A Lie for a Lie (25 page)

“I think it’s exciting. I’d let him throw knives at me. I even volunteered.”

“You didn’t.”

“I think I’m too stately. He probably wasn’t sure the wheel would spin fast enough. Of course he was too kind to say so.”

Junie is short, chunky, and very blonde. None of her daughters fits that description. The reminder made me feel better about my genetic lottery. Mother Nature can be a wonderful comedian.

“Please don’t volunteer for anything else here, okay? I’m sure they have plenty of skilled
umm
. . . artisans to do everything that needs to be done.”

“I just feel so badly about Nora being thrown to the lions this way.”

“Better watch the imagery, too. Wrong place, wrong time.” As if to corroborate, a lion roared somewhere nearby.

We were close enough to Yank now that conversation ceased. We stood about twenty feet behind him and waited for the last knife to be thrown. He hit a switch with his foot, and the disk stopped spinning.

“Yank?”

Without knives at his fingertips, Yank looked much more approachable. He turned and smiled at Junie. “Ms. Bluebird. What are you doing here?”

“Have you met my daughter Aggie Sloan-Wilcox?”

Yank extended a hand. “So you’re Aggie. Nora said you were helping her.”

That seemed a huge overstatement, which I tried modestly to correct. “I’m not. Well, not really. I mean, I don’t know if I can.”

“Aggie will find the real killer and make sure Nora gets off,” Junie said, clearly believing every word.

“Nora’s convinced this was all preconceived and meant to be.” Yank looked to be in his late forties, thin like a runner, dark curly hair slowly going gray, lightly tanned skin, and eyes as dark as olives. I wondered how long he and Nora had been together and how much he knew about her relationship with Grady.

Junie thoughtfully excused herself, leaving me there to question him without interference. She promised to meet me outside in a little while. I hoped that in the meantime nobody talked her into taking up sword swallowing.

“I did get in to see Nora on Monday,” I said after Junie had gone. “I guess she’s been moved to the regional jail by now?”

“At least they have regular visiting hours. We can see her on Saturday.”

“I wonder if you’d mind answering a couple of questions? I honestly don’t know if I can do a thing, but I do know there were a lot of people who didn’t like Grady Barber. And in my mind, the evidence that points to Nora is just too clear and clean, almost as if somebody was planning to make it look that way.”

“Almost?”

I liked this man, and I didn’t know why. I mean, Yank hurls knives at people. He’s shacking up with a woman who talks to God and believes everything she hears. That’s just fine if it really is God putting words in Nora’s head, but these days we’re more likely to assume it’s a lack of medication.

“I don’t think Nora killed Grady.” I turned up my hands. “But let’s face it, I’m in a real minority.”

“Ask away. Let’s blast away any remaining doubts.”

I had a vision of Yank shooting me from a cannon, but I thrust that one aside, as well.

“Okay, did Nora ever talk about Grady with you? At the very least, he was her first husband.”

“Only husband. And not a good experience, as she probably told you.”

“Then she did talk about it?”

“She felt Grady was a hurdle she had to overcome. In order to be worthy of the visions she was experiencing, she felt she had to really forgive every wrong ever done to her. Grady was the hardest, but she triumphed. At the end she only wanted to save him from himself.”

“Was she hopeful she could?”

“Faith moves mountains. But Grady needed the faith, and hers couldn’t suffice for him. He didn’t listen. He died.”

“Free will?”

“If all it took to turn a bad person into a good one was a little prayer here and there, the world would be a much nicer place to live.”

I thought quite possibly Yank was the force that held Nora to the earth. I imagined he was a daily dose of common sense. I was really warming up to the guy.

“So, in your opinion, Nora only had the concern of one human being for another to bind them together? She wasn’t looking for anything except his,
umm
. . . conversion to a better life?”

