Stakeout at the Vampire Circus
1
The circus is supposed to be fun, even a monster circus, but the experience turned sour when somebody tried to murder the vampire trapeze artist.
As a private detective, albeit a zombie, I investigate cases of all sorts in the Unnatural Quarter, applying my deductive skills and persistent determination (yes, the undead can be very persistent indeed). Some of my cases are admittedly strange; most are even stranger than that.
I’d been hired by a transvestite fortune-teller to find a stolen deck of magic cards, and he had sent me two free tickets to the circus. Gotta love the perks of the job. Not one to let an opportunity go to waste, I invited my girlfriend to accompany me; in many ways her detective skills are as good as my own.
Sheyenne is beautiful, blond, and intangible. I had started to fall in love with her when both of us were alive, and I still like having her around, despite the difficulties of an unnatural relationship—as a ghost, she can’t physically touch me, and as a zombie I have my own limitations.
We showed our passes at the circus entrance gate and entered a whirlwind of colors, sounds, smells. Big tents, wild rides, popcorn, and cotton candy for the humans, more exotic treats for the unnaturals. One booth sold deep-fried artichoke hearts, while another sold deep-fried human hearts. Seeing me shamble by, a persistent vendor offered me a free sample of brains on a stick, but I politely declined.
I’m a well-preserved zombie and have never acquired a taste for brains. I’ve got my standards of behavior, not to mention personal hygiene. Given a little bit of care and effort, a zombie doesn’t have to rot and fall apart, and I take pride in looking mostly human. Some people have even called me handsome—Sheyenne certainly does, but she’s biased.
As Sheyenne flitted past the line of food stalls, her eyes were bright, her smile dazzling; I could imagine what she must have looked like as a little girl. I hadn’t seen her this happy since she’d been poisoned to death.
Nearby, a muscular clay golem lifted a wooden mallet at the Test Your Strength game and slammed it down with such force that he not only rang the bell at the top of the pole, he split the mallet in half. A troll barker at the game muttered and handed the golem a pink plush bunny as a prize. The golem set the stuffed animal next to a pile of fuzzy prizes, paid another few coins, and took a fresh mallet to play the game again.
Many of the attendees were humans, attracted by the low prices of the human matinee; the nocturnal monsters would come out for the evening show. More than a decade had passed since the Big Uneasy, when all the legendary monsters came back to the world, and human society was finally realizing that unnaturals were people just like everyone else. Yes, some were ferocious and bloodthirsty—but so were some humans. Most monsters just wanted to live and let live (even though the definition of “living” had blurred).
Sheyenne saw crowds streaming toward the Big Top. “The lion tamer should be finishing, but the vampire trapeze artist is due to start. Do you think we could …”
I gave her my best smile. With stiff facial muscles, my “best smile” was only average, but even so I saved it for Sheyenne. “Sure, Spooky. We’ve got an hour before we’re supposed to meet Zelda. Let’s call it ‘gathering background information.’”
“Or we could just call it part of the date,” Sheyenne teased.
“That, too.”
We followed other humans through the tent flaps. A pudgy twelve-year-old boy was harassing his sister, poking her arm incessantly, until he glanced at me and Sheyenne. I had pulled the fedora low, but it didn’t entirely conceal the bullet hole in my forehead. When the pudgy kid gawked at the sight, his sister took advantage of the distraction and began poking him until their mother hurried them into the Big Top.
Inside, Sheyenne pointed to empty bleachers not far from the entrance. The thick canvas kept out direct sunlight, protecting the vampire performers and shrouding the interior in a pleasant nighttime gloom. My eyes adjusted quickly because gloom is a natural state for me. Always on the case, I remained alert. If I’d been more alert while I was still alive, I would be … well, still alive.
When I was a human private detective in the Quarter, Sheyenne’s ghost had asked me to investigate her murder, which got me in trouble; I didn’t even see the creep come up behind me in a dark alley, put a gun to the back of my head, and pull the trigger.
Under most circumstances, that would have put an end to my career, but you can’t keep a good detective down. Thanks to the changed world, I came back from the dead, back on the case. Soon enough, I fell into my old routine, investigating mysteries wherever they might take me … even to the circus.
Sheyenne drifted to the nearest bleacher, and I climbed stiffly beside her. The spotlight shone down on a side ring, where a brown-furred werewolf in a scarlet vest—Calvin—cracked his bullwhip, snarling right back at a pair of snarling lions who failed to follow his commands. The thick-maned male cat growled, while the big female opened her mouth wide to show a yawn full of fangs. The lion tamer roared a response, cracked the whip again, and urged the big cats to do tricks, but they absolutely refused.
The lions flexed their claws, and the werewolf flexed his own in a show of dominance, but the lions weren’t buying it. Just when it looked as if the fur was about to fly, a loud drumroll came from the center ring.
The spotlight swiveled away from the lion tamer to fall upon the ringmaster, a tall vampire with steel-gray hair. “Ladies and gentlemen, naturals and unnaturals of all ages—in the center ring, our main event!” He pointed upward, and the spotlight swung to the cavernous tent’s rigging strung with high wires and a trapeze platform. A Baryshnikov look-alike stood on the platform, a gymnastic vampire in a silver lamé full-body leotard. He wore a medallion around his neck, a bright red ribbon with some kind of amulet, and a professional sneer.
“Bela, our vampire trapeze artist, master of the ropes—graceful, talented … a real swinger!” The ringmaster paused until the audience realized they were supposed to respond with polite laughter. Up on the platform, Bela lifted his chin, as if their applause was beneath him (and, technically speaking, it was, since the bleachers were far below).
“For his death-defying feat, Bela will perform without a safety net above one hundred sharpened wooden stakes!” The spotlight swung down to the floor of the ring, which was covered with a forest of pointy sticks, just waiting to perform impalement duties.
The suitably impressed audience gasped.
On the trapeze platform, Bela’s haughty sneer was wide enough to show his fangs; I could see them even from my seat in the bleachers. The gold medallion at his neck glinted in the spotlight. Rolling his shoulders to loosen up, the vampire grasped the trapeze handle and lunged out into the open air. He seemed not to care a whit about the sharp wooden stakes as he swung across to the other side. At the apex of his arc, he swung back again, gaining speed. On the backswing, Bela spun around the trapeze bar, doing a loop. As he reached the apex once again, he released, did a quick somersault high in the air, and caught the bar as he dropped down.
