The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Penn rested her nose on Pippa’s knee. Pippa stroked her head and fingered the tip of Penn’s ear. The sides of her newly bobbed hair tickled her chin.

  “You have every need met. Every future need arranged. I’ve provided for you. Protected you. I don’t know what you’re searching for.”

  Hope? Love? A father who could be honest?

  Pippa couldn’t say those words. Not when hurt crowded out her voice. She had no desire to trust the man who had provided for her since birth. Providing and cherishing were two very separate things. What would it have been like to have tender moments as a little girl where she could have confided in him? Been reassured by him? Asked him about who she was or who God could help her become? Instead, she was reminded of every obligation she had toward Richard Ripley in return for how he had met their parental obligations to her.

  Penn nudged her hand, sensing Pippa’s angst. Pippa met the dog’s commiserating gaze. Penn’s warm nose tucked its way under Pippa’s forearm.

  Ripley pushed his palms against his knees and stood. “You’ve no idea what life could have been like for you if I’d left you to the circus. Or deposited you in a home for parentless children. I took you in. I made sure you were educated. I have kept you from needing anything. There are many a young woman with a past like yours who have been forced into much more difficult circumstances. You, young lady, are not one of them.”

  Pippa stared at the note in her hand, her thumb flicking a corner.

  “And Pippa?”

  She looked up.

  Ripley had risen from his chair and now stood in the double doorway of the library, his robe tied at his waist, spectacles perched on his Roman-straight nose.

  “I wouldn’t make a decision on your behalf without the Ripleys’ welfare in mind. That should count for something.”

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Pippa?”

  She screamed, clapping her hand over her mouth, her shoulder banging into the wall. A flashlight with its large, round glow lifted as Forrest shined the light into Pippa’s face.

  “What’n heck are you doing here?” He took a few quick steps toward her. Stopped. Shot a look over his shoulder to the open door and the night outside. “It’s almost midnight.”

  Pippa tried to collect herself, to calm her raw nerves. She sucked in a wobbly breath and glanced around the carriage house that stood just behind the Ripley house where everyone slept. Assumedly.

  That she had determined to search here for the elusive zebra toy was beside the point. That Forrest was there, after midnight, was more the question.

  “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t sure if Forrest paled or if it was just the odd lighting from the flashlight mixed with a little moonlight.

  He rested his hand on the bumper of her father’s car. His flashlight swung in an arc around the open room with its vaulted ceiling, highlighting for a moment a carriage, tack, and other sundry items.

  “I was—I misplaced a notebook. I thought I may have left it in your father’s vehicle.”

  Pippa frowned. “And it was necessary to find it in the middle of the night?”

  He seemed surprised at her questioning his judgment. Forrest squared his shoulders, the shadows making his eyes appear deeper set and his nose more angular. “There are financial records in the notebook. The last thing I need is for it to fall into the wrong hands—someone like Georgiana Farnsworth.”

  Pippa nodded. It was plausible and made sense. Just that morning, Georgiana had been picketing the circus again, this time more peaceably. Still, her presence remained a veiled threat nonetheless.

  “And you? Why are you up at this hour, and in the carriage house, no less?” Forrest edged past her and moved to the doorway. He looked out into the blue-tinted night.

  She had no intentions of explaining herself. Of explaining the Watchman’s directives to find the zebra toy. His silence was evidence that he would reveal nothing until she did. An urgency was rising in her, even now, to find it. Somehow that toy had to be key to uncovering who she was—who the Watchman was—and any pure or incendiary motives.

  “I—needed some fresh air.” Her excuse sounded as pitiful as the look Forrest shot her.

  “Fresh air? In the carriage house?” He spun and marched toward her until he was mere inches away. As he looked down his nose at her, Pippa could feel his breath on her face. “What are you hiding, Pippa?”

  She drew back, surprise riddling her. “Hiding?”

  Forrest lifted the flashlight to reveal her face to him. “Your insistence on cutting your hair, helping with the elephant, dallying with Chapman and, God forbid, his friends. It doesn’t add up. It’s not like you.”

