Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) (13 page)

“What’s the next part?”

“You put the chair down and stick your head in her mouth,” Peg explained behind me while Shelly switched to, “Oh no … oh no … oh no.”

“I think I’ll improvise instead,” I said, bringing the chair in front of me. Puddles cocked her head and looked puzzled. This was not the act, and I was not the trainer. She had latched onto something familiar in unfamiliar territory, but I wasn’t playing the game.

“I am not putting this chair down and sticking my head in her mouth,” I said through my teeth.

“Toby, do it, for God’s sake,” whimpered Shelly.

For a wild fraction of a second, I lost all fear. Once a woman in Pomona, or it may have been Palm Springs, told me she had jumped from a roof without planning to do it, just because she found herself looking down and suddenly lost touch of what it would mean. One thing that saved me from the jaws of Puddles was Puddles’ mouth. It was open and full of saliva and teeth.

“I’m not putting my head in that mouth,” I cried.

“I put my hands in worse mouths than that every day,” Shelly pleaded.

“Forget it, Shel, or do it yourself.”

Puddles took a tentative swipe again, but it didn’t have the showmanship of the first swing. It didn’t even have a roar.

“She’s making up her mind, I think,” said Peg.

“I’m going to hit the sonofabitch in the head with the chair. When I do it, run like hell,” I said, trying to smile reassuringly at the lion who looked into my face. I was probably uglier than the lion, but she seemed curious.

“That’s a stinking plan,” shrieked Shelly.

“I have none better,” I said, raising the chair slowly. “Get ready, Peg.”

“Toby,” she said, clutching my arm. “You could hurt her.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I really hope so.”

Puddles seemed to understand something of what was going on. She opened her mouth, bared her teeth, roared and eliminated the last of the space between us. The chair should have come down in her face, but I knew it was still up in the air, maybe floating up there with my hands and arms attached. A marvel of the universe.

“Stop that,” came a voice from behind me as Puddles was about to eat my cheek. When the voice hit, Puddles took one step backward, hesitated, and looked as if she were going to spring.

“I said stop,” shouted the blond lion tamer Sandoval, stepping to my side. The lion backed up two steps and growled.

“Chair,” he said in a confident voice. “Hand me the chair quickly.”

I pleaded with my arms to respond, and they did. I thanked them and watched the trainer step forward, driving Puddles back.

“Now,” he said commandingly, “we go back to your cage. Right
now.
I will like you very much if you go back to your cage, but I will not like you very much if you do not.”

I don’t know if the lion understood the words spoken with a European accent I couldn’t pinpoint, but she knew she was in the presence of the boss.

“Now lie down,” the man commanded softly. “Down.” And the lion went down.

“Thanks,” I said, without looking back at Peg, who clutched my arm, or Shelly, who was breathing loudly enough to rouse the Japanese at sea.

“Very slowly,” he said. “Very slowly go back to the tent where the cage is, and bring Henry and some help. Bring the roll cage in the corner. Quick, but slow.”

I moved with what I thought was a quick but slow pace back through the tent flap, pulling Peg with me. Shelly sat petrified in the dirt, his eyes fixed on Puddles.

“Let’s go, Shel,” I said, reaching down for him, but he didn’t move and I didn’t have time to wait. Outside the tent, Peg let go of my arm and I ran for the tent a few dozen yards away. Gargantua was dozing. So was Henry.

“Hurry,” I shouted. “The pull cage. Lion’s in the tent over there.” I pointed meaninglessly.

Henry moved faster than I thought a Henry could move behind the lion cage and pulled a smaller cage on wheels that didn’t look big enough to hold Puddles.

“Gimme a hand,” grunted Henry. “I ain’t endowed enough.”

With my endowment and his we got the small cage rolling and out into the night. I glanced in the direction of the big top and could see a few people leaving. The music was going furiously, but whatever the stall, it wasn’t working for some of the people.

