by Emmy Grace
“He’s over there,” she says. I turn to find her pointing toward the place where we parked earlier. I see Liam’s tall figure moving quickly toward his truck.
I tuck the cat under my arm and run as fast as I can after him. He’s stabbed and bleeding and angry, and he probably just wants away from me, but that’s not happening.
This is my fault.
I have to fix it.
He’s in the truck by the time I make it there. I throw open the passenger side and heft Lucy up to the seat. She immediately moves to the console, where she perches to look out the window like she does this every day.
She does love her high ground.
“Wait!” I yell when he starts the engine.
“Move, Lucky.”
“No. You need to let me drive. You’ve been stabbed.”
“I haven’t been stabbed. I’ve been cut.”
“Tomato, tom-ah-to,” I say, waving him off. “You’re hurt. You need to let me drive you to the hospital.”
“Now you’ve really lost your mind.”
“You shouldn’t be behind the wheel. You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve got things at my house to take care of this. That’s where I’m going. If you’ll shut the door and let me leave, that is.”
He’s definitely not any milder when he’s wounded.
“Fine,” I say, flinging my body toward the passenger seat and grappling my way into a sitting position. I’m like a slippery fish inside my plastic suit and sweat is running down my back, and I’m more than vaguely winded by the time I slam the door shut and look over at him. “Okay. Drive.”
He shakes his head once, but doesn’t argue. He shifts into gear and all but screeches out of the lot. It’s hard to screech on dirt and gravel, but if it could be done, Liam would’ve just done it.
As we fly along the roads, Liam points to the glove compartment. “Get in there and hand me some napkins.”
I do as he asks, and then he stuffs them between his legs.
“I…I really am sorry.” My voice is soft and tentative. Surely, surely, surely he knows I’d never do it on purpose.
“I know.”
I lean my head forward a little to see him better. “But do you?”
He slides his eyes over to me. “Yes, I know.”
After a short pause, I offer another hesitant word. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
To this, he says nothing. He just concentrates on his driving.
Evidently, that emotional “nick” will take a little longer to heal.
He drives us to his house, zooms into the driveway, and slams the truck into park. I don’t hurry to reach for the door. I’m feeling low for some reason.
I would never hurt Liam’s feelings on purpose. Heck, I wasn’t even sure he had any. How was I supposed to know he’d take offense at my reaction?
But then again, Liam is a decent man. And like any decent man would, he’s probably bothered by a woman insinuating that he’s capable of violence toward the fairer sex.
The thing is, I don’t. I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. If I thought for one second that Liam Dunning would actually hurt me, there’s no way I’d continue to be around him. No way in Hades.
I jump when the passenger door is wrenched open. Liam reaches in and grabs me to set me on the ground, then turns and limps off.
“You coming?” he asks over his shoulder.
“I... Y-yes,” I stammer, snapping my fingers for Lucy to come to me. She leaps down into my arms, and I close the door and scurry after Liam.
Even with a slice in his thigh, he walks faster than I do.
I make absentminded notations about Liam Dunning’s house. It’s a beautiful cabin-type structure with windows all along the front and two big double doors recessed into the porch. He slides his key into the lock and pushes through so fast it’s almost like one smooth movement.
I follow him in, clutching Lucy to my chest as I take in the interior. Vaulted, planked ceiling that stretches from the foyer through the kitchen to the dining and living rooms. The main rooms are open and end in floor-to-ceiling windows that face a view of the fields and the forest beyond. There’s a massive deck out back, but Liam’s already disappearing through a door to the left, so I rush to follow him.
It’s the master bedroom, done in cream and various shades of gray. Not fifty, but a few anyway.
There’s a huge king bed in the center of one wall, and a door across from it. That’s where Liam is going.
He’s reaching into the linen closet and taking out some sort of kit by the time Lucy and I darken the doorway. I watch him yank down his pants and sit on the toilet lid as he starts rifling through the kit. He opens a packet of something and dumps it on the wound, then opens another packet of something else and pours that on, too.
He dabs and bends down to look at the cut, squeezing it, I guess to determine the depth. My stomach sloshes a little when he does that.
Next, Liam takes out another packet, this one flat, and pulls out a curved needle that’s attached to some thread. Then, without any warning, he loops it through his flesh and tugs it out the other side. I hear his breath hiss through his teeth, and for Liam to react, I know it must hurt like a mother.
I sway on my feet. I have enough presence of mind to let Lucy go, but just barely. When Liam goes in for a second stitch, that’s when I, Lucky Boucher, lover of all things murder-y, hit the floor with a thud.
13
I wake suddenly.
You know how you bolt upright in the bed after a bad dream?
Yeah, like that.
“What happened?”
My question is more to the world in general because I don’t immediately spot the person sitting in the chair across from the bed.
“You passed out,” Liam says, drawing my eye.
I turn to look at him. My head swims lightly for a second or two, but then it all comes rushing back. My stomach flips over with a sickening glop.
