Working Stiff

by Kevin J. Anderson

  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 ringmas
ter 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!”