“I seen the guy who done it,” Henry said. “Skunking around. Little fat guy, sweaty guy with no hair and glasses.”

“Not him,” I panted. Shelly had managed to get spotted by Henry within five minutes of following him. We went through the flap of the storage tent. Nothing had changed. Neither man nor animal had moved.

The sudden arrival of Henry and me startled Puddles, who stood up.

“Shhh,” said Sandoval, putting his finger to his lips. “You back there, be quiet. Be quiet.”

“That’s him,” shouted Henry, pointing at Shelly.

“Forget him,” I said to Henry. “Open the cage.”

Unsure of whether to watch Shelly or Puddles, Henry opened the door of the cage and said, “Open.”

The tamer coaxed the lion toward him with his hand. “Come, yes, come with me,” he said, showing teeth which gleamed even in this dim light. The music of “The Washington and Lee March” filtered in from the big top and seemed to give Puddles the feeling that this was something a bit more familiar.

“Yes,” said the tamer, crouching and backing up next to the cage. “You didn’t want to run away, did you? No. You just ran to the closest dark place. Now, into the cage. Go, Go.”

And into the cage went Puddles with only one brief pause to swipe a paw at the tamer and try to rip his right arm to the bone from elbow to wrist.

“Ahhh,” gargled Shelly, as the tamer pushed the door closed on the big cat.

“Wheel her back,” he said to Henry, hardly noticing that he might be bleeding to death.

“Can’t do it by myself,” bleated Henry, showing no great interest in the maimed man before him.

“Shelly, get off your behind and help,” I shouted, walking over to Sandoval, who showed nothing, didn’t even touch his arm.

Shelly managed to get up and over to Henry, who eyed him with great suspicion.

“Get the doctor,” I said.

“No,” said the tamer in the same commanding tone he had used with Puddles. “First get that cat out of here.”

Shelly and Henry obeyed as quickly as they could and made a not very fast exit, pulling the rattling caged lion outside.

“The cat could not see me reacting,” explained the tamer when the animal was gone. “If she saw me showing fear, I’d never be able to use her again.”

“You may never use that arm again,” I said, looking for something to slow down the bleeding. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around his arm. He sagged back, and I put out both arms to catch him. He felt cold.

The blood soaked my jacket red almost instantly. I let one hand reach for the chair, set it right, and guided the tamer into it. He nodded thanks as people rushed into the tent around us.

“Doc’s on the way,” said someone.

Sandoval didn’t even nod. Elder was there, propping him up, and so were two or three others I hadn’t met. Then Doc Ogle came in with his plaid bag. He squinted, trying to find his patient.

“Here, Doc,” said Elder.

The doctor came over to us and looked down at me with obvious disdain.

“Not me,” I said. “Him. His arm.”

Then the doctor spotted what everyone in the tent had seen the second they came in.

“If you hide the man,” he said irritably, “how the hell am I supposed to treat him? What happened to him?”

“Lion,” I said.

The small crowd backed away, and Peg came through to stand at my side.

“Who put this filthy jacket on this wound?” said the doctor, moving his head inches from the arm as he flung my jacket in the corner. “Man gets bit by a damn lion and you push the germs in.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Stop the bleeding and kill the patient,” said the doctor to himself, pressing the wound with his hands. The tamer grimaced but didn’t let out a sound. The bleeding slowed. “Pressure,” said the old doctor.

“It wasn’t a bite,” I said. “The lion tore his arm with his nails.”

“Claws,” corrected the doctor. “Well, pick him up and we’ll get him to my wagon. He’ll be all right. I’ll be sewing on that arm for two hours, but he’ll be all right. Now, if we can just declare a cease-fire for an hour or two …”

He had no ending for his observation. Two men started to help Sandoval out. His yellow mane was sagging.

“Thanks,” I whispered to him. He had probably saved me from his own fate or worse, but he didn’t hear me.

