by Cindy Brown
“Indeed.”
She didn’t say any more, so I gave her a tidbit, hoping to get one back. “One of me boyfriends was in jail once. Nicked a bicycle.” Of course, my tidbit was a lie, but it was all toward a good cause. “What’d her guy do?”
“Well, the one in jail, they say he had something to do with the other’s death, but I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Not smart enough. Now, if it’d been the other way around...” Her eyes grew hard. “That Angus was a bad man.”
How had I misread Angus so badly? Was I really that susceptible to charm? “Angus, the Charming Bully?” I said to the woman. “You mean the bird lady’s boyfriend was the jouster? Why was he bad?”
But the woman had set her mouth in a “not saying anything more” line.
“Was the other bloke—the jailbird—bad too?” She shook her head but didn’t say anything more. I took a different tack. “Well, that woman’s even more brilliant than Oi thought. Performin’ like that after a love triangle death, when she must be broke up about it and all.”
“Maybe not as much as you’d think.” She leaned in: Ah, here was the juicy gossip. “I heard she found out they were both using her.”
“That’s a bad business. Using ’er how?”
“Don’t know. But I also heard she broke up with one of them before everything went to hell.” She frowned. “Or maybe both of them. I heard several different versions of the story. People talk a lot around here, you know, like a small town or a big family.”
I wanted to ask more, but figured I’d pressed my PI luck enough for the moment— didn’t want the woman wondering why I was so interested.
“Well, Oi’d better get back to shakin’ me arse,” I said. “Toodle-oo.”
“Fare thee well.”
I walked away, swinging the sign on my rear and thinking about what I’d learned: Yes, Bianca was with both Riley and Angus. Both of them somehow used her. She broke up with one or both of them. Riley hadn’t said anything about Angus using Bianca. Did he know? Was he telling me the truth? Or was he using me too?
Chapter 31
I’d heard that nights in Ren faire camps were rowdy, lots of drumming and dancing and drinking. Just the sort of environment where people talked. And, it being off-hours, I figured I could talk, too (instead of being a mime), and find out more about Bianca and Angus and Riley and jousters and killers.
The faire closed at six thirty. I hung out for a few minutes until I saw some Rennies heading off in one direction, toward the edge of the faire. I headed that way too, through an opening in the ring of buildings that made up the faire. The desert opened wide before me, but a few feet away were tents, maybe a hundred of them. A little further away, a group of RVs huddled together. Portapotties ringed the area at a discreet distance and campfires glimmered here and there like small party beacons in the gathering dusk.
I found the jousters around one fire, accompanied by their squires and a gaggle of young women showing lots of cleavage—a large group, so I mingled easily. They mostly talked about the day’s jousts, but then one young wench said, “Where’s Squire Riley?”
“Sir Riley, you mean,” said Sir Collier the Red (real name: Grant Collier). “He’s a knight now.”
“And he’s in jail,” said Riley’s squire, name of John Hopper.
“He shouldn’t be,” said Collier. A murmur of agreement. I leaned in. “Everyone knows it was an accident.”
Really? They were going with that? Even after they saw the murdering knight ride away?
“Dreadful thing, though,” said the Blue Knight (aka Daniel Overton, actually British). Another murmur of agreement. “That poor horse.”
I stayed long enough to hear that Thunder actually hadn’t been injured or even gotten dehydrated, and was getting extra attention from Riley’s squire. When the conversation turned to beer making, I moved on.
People weren’t unfriendly—they offered drinks and places to sit beside the fires—but the cliques seemed well established. My hopes of starting up casual conversations slid away with the last of the daylight. Then I saw a familiar face.
William the Wondrous sat off by himself, at the edge of a pool of firelight. Still in full wizard gear, he smoked a pipe, his eyes unfocused. I squatted beside him. “Hiya. So can you blow rings and all? Maybe a smoke-dragon?”
He started. “What?”