“You…you gave yourself stitches.”
He nods. “I did.”
“Why…why did you do that?”
“Just for fun. It’s what I do every Sunday.”
I tilt my head. “Ha. Ha.” I scoot to the end of the bed. “Ar-are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It wasn’t as deep as I thought it was.”
“But you still stitched it?”
“Oh, it was deep enough to need stitches, but not so deep that it nicked anything important.”
If Regina were here, I’d ask her if I’m green.
Because I feel green.
I think I’m a little green.
“I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs. “You didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I really didn’t. Blame that Cessna sized bug.”
“Did you get it out?”
“I think so. If not, it’s laying eggs in my brain and they’ll hatch and I’ll become the fly in a few days. Tell me if my hair starts falling out.”
I’m only partly kidding. But it would be rude to focus on a bug infestation of my own when I nearly emasculated the man across from me.
And I mean that in a literal sense. I came way too close to cutting off his boy parts. Or at least puncturing one or two of them. That takes priority over a bug any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
One side of his mouth lifts in a smirk.
Now he smiles.
“So, you’re not supposed to be buzzzzzzing?” He accentuates the onomatopoeia.
I clamp my hands over my ears. “Not funny.”
“Sure it is.”
“You’re impossible,” I grouse.
Liam leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Let me get this straight. You can look at dead bodies that have disgusting wounds, but you can’t watch me give myself stitches?”
“I’m better with blood and stuff when the person is dead.”
“Good to know.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, if I ever get hurt, i
t’s important to know that you’re not effective in a medical crisis.”
“Yeah, you can pretty much count me out of that. Sorry.”
He shrugs again like it’s no big deal.
Men!
“I think you should take off that sweat suit. You might be dehydrated. You’ve been sweating a lot I’ve noticed.”
Even now, I feel a rivulet of water run down between my boobs. “You’re probably right.”
I don’t tell him that I might need a surgeon to get me out of it. It’s probably melded to my skin by now.
I shimmy off the bed and head for his bathroom-slash-room of torture. I quickly shed my outfit and then work at peeling the plastic sweat suit from my limbs. When I step out of it, I fling it onto the floor, where it makes a wet slopping sound like I just threw down a gob of boiled spaghetti. It doesn’t look like spaghetti, though. It looks like I’ve shed an entire layer of skin.
Lucky’s molting, y’all.
I pick it up and put the suit in Liam’s bathtub. When it dries, I might see if he’ll let me set it on fire.
I find a towel and dry off before redressing in my costume. By the time I make my way out to the bedroom again, I’m feeling more like myself.
I shall be reviewing that thing as a devil suit.
“I hope you don’t care that I left that thing in your bathtub.”
He waves me off like it’s no big deal that I left a disgusting, sweaty heap of nude colored film in his tub. Men are so strange.
I’m shocked by his next words.
“You going to feel like doing tonight’s show?”
My jaw unhinges. “What?”
“We’re supposed to do it again at seven fifty, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but…but…” I end up just pointing to his leg/crotch region.
“What? It’s fine now.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Of course, I’m serious. Let’s just pray a bug doesn’t make an encore appearance.”
“Liam, I can’t be sure that won’t happen again. I mean we’re in a spotlight. Under a tent. Out in the open. I’m sure there are more bugs.”
“But what are the chances of one finding your nostril again?”
“I have no idea, but those aren’t odds I’m willing to take.”
“We need to do this. We’ve got a murder to solve.”
I flop back onto the bed. Now that I’m paying attention, Liam’s mattress is actually very comfortable. “We aren’t even absolutely certain it was murder. What if it really was an accident? I mean, we’re taking the word of a person who spends her days dressed like an Amazonian princess and plays with fire and snakes. How reliable can she possibly be?”
“I’m not going to ask what changed your tune, but I can tell you for sure that it was murder.”
At that, I sit up again. That perks me up instantly. “Why? What happened?”
“Clive called. He got the results from that piece of plastic he collected from the scene around the clown.”
“And?”
“You were right. It was a little speaker. It’s part of a wireless transmitter. The receiving end. That’s what the stem was. A broken antenna.”
My mind starts chugging along. “In other words, someone attached it somehow to Lola, maybe back behind her ear or something, and then gave her the command at just the right time. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Liam nods. “And the residue on it was adhesive. Probably from something like duct tape. So, yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I don’t suppose there were fingerprints.”
“Nope. The piece was too small.”
“But if we could find the transmitting end of it, we’d have our killer.”
“We would. But trying to find evidence like that when there are people milling around out there most of the time won’t be easy.”
My lips curve steadily until I’m beaming over at Liam. “Easy is overrated.”
His eyes gleam, and it seems he’s holding back some humor again. I have no idea why, though. What he would find amusing in this moment.
I will never understand this man.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Fortunately for us all, the second act starts off much better than the first. No panic attack for me, and Liam gets a standing ovation for being alive and returning.