The audience applauded. Werewolves in the bleachers howled their appreciation; some ghouls and less-well-preserved zombies let out long, low moans that sounded upbeat, considering. I shot a glance at Sheyenne, and judging by her delighted expression, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
Bela swung back, hanging on with one hand as he gave a dismissive wave to the audience. Vampires usually have fluid movements. I remembered that one vamp had tried out for the Olympic gymnastics team four years ago—and was promptly disqualified, though the Olympic judges could not articulate a valid reason. The vampire sued, and the matter was tied up in the courts until long past the conclusion of the Olympics. The vampire gymnast took the long view, however, as she would be just as spry and healthy in the next four-year cycle, and the next, and the next.
A big drumroll signaled Bela’s finale. He swung back and forth one more time, pumping with his legs, increasing speed, and the bar soared up to the highest point yet. The vampire released his hold, flung himself into the air for another somersault, then a second, then a third as the empty trapeze swung in its clockwork arc, gliding back toward him, all perfectly choreographed.
As he dropped, Bela reached out. His fingertips brushed the bar—and missed. He flailed his hands in the air, trying to grab the trapeze, but the bar swung past out of reach, and gravity did its work. Bela tumbled toward the hundred sharp wooden stakes below.
Someone screamed. Even with my rigor-mortis-stiff knees, I lurched to my feet.
But at the last possible moment, the vampire’s plummeting form transformed in the air. Mere inches above the deadly points, Bela turned into a bat, stretching and flapping his leathery wings. He flew away, the medallion still dangling from his little furry rodent neck. He alighted on the opposite trapeze platform, then transformed back into a vampire just in time to catch the returning trapeze. He held on, showing his pointed fangs in a superior grin, and took a deep bow. On cue, the band played a loud “Ta-da!”
After a stunned moment, the audience erupted in wild applause. Sheyenne was beaming enough to make her ectoplasm glow. Even I was smiling. “That was worth the price of admission,” I said.
Sheyenne looked at me. “We didn’t pay anything—we got free tickets.”
“Then it’s worth twice as much.”
With the show over, the audience rose from the bleachers and filed toward the exit. “The cases don’t solve themselves,” I said to Sheyenne. “Let’s go find that fortune-teller.”
2
As Sheyenne and I walked along the midway in search of the fortune-teller’s booth, we suddenly heard screams—not the joyful yelling of riders on a rickety roller coaster, but loud, terrified cries. Bona fide bloodcurdling shrieks. The screams of children.
I was moving before I even knew it, and Sheyenne flitted along beside me. Five children came running toward us, eyes wide enough to qualify the kids as amine cartoon characters. They yelled wordlessly, pelting past us.
They were running from a circus clown.
I had seen him on the circus posters: Fazio the Clown, grinning with a painted smile so wide he could have swallowed a bloody feast and not even left stains on his chin. His very appearance was supposed to be joyful and comforting, but I thought it looked diabolical—as it did to the kids, apparently.
Fazio implored, “Wait! I just want to make people laugh!”
Pursuing panicked children was not how I would have tried to make them laugh.
Panting, the clown stumbled up to us in his big floppy shoes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with kids today.” His face was covered with white greasepaint, and he wore a bright red nose the size of a tennis ball. His bald cap was wrinkled over the top of his head, and shocks of pink hair stuck out in all directions. His teeth could have used whitening (a lot of it) and orthodontia (a lot of it). He held out a bicycle horn and honked it in my face. “Does that make you laugh?” Then he giggled, an edgy Renfield-catching-a-whole-handful-of-flies laugh.
“Sorry, not today,” I said.
Glum, Fazio hung his head and shuffled off with his floppy shoes.
We found the booth of Zelda the fortune-teller, a rickety affair made of plywood and two-by-fours painted bright blue, festooned with crepe paper and a stenciled sign that said: Fortunes Told: $5. But the price had been crossed out and reduced three successive times to the bargain rate of $1.
At the booth, a customer forked over a dollar bill, so we kept our distance, watching the fortune-teller in action. Zelda had told me to be discreet.
The customer was a potbellied man in plaid shorts and black socks. (And they say unnaturals look odd?) Zelda wore a curly wig of platinum-blond hair, eye shadow and blush that must have been purchased in bulk and applied with a trowel; the five o’clock shadow had come in a few hours early on the fortune-teller’s cheeks. Gold hoop earrings, gold necklaces, and gold bangles accessorized a dress with a high neckline, but still showed planetary-sized bosomic curves, which were obviously just stuffing.
Zelda shuffled a well-worn deck of regular playing cards, then laid five cards face-up on the wooden tabletop in front of the customer. “The eight of clubs is a good sign—it shows you have worthy goals and are determined to achieve them.” The supposedly female voice was falsetto and unconvincing.
He laid down another card. “The king of hearts indicates that you will be happy in romance, lucky in love.”
“But when?” the man asked, plaintive.
“Unfortunately, the cards have no time stamp,” Zelda said. “Now, the third one … ah, the three of spades! A very significant card. You are destined to have great financial success, but it may take a while, so be patient.”
The man took hope from that. He looked at the last card. “And the jack of diamonds?”
Zelda shook her head. “That, unfortunately, is a minor card. It merely signifies that your breakfast won’t satisfy you for long and you should seek refreshment from one of our fine food booths.” The fortune-teller gathered the cards and restacked them in the deck as the customer bent down to pull up his black socks, which had slid lower on his ankles, then he walked off.
Taking our cue, Sheyenne and I stepped up to the fortune-teller. Zelda shuffled the deck, gave me a skeptical look. “I charge extra to determine the fate of the undead.”
“We’re not here for a reading, uh, ma’am. You hired us—I’m Dan Chambeaux, private investigator, and this is my associate Sheyenne.”
Her voice dropped at least two octaves, and she lit a cigarette. “Of course, Mr. Chambeaux—thanks for stopping by.” Zelda eyed my gaunt form, looked at my complexion, frowned at the bullet hole in my forehead. “Your business card didn’t say you weren’t alive.”
“Those are old cards. I need to get them reprinted.”
Sheyenne joined in. “We have references available upon request.”
I got down to business. “I understand your magic fortune-telling deck has been misplaced? You need us to find it?”
“Not misplaced—stolen. I’m sure of it this time.”
Some questions beg to be asked. “This time?”
“It’s my second deck gone in six months! I thought I must have misplaced the first one—it happens in the circus, packing up, tearing down, day after day. But real magic fortune-telling decks are hard to come by, so I kept careful watch on the replacement cards. It was the last deck the supplier had in stock, and I couldn’t afford another. But it’s gone, too. Somebody stole it … somebody who’s out to get me.” He lowered his voice. “I predicted that, even without the cards!”