I sat down in the dirt next to him, hoping my belly dancing costume was washable. “You look like Gandalf, sittin’ and smokin’ on the hillside in the Shire.”
“I wish I were he, my dear lady. I wish I were.”
“Everyfing all right?” I’d just met William the one time, but I liked his gentle spirit.
“Fine, fine.” His eyes focused on me. “And how are you getting on at our faire?”
We chatted for a few minutes about Ren faires in general and our faire in particular, and then I said, “Oi’ve been finking about what we talked about before—me jousting, you know? Oi was wonderin’ if maybe someone could give me a few pointers. Not the jousters here, you know, much too busy”—plus I’d already vetted them—“but maybe some who used to joust? Or is workin’ up to bein’ a jouster?”
“I’m sure they could.”
“Do you fink you could give me a few names?”
William gave a low laugh. “Just look around you, my dear. Many of us—in fact I’d say most of us—who can ride have attempted jousting at one time or another.”
“Really?” Please no.
“Given the opportunity to be a jouster—a brave knight in shining armor thundering into an arena on horseback—who wouldn’t want to give it a try? Of course, most aren’t suited to the sport. It takes a special talent to be a good jouster.”
Dang. Maybe another tack. “That guy who died, was he a good jouster?”
“Yes. And no.” William’s voice took on the sonorous tone he used during his performance. “Angus had talent, no question. But...he lived off of others, with no regard for community. It happens, that people enter our midst disguised as one of us, living at our expense, draining our life force like psychic vampires. They think we are naive, but we have learned to recognize them and kindly escort them from our midst. We have become warriors of sorts to protect what we have created here.”
Whoa. Was William trying to tell me something? Or was there something besides tobacco in that pipe he was smoking? “But what happened wif Angus...that weren’t no kindly escortin’.”
William shook his head as if to clear it. “No. No, it wasn’t.” He rose from the camp chair he’d been sitting in. “It’s been wonderful speaking with you, but I have another appointment.”
I watched him walk off in the direction of the RVs. What did he mean about the community and Angus? Was he implying that his death was plotted by a big group? That seemed hard to pull off...plus, why not just kindly escort the psychic vampire from their midst? Why kill him?
I hung around the camp a few hours longer, hoping to hear more about Angus or Riley or Bianca or even just jousting, but I didn’t. Everyone seemed firmly anchored in the pleasures of the evening. I gave up and joined them, dancing to the beat of drums, the bells on my hips jangling, firelight flashing in my eyes. It felt good, the heat and light and life of it all. It felt tribal and yet personal, like freedom and possibility and make-believe and a very present reality all mixed together. Heady stuff.
Then the wind came, suddenly, as if God had turned on a fan. The drummers faltered, then, “Haboob!” someone yelled. “Take shelter!”
People began to run toward the tents and RVs, the wind battering their backs. Haboobs, those giant desert dust storms, can be dangerous if you’re driving—visibility can be down to a foot or so. If you’re out in the open like we were, they’re just really uncomfortable. Imagine your face as a car’s windshield, and dirt and twigs and bugs
hitting your face at fifty miles an hour. We could still see, so the worst of the storm wasn’t upon us yet. I ran toward the parking lot, upstream against a scrambling mass of people. I bumped into one of them. “Sorry,” I said. Our eyes met. We both held the glance a moment too long. The man quickly melted into the crowd. I tried to follow him, but there were too many wenches and pirates, plus about a billion guys dressed like him in poet shirts and breeches. I lost him, but it didn’t matter. I’d seen the man’s eyes.
They belonged on Jackie’s face.
But it couldn’t be Jackie, could it? Maybe she had a twin broth—
The wall of dust was on us quicker than I thought possible, roaring above the sound of RV doors slamming and tents zipping. Shutting my eyes against the grit whipping against my face, I ran through the empty faire toward the parking lot and my truck. My eyes were open just a slit, which is why I didn’t see what was right in front of me.