“That’s all she wanted. She came home disheartened, but not unreasonably so. She hadn’t expected a miracle, although she believes in them. She said Grady was still Grady, that he hadn’t changed except that the youthful, sweet-faced innocence was only the thinnest of veneers now and would soon be gone entirely. She said in the future, people wouldn’t be fooled so easily, and that, at least, was a good thing. But honestly, she didn’t expect him to have much of a future. She saw a very dark cloud over him.”

This was beginning to sound like a tarot reading. I pictured old Grady about to turn over the Death card in some cosmic spread, and Nora with her compassion and sensitivity had been attuned enough to recognize it and warn him. I wondered why that interpretation bothered me less than the one Nora believed, that God had intervened and requested her to make one more attempt to bring Grady to the light.

Since this whole situation required me to move beyond those notions to get even the slightest sliver of objectivity, I shook these thoughts off as, well, a philosophical Labrador retriever emerging from a theology-encrusted pond.

“Tell me about the security system at your house,” I said. “Nora praised it the evening she gave us a tour.”

“We kept everything in the house and put in an alarm, motion detectors, special locks on the doors and windows. Not keeping a weapon was a requirement of traveling with us. Anybody found to have one was asked to leave. We were so careful. I was taught to be careful from the time I was old enough to hold a knife in my hand.” He raked fingers through his curls, clearly agitated. “I can’t believe I might have been responsible for what happened.”

“What do you mean, Yank? Were you careless one day? You forgot to turn on the alarms, or you left the door unlocked? You made it possible for somebody to get in and steal a knife?”

“Nothing like that. Only I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember something, anything, that might have made it possible for somebody to slip inside. And last night I remembered an incident. About two weeks ago I was in the house getting ready for a rehearsal here.” He gestured to show he meant the big top. “There was a commotion outside, and somebody set off one of the alarms in the menagerie tent. I took off to see what was going on, and I can’t remember now whether I locked up first or not. I don’t think I did. When that alarm goes off, we go running.”

“What was the problem?”

“A door to one of the cages hadn’t been shut tight, and it hadn’t been locked. Somebody went in and found our white tiger with her paw in the opening, more or less playing a game with herself. He sounded the alarm to make sure he had backup if she decided to spring when he closed and locked it. It was all taken care of by the time I got there. I wasn’t gone more than a few minutes.”

“Do you remember if you had to unlock first to get back in your house?”

“No, I was in a hurry, already late for the rehearsal. I can’t remember anything but that. But if I didn’t lock up, it never really registered with me. I never felt guilty or worried. It all happened so fast, I guess it just didn’t seem like much of an event.”

“How long would it take somebody to slip in and steal that knife?”

“Less than a minute. And it’s doubtful they would have been noticed. Everyone was heading for the cages. People go in and out when we’re in the house. Nothing would have seemed out of place.”

“Have you told the police?”

“I spoke with the detective in charge this morning. He wasn’t impressed.”

Roussos, of course, and he wouldn’t have been.

My head was filled with questions, but the most important one was obvious. “Let’s say somebody did get into the house, steal a knife, take the time to spread the others on the magnetic strip so that you didn’t notice the absence—”

“That’s what I think happened. Because if there’d been an obvious space, I would have seen it right away.”

“So who might have done it? Does anybody here have a reason to want to frame Nora? Better yet, does anyone have a reason to kill Grady Barber and frame Nora for the murder? Anybody with a connection to both of them?”

“I can’t imagine who. If somebody does, they’ve kept it to themselves.”

“Nobody who’s mentioned knowing Grady? Nobody who was particularly interested in the Idyll?”

Yank shook his head. “Nobody like that, at least not that spoke to me. And Nora’s never mentioned it.”

“Ask her on Saturday, would you? But if that’s a dead end”—I tried not to wince at my own words—“who might have killed Grady just to frame Nora? Did she have enemies in the tent show? Anyone who wanted to see her brought down in a big way? Someone who wanted control, or wanted to stop her from living her,
um
. . . message?”

“Nora’s the heart and soul of the tent show. Nobody would listen to a detractor. Anybody who didn’t like her and didn’t want to follow her would simply pull up stakes and leave. There’s nothing to be gained here, no resources to grab, no power that doesn’t come directly through her.”

