14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse

by JoAnna Carl

  The impersonal voice of the electronic guy who takes our messages spoke. “Wednesday. Ten oh six p.m.,” he said.

  Next we heard a whispery little voice. “Mr. Woodyard? This is Emma Davidson. I got your phone number from the telephone book. Please call me. I need to talk to you in the worst way.”

  Chapter 11

  “Well, darn!” Joe said. “I left my cell phone number. Why did she call this one?”

  We chewed that question over until we got in bed, and then for twenty minutes afterward. Which proved, I guess, that we had become an old married couple.

  But it was a puzzle. All day long Joe had called Emma Davidson, and each time he had left his cell phone number and asked that she call it. But when she did finally call, she looked our home number up in the phone book and called our house. Why?

  The most obvious explanation, I maintained, was that Chuck and Lorraine were trying to keep her from calling Joe and therefore had not passed the cell number on to her.

  “But that implies they’re controlling her actions,” Joe said. “That’s hard to visualize. She’s a grown woman.”

  “The one time I saw her, she didn’t exactly act assertive.”

  “Maybe not. Everybody says Emma is naturally quiet. Being quiet, however, is a long way from being a . . . a prisoner.”

  “Elder abuse does occur,” I said.

  We were concerned enough that I called the Davidson house to check on Emma. Lorraine answered and told me that Emma had been admitted to the hospital in Holland and would be there at least overnight. She thanked me for calling 9-1-1.

  “Emma’s been a worry to Chuck and me,” she said. Her voice sounded slurred and whiny. “She doesn’t seem to want to get over our dad’s death.”

  “It’s very soon after her loss.” I didn’t add that it might take years to come to terms with a death like Moe’s. I couldn’t resist asking another question. “Were you and your dad close?”

  “We hadn’t been in recent years,” Lorraine said. “He could be a real bastard, as I’m sure you’re aware. And he and Chuck went at it over money. But it had nothing to do with Emma! She’s a nice lady. Chuck likes her, and so do I. We’re really upset over what’s happened to her.”

  She didn’t sound upset, but I left it at that.

  At eleven o’clock Joe turned over and shut his eyes. He has that wonderful knack of putting whatever concerns him out of his mind and going to sleep quickly. My mind doesn’t function that way. I picked up a book and tried to get into a mind-set that would help me doze off. I was far from sleepy.

  I felt uneasy, as if I had forgotten something. What? What could it be?

  I put my book down and went over the day’s activities. I couldn’t remember anything I’d forgotten to do at the office. I hadn’t heard from Aunt Nettie, so I hadn’t forgotten any of her instructions. The purchase of the Clowning Around building was hanging fire, of course, but I had done all I could do about that for the moment, and I honestly thought I had put it out of my mind for the night. What was bothering me?

  I finally growled in annoyance and picked up my book again. I wasn’t accomplishing anything by trying to remember. I lay down and immersed myself in an old Agatha Christie novel I’d picked up at the library sale. That seemed to do the trick. After twenty minutes I felt quite dozy and reached for the bedside lamp. Lying in the dark, I felt even closer to sleep.

  And just as I reached the verge of never-never land, I remembered.

  I sat straight up in bed. “Joe!”

  “Uh?” he murmured, but he didn’t say anything. I turned the light back on, and he didn’t stir. Should I wake him up?

  I decided that would be mean. I might not be right.

  I was now wide awake. I got up, went to the answering machine, and played Emma’s message again. Actually, I didn’t listen to what the message said. I listened to the voice saying it.

  Whisper, whisper. It sounded right, but could I be sure?

  No, I couldn’t. But it was possible.

  Emma Davidson’s whispery little voice sounded a lot like the person who had called the police station ten days earlier—the one who had been so amazed to learn that Royal Hollis had been arrested in the killing of Moe Davidson.

  Could Emma have been the person who called?

  How could I check? What was the phone number for that call? Had I written it down? Could I remember it?

