther had to think quick. Thinking quick was part of his profession and he wasn't one to panic. He would protect his wife. But, as we already know, he was also a man of business and he saw an opportunity. Rather than make the body disappear, he would proclaim the death, put the body in the spotlight, and gain a chunk of change for the effort.
“Their profession made it necessary their lives be heavily insured. The death of either The Hawk or The Canary would set the other up for life. Aurelia and Luna had nearly identical body shapes and both looked superficially alike. If they fiddled the insurance company, if Luna – as The Canary – died in Aurelia's place… But Luna's body was already cooling. The next show time was quickly approaching. There was little time to plan.
“Still plan they did. The Canary would put on her heart-stopping performance as usual. A chaotic event would grab the attention of the audience and stop the show. During that diversion, a tragic accident would occur. With Luna providing the corpse, The Canary would die before hundreds of witnesses and nobody would see a thing.
“The glitch in the program was that Gunther and Aurelia, busy on the trapeze above, would need an accomplice to create the diversion and assist with the body switch. There was no way around it. There were few prospects from which to choose. And they had no time. Gunther found his answer in a long-time co-worker. His name was Michael Gronchi. Circus visitors knew him as Mickey, the Sideshow Geek. The upside was Mickey was desperate to keep his job and his loyalty could be cheaply bought. The downside was he spent most of his free time inside a whiskey bottle. He might not have been the best choice but there was no time to be choosey.
“Luna's body, dressed in a costume identical to the one to be worn by The Canary for that night's performance, was hidden in an ordinary trunk. It's a guess but, I have reason to believe, a good one. Just before the show, the ringmaster would be informed Luna was ill and would not perform. One of a half-dozen bareback riders in the show, the ringmaster would not have had time to check and would likely not have cared awfully. Message delivered, Mickey hurriedly dragged the trunk to ringside then made himself scarce. A trunk among the countless electrical boxes, props, and odds and ends at ringside? With the show ready to begin who would have noticed? Who would have guessed? The dead little trick rider was there for the whole performance; until she was needed.
“On cue, most likely a dicey and dangerous moment above, when The Canary would have had every eye under the Big Top on her, Mickey followed his orders and, unseen, created their diversion. He set fire to the straw in an empty animal cage on the far side of the tent. It went up like tinder. But Mickey didn't know. Without looking back, he was off to his next assignment – the trunk near center ring.
“One by one backstage personnel spotted the fire and began to perceive the danger. The tent crew shouted to one another, interrupting the show without caring, calling for water and help as the flames spread beyond the cage and caught a row of draperies. Within seconds, performers and animals became alarmed. The audience, mesmerized by The Canary's performance above, caught on slower and in waves, but they did catch on. Within minutes the fire, like the lady acrobat that had inspired it, went totally out of control. Panic erupted.
“No one actually saw the accident. How could they? They were all on the run. The ushers and clowns trying to move the crowd to safety. The performers trying to rescue their props. The animal keepers trying to herd their frightened charges away. The ringmaster trying with little success to organize the chaos. No one saw Mickey the Geek open the trunk, lift out Luna's body, and lay it in the center ring beneath the aerial rigging. No one saw Aurelia slide to the ground and fold herself up in that same trunk. No one saw Mickey drag the trunk away. And no one saw Gunther drop from above, fall on Luna's body, and begin to shout his lungs out that his wife had fallen. All anyone knew was The Canary was flying aloft, a fire erupted in the tent and, as they scrambled to escape the blaze, The Canary lay dead in the sawdust of the center ring.
“Gunther was, of course, too distraught to allow anyone else near the body. There is no record as to what he thought of Mickey's handiwork. There's no doubt the geek came through for them. But he overdid it. When the smoke cleared nearly one hundred people, performers and audience alike, had been injured. Several seriously. One person went missing, a trick rider named Luna Blaženovic. One person, Aurelia Marx Herman, was accidentally killed. The Canary died when she fell from the sky.
“The following day Gunther and Mickey identified Luna as the dead Aurelia. After a perfunctory Coroner's jury reached a verdict of 'Accidental Death', the body was cremated, and Gunther collected his insurance money. The Kessler Traveling Circus folded without another performance. Heartbroken, Gunther retired and, almost immediately, vanished from the face of the earth.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Fascinating,” Wenders growled with no sign he was fascinated. “But how does a questionable death and an insurance fiddle in Missouri three years ago lead to modern day murder in Chicago?”