The customer is always right, as the saying goes; and also, the customer is sometimes paranoid. “We’ll look into it, Mr., uh, Ms. Zelda.”
“Aldo. My real name is Aldo Firkin. Zelda’s just a stage name.” He dabbed at the layers of peacock-colored eye shadow. “It’s all an act.”
“You don’t say,” I said. Sheyenne pretended to jab me with her spectral elbow, though I couldn’t feel her touch. She sometimes has to remind me to show a proper professional attitude in front of the clients.
The fortune-teller frowned, plucking at the absurd dress. “You think I want to dress up like this? I’m not a natural-born transvestite, but I can’t make a living otherwise. It’s a stereotype we can’t shake—nobody wants male fortune-tellers. What a sham! All these decades of fighting for equal rights, and I have to do this.” He adjusted the ridiculous wig. “Now, about my stolen cards? I really need them back. I’ve been doing my best.” With a burring rattle of laminated paper, Aldo/Zelda shuffled the regular playing cards. “But there’s nothing magical about these. I’m just making it up. My other deck—now, those cards were real, the magic just barely starting to wear off.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at the old playing cards. “Oddly enough, my fortunes seem to be just as accurate with this ordinary deck. I must be really good at this.” He tapped the deck, drew a card, looked at it, and smiled. “Ah, correctly predicted that one. Maybe there’s real magic here!”
“Or maybe you’re just telling people what they want to hear,” I suggested.
Aldo grinned. “Ah, and that’s the real magic, isn’t it? Give cryptic fortunes and let the customer figure out the true meaning. ‘You will lose something very valuable to you, but you will gain something unexpected.’ That’s one I told the fat lady a few months ago.”
“Sounds like a bad horoscope,” I said.
“Actually, it sounds like a good horoscope,” Sheyenne said.
The gaunt vampire ringmaster walked by, still wearing his equestrian jacket; he kept to the awnings, shading his head with his black top hat to avoid the direct sunlight. Aldo waved. “Oscar! Come here—this is the private detective I was telling you about. Dan Chambeaux, meet Oscar Kowalski, ringmaster and circus owner.”
The ringmaster gave a formal nod, and we exchanged a cold grip. “Dan Shamble?”
“Chambeaux,” I corrected. “People always mispronounce my name. And I wouldn’t expect a vampire to be named Oscar Kowalski. I’d think something more like … Bela.”
Kowalski let out an annoyed snort. “Bela is a drama queen and a pain in the ass, but he does draw a crowd, and that’s what it’s all about.” He lowered his voice. “I’m glad Aldo called you to look into the thefts. We’ve had a rash of them over the past two weeks.” He shot a narrow-eyed glare at the transvestite fortune-teller. “But we need to be discreet.”
Aldo sounded indignant. “He’s a private detective, not a public one. And I couldn’t wait any longer—I need my magic cards back.”
“What other thefts?” Sheyenne pressed.
“Mostly minor items, low value,” Kowalski said.
“My fortune-telling cards are extremely valuable!” Aldo insisted.
The ringmaster continued, “But it causes a lot of nuisance and unease. We like to think we’re family here at the circus.”
“I miss the Bearded Lady,” Aldo muttered. “Harriet was like a mother to us all, really kept the circus tight-knit, like a family. Things were so much nicer before she went off to lead a semi-normal life of her own.”
Kowalski shook his head. “We all miss Harriet, but there’s not much call for everyday freaks after the Big Uneasy. People can see weirder creatures on any walk through the Quarter.”
I got back to business. “We need to know what the other items are. All the clues should lead to the same suspect.”
“I can get you a list—a long one,” Aldo said, then considered. “But if you’re investigating all of the thefts in the circus, then Oscar should pay your bill.”
The ringmaster’s shoulders drooped. “I’ll pay half … provided Mr. Shamble—uh, Chambeaux—can help us all out. Most of the other items aren’t worth much.”
“If there’s a thief running loose, maybe we should report it to Officer McGoohan?” Sheyenne suggested.
I explained, “I have a good friend on the police force. He’ll take your problems seriously.”
Kowalski cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary. We must count on your discretion, Mr. Chambeaux. People don’t trust circus folk as it is, even here in the Unnatural Quarter, and I don’t want to do anything to reinforce that stereotype. You probably don’t like it when people consider all zombies to be brain-eating clods with speech impediments.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I work hard to stay well preserved.”
Kowalski tipped his hat. “I hope you can resolve this quickly and quietly. The circus is your client.”
“But find my magic cards first,” Aldo insisted as he jotted down the list on a scrap of paper.
“If we find the thief, we should find all of the stolen items,” I said.
Sheyenne and I read the list as we walked away. In addition to the magic fortune-telling cards (two sets, but I doubted we’d find the one he’d lost six months earlier), Aldo had listed a hammer (standard hardware store issue), glass milk bottle from one of the game booths, dagger from the knife thrower’s act, three costume-jewelry necklaces from Annie the fat lady (hence a rope-length of jewelry), and a cold Reuben sandwich from a refrigerator in the Flag. I figured we could discount that last item.
We had no trouble finding the fat lady, mainly because she wasn’t very mobile, but also because she was so large. In her open tent, Annie reclined on—and covered most of—a queen-sized bed. Plates mounded with chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and Danishes sat within reach of one hand; by the other side of the bed sat a tray of chicken wings and ribs. She had apparently been through several plates already, but despite the aftermath of her obviously enormous appetite, her face looked saggy. I didn’t think the fat lady looked healthy at all, but since I’m undead, I’m not one to point fingers.
Annie’s wide throat was round and somewhat tubular, like a pelican with a particular lucky catch of fish. She had permed gray hair and wire-rim glasses that made her look like the world’s kindest, and largest, grandmother. An enormous floral muumuu extended all the way down to her ankles; sleeves covered the wrists where they met the gloves. Under her gigantic tent of a dress, her mounded belly stirred and squirmed in a disturbing way, as if her intestines were rearranging themselves before our eyes.
Annie gave us a twinkling smile. “Hello, dears! Come in and stare—that’s what I’m here for. Would you like a cookie? I’ve got plenty.” She extended the tray to us.
“No thanks, ma’am,” Sheyenne said. “I’m ectoplasmic.”
