Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) (19 page)

“The police will be here shortly,” he said. “I’ll get you a drink. Bourbon, beer, coffee, tea?” he asked as amiably as his face, body, and probable madness would allow.

“I don’t know about Agnes,” I said, rising with a stretch, “but I could use a washroom.”

“Me too,” agreed Agnes.

Paul looked at his watch and figured, as I hoped he would, that there was plenty of time for us to get to the washroom and back before the police came. It was either that or pull out the gun now and hold us, which had other risks, including a pair of victims who weren’t surprised and might cause some trouble at the very moment when they were supposed to be catching bullets between their teeth.

“Right down the hall near the kitchen,” he said. “I’d suggest you hurry. The state police are not far off, and they said they’d get here quickly.”

We thanked him and went into the hall. Next to the kitchen where we had overheard Paul’s phone call was the partially open door of the bathroom.

“You first,” I said to Agnes with a yawn and closed the door before she could step in. I looked back toward the living room, but Paul didn’t step out. Agnes followed me into the kitchen. The door to the outside was bolted. I pushed the bolt back slowly, turned the latch and opened the door. It made a little noise.

“Peters?” came Paul’s voice.

“Let’s run like hell,” I said, and held her hand as we stumbled across the lawn. We had just reached the low wall when the first shot came. It chunked into the wall, sending a spray of yellowish fragments in front of my eyes. Agnes scrambled over the wall with me behind, followed by a second shot that whizzed across the road. We crouched behind the wall and did an ape scramble across the road. We could hear Paul coming after us, and I hoped he would guess wrong and try to head us off toward the beach. When we hit the small road in front of the house, I glanced back and saw Paul leveling a small rifle at us.

I pulled Agnes down, and the third shot caught a piece of the heel of my right shoe. The closest cover was some tall grass a dozen feet away, and he was sure to get a shot off before we were up and moving. I squeezed Agnes’ hand, gave her my devil’s grin, and began to roll into the road. She did the same. It seemed like a good idea, but it almost got us killed by the car that sped out of Paul’s driveway and stopped inches from my head.

The car door opened, and an arm reached out to grab me and lift me like a teddy bear into the front seat. The arm went out again and pulled Agnes in as the fourth shot screamed through the car door and lodged in the seat near my shoulder.

“Jeremy,” I said. He drove away as a fifth wild shot went over the car.

“I was watching the house, watching Paul,” he explained, looking back in the rearview window. A car had stopped in front of Paul’s house. It was a small car, getting smaller in the mirror, but it was clearly Alex and Nelson, who got out of it and met the massive Paul, who pointed in our direction.

“You see?” I said.

Jeremy nodded and stepped on the gas. The car was Shelly’s Olds, and it proved to be reliable as always. Nelson and Alex might have caught us if they had had a little driving nerve, but that had probably been taken out of them earlier in the day by a snake and a crash. Neither of them wanted to risk nonsurvival in a second accident.

“Why not just leave me off at the side of the road?” said Agnes. “I like a little excitement, God knows, but this is going a little far.”

“Sorry, Agnes,” I explained, as Jeremy took a corner and sent me up against the door. “Paul knows we ran, knows we know he tried to kill us. If he spots you, he’ll pull the trigger and claim you had a gun, or he went mad, or who knows. No, let’s get back to the circus. I’m almost close enough to taste it.”

“The killer?” asked Jeremy. “But isn’t Paul the killer?”

“Nope,” I said, leaning back to rest. “He’s only half the tale.”

“There is little poetry in the world,” sighed Jeremy, turning another corner.

“We need what we can get,” I said with eyes closed.

“I too thought that not long ago,” he said. “But I no longer think it. This is a world of steamy woe, Toby. Poetry is necessary, yes, but for the poet, not the public. It took me this half a century on earth to understand that basic truth.”

We hit a bump, and Agnes squealed in the back seat. “I think the nights are too cold in California,” she whimpered, as the first chill of evening whistled through the bullet holes in the rear window.

“Yes,” agreed Jeremy, “too cold for poetry.”

“No,” she sighed, “too cold for Abdul.”

“You have a sick Arab brother, husband?” Jeremy said in sympathy.

“Snake,” I explained. “Abdul’s her snake. He got lost.”

“We each fight our own wars,” he said. “I have a snake poem which might comfort you. It’s in the spring issue of
Southern Thought Magazine
.”

Agnes didn’t pick up on the invitation. It was the least she could do for someone who had just saved her life, but then again, her life wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t accused her of murder.

“I’d like to hear it, Jeremy,” I said.

Agnes came out of her grief for Abdul enough to pick up on the signal I was giving her. Jeremy probably picked it up too. He had known me longer than she had, but he wanted to do it, and as he said, it was more for the poet anyway.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. There was a calm smile on his face as he performed.

                  
What once were legs are no more

                  
in the cool perfection

                  
of form that seeks no complication

                  
and neither wishes to please nor score.

                  
It kills without abuse,

                  
consumes without excuse,

                  
craves no company

                  
and keeps its counsel close to the earth.

                  
Hated for its distance and distaste

                  
for the image of standing man,

                  
the snake in his indifference becomes

                  
the symbol of the beast who can

                  
tempt us from the garden of ignorance

                                 
by his very example

                                 
of independence.