  “His friends?” Pippa frowned.

  “Benard. Patty Luchent. Clive. They’re all of the circus, Pippa. You’re better than they are.”

  “I am not,” she whispered and shook her head, even though it made little difference.

  Forrest leaned forward until his nose almost touched hers. His eyes burrowed his disapproval into her soul. “You are. You were rescued from that life—from those outcasts and misfits. Why must you attempt to become one of them again?”

  “You’re part owner of the circus itself!” Pippa couldn’t help but argue, feeling the pressure of incredulity pressing into her. “What could you have against them?”

  Forrest drew back and expelled a breath of disbelief. “I own them—I’m not one of them.”

  “Own them?” Appalled was too kind of a word to describe the emotion that pained her. “Own them?”

  Forrest waved her away. “Not like that. They’re our employees, yes, but merely that. They’re not on our same level. They’re a part of Bonaventure because they’ve nowhere else to go. Your father spared you that. Why return, Pippa? Why?”

  He had moved back to the doorway, turning away from her. He grasped the doorframe and looked up at the moon. “I saw them this year. On the circuit. I followed their paths from city to city, and you know what?” Forrest spun and addressed her again. “No one sees them as people, Pippa. They are entertainment. Objects. Anomalies of life. Curiosities and queer and daredevilish. Not to mention, loose living. The liquor that flows when the lights are out. And you know as well as I do that some of the girls, like Patty, aren’t morally upright!”

  Pippa leaned back against her father’s automobile, seeking its frame for support. Her weak leg shook, and she worried the hem of her sleeve’s cuff as she watched Forrest and listened to him rail against the circus folk.

  Forrest slapped the doorframe with his hand. “Why must you try to be one of them?”

  Silence cut through them, separating them as thick as the night air that floated around their shoulders. Crickets chirruped outside the house, and a breeze chilled the air, sneaking through the doorway and penetrating Pippa’s dress. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I am one of them, Forrest.”

  “No.” He took three long strides and grasped her shoulders, hauling her to himself. Pippa tried to pull back, but his grip was strong. “No. You are not. You never will be. I’ll keep you safe from people like them. From people like Georgiana who want to slander us. You will walk the line between them, with me, and we will be better than your father ever was.”

  “What do you mean, Forrest?” She could barely breathe, let alone make sense of his words.

  Forrest’s expression darkened. His fingertips bit into her arms. “We will be better than your father.”

  “You’re hurting me!” Pippa squirmed as she felt her skin begin to bruise beneath his grip.

  Forrest dropped his hands as if she were fire and he’d been burned. He backed away, shaking his head. “You may go to the circus, you may tend that blasted elephant, you may even cavort with the likes of those who aren’t meant for better things, but you—you, my Pippa—I won’t let you fall.”

  He disappeared into the night. Taking with him any last remnant of peace that Pippa had hidden in her heart, and leaving behind more questi
ons, more thoughts that were fast brewing into fear.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  CHANDLER

  Did you hear?”

  Chandler startled at her desk and jerked her head up, her messy bun tipping just a bit at the movement. She took in Cru Dobson’s form as he poked his shoulders out the screen door of the costume house that he held open with his right hand.

  “Hear what?” Explanation would be good before she gave her answer. She’d heard a lot of things already this morning. She’d heard Jackson go on a cold-and-collected rant that the discovery of a body in the depot wasn’t just a delay on the project but a damnation of it. She’d heard her mom’s same old message on her voicemail: “Give us a call. We’re just checking in.” To see how she’d failed again? Probably. She’d also heard thumping. Upstairs. In the haunted section of the still-disarrayed second floor. Patty Luchent? Lottie would say it was. But Chandler wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her own personal poltergeist keeping her company. She’d been too chicken to go upstairs and see what had caused the sounds. A mouse or a bat probably, nothing nearly as dramatic as a lost spirit.

  Cru stepped inside, and the screen door slammed behind him.

  Chandler jumped again.

  His blue eyes flickered. “You okay?”