“And I’m on a low-carb diet,” I added, even though it was just an excuse. My undead taste buds were no longer very discriminating, and Annie needed a constant stream of calories just to maintain her bulk. She consumed the rest of the cookies with methodical swiftness, as if it were her mission.
“We’re from Chambeaux and Deyer Investigations, and we’re here on a case.” I set one of our business cards on the bedside table next to the chicken wings. “We’ve been hired to investigate certain items that have gone missing. If there’s a circus thief, we’ll catch him.”
“A thief? Oh, my!” Annie held her hands to her face, licked a few crumbs from her fingers. “I refuse to believe members of my dear circus family are thieves.” Her mounded stomach shifted and churned, and Annie let out an embarrassed giggle, placing her hands flat on her belly. “Just a bit of indigestion—it tends to get extreme in my case.”
I held up Aldo’s handwritten list. “According to this, you’ve lost several items of jewelry?”
“Oh, dear me, I may have misplaced a few cheap necklaces—I’m always doing that. When I manage to walk around, I can’t see the ground, and if something falls … well, I just give it up for lost. I wouldn’t call them stolen. The circus people are my family. I’m like a mother to them since Harriet’s gone. Someone has to watch out for everyone.”
I tipped my fedora. “If you think of anything, please let us know, ma’am. Any clue would help.”
Leaving the fat lady’s tent, we strolled along the midway, and soon Fazio the Clown buttonholed us again. “I saw you two talking with that fraud fortune-teller! He’s a fake—a complete fake. I doubt he could predict yesterday if he had a newspaper in front of him.”
If you had asked me before the Big Uneasy, I would have said that all fortune-telling was fake. Now, though, I’d seen plenty of evidence of functional spells. “He’s at a disadvantage if he lost his magic cards.”
“Not the cards—the sham costume. Him in his stupid wig and his clumsy makeup! It’s an embarrassment. Makeup is no joke. I work hard on my appearance, greasepaint over every inch of exposed skin.” He tugged at his shocks of pink hair, straightened the bald cap, then tweaked the bright red nose. “It’s a beautiful design, the perfect clown face—I’ve even got it trademarked. But Zelda, or Aldo, or whoever or whatever the name is, does it just to make a buck. It cheapens the art of face painting.”
“And why do you paint your face?” Sheyenne asked.
“For a greater purpose, of course—to get a laugh.”
Or a scream, I thought, remembering the terrified children.
“We’re investigating a rash of burglaries, not makeup techniques,” I said. “Any comments about his missing deck of fortune-telling cards?”
“I don’t know anything about the first one he lost, and not the second one either.” He snorted, then stormed off. “You should be investigating Aldo. His eye shadow is a crime!”
3
After gathering as much information as we could, Sheyenne and I returned to the Chambeaux & Deyer offices in the seedy, run-down section of the Unnatural Quarter (I realize that’s not very specific).
Sheyenne began compiling a list of circus suspects and digging up dirt on them. She’s good at uncovering details, whether they be sordid details, suspicious details, or just plain bookkeeping details.
A large part of my job is time management. Real life as an undead private investigator isn’t like a TV detective show, where the PI works on one mystery at a time and solves it without other clients getting in the way. In addition to investigating stolen items at the vampire circus, I had several active cases.
My partner, Robin Deyer, came out to brief me on the legal battles she had fought during the day. As a lawyer, Robin makes sure that downtrodden and underrepresented monsters get a fair shot in the legal system. She’s a young African American, as pretty as she is determined—and she is extremely determined. Her eyes had a faraway, preoccupied look because case subtleties ran through her head at all times.
I had taken her under my wing back when I was a human private detective. We shared office space, offered assistance on each other’s cases, and enjoyed working together. After my murder, I think Robin was hit even harder by my death than I was. When I came back from the grave, she welcomed me with open arms (after she got over the shock and uneasiness). She made a special point to treat me just as she’d always done, and we quickly got back to our usual routine.
“Any word on the gargoyle case?” I asked.
For several weeks Robin had represented a gargoyle who was suing the Notre Dame cathedral for unauthorized use of his likeness. Comparing the gargoyle himself with photographs of several specific stone figures on the ancient cathedral, the resemblance was undeniable.
Her expression tightened. “I think we’re going to lose that one. There seems to be an unbreakable statute of limitations clause in church law. Today, I’m neck-deep in that unnatural voting rights case.”
Robin was tilting at a different windmill, challenging voter restrictions recently put in place for the sole purpose of denying unnaturals the right to vote. (No one seemed to remember that in some corrupt cities, dead people had done more than their share of voting over the years.…) Both political parties insisted that the proposed voter suppression rules against unnaturals were disenfranchising their constituents, although neither side had been able to prove that unnaturals leaned toward any particular affiliation, as a rule.
After Robin described a brief she had filed and her court appearance schedule for the week, I told her about the vampire circus and headed to my office to take care of my own work. “I think I can wrap up the Amontillado case this afternoon.”
“Good,” Sheyenne called from the receptionist’s desk. “We need to send them a bill.”
Robin cautioned, “The outcome wasn’t what the client expected. Maybe we should offer a discount—”
Sheyenne cut right in. “The client is a client, and a fee is a fee.” If Robin had her way, she would do all cases pro bono, and Sheyenne often had to remind her about the facts of business. Even though I was undead and Sheyenne was a ghost, Robin still needed to eat, and we all had to pay the rent on the office space.
I suggested a compromise. “Give the client a coupon for his next case with us. We did solve the mystery, which is what he hired us to do.”
A wealthy man had asked me to track down a very rare cask of Amontillado, more than a century and a half old, and I found the cask behind a brick wall, along with an animated skeleton that had been manacled there. In the years since the Big Uneasy, the skeleton had managed to break loose from one manacle by detaching his entire bony hand. With his wrist released, he was able to reach the cask, work the bung loose, and pour the extremely expensive sherry down his throat. Of course, since he had no throat, the rare Amontillado spilled all over the vault floor and dried up. When I found the very expensive and very empty cask I’d been hired to track down, the skeleton laughed and laughed at the joke, saying in a rattling voice, “I drank it all, I drank it all!”
Now I sat at my desk and wrote up the report, reducing the total number of hours billed on the case just to make Robin happy, and to make me feel better as well; Sheyenne didn’t need to know.
It was full-dark outside by the time Sheyenne flitted through my closed office door. She carried a stack of papers, which could not spectrally pass through the barrier, so they fluttered to the floor outside. With an impatient frown, she flitted back out, picked up the papers, and opened the door to enter via the normal way.