Oof! I landed hard on the pebbly ground, the gravel stinging my knees through my flimsy costume. Whatever had tripped me was a few feet behind me. I opened my eyes enough to see what it was.
A body.
Chapter 32
“Help!” I yelled. My words were swallowed up in the howl of the haboob. “Help!”
The body—a man—lay face down in the dirt, sprawled as if he’d staggered and fallen there. I turned his face toward me. William. He was unconscious.
“Someone help!” I yelled again. My cell phone was in my truck. Should I run and get it? No, no time to get the cell phone. William needed help now. His breathing was ragged and irregular.
I pulled him over so he was on his back, and tried to shelter him from the blowing dirt stinging my face. Now what? CPR? Mouth to mouth? I’d never had first aid training. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something. I straddled William’s still form. My belly dancing skirt blew up over his face. I tucked it underneath me and yelled to the deserted faire one more time. “Help!” Then I put my fists underneath his clavicle and—
“What’s wrong? Omigod, William.” Bianca, her hair blowing across her face.
“Do you know first aid?”
“Yeah. And he’s done this before. I know what to do.”
I climbed off William. “Thank God. You take over. I’ll get my phone. It’s in my truck.”
“Use mine.” Bianca slid a hand into a near-hidden pocket in her thigh high boots and handed a phone to me.
I pushed the emergency call button. Nothing. I looked at the phone. “No signal.”
“Go to the mews—where I keep the birds—to one of the second story balconies. You should get a signal there.” Bianca took my place on top of William. “If the storm hasn’t taken out the cell tower.”
I raced to the mews, ran inside the unlocked door, and scrambled up a narrow staircase onto a landing with a door. I pushed open the door and ran onto a balcony, holding Bianca’s phone in the air. A signal.
I called 911. After they promised to have someone out there right away, I ran back to Bianca. She sat in the dust next to William, crying. Oh no.
But as I got closer, I saw that William was breathing again.
“Thank God you found him in time,” Bianca said through tears of relief. “Thank God.”
“I don’t really know what happened,” I said to Matt on the phone. I’d showered when I got home, but was now trying to brush the dust out of my belly dancer wig. “Bianca told the EMTs he’d probably overdone a recreational drug. After William came to, he said something about hearing the mermaids sing.” The dang wig had a ton of hairspray and the dust stuck to it like it was glued on. “But it seems awfully coincidental, him having this accident right after he told me about escorting psychic vampires away from the faire.”
“I’m not even going to ask you what that means.”
“Good. I think I’m too tired to explain.” I gave up on the wig. Good thing the veil would cover most of it. “You must be tired too.”
“I am.” Matt caught me up on the day’s events in Grand Island, which mostly consisted of talking with insurance people and visiting his mom and making meals for his dad. “Good thing he likes omelets and sandwiches. I make a mean baloney sandwich.” He paused. “So...”
“I, um, didn’t really have a chance to think about your...question today,” I said. “Not with the Ren faire and rehearsal and all.”
“Rehearsal?”
“Oh. Right. Vicki texted me after we talked yesterday. I got the Marilyn role.”
“That’s great!...Why don’t you sound more excited?”
“Well...” It wasn’t that my excitement had dimmed (Broadway!), but it was all muddled with the choice that was in front of me along with the confusing who-was-whom rehearsal. I decided to talk about the latter.
“Wow,” Matt said after I gave him the rundown. “And you say this guy’s supposed to be good?”
“A Broadway legend. With his partner, at least.”
“Yeah. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” His voice got soft. “In fact—”
“Yeah.” I cut him off. “Um...” I had to tell him about the play’s planned future. Matt and I recently had a big fight when I neglected to tell him about a touring opportunity. This was bigger—I’d be gone more than a few months. “John Robert said the play will move to La Jolla Playhouse and then to off-off Broadway and then to Broadway.” I said it all in a rush, the vocal equivalent to ripping off a Band-Aid.