  Chandler waved her hand at him and pushed her laptop a few inches away from her. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. What was I supposed to hear?”

  Cru grabbed a chair and spun it on one leg, then dropped onto it, straddling it with his arms crossed over the back. “DNA came back on your skeleton.”

  “Not my skeleton.” Chandler grimaced. She could still feel the smooth coldness of the bone, the stringy awfulness of the remaining hair on the skull. Like a Halloween prank come to life.

  “It’s Linda Pike,” Cru announced. “The town is in an uproar. She’s been missing for decades. Without even a hint and yet she was here the entire time.”

  Poor guy probably thought she’d rejoice in the confirmation like everyone else. The image of Denny’s bearded Santa Claus face bending over her at the hospital crossed her memory, and tears burned behind her eyes. She looked away and made a pretense of straightening papers.

  “That’s—it’s good they identified her.”

  Cru studied her, and his scrutiny made Chandler uncomfortable. She risked a sideways look at him, and he tipped his head, his brow furrowed. “This messes up your project with renovating the depot, doesn’t it?”

  Chandler nodded. “Sure. But I’m not complaining. I’m relieved for the Pike family.” Hank’s image flashed across her mind. Even their foster kid, she added mentally. Aloud, she finished, “It has to be a relief. Tragic, but a relief nonetheless.”

  Cru shifted in his chair and scratched his temple, his fingers ruffling his thick dark blond hair. He had a gentle face. A gentle way about him.

  “Is this going to affect your tours?” Chandler realized the discovery of Linda Pike’s body in the depot could sway the tour both ways. One, make it more intriguing to those so inclined to find murder exciting. Two, make it more distasteful, as the reality of a more recent death shocked any empathetic person’s senses.

  Cru shrugged. “I don’t think so. We’ll take the depot off the tour for now. I don’t want to leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth. Mom wants to keep it on, says it shows an appreciation and a memorial for those who have passed. I think it’s too soon, though. What do you think?”

  His question snagged Chandler’s attention. She hadn’t expected him to want her input. She fumbled with a pencil on the desk. “Um, yeah. I get your mom’s point, but I’m with you. It’s way too soon.”

  “Right.” Cru pressed his lips together and nodded. His eyes brightened. “Hey, would you care if we detoured and put this place on the list of stops? I mean, actually tour the inside?”

  “The costume house?” Chandler squirmed. Why did she have to be the caretaker for the haunted places in Bluff River? The circus museum down the road had to have some of the same. Wasn’t there that old elephant house? Surely there were the dead spirits of elephants haunting the insides of its yellow walls.

  “Yeah,” Cru affirmed. “We always need to switch up the ghost tour anyway, for repeat visitors. The costume house features Patty Luchent’s ghost the same as the depot does. Her story doesn’t change, and since no one knows exactly where she was murdered . . .” He frowned.

  “What?” Chandler leaned forward.

  Cru gave a quick shake of his head. “I dunno. I just had the random thought that it’s strange how the depot seems to be a magnet for death.”

  It wasn’t a new thought for Chandler. Patty Luchent, Linda Pike . . .

  “Anyway”—Cru was still talking—“there’s the whole angle of the Watchman too. He physically haunted the circus and depot grounds in the twenties. If that really was his hidden memorabilia in the depot, then who knows what else is tucked away here or on the grounds? He did roam the circus, you know?”

  It was a statement whose tone implied a question. Cru was fishing. He wanted to know what she’d seen. The details the police had yet to make public.

  Chandler recalled the locks of hair, the circus tokens, the cannibalized circus posters that hinted at some sadistic slaughter of the circus itself.

  “What is the story of the Watchman?” she asked. Hank had told her snippets only, and now she wanted further clarity.

  Cru gave his customary casual shrug. “The story has been capitalized on for years. But the nuts and bolts are that he murdered Patty Luchent in the autumn of 1928, and shortly after that, they caught him. He was sent to prison and eventually sentenced to life. Wisconsin didn’t have the death penalty.”