“I ran down the usual suspects at the circus. Some very interesting background material.”
I took the papers. “Anything suspicious?”
She arched her eyebrows. “Naturals and unnaturals all working for a traveling circus run by a vampire—isn’t that suspicious enough?”
“I was hoping for something more specific.”
“So many aliases, stage names, plenty of skeletons in the closet—and not like the one you found with your cask of Amontillado.” She grinned at me.
“Speaking of that …” I handed her the bill and final report, which pleased her very much.
She continued with her summary, “First off, Oscar Kowalski is not a very talented businessman. He’s filed for bankruptcy twice since the Big Uneasy, barely scraped through, and seems to be in rocky circumstances right now.”
I said, “I don’t see how stealing a deck of fortune-teller cards, costume jewelry, and a cold Reuben sandwich would help his financial situation.”
“Probably not.” Sheyenne glanced down at her papers again. “Checking back along the circus route over the years, I found that two goblin roustabouts were arrested for petty theft, but they escaped and disappeared. Young twins. Their juvenile records should have been sealed, but Robin pried them loose because the law is still murky.”
“Robin used a murky law to her own advantage?” I asked. “Good for her.”
Sheyenne blew an imaginary breath through her lips. “The goblins were over eighteen years old—adults according to the letter of the law—but goblins live a long time, and those twins are still adolescents as far as goblins go. Still, nobody’s bothered to change the law, so we got the arrest records. Not that it does us much good, if the twins are no longer with the circus.”
Robin would probably decide to challenge that law, now that she’d noticed the injustice.
“What else?” I asked.
“Aldo—or should we call him Zelda?—is late on his child support, and his ex-wife is trying to track him down.” She checked off items on her list. “Fazio got arrested for drunk driving in his clown car, but that was never prosecuted. Oh, and his clown license has expired.”
I frowned. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a clown license. I find that very suspicious.”
Sheyenne blinked her blue eyes at me. “More suspicious than all the other things?”
“He’s a clown. I’m always suspicious of clowns.”
4
With the information Sheyenne had uncovered about the circus personnel, I went back to the midway early enough to catch the nighttime monster matinee. While unnatural crowds started to gather inside the Big Top for Bela’s performance, I stopped by Oscar Kowalski’s office trailer just outside the main tent. I wanted to ask him about bankruptcy filings, late child-support payments, Fazio’s expired clown license, and anything else that came to mind. Instead, I stumbled into another crisis.
“I refuse, Oscar!” Bela cried with an exaggerated and obviously fake Transylvanian accent. He raised his chin with an imperious air and flared the nostrils on his beak-like nose. “You must cancel the show. I can’t perform under these circumstances—it is impossible!”
“Nothing’s impossible, Bela.” Kowalski sounded long-suffering and annoyed. He sat at his desk with an open, and messily scribbled ledger. “Nobody’s canceling the show. You can go on, and you will go on.”
“But it’s been stolen!” Bela clutched at his throat, where I noticed the gold medallion was missing. (The far-too-clingy silver lamé bodysuit had previously demanded most of my attention.) “It’s my Air Commander medal, given to me for being a Flying Ace in World War Two—or World War One, I forget which. If I don’t wear the medal, then I won’t have the confidence to transform into a bat at the climax of my show.”
I interrupted, startling them. “You need a magic talisman to change into a bat?”
“Have you ever tried it?” Bela snapped, then whirled on Kowalski. “Have you? Most vampires are incapable. It requires the utmost concentration. My Air Commander medal is the perfect focusing aid.”
“So it’s like Dumbo’s magic feather?” I said. “Without it, you wouldn’t have the self-confidence to fly?”
Bela raised himself up, looked down his nose at me, and said with withering sarcasm, “Yes, exactly like that.” He sniffed.
“It’s all in his head,” Kowalski explained to me. “Nothing magical whatsoever. The medallion’s just a piece of junk.”
“It is part of my act! I feel naked without it.”
Again, I had trouble tearing my attention from the excessively form-fitting lamé bodysuit.
The ringmaster looked at his watch, closed his ledger with finality. “Sorry, Bela, but the show must go on. So follow that advice—go on!”
In a huff, the vampire trapeze artist strutted out of the admin trailer.
With a flicker of relief on his face, Kowalski turned to me. “Every week he’s got some other excuse, imagines he’s been cursed whenever he passes gas, threatens to quit the circus, but I doubt any rival show would have him.”
“Are there other monster circuses?” I hadn’t heard of any.
“No. Hence, my point. And I admit it takes a lot of concentration to turn into a bat, especially on the fly, but he doesn’t have to be such an ass about it.” He brushed down his jacket, looked at the watch again. “Now, I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, Mr. Chambeaux. Come up with answers yet?”
“Even better—I’ve got a lot more questions.”
“How is that better?”
“That means I’m making progress.”
Kowalski stood from his desk. He looked tired as he reached for his top hat. “I can’t talk with you at the moment. The show must go on for me, too, and if there’s any unreasonable delay in the performance the lions start complaining.”
“Don’t you mean the lion tamer?” I asked.
“No, Calvin’s easy to deal with, but the lions want their treats, and they can get quite demanding.” He showed me out of the trailer and locked the door behind us.
With the audience crowded in the Big Top for the monster matinee, the midway was quiet and dark. I decided to lurk and snoop, two things for which a zombie detective is eminently qualified.
Since the Air Commander medal was the latest stolen item, I made my way to Bela’s darkened tent. Though he considered himself the star of the circus, the vampire’s mobile domicile wasn’t much more than a place to shelter his coffin when he needed some quiet time—wide open and not secure. If Bela had gone to ground to take a nap, someone could easily have snatched his medal from the nightstand and run off with it.
I walked around outside Bela’s tent, senses alert and scanning the ground for any unusual clues … such as that playing card lying face-up on the ground not far from the tent.
It was the jack of diamonds, the same card that predicted a person would be hungry soon after breakfast. I guessed it came from Zelda’s deck.
I kept plodding along, scanning from side to side. The circus seemed eerily empty, filled with shadows. I heard the audience cheer in the Big Top; Calvin must be in the middle of his act.
Spotting something ahead, I bent over to pick up another playing card, the six of hearts. With two dropped playing cards making a dotted line that led from Bela’s recently burgled tent toward the general direction of Zelda/Aldo’s trailer, I knew how to connect the dots.