  All I was sure of was the area code: 765. A check of the map in the front of the phone book showed me that number was for central Indiana. Emma Davidson lived in Indiana. But did she live in central Indiana? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know the name of the town she lived in.

  I eyed the computer. I could go online and figure it out. Finally I decided that identifying Emma’s hometown could wait for morning. Emma was safe in the hospital. The question my subconscious had been working on had been answered. Time to go to bed. This time I dropped off as soon as I lay down.

  Six hours later, after I had made the coffee and put the toaster out as a breakfast table centerpiece, I told Joe about my midnight inspiration.

  “Do you think I should tell Sheriff Ramsey?”

  “I don’t think he’ll have an interest. I seem to recall he came by here to tell me that he wouldn’t help with further investigations into the Davidson case.”

  “That’s the way I recall it, too. And I can’t be sure it was Emma’s voice.”

  Joe nodded. We both sighed. Then we spoke, almost in unison. “Hogan! We need Hogan!”

  Yes, Hogan—our friend and my uncle by marriage—would be the perfect person to advise us about this. Hogan was a levelheaded police officer and a perceptive detective. He would know if the anonymous call made to the police station was likely to mean anything—if it had been made by Emma Davidson. He would know if we should tell anyone in authority, and he would know who that person was.

  I spread butter on my toast with vicious slashes of my knife and bit into the bread savagely. I was frustrated. “Well,” I said, “if the authorities aren’t going to question Emma Davidson, maybe you can.”

  Joe nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s what I was trying to do yesterday. I wanted to question her in light of what we learned at the homeless shelter, when Elk gave us some strong hints. But I can’t do it today. First, her doctor may not want her to have visitors. Second, I have to go to the jail and interview Royal Hollis. Which is going to be a different sort of challenge.”

  “Maybe Royal won’t have his harmonica along,” I said.

  “A harmonica! Just what you need for the clown show.”

  It took me a minute to realize what he meant. “Oh no!” I said. “The hospital stunt! That’s this morning! I was hoping to forget.”

  “Nope. You’re stuck, Ms. Chamber of Commerce.” Joe waggled his hands beside his ears. “The sick kiddies are going to love you.”

  Yes, one of the tourism committee’s promotional stunts for Warner Pier Clown Week was to visit a hospital in Holland, where we were to entertain the patients, particularly the children, by wearing clown outfits and doing clown tricks. Naturally, the television news and the newspaper had been alerted to our plans.

  Yes, I had a clown costume. I had borrowed it from the Warner Pier High School drama department, courtesy of my friend Maggie McNutt, speech and drama teacher. She wasn’t charging me, but I knew I’d be on the hook for a nice donation to Maggie’s scholarship fund.

  “So you get a nice visit to a jail,” I said, “and I have to dress up and scare sick children. Who’s in for the hardest day?”

  “You are,” Joe said. “I’ll face a whole prison full of inmates before I take on sick kids. They terrify me. But you’re the one who agreed to serve on the tourism committee. And now I’ve got to be on my way.”

  He gave me a nice good-bye kiss. “If you run into Chuck or Lorraine,” he said, “it might b
e best not to mention that phone call.”

  “I’ll just ask about Emma. She’s probably still in the hospital.”

  The visit to the children’s ward went all right. My borrowed costume was half red and half white, with big floppy ruffles around the neck, wrists, and ankles. It had obviously been made for a guy, but it was baggy enough to fit a woman who’s nearly six feet tall. In fact, I put it on over my regular clothes. It fastened in the front with a strip of Velcro.

  The costume came with a small white felt hat, and Maggie had pinned a giant floppy red bow on top of that. I borrowed a pair of Joe’s tennis shoes to give myself big clown feet. Actually, it takes a pretty big foot to hold me up, and a pair of my own shoes would probably have filled the bill.

  I drew the line at wearing clownish makeup, so I settled for bright red lips, drawn extra big.