“You can’t think of a single person who might be angry and want to see her arrested?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and no one comes to mind. Of course I don’t know every thought every person has. And we have some people who’ve only cast their lot with us in the past months. So in some ways, they’re still strangers.”

“Was there anybody you or Nora was worried about? Somebody who wasn’t fitting in? Somebody who might have been here just waiting to do mischief?”

“But why would they be? What would they have against Nora?”

I wondered, as well. One religious fanatic determined to take out another? Calling Nora a fanatic felt odd, since her message was about peace and saving the world from itself. In my mind fanatics always preach hate and destruction. She had the destruction part down pat, but only because we were heading down that road and she was trying to stop us.

I wasn’t coming up with anything, and I wanted to, badly. “Could somebody dislike her for her ideas? Is there a test of some kind to join you? A profession of faith in Nora’s abilities, maybe? And somebody whose profession didn’t quite ring true to you?”

He smiled, and gestured again as he did. “This, everything you see here, is not about Nora. She’d be the first to tell you so. It’s about doing what’s right. Not about dotting every
I
in every word she says. No one is required to make any kind of statement. This isn’t the easiest life. Nora assumes that anybody with serious doubts won’t put themselves on the line with us.”

“Anybody who just doesn’t quite fit in? Any of the new people?”

This time he laughed. “Look around you. We’re circus people. We never fit in.”

“I mean
here
, with each other. Not the world in general.”

“I don’t want to start looking at my brothers and sisters with suspicion.”

“I understand, but somebody stole that knife. Either that, or Nora took it to the Idyll the night Grady was killed . . .”

I knew Yank didn’t want to believe the worst about anybody, but there was a choice to be made here. Somebody had taken the knife. Somebody had betrayed a trust.

He looked uncomfortable. “I just don’t know.”

“Would you be willing to give me the names of anybody you don’t know well enough to trust completely?”

Yank didn’t shrug me off. I could see him struggling. He wanted to deny the possibility that somebody was trying to hurt Nora by killing Grady Barber, but there were only so many possibilities.

“There are a couple of young men who joined us back in the spring. I’ve never been sure they’re here for the right reasons. I’ve even wondered . . .” He glanced around, but I thought it was more likely he was giving himself time to compose his thoughts than to see if anyone was listening.

“What did you wonder?” I didn’t want him to compose too much.

“If they were running from something or someone. The law, most likely.”

“Is this a good place to hide out?”

“It can be. Circus people take care of each other. We offer protection from outsiders. This may not be a circus anymore, but we’re still a community. What doesn’t hurt the community, you know, things that happened in the past, stay in the past. It’s no concern of ours.”

“So the men in question might have joined hoping you wouldn’t look too closely or ask too many questions.” I paused. “Could you give me names?”

“I could give you the names they go by here.”

I saw his point. “There must be paperwork, Social Security numbers, that kind of thing.”

“The bare minimum, easily faked. But I can give you whatever we have. To help Nora.” He paused. “But I wouldn’t give it to the police.”

“And I won’t, either. Not without your permission.”

“I’d appreciate that. And discretion if you investigate them?”

I reassured him. Satisfied, he walked to the target and began to remove his knives, carefully placing them in a carved wooden case. I watched, then asked the obvious question.

“Yank, why do you put them in the case here, then take the time to put them back up on your wall? Aren’t they safer in the case?”

“Oh, these aren’t the same knives. That set belonged to my father. They’re for display. Sort of a sentimental thing, I guess, that got me in trouble. If one of these knives had been taken, I would have missed it immediately.”

That made sense to me, but was little help. As we walked toward the exit I asked what I hoped was my last question.

“Just one more thing. You talk about loyalty here, the way circus people take care of each other. When it goes wrong, it can really go wrong, though, can’t it? I know there was trouble in Nora’s past with Grady, that the Nelson-Zimboni circus was dissolved after a scandal.”