Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) Read Online Free PDF

I didn’t keep count of such things, but it would have been number sixty or seventy, and I would have absorbed it. It was the inability of people to know where they belonged in my fantasy that caused me the real pain.
    “Thanks,” I said, putting out my hand to Elder, who took it firmly. The circus figures melted back into the fog, and sounds of waking returned.
    “The sheriff bluffs awfully easy,” he said with a grin that turned his already sun-creased face into a walrus-leather mask. “I’m glad that deputy isn’t in charge here, or you’d be on your way to whatever they planned for you.”
    Light began to penetrate the fog, and I started to see shapes and activity.
    “Emmett told me about you,” said Elder, looking back at some sound he separated from the noise. “I don’t think there’s anything going on here, but it’s his money if he wants to pay you. I just don’t want any panic talk, and I don’t want you stirring anything up that isn’t there.”
    A shiny wagon, a massive gold-painted thing, lumbered out into view, pulled by a squat red truck with massive tires. The truck rumbled past us, drowning out other sounds and our conversation; and I found myself looking into the face of the creature in the cage, the gorilla, whose hands clung to the bars of the jiggling cage and who examined me without curiosity.
    Kelly backed away as the cage pulled past.
    “Gargantua,” he said, without affection. “When I joined Ringling a year ago,” he went on, watching the wagon rumble off, “they wanted me to be part of an act with him. It was called The Wedding of Gargantua. Willie, that’s my clown, would be the jailer outside the cage, keeping the gorilla from running away before the wedding. I never liked the idea, and the monkey didn’t take to me. Went wild. We gave up the idea. I think some clown did him wrong once.”
    By now the fog was almost gone. I could smell something cooking, and my stomach rumbled.
    “Let’s take him to chow,” said Elder. “Peters, let’s just call you an unpaid member of circus security for a few days. You do what you have to, to satisfy Emmett, and then we say good-bye. Fair enough?”
    “OK with me,” said Kelly, putting a hand to his balding head.
    “Right,” I added.
    “But I tell you there’s no secret plot going on here,” said Elder. “I’ve been circusing for …”
    “Elder,” came a scream, and the three of us turned our heads. A woman, her hands in the pocket of a mannish gray jacket, came running forward. She spotted Elder and slowed down to a fast walk. Her dark eyes scanned the three of us, and her mouth was open as if someone had slapped her and she was afraid to say so.
    “What is it, Peg?” Elder said.
    “Tanucci, the young one,” she gasped. “He … he took a fall. The doc’s with him.”
    Elder ran off with the woman after him. I looked at Kelly, whose eyes were wide.
    “An accident,” I said. “Circuses must have accidents all the time.”
    “Yes,” said Kelly. “But most of the accidents happen to the laborers, not the performers.”
    “OK,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”
    Before we could take ten steps after Elder, something happened. Kelly sensed it before I did and stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, and then I could tell that the sounds of the circus had changed. The machine sounds had dominated a few minutes ago. Now the sound of animals took over. Bleats and cries and screams and roars, a sad madness of sound.
    “What …” I started.
    “I think Tanucci’s dead,” said Kelly.

 
    There were four Tanuccis. Five if you counted the one lying dead on the rolled-up canvas in the corner of the tent. The dead Tanucci was dressed like the live ones, in blue tights and a top. His arms were at his sides and his legs together as if he were about to dive into the sky. Just one step forward, a perfect flip of his dark arms and tight, compact body, and he would go soaring into the air and through a hole high