  “I thought he was executed.” Chandler recalled Hank’s insinuation that the Watchman had been electrocuted.

  Cru shook his head. “Nah. People wanted him to be. Especially after the rumors started circulating that he was responsible not only for Patty’s death but also the deaths of several young women along the circus train circuit.”

  “He was Denny Pike’s grandfather, right?” Chandler pressed, mostly to see if Hank’s story stood up to popular opinion and Lottie’s sensory feelings.

  “Yeah. It’s easy to trace. Go to any online ancestral site and it’s right there. It’s gotta suck, growing up the grandkid of a serial killer. I can’t imagine people went easy on them. I know, even now, people talk about Denny. Whether it’s genetic.”

  “Whether what’s genetic?” Chandler frowned.

  Cru shot her a sheepish smile. “Killing. Is being a killer genetic?”

  Chandler snorted in disbelief. “Mental illness might be, but that by no means indicates someone would be a killer. In fact, I find it insulting.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Cru was immediately apologetic.

  “What about the news reports of the Watchman’s trial?” Chandler chose to ignore the implications and instead flipped the pencil she’d been fumbling with. It launched over the desk and rolled until it hit the side of a glass candleholder.

  “Nothing secretive about it. Plain and simple. They caught him, he was tied up with some scandal with the Ripleys’ daughter—she was the one who originally knew him as the Watchman—and it all blew up.”

  “I don’t know much about the Ripleys. I know they owned Bonaventure Circus and lived in that yellow mansion on the hill. The one that’s now a bed-and-breakfast?”

  “Yep.” Cru coughed and cleared his throat. “But the Watchman almost did them in totally. I mean, things were already tenuous with Bonaventure in those days. People were starting to get in on the idea of animal abuse—much like they are today.”

  Chandler nodded. “I heard about that large circus in New York shutting down last year under allegations of elephant abuse.”

  Cru tapped the back of the chair he straddled. “The last of the big circuses. Sad, really. It’s a legacy of entertainment, and for many it was their home when they couldn’t find one elsewhere. Still. Long before the animal-rig
hts activists gained a major voice, the Watchman almost shut this place down.”

  “How?” Chandler reached for the wayward pencil, more for something to do than anything else.

  “Besides the string of murders? There was an accident on the grounds at the time. Some attributed it to a rally against the maltreatment of animals, but later many figured it was the Watchman himself. Deflecting attention off his murders. Destroying the circus from the inside.”

  A thump upstairs silenced them both.

  Cru’s eyes lifted toward the ceiling.

  Chandler’s pencil stilled in her hand.

  Silence, and then a shuffling sound, like a box being pushed across the floor.

  Chandler’s stomach twisted into anxious knots, and she met Cru’s eyes. He gave her a thin, knowing smile.

  “Patty’s not keen on this conversation,” he stated.

  Unnerved by the ghostly attributions above their heads, Chandler squeezed the pencil and it snapped in half. If Patty Luchent had an opinion, Chandler was beginning to share it. It was very tempting to run away, to stop, to turn all attention off the old story of the Watchman, of Patty, and of circus sabotage. Circuses were supposed to be entertaining and fun, vivid and lively. But this one? This was dark and thick with questions. Age-old questions that should have died with the Watchman but instead lived in his secret room in the closet, guarded for the last thirty years by a young woman whose disappearance was the last major crime to ever touch Bluff River.

  The screen door slammed as Peter charged into the house, brandishing his paper towel roll turned toy laser gun. He waggled his brows at Chandler as he raced past, clomping up the stairs, some mission in mind fully taking precedence over eating.

  Margie turned from where she was frying taco meat on the stove and rolled her eyes. “That boy!” she chuckled.

  Chandler gave a little smile and nodded. Smiles felt rarer these days.

  “Well,” Margie said, wiping her hands on a dish towel and flicking the gauge on the stovetop to off, “I’ll leave you two to your supper. I’ve got to run by the store and pick up some things before I head home.” She paused and tilted her head, studying Chandler. “You gonna be okay?”