  About a dozen of us went to the hospital, with Kyle and Paige, our professional clowns, leading the group. Someone took a group photo before we started performing, of course. We were all dressed in cheerful clown costumes suitable for children, except for one tramp clown. That guy—or maybe gal—came in too late for the photo. He had on such thick makeup, including teardrops falling from his left eye, that I couldn’t tell which Chamber of Commerce member he was. He—or she—was a silent clown, so I couldn’t guess from the voice either.

  To my relief, the local newspaper and television reporters and photographers showed up, along with a newsman/photographer from Grand Rapids, and a guy with a camera who said he was a stringer for the Chicago Tribune. The large papers might not use anything on Clown Week, but we had tried. And that was what the hospital event was all about, of course. We were happy to entertain the kids, but we were the tourism committee from the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce. Our purpose was to get publicity for our winter promotion. Everybody understood that.

  Kyle and Paige were the big hits, naturally. They actually knew what they were doing. In fact, they pleased the hospital administration so much I overheard discussion about their coming back for a separate gig. I had ignored Joe’s suggestion about bringing a harmonica, but I did take my guitar. I had rarely played it since I’d dropped out of pageant competition, but “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” seemed to go over well.

  Shortly after one o’clock, I finally got around to going to the reception desk to ask about Emma Davidson. I knew Chuck and Lorraine weren’t visiting that afternoon, because they’d been working at Clowning Around when I left for the hospital.

  The volunteer checked the list of patients carefully, the way hospital folks are required to do because of patient privacy rules, but she finally gave me Emma’s room number.

  That surprised me a bit. If the doctors thought that Emma had attempted suicide, I would have expected some restrictions on her visitors. But apparently there were none.

  I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and trotted down the hall. Emma’s room was a long way from the elevator, but she was fairly near a nurses’ station. Did the hospital have a psychiatric unit? It seemed to be large enough to support one.

  Emma’s door was shut. I rapped softly. No one hollered for me to come in. Should I give up? I decided I should be a bit more aggressive. I pushed the door open a few inches and spoke through the crack.

  “Mrs. Davidson?”

  I heard a grunting noise. That seemed odd.

  I pushed the door open a couple of feet, and I stuck in my head—still with the silly bow on top.

  A clown. To my astonishment I was facing a clown. That tall clown in a hobo outfit with a grin painted from ear to ear and tears painted on his cheek. The one I hadn’t been able to identify.

  He was standing beside the bed. Somebody was lying in that bed. Feet were kicking. The grunting noise was coming from the bed.

  I couldn’t see who was in the bed because the clown was holding a pillow over the person’s face.

  I shrieked.

  Chapter 12

  After I shrieked, I shouted. “Help!”

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The hobo clown dropped the pillow and charged at me. He yanked the door open and knocked me aside as if I were a rag doll. I was suddenly on my fanny on the floor. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the bedside. Emma Davidson was looking around wildly.

  “Keep breathing!” I was still yelling. “I’ll catch the guy!”

  I ran back to the door and got all tangled up with a nurse who was coming into the room. I yelled again. “She’s alive! I’ll try to catch the clown!”

  When I got into the hall, I frantically looked both ways. No sign of a clown. A woman in navy blue scrubs was standing behind the nurses’ station, her mouth agape.

  “Which way did he go?”

  Silently, she pointed toward the elevators. The door to the stairwell next to them was closing.

  I pounded down the hall, my giant shoes slapping with every step, and yanked that door open. I ran out onto the landing. Concrete stairs led down, and I took them. Down I went, feet thudding, round and round. I held the handrail, terrified that Joe’s shoes would trip me up.

  There was movement below me, but I couldn’t see exactly who was there. I followed anyway. A door opened and slammed shut. Had the noise come from the second floor or the first?

  When I got to the level marked 2, I swung the door open and ran out into a hall, barreling into another person in scrubs. This one was a man.

  I yelled, “Did a clam run out this door? I mean—a clown! Did a clown run out this door?”