As I approached the trailer, I heard raised voices, an argument in full swing. Aldo was shouting, so upset that he still sounded high-pitched and falsetto, and not in an attempt to maintain his transvestite identity. “What did you want with my magic cards anyway? It wasn’t enough for you to steal my fortune-telling deck, so you had to steal my playing cards, too? And my makeup kit? You’re trying to ruin me!” He had his wig in his hand, and a smear of cold cream had removed only the first few layers of eye shadow.
Fazio was still in full clown makeup, his bright red nose planted in the middle of his white-painted face, his pink hair sticking out in all directions. “You have nothing I’d even want to steal—certainly not your amateur makeup kit! You are a fake and a disgrace!”
Before they could come to blows, I interrupted, holding up the two playing cards. “Are these from the deck? I found them on the ground near Bela’s tent—there’s been another robbery.”
Aldo grabbed the playing cards, as if he could make a good start with only two of the fifty-two. “Yes, there has—my cards and my makeup kit.”
Fazio asked, “What other robbery?”
“Someone took Bela’s Air Commander medal right before his trapeze act.”
“Bela never goes anywhere without that gaudy thing.” Aldo crossed his arms over his too-obviously padded chest, then turned to the clown. “Why would you steal the poor vamp’s Air Commander medal?”
“I didn’t steal it! And I didn’t steal your damn cards, either! Or your makeup kit. I am a completely honest, law-abiding citizen.”
“Then what about my Reuben sandwich?” Aldo demanded. Fazio hesitated just long enough for the fortune-teller to pounce. “I knew it—you took my sandwich!”
“Those may be two unrelated cases,” I said. “And, Fazio, you’re not off my list of suspects—I know you’ve been keeping secrets.”
The circus clown seemed to turn even whiter than his greasepaint. “You … know my secret?”
“Your clown license is expired, and that’s enough to make me suspicious,” I said, deciding not to bring up the clown-car drunk driving incident. “I can bring in the real police at any time, but for now I’ll keep looking.”
I stalked off among the dark trailers and tents. I hoped I could find the Air Commander medal in time to take it to the vampire trapeze artist before his act, just to give him a psychological boost. The crowd in the Big Top continued to cheer the lion tamer’s show.
I paused at Annie’s tent. Since the tent flaps were open, I looked in. The fat lady was inside, lying on her bed, and appeared to be asleep, covered by a mounded blanket. She looked like a mountain range under the comforters. More plates piled with cookies, brownies, ribs, and wings remained within easy reach; someone must replenish them all day long. I left her to rest.
I circled around, trying to keep an open mind but ready to find Fazio responsible (okay, I admit, I was guilty of clown profiling). There, outside the front of his tent, I found the red ribbon and gold disk—Bela’s Air Commander medal, just lying on the ground. Not only was the circus thief persistent and random, he was also clumsy. Why steal things, then drop them all over the place like a cat losing interest in a mouse?
In the Big Top, the crowd cheered and applauded as Calvin finished his show. I grabbed the medal, deciding to confront the clown later. At the moment I had to get the Air Commander medal back to the vampire trapeze artist before he started his act.
I expected to feel a tingle of magic; if the Air Commander medal were really a spell-impregnated amulet, I should have been able to sense the power even with my numb fingers. Then the “gold” disk rotated as I dangled the ribbon, revealing Made in China stamped on the back; I suspected the disk itself was nothing more than coated tin.
But Bela somehow had it in his head that he needed this thing for his bat transformation, so I might as well be of service.
I raced to the Big Top at the best speed I could manage—joints and muscles tend to stiffen up postmortem, so it’s a good thing I keep myself in shape. So many spectators were milling at the main tent opening—mummies, werewolves, ghouls, vampires, a very tall ogre—that I couldn’t get inside, so I ran around to the side by Oscar Kowalski’s office trailer. I pushed my way through a smaller stage entrance, holding up the medal. “Wait—I have to get this to Bela before he starts!”
But the ringmaster had already announced the performance, and the crowd drowned out my voice. Spotlights shone on Bela, high up on his trapeze platform, and the audience gave suitable gasps as the light swung down to illuminate the hundred sharpened stakes.
For all his prima donna behavior, Bela was a true showman. Even without the not-so-magic medal around his neck, he showed no sign of nervousness as he grabbed the trapeze and swung out over the yawning gap. As Bela began his act, Kowalski withdrew to the side of the tent, where he saw me holding the red-ribboned amulet. “I found it,” I said, “but too late.”
The ringmaster gave a snort. “He doesn’t need the thing. It’s all in his head, and I can’t let him make excuses. The show must go on.”
Above, Bela did a beautiful somersault loop, then caught the trapeze bar again.
“His ego needs to be taken down a notch anyway. He demanded a big pay raise. Does he think the circus is actually making any money? We’re holding on by a spiderweb here.”
I lowered my voice. “I know about the bankruptcies, Mr. Kowalski.”
The ringmaster frowned. “So then you know I can’t pay Bela anymore, but I can’t have him leave, either. If he refused to do the show tonight, and I had to refund all these tickets …” He gestured to the audience. “I might as well bury myself six feet under without a book to read.”
Bela swung back and forth on the trapeze, increasing his momentum and height as he set up for the climax of the show.
Kowalski looked up. “The fumble is all part of the act, you know. He better not chicken out tonight.”
At the apex of the swing, Bela flipped himself into the air, spun three somersaults, then reached out to catch the returning bar, fumbled and missed—just as I had seen him do that afternoon. Bela wore a panicked look, his arms outstretched as he plummeted toward the pointy wooden stakes.
The audience gasped. A necromancer screamed in a high, womanish voice. Kowalski and I waited for Bela to transform into a bat.
And waited.
He flailed and thrashed in real panic. In the last instant, Bela squeezed his eyes shut, either in a last-ditch attempt to concentrate or to avoid seeing so many sharp wooden tips. And then he slammed into them. Since he’d been falling spread-eagled, Bela managed to impale himself on a goodly number of the one hundred stakes.
Kowalski gaped. The monsters in the audience screamed; some chuckled, thinking it was part of the show. But when Bela sizzled and fumed, his body boiling and flesh sloughing away to leave only a skeleton that crumbled to dust, people began running out of the Big Top. A few stayed and applauded.
“I have to manage this crowd!” Kowalski said as he bolted away from me. “The show’s over—you saw it finish. Nobody’s getting refunds.”
Disgusted, I held up the Air Commander medal and called after him. “I found this by Fazio’s tent—and I bet he also stole Aldo’s deck of fortune-telling cards.”