“Some snakes kill very violently, and a lot of them like company,” commented Agnes. “I mean, I like the poem …”

“It is not about the reality of snakes,” explained Jeremy patiently. “It is about man’s image of the creature, my image of the creature. The total number of subscribers to
Southern Thought Magazine
is no more than two hundred, and I doubt if any of the dozen or so who will read my poem are herpetologists. I don’t care about snakes. It’s metaphor I’m after.”

“Well,” said Agnes, “I don’t care about metaphors or Seventh-Day Adventists. I care about snakes.”

“A realist critic,” sighed Jeremy, with a sudden turn down the road to the circus.

There wasn’t much doubt that Paul, Alex, and Nelson would either follow us to the circus, lose us and head for the circus, or just realize where we were going.

The circus lights glowed yellow in the twilight over Aldreich Field, and we followed those lights like the North Star. Jeremy drove right to Emmett Kelly’s wagon and parked the car behind it. I told Agnes to stay with me, but she said she was going back to her snakes.

“They’re hungry and scared,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I mean, I’m sorry I thought you had anything to do with the murders.”

She kissed my nose and ran off. I asked Jeremy to stay with her just in case Paul or anyone showed up who might be a problem. He nodded and went off after her.

Kelly, Gunther, and Shelly were inside the wagon, and all three leaped up when I stepped in.

“Are you all right?” said Gunther.

“Is Agnes all right?” said Kelly, dressed as Willie.

“My car,” said Shelly. “Jeremy took my car.”

“Agnes is fine. I’m fine. The car’s outside with one neat bullet hole in it.”

Shelly ran for the door and out.

“I’ve almost got it wrapped up,” I said, “but I need a little more time.”

“The clown suit,” said Kelly, who was in his Willie costume. I winced and then agreed. Gunther hurried along at my side as we headed for clown alley, and I explained what I wanted him to do.

“There is probably a much simpler way than such direct confrontation,” he said reasonably. He was always reasonable.

“Maybe,” I said, winding my way through the crowds to keep an eye on Kelly, whom the people kept stopping to gawk at, “but I haven’t got any real proof, just someone caught in a lie and my word and Agnes’ against Paul’s. This is his town. I don’t even have a motive. I’ve got to turn over a killer before the killer turns me over.”

“Us,” corrected Gunther, running at my side.

“Us,” I agreed, looking down at him.

“Be cautious, Toby,” he warned. “Some day your recklessness …”

“… will save the world,” I finished with a wink. Gunther walked away, shaking his head, and I followed Kelly into the tent, where the clowns were putting the finishing touches on their costumes.

“Help needed here,” Kelly said. Three clowns, one with a mop of orange hair and a huge painted grin, hurried over. He had a pipe between his teeth. Two other clowns, one a midget, leaped to our side.

“We’ve got to get him back in paint and fast,” explained Kelly. “Town cops are after him, and he’s got the Tanucci killer coming down.”

No one spoke. There were a few nods and some hands grabbed me, began to strip my clothes off. First the inner tube went around my waist. Then the costume went on over it. My face was covered with something sticky, and the little hat was on again with the rubber chin strap. Someone thrust the fake lasso in my hand, and hands stood me up. I looked in the mirror at my side and saw that Toby Peters was gone.

“Just stay behind me,” said Kelly as Willie. “Spin the rope and I’ll do my act. I’ll look back at you every once in a while as if you’re following me. When I look at you, you look out at the audience, very slow, as if you want me to think you’re not following me, and keep twirling the rope. Got it?”

I said I did, and I followed him into the night. The band was playing in the big top, and the stragglers were buying up their tickets for the final night of the Rose and Elder circus in Mirador. Kelly, two clowns, and I ran right past Alex and Nelson, who were at the entrance with their hands touching the steel of holstered guns. A few dozen yards behind them was Paul, who stopped still when we passed and looked directly in my eyes. I tried not to return the look as I passed, but that split face was irresistible. He recognized me as surely as I recognized him. I half expected him to yell for Nelson, but he didn’t, and as I ran into the big top, I knew he didn’t want to risk confronting me before witnesses. I had to be done away with before I could talk.

The lights hit me, and I was aware of something I had never felt before: eyes, thousands of eyes looking at me from beyond the brightness. There was a cheer in my direction, our direction. I was a clown. I followed Kelly and watched as clowns drove around in little cars, carried pails of water which they threw at each other, hoisted ladders, and drew howls of laughter. Willie walked in front of me, doing his wood-sawing act and taking it right into the stands. The first time he looked back at me I twirled my lasso harder and looked up at the crowd the way he had told me to do, a Jack Benny look. The entire section of the stands, hundreds of them, laughed. They laughed at me. They laughed at me because I had done something funny. I knew Kelly had set up the laugh, but it was a feeling I had never had before, as good as anything I had ever felt except for sex, handball, and the moment of facing what you most fear.

We were walking around doing a counterpoint to the music when I spotted Alex at the entrance on one end of the tent. Nelson stood at the entrance to the other end, scanning the crowd. I didn’t see Paul or his partner, but I knew they couldn’t be too far away.