Shelly came running in just as the crowd left. “This is not good for me,” he said seriously. “It really isn’t. I’m not used to this stuff with animals. Did you see the tricuspid on that baby?”

I had been chased by an elephant and almost killed by a lion in one day. The closest I had been to an animal outside of the Griffith Park Zoo was a police horse, and I didn’t much like it.

“Let’s go back to my wagon,” said Peg to me quietly. I liked the invitation.

“Good idea,” agreed Shelly, picking up the words. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

We walked back to Peg’s wagon through the crowd streaming out of the big top. Some faces were tired, some flushed with recent memory, none aware that they had almost had a lion in their laps.

The three of us had coffee, and Shelly kept talking. It was clear that he wasn’t going to leave until someone told him where he was sleeping. There was no point in sending him to watch Henry. He had already been spotted. So he talked of past patients, bicuspid articles he would never write, and the state of restoration of his favorite customer’s mouth. Mr. Stange had but one crusty tooth, a small scenic reproduction of one representative of Monument Valley. On this decaying piece of enamel, Shelly planned to reconstruct a mouth full of false teeth plus some experimental creations which were to be the envy of the county dental association. I felt some pity for Mr. Stange, in spite of the fact that he had once tried to hold Shelly up and had wrecked our office in the process. As I was about to leap on Shelly and kill him, a knock came at the door. Peg looked at me in apology and shrugged.

“Come in.”

And in came Gunther and Jeremy.

Gunther sat on the bed next to Shelly, whose mind was back in our office in Mr. Stange’s mouth. Gunther looked decidedly dejected.

“I lost her,” he said. “I found her and then I lost her.”

“So,” I said to Peg. “Agnes, who was found inside the tent with Puddles, could have let him out.”

“But,” said Jeremy, putting his massive bulk into the chair near me, “Thomas Paul could not have. He was in the big tent all through the show. I found him quickly and watched him. When the show ended, I asked a father and son sitting next to him if Paul had been there all through the show. Paul’s face is not forgettable. He was sitting there when the father and son came in half an hour before the show started. I’m sure he didn’t know I was watching him. Strange man. He was more interested in the show than anyone I have ever seen at a wrestling match. I cannot always fathom the human mind.”

“So,” I said, “that lets Mr. Paul out.”

“Perhaps not,” said Gunther. His hand went to his neck as if to loosen his tie, but his. sense of decorum got the better of his instinct and the hand came down. “Perhaps it is Mr. Paul who has an accomplice.”

“Agnes,” shouted Shelly.

“Possible,” I said, pouring the last of Peg’s coffee for the group. “But why the hell would Paul want to ruin the circus?”

No one knew. Peg smiled at me, and I suggested that we all go out and find someplace for my troupe to sleep.

“Perhaps we should stay near our charges, our assignments,” said Gunther.

I convinced them to call it a night and went outside with them, whispering to Peg that I would be back soon. People in costume were milling about, still up from their performance, talking about how it went, the murders, the runaway animals. We found Emmett Kelly in his wagon, and I asked him if he could put my friends up.

“We’ll find room,” said Kelly soberly.

“I’ll find somewhere else to sleep,” I said sacrificially.

“No need for that,” said Kelly. “We’ll make room.”

Then Kelly looked at me and understood.

“I’m sorry about the lion,” Shelly said.

“It’s OK, Shel,” I grinned.

“I didn’t want to hurt him,” he said, taking Emmett Kelly’s bed when Kelly moved to search for some bedding for the others. “I just wanted to frighten him a little.”

“Sure, Shel,” I said, backing out of the door with no desire to hear the tale the pudgy dentist would spend part of the night telling. I said good night to Kelly, Gunther, and Jeremy. Jeremy was already comfortably on the floor. Poor Gunther was looking for a place to change into the pajamas and robe he would magically produce from somewhere.

“One good thing,” said Kelly to me as I started to close the door. “They found the missing elephant.”

“Now all we need is a killer,” I said and closed the door behind me.