Then I had another thought, realizing that the uproar would let Fazio know that Bela was dead—and the clown knew he was responsible. If the amulet truly had no magic, I didn’t know whether this counted technically as murder, but at the very least he had caused a deadly accident, messing with the vampire trapeze artist’s head before a dangerous act. Fazio had some explaining to do, and I had to stop him before he fled the circus.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Officer Toby McGoohan, commonly called McGoo (by me, at least), and told him to roll the squad cars, that we had a death at the circus and a possible murderer to arrest. McGoo likes to hear things like that. He’s my BHF—my best human friend—and we’ve helped each other on many cases. I knew I could count on him now.
First, though, I had to prevent the escape of a deadly circus clown.
5
I expected to find Fazio at his tent, stuffing valuables into a hobo sack so he could run far from the Quarter. That’s what I would do if I were a killer clown cat burglar responsible for the death of a vampire trapeze artist.
I did find Fazio in his tent, but he wasn’t packing up to leave. Instead he was wailing, outraged. “They stole my nose! The little bastards stole my nose!”
The clown whirled to face me, and I saw that the big red nose was indeed gone from the middle of his face. More shocking, though: The fake nose wasn’t the only thing missing. Fazio’s real nose was gone, leaving a cavernous empty sinus socket draped with a few shreds of rotted flesh. The makeup had been smudged around his eyes, and I could see the sunken hollow look, the grayish tone to his unpainted skin.
“You’re a zombie!” I cried, demonstrating my detective abilities.
“Not just a zombie,” Fazio insisted. “A clown, too. That’s my true calling in life—and afterlife.”
A zombie clown, I thought. Now that’s scary.
Fazio moaned, covering the nose hole in the middle of his face. “All I ever wanted was to make people laugh.” Then he looked up at me. “Why are you so surprised? You’re undead, and you came back to keep solving cases. Why can’t I still be a clown just because I’m a zombie? Maybe that’s why I rose up in the first place—to make people laugh.”
Actually, he wasn’t making anyone laugh that I could tell, but I decided not to argue with him.
He touched his cheeks. “Put on enough greasepaint and a wig, no one can tell the difference. I still do my job.” A wave of anger passed through him again. “And those little goblin bastards stole my nose! I thought we were done with them for good! Last time they were here, the twins stole everything that wasn’t superglued down.” He let out a huff. “In fact, we tried supergluing everything down … which did prevent the thefts, but kept us from using the items at all. Bad idea. And then they stole the tube of superglue.”
“Which way did they go?” I heard sirens wailing in the distance. McGoo responded quickly, especially when he knew he’d have a nice arrest on his record without having to do the footwork.
The clown sniffled again—which came out as a loud hooting sound without his nose—and pointed out the tent. “They grabbed the nose off my face and ran that way. Somebody must be hiding them.”
“What would they do with a clown nose?” I asked. “Can you sell it on an auction site somewhere?”
“They don’t do anything with what they steal—they just steal it. It’s an illness. That’s why you find so many things just lying around on the ground.”
I bolted out of Fazio’s tent, hoping to intercept the kleptomaniac goblins. The circus midway was full of attendees streaming toward the exits, chattering about Bela’s spectacular (and, most agreed, entertaining) death. Some unnaturals still insisted it was part of the show and were trying to figure out how the trick was done.
Then I spotted another playing card lying on the ground and a necklace a few steps beyond that, then a baseball cap, and an eye patch. This was like a scavenger hunt. All of the breadcrumbs were heading toward the fat lady’s tent.
I heard a scuffle and a squeal, and I put on a burst of speed; zombies can move quickly in emergencies, or when they’re especially hungry. “Over here!” I yelled, hoping someone else would come running. I already knew Fazio was sounding the alarm among his circus friends, who were already alarmed after the death of the vampire trapeze artist (or maybe just because of the approaching police sirens).
The flaps of the fat lady’s tent were down, but I yanked them open. I saw Annie struggling with her enormous dress, pulling down the fabric folds to cover her body—and the dress itself, or something inside it, was fighting back.
“Quickly, my dears, quickly!” When she saw me, a look of horror crossed her face (I often get that reaction). She did not look like a sweet granny now; her whole face was much skinnier, as if someone had deflated her. Annie still had many chins, but they hung like wattles around her neck.
As she struggled and thrashed with her recalcitrant dress, the fabric tore, and a goblin’s smooth, ugly head poked out. The second young goblin also squirmed and broke free, ripping the dress to shreds as they both escaped from their unorthodox hiding place. Inside the tentlike flower-print fabric, they left behind a rather scrawny-looking Annie in a one-piece bathing suit. The goblins hissed and snapped, annoyed to be exposed.
Goblins are like small gray-skinned elves … if those elves happened to be born from a mother saturated with toxic waste and poisonous thoughts. Their huge mouths were filled with needle-like teeth, and their glowing eyes could have been used as a plumber’s utility light. As the goblin twins tried to scramble away, Annie wrapped her arms around them and pulled the creatures close to her in a motherly embrace.
There was hardly anything to Annie now. With all her loose skin, she looked as if she was wasting away, despite the numerous plates of ribs, cookies, etc., she consumed every day. Then I realized that if she had been hiding the kleptomaniac creatures, they might have eaten much of the food.
The fat lady’s eyes were wide, her expression desperate. “You can’t take my boys!” She yanked the goblins closer, practically smothering them. “I was trying to protect them, and they helped me when I needed it most! They’re so sweet.” She held out her hand, and one of the goblins tried to bite it. Annie giggled.
More shouts came from outside the tent. Fazio, the now-noseless clown, staggered in, accompanied by Aldo, who’d thrown on his wig while he ran, as well as the werewolf lion tamer, who still held his bullwhip, ready to use it.
The vampire ringmaster barged in right behind them, distraught. “The police are coming. What the—” He stopped when he saw the goblins. “What the hell are those two doing here? With all the arrest warrants—”
As the kleptomaniac goblin twins tried to bolt, Calvin cracked his bullwhip, and they skittered back into Annie’s protective embrace.
“I won’t turn them out into the cold,” she said with a sniffle. “They’re just misunderstood. They stole things, but they didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
“Nothing bad?” Kowalski cried. “They stole Bela’s Air Commander medal. Without it, he didn’t think he could turn into a bat—and now he’s dead!”
Annie was disturbed by this. “But he started out dead.”
“I mean he’s really dead now!”