I clap, too. I can’t help but be impressed. He’s what Beebee would call tough as a pine knot.
When the crowd has duly applauded Liam, we make our way out back where the other circus folk are in various states of preparing or cleaning up. For just a second, I consider going out to watch the rest of the show. I mean, this is the circus, and I missed it the first go round.
But, alas, there’s a killer to catch and a murder to solve. First things first.
I get an idea, so I turn to Liam as I take a flat pouch of Starkist tuna out of the back of my waistband.
He scowls down at it. “You carry tuna in your pants?”
I widen my eyes in innocence. “Doesn’t everyone?” His expression is one of such surprised revulsion that I have to take a second to laugh. “You’re too easy.”
“I’m not easy. I’ve just come to realize that nothing should surprise me when it comes to you.”
“Most men like unpredictable women.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. It definitely keeps me on my toes.”
I smile broadly. I like that for some reason—keeping this virile, smart, dangerous man on his toes. I think there’s bound to be a compliment in there somewhere. He’s probably seen a little bit of everything and isn’t exactly easy to throw off.
The more I think about it, I believe I’ll have to wear that comment on my heart like a badge of honor. Henceforth, I shall be She Who Stumps the Grump.
I giggle.
Liam glowers.
Of course.
“What?” he demands.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
He shakes his head. “I probably don’t want to know. I’m sure the story behind the tuna will be quite enough for my brain tonight.”
“Right. The tuna.” I’d nearly forgotten. “So, I figure it like this. Unless Pike wanted to make it look like someone was setting him up, he didn’t do it. I mean, he could’ve just said the commands himself or taught her a different command to make her do it. Why go through all the effort of the microphone when there were easier ways? So, can we agree that he’s not our most likely suspect?”
Liam seesaws his head. “I can get on board with that.”
“Okay, good. Then that would leave us with George, the strong man as our most promising suspect.”
“Agreed.”
“Followed by Allanda. We have to include her, right? If for no other reasons than they were a couple and both of them clearly had other partners during their on again-off again relationship. There’s bound to be a motive or two in there somewhere.”
“Eh.” Liam makes a face. “I’m not sold on that, but we can leave her at number two. That’s fine.”
“Anyone I’m missing?”
Liam narrows his eyes as he sweeps the area. I watch them flicker open wider for a split second before narrowing further. I whirl around to see what caused that reaction. That was an “I saw something” look if I’ve ever seen one.
“What?” I scan the immediate vicinity trying to find what caught his interest.
When I see what he must’ve seen, I gasp. “Is that…?”
“I bet it is.”
“That means…”
“I bet it does.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“If you’re thinking that we might have another name to add to the list, then yes. I’m definitely thinking what you’re thinking.”
14
“Come on,” I tell Liam. I wiggle the packet of tuna. “I have a plan.”
With Liam at my side, I make my way toward the tent that caught our eyes. The flap is pulled open and fast
ened to one side. Neither of us had noticed what it was earlier because it was daylight, but the darker it gets, the more visible the shrine inside is.
I recognize one of the contortionists that was practicing out where we were today. He’s small. Short and fine-boned. Skinny. All of which probably makes it much easier to bend one’s body into a pretzel.
“Hi, excuse me, but was this Rodney’s tent?”
The man-child nods. “Yeah. Go on in.”
I just smile and nod in return. I don’t tell him that we were going to anyway. I just wanted to confirm that the face we can glimpse through the tent opening does, indeed, belong to the late Rodney, the clown.
When we duck inside, it’s like stepping back in time and into a king’s memorial in the days of the crusades. There are candles on every surface. It’s probably an insane fire hazard, considering that everything in here looks like it could go up in flames if someone set off a sparkler from ten feet away, but it’s a nice effect. It gives a soft, ethereal glow to the canvas painting that hangs on the back wall. Like all the light is focused solely on him. His last time in the spotlight.
The canvas is an enormous oil painting of Rodney, the clown, without his makeup. I wonder who painted it and when. Unless someone in the camp does this sort of thing, and very quickly, it had to be commissioned a while ago. Weeks at least. Unless it was used at some point for publicity. The canvas with the rough edges does have a sort of tent-like, Barnum and Bailey look about it.
Regardless, whoever fashioned it did a great job. The details are fantastic. Enough to be able to plainly see that this man shared a lot of physical similarities to someone else in Fancy Fishman’s Flying Circus.
“They look so much alike,” I whisper.
Liam is just behind my left shoulder, leaning in to look more closely at the painting. “Father and son for sure.”
“Why wouldn’t Jonah tell me?”
“You’re assuming he knew.”
I glance back at him. “How could he not?”
Liam raises one shoulder. “I don’t think most people see the resemblance to their parents and siblings the way others do. We’re all sort of blind to it.”
“Is that your way of saying you think you look nothing like your father?”