“Omigod, that’s great! Broadway!” Matt sounded genuinely happy for me. “I always knew you had the talent and now you got the luck. This is so great. Broadway!”
“Thanks.” I fake-yawned. “I’ve got get to bed. I’m beat.” I wanted to get off the phone while the conversation was still happy, before Matt realized the implications.
“Yeah, me too. Goodnight. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I meant it. I didn’t know what I was going to do about us, but I meant it.
Chapter 33
I stood in front of my closet and stared, bleary-eyed after too little sleep. Nope, nothing that said fifties bombshell. Dang. I really needed to get some more Marilyn clothes. The outfit I’d worn to the audition hung over the back of a chair. I picked it up and sniffed it. It’d do, at least for the few hours I’d be rehearsing.
I did my makeup, put on my wig, and grabbed a banana and piece of toast on the way out the door. I was on the highway when my cell rang. I picked up on speakerphone. “Morning, Riley.”
“Mornin’.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t have pancakes today.”
“Scrambled eggs. I think they were powdered.”
“I thought maybe you’d heard about William. Oh, duh. Sorry—of course you didn’t hear.”
“Yeah, I’m sort of cut off the grapevine in here. Like a raisin. What happened to William?”
Since Riley didn’t know I was undercover at the faire, I told him the story as if I’d heard it secondhand.
“Man, I’m happy he’s okay,” Riley said. “It’d suck if anything happened to him. He’s like everybody’s cool uncle.”
I understood. I had one of those.
“He really is like a wizard,” Riley continued. “It’s like he knows everything, and he’s been around so long that he’s really wise about stuff too. They said it was an accident?”
“Must’ve been an overdose. I guess he was talking about mermaids singing. It probably was accidental unless...Do you think he’s the kind of guy who might hurt himself?”
“William? Can’t see it.”
“Would anyone want to hurt him?”
“No way, man. Like I said, he’s the cool uncle. And William likes to...experiment, you know? Just natural stuff: mushrooms, peyote, once some datura—that shit is bad. They call it devil-weed, you know...You said it was Bianca who helped him?” He sighed heavily. “S
he’s awesome. I screwed up royally, man.”
“I saw her with the birds yesterday. She’s great.”
“She’s crazy about them. Did you see Edgar? He’s wicked smart.”
“Yeah. And Bianca does seem pretty cool.” But why did she think Riley was using her? And how to ask him? Maybe... “Seems like someone that, uh, focused could be hard to live with, though.”
“Nah. We got along great. That’s why this thing with Angus whupped me upside the head.”
“You didn’t fight?”
“Well, sometimes, about little things. Like when I’d eat all the Cheerios and forget to buy more. Or drink all the beer. Or use up all the toilet paper. That was a big one.”
“No other fights?”
“Not until that last one.”
“What happened there?”
“I was pretty pissed off about her and Angus and she said she didn’t know why I’d care—don’t know what that meant—and then she said something about me not being much different from Angus. That’s when I shoved her.” A thump. I could almost see Riley hitting his head against the wall. “Which does make me kind of the same. An asshole.”
Chapter 34
There was so much I wanted to do. I wanted to call Bianca back—she’d never responded to my messages. I wanted to talk to Doug, to see if there was any news about William. And, I remembered when I walked on to John Robert’s patio for another brainstorming/rehearsal session, I wanted to figure out exactly who it was I saw afterhours at the Ren faire last night.
After John Robert’s delight over me being Marilynishly late yesterday, I figured I had a little wiggle time, so it was five minutes past eight when I arrived. Rehearsal was already in progress: Robert and JFK in the audience, Jackie onstage.
“Where are the simple joys of Hyannis Port?” Jackie sang. “Are those languid summer evenings gone for good?”
Now that I was looking, I could see Jackie’s shoulders were broader than they first appeared and her hips were suspiciously slim.