“Well, I’m sure they’re very sorry,” Annie insisted.
“The medallion was fake.” I held it up so everyone could see the words Made in China stamped on the back. “No intrinsic magic.”
Annie sounded defensive. “There—no harm done.”
The clown and the fortune-teller looked at the strangely emaciated form of the fat lady. Aldo said, “What happened to you? You used to be so … so …”
“Fat,” she answered.
“I was about to say substantial.” Then Aldo remembered his priorities. “And what happened to my fortune-telling cards?”
“I lost weight, thanks to your magic cards.” She sniffed, sounding glum. “When Harriet left the circus, I wanted to be in better shape to mother you all. It’s quite a job! I wanted to be healthy, go on a diet, so I signed up for a guaranteed Gypsy weight-loss routine. Mean Cuisine. I lost four hundred pounds—and now I can’t stop!”
Aldo scratched his wig, which was already askew. “What did my fortune-telling deck have to do with it?”
“I needed your cards, ones with real magic, and that’s why I took your deck six months ago.” She sniffed and made an excuse. “Well, you did leave them lying around a lot.” When the fortune-teller glared at her, she turned away. “I just had to have two specific cards, the fat lady and the skeleton. I superglued the cards together, read the spell from the Gypsy diet book, and this fat lady started to look more like a skeleton. Worked like a charm!”
“Uh, it was a charm,” I pointed out.
“But because of the superglue, I couldn’t separate the cards again. Impossible to break the spell. And I realized I was going to lose my livelihood! Being a fat lady is all I am … and believe me, there was a lot of me.” She pulled at the excessive folds of her torn dress. “Everybody loved me when I was a fat lady. Everyone wanted to hug me, lose themselves in my expansive … everything. I needed another fortune-telling deck, a fresh skeleton card and a fat lady card, so I could break the magic.”
“So you stole my other deck, too!” Aldo said.
“The goblin boys did.” Annie sounded ashamed. “You were much more careful after losing the first one, and I wasn’t exactly nimble enough to slip into your trailer unnoticed. The boys came back to the circus, looking for shelter and hoping to hide from the police, and I just asked them to do me that one favor. Unfortunately, once they got started …”
Officer McGoohan and four uniformed cops charged into the tent, all trying to fit through the open flap at once, as if they were performing their own circus clown act. Fortunately, because it was designed for a fat lady, the tent opening was double-wide.
McGoo’s a rough, tough cop who gets himself in trouble more often than the criminals do, but he and I have gotten each other out of trouble enough times, too. “Shamble, tell me what’s going on here.”
I rattled off a quick summary. “Fat lady hiding kleptomaniac goblins in her dress, a vampire trapeze artist accidentally murdered because he couldn’t change into a bat, deck of magic fortune-telling cards stolen—among other things.”
McGoo nodded. “Oh, another one of those cases.”
The goblins tried to bolt as the policemen rounded them up, and Calvin used his whip with great enthusiasm as well as precision. Even after the goblin thieves were handcuffed, they snapped with their needle-like teeth, trying to bite the hands that arrested them. Fortunately, among his other useful defensive items, McGoo kept a roll of duct tape on his belt, with which he secured the criminal goblins’ mouths.
“Oh, my poor dears,” Annie wailed. “They just need some love and understanding.”
“They need a little time behind bars,” I said. “Or at least doing community service.” All in all, I doubted the stolen items added up to more than a misdemeanor.
“There are other arrest warrants for those two.” McGoo was shaking his head. “And the fat lady was aiding and abetting.”
“For petty theft,” Kowalski said, troubled. “Bela might disagree, but he never liked to accept blame for anything. He did sign a waiver acknowledging the inherent risk in performing death-defying feats.”
Kowalski stood next to Annie. “The circus is like family, and Annie is part of it. We’re not pressing charges against her, and we’ll return all the stolen items to their rightful owners.”
“Except for my magic deck,” Aldo grumbled.
“I can track down another one,” I said. “Part of my services.”
“And my Reuben sandwich.”
“Can’t help you there.…”
Without asking permission, the clown and the fortune-teller worked together—a victory in itself—to open the trunks in the back of Annie’s tent, moving aside the plates piled with cookies and gnawed rib bones. Fazio lifted out a bright red ball. “Here’s my nose!”
Digging deeper, they also found what was left of the deck of magic fortune-telling cards. Aldo was dismayed as he counted through them to find the skeleton and fat lady cards torn in half, by which Annie had apparently broken the weight-loss spell; other cards were missing as well, probably strewn on the ground somewhere along the midway.
The former fat lady wept, still clutching at straws. “Maybe if everything’s returned, there won’t be any charges filed?”
“Suit yourselves.” McGoo shook his head as the cops wrestled the still-squirming goblins out of the tent. “Those boys have already gotten themselves into enough trouble, more than just robbing circus folk. They’ll probably serve a year in juvie, maybe get out early for good behavior. Or maybe not.”
“Yes, they are quite a handful,” the fat lady said. “Even I have to admit that.” Looking longingly after the wayward goblins, Annie drew a deep shuddering breath, then turned to Oscar Kowalski. “I don’t suppose the circus has any use for a skinny lady? At least until I fill out a little bit? The spell is broken, and I’m gaining weight again … and it’ll be even faster when the twins don’t eat most of my food.”
The ringmaster thought long and hard. “I could use someone who understands the circus—and business. I’m no good at handling the day-to-day paperwork, the administration, managing the employees. I’m a showman, not an accountant.” He propped himself up, snatched off his top hat. “I never was much good at the business side of things. You’d think a vampire circus would want to be in the red.”
Annie finally brightened. “I can help. I can be like a mother to everyone. And if I manage the money, it’ll be like giving everybody an allowance!”
Fazio had reapplied his nose, although his makeup remained smeared. He looked at the remaining platters of food. “Annie, you wouldn’t happen to have a banana-cream pie I could smash into someone’s face? Just for the gag?”
“Sorry, dear, I only have cookies.”
The zombie clown threw cookies at Calvin, but nobody laughed. Rather, the werewolf lion tamer caught them and munched politely.
Aldo came up to me, smiling. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Chambeaux. You did track down the cards, and the thieves. And if you can find a replacement deck …” He held out his abbreviated deck of magic cards, shuffled them, and extended the pile to me. “Pick a card, any card.”
I did, looked at it myself, then slid it back into the deck. “No, thanks.”
Aldo frowned. “Don’t you want to know your future?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’d rather figure it out for myself.”
***