“Because the principals in that tragic tale didn't really vanish from the face of the earth. They merely seemed to. Circus performers have always come and gone like gypsies. Small circuses have always done the same. No one batted an eye when, several years later, a tiny circus appeared out of the blue. It was owned and managed by its ringmaster, Karl Kreis, a fellow nobody had ever heard of before. He preferred to be called The Major. He called his show The Major's Major Circus.
“After the fire, Gunther Herman had no traceable future. He disappeared. Before the fire, Karl Kreis had no past. He didn't exist. Karl Kreis, The Major, was Gunther Herman. He'd returned to the circus; no longer as a trapeze artist, those days were over, but as the head honcho. His new show was a rousing success. So much so it was acquired at a handsome price by a financial group owned by a Chicago entrepreneur. Herman had his second big windfall in less than three years and, out of it, the All New Callicoat and Major Combined Circus was born.
“Only one step remained in Herman's plan; the plan concocted in haste that fateful day of Luna's death. But a hitch came last spring, bringing with it several weeks of fear, when Herman's new partner and majority owner, Reginald Callicoat, was killed in a plane crash. What would happen to his circus? What would happen to the final step in his plan? But it sorted itself. The heiress and new owner, Danita Callicoat, was willing the circus continue. The Major breathed a sigh of relief and kept on keeping on. Not long ago, his plan came full circle. He hired a brilliant aerialist named Alida Harrison…”
Everyone, even Rudy, turned to stare at the pixie. Alida lifted a proud and defiant chin.
“It was quickly apparent she would be their headlining act. What no one knew was Alida, like The Major, had no discernible past. In short order, and in spite of their age difference (nearly two decades), and to the wasted tears of a pint-sized circus clown, The Major and the new acrobat became engaged.
“Nobody knew The Major and Alida were already married. Gunther Herman was back from obscurity and Aurelia Marx Herman had returned from the grave; both with new identities and new lives, The Major running his own circus, his wife performing a new solo act.”
“You mean,” Wenders asked, chucking a thumb at Alida, “this is Aurelia Herman?”
The little acrobat gnashed her teeth at the homicide detective. Wenders gave her a sneer in return.
“In the flesh,” I said, going on. “They'd allowed things to cool off and reunited to resume the fun and games. Everything might have been jake except the little clown, Alfonso Valencia, a self-proclaimed second-in-command, took it upon himself – without his bosses' knowledge – to hire a down and out Sideshow geek to sweep up around the
circus. Michael Gronchi had, by sheer coincidence, wandered into Chicago and the Callicoat and Major Circus.
“The crap hit the fan in no time at all. Gronchi, who'd performed with the Kessler Circus and aided in their insurance fraud, recognized The Major as Gunther Herman and Alida as Herman's supposedly dead wife, neither of whom he had ever expected to see again. He recognized – if not a gold mine – at least a pot of gold to call his own. After all those years on the circuit he saw a chance to stroll down easy street. He knew he was complicit in their original crime. He also knew, if his scheme went wrong, the worst he might face would be a charge of mishandling a corpse or conspiring to defraud. He had manslaughter to dangle over the Hermans. It was worth the risk. Mickey blackmailed the couple.
“The Major may have been willing to go along. He'd had a lot of practice giving in, especially where his wife was concerned, and might have parted with a little money to keep the old drunk quiet. Mickey wasn't a professional gangster, after all, just a bum with an opportunity. But Alida, then and now, lived for Alida. She knew her wants and desires and nothing else. She never gave in. She saw Mickey as a threat to be dealt with immediately and for good. If The Major wouldn't take care of it she had an easy way of finding someone who would. She's a talented performer but her outlook on life is a living embodiment of a Third Grader's joke. 'With one of these,' the little girl said, lifting her dress, 'I can get all of those I want.'”
Wenders ogled the pixie and swallowed hard.
“That's what she did,” I went on. “Using her God-given credit card, Alida purchased the aid of the circus owner's husky chauffeur, Rudy Ace.” I turned to Rudy. “Isn't that right?” He didn't answer but he didn't waver either. He held his silence and a cold thousand-yard stare. I returned to Wenders. “On her order, Rudy hurled a knife into Mickey's back and shoved the old drunk into Lake Michigan from the deck of the submarine Silversides there on Navy Pier. That should have secured their secret and ended the problem.
Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2) Page 24