  The man laughed. “Not a clam or even an oyster. And you’re the only clown. Is this a Keystone Kops act?”

  I ran back into the stairwell and thudded down another flight, then ran back out of the stairwell and onto the first floor hall. There I stopped and looked both ways. Everyone I could see wore ordinary street clothes or scrubs. There was no clown—dressed as a hobo or dressed as anything else. I had lost him.

  I punched the elevator button. I was panting. I wasn’t going to climb all those stairs. Going down them had been bad enough.

  When I got back to the fifth floor, of course, things were worse than bad. I hurried to Emma’s room. She was sitting up by then, but she looked dazed. A nurse was standing over her bed and glared at me.

  “This clown business is ridiculous,” the nurse said. “I’m going to file a complaint about the public information office setting this up. The hospital should never have become a party to such a stupid publicity stunt. You and that other clown have disturbed the entire floor.”

  I realized that I was the only witness to the attack on Emma, and no one else had any reason to believe it had even happened.

  Emma might have believed it, but the nurse wouldn’t let me talk to her, so I didn’t know if she backed up my story or not. It was entirely possible that she had been either asleep or unconscious. She certainly hadn’t seemed alert at the moment. She might not know what had happened. I had a strong feeling that no one had asked her.

  I stood quietly and let the nurse rave on, but every time she paused, I asked the same question. “Have you called the police?”

  Additional people appeared to care for Emma, and the nurse and I moved out into the hall. An administrator came. She was angry, too. I kept demanding the police. Finally, a hefty young guy in a security service uniform appeared. I turned to him, and for the tenth time I demanded the police.

  I repeated the story that I had witnessed an attack on Emma Davidson. I threatened to tell Emma’s family. I generally made myself so annoying that they eventually did call the police. I think they hoped the police would arrest me.

  And they nearly did. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, one of the officers who took the call knew Joe. Or knew of Joe. He was a young guy with Dutch blond hair and a nametag that read VANDERBERG.

  Officer Vanderberg immediately pointed ou
t to the assembled hospital group that my husband was representing “the man who killed Mrs. Davidson’s husband.”

  I gave an angry sniff. “Joe was named by the judge,” I said. “He didn’t ask for the job. And Royal Hollis hasn’t been tried yet.”

  The second cop didn’t introduce himself, but he had a nametag that read BUSH. He assured everyone that I was pulling some publicity stunt designed to help Royal Hollis. I denied this. We quickly reached an impasse. Nobody even asked me if I knew the hobo clown. And, of course, I couldn’t identify him. Or her.

  Officer Vanderberg recommended that the hospital drop the whole thing. “That’s the way to fight a publicity stunt,” he said. “Don’t let ’em get any publicity with it.”

  I didn’t shut up. “If I warn you Mrs. Davidson is in danger, and you don’t do anything, and somebody kills her, you’re going to be the ones—the hospital and the police department—who are getting publicity. And it’s going to be lousy.”

  At that point silence fell, and everybody around me took a deep breath. They all stared at something behind me.

  When I turned to see what was going on, I was looking straight at Emma Davidson. She was on her bed and was being pushed out of her room.

  The hospital administration representative spoke firmly. “Mrs. Davidson is being moved to another room, and only family members will know where she is. She will not be in any danger.”

  Emma Davidson didn’t seem to hear her. She was beckoning. Was she beckoning to me? I took a tentative step in her direction. This caused the security guy to jump in front of me.

  “Let me talk to her,” Mrs. Davidson said in her whispery voice. “Please!”

  The security guy stayed with me, but he allowed me to move two steps closer. Emma ignored him. She looked straight at me.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Woodyard. Thank you.” She wiped her eyes. “Even now Moe is trying to hurt me.”

  Oh dear. Because her attacker was dressed as a clown, she thought her dead husband was after her. Was she mentally unbalanced? Or just momentarily confused from the stress of being attacked? I wanted to pat her hand, but I was afraid the security officer would pull a pistol on me if I touched her.