by Jenna Coburn
“Let’s say we find out what the smell is,” she said to regain focus. “What would it help us? I mean, let’s say the two acts really are connected—they already look like they’re connected. We need the outside connection, that tiny snaking path leading us away from what we know into…something new.” She was watching him intently for his reaction.
“We are in a dark room searching for the light switch, Miss Thwaite. Only by spreading our fingers and tapping in all directions can we maximize our chances.” He took a larger drink of his coffee than anyone should ever take of something that was steaming so profusely. “We will know where any lead takes us only when we’re there. Don’t give up before then.”
“I’m not giving up,” Alethea immediately protested. “I’m just, ehm…trying to learn from your rich experience.” Holden smiled. She tried to keep a serious face. At that moment, something else clicked. “Oh! Maybe…did you find if something might have been stolen from Horne’s home?”
He shook his head, perhaps to buy himself time to chew. “That’s difficult to tell, because there would be nobody to report it missing, and in a house as filled with things as his, it can be difficult to tell if something isn’t where it should be. There’s certainly no overt sign of it.”
“Filled with things,” she echoed his words. Lionel Horne could have been that obsessed collector who, through arduous investigation, found out about the jade tiger and then arranged to have it stolen, only that didn’t explain why he died. Moreover, it seemed peculiar for a collector to try to have something stolen before asking to buy it.
“Do not worry too much, Miss Thwaite. A case is a case. And this time, it’s not personal.” He actually put down his fork in order to pat her lower arm. “To me, you look like you need a good rest at home. I’ll bring you to the circus after this. I’m sure someone there can help the investigation by telling us why, exactly, Lionel Horne has been collecting these newspaper articles.”
“Hey, have you been to Vegas in the meantime?” The question came to her and had already rolled off her lips before she gave it another thought.
“Another one of these questions I have to answer with a no.” He smiled apologetically.
“I think I’m in need of a vacation like that, Agent Westley.” Leaning back and allowing her head to roll to the side, she literally tried looking at the world from a new perspective. “It’s like I’m running after my life, but never catching up…there’s that version of me, that dreamy future Alethea, always ahead of me a bit. I wake up in the morning and think how I’ll be her today…and then I go to sleep thinking I’ll be her tomorrow. But I’m always the same old me, you know. I’m always…just there, while the days fall away.”
They looked at each other, and neither of them said anything. The air was heavy but soft, like the piece of her laid out in front of both of them made things easier—made it easier to just be there, among each other, without words.
Chapter VI
Alethea took a nap before speaking to anyone at the circus. After driving down with Holden Westley and exchanging more opinions about ocelots and coffee quality, all she had wanted was to get to bed. She ended up taking much more than just a nap; the sun had gone down before she woke up again. Even then, waking up was difficult. Her head was aching and she felt slow and sluggish, and so she ended up taking almost another half hour simply to recover from her rest.
After a night snack and good cup of tea, she looked at the clock. Virgil’s sleeping hours were nigh impossible to predict, and she also wanted to visit America, in addition to checking in on Léa. There had been a promise between them, and even if Alethea couldn’t fulfill it entirely, she’d honor the remaining part. She decided that would be her first stop, as long as the acrobat was here and not back with her brother in the hospital.
After asking around for a bit, she found out that Léa was in one of the most unlikely places—at Rob and Tony’s trailer. Then again, maybe she had recognized her own need to think about something else. They delivered on that. She heard the sounds of a cheerful conversation and laughs from the trailer, but they fell silent when she stepped inside.
Three pairs of eyes looked at her, and she half expected hissing sounds and a scramble for a dark corner. Rob, Tony and Léa were sitting in the kitchen and having beers. Alethea couldn’t really explain why they had stopped talking so suddenly. Was she really that much of a party pooper?
“Hey, guys,” she smiled. “I was looking for you, Léa. How’s it going?”
“I’m okay, thanks for asking.” Léa smiled back, and she seemed much more composed than before, even if a little intoxicated. Rob and Tony probably understood this as “taking it easy” in order to heal their injuries. Tony, the one sitting closest to the entrance, promptly pulled on Alethea’s hand.
“Letha! Sit down with us! Have a beer!” He looked to Rob, who sat closest to the fridge. “Give her a beer!” She suddenly had a beer in her hand, and sat next to Tony. “So you got our invitation.” He laughed and patted her back. She wrinkled her forehead.
“I regreteth as to inform thee, I hath not sendeth out the invitations,” Rob apologized and bowed his head deeply.
“You had one job, man! One job! It’s someone’s birthday today!”
Alethea, taken by surprise, looked at Léa, who just quickly shook her head. Still wondering, Alethea turned to Tony. “Whose birthday is it?”
“Some guy, I mean, some person has to have been born today, I’d wager.” He nodded grimly and took a sip of his beer. “And this guy blew it.”
Alethea should have suspected as much. She wanted to say something more, but before she could, Léa actually chimed in. “Letha, did you find anything? I kind of put you on the spot with that promise, I guess…but I’d still like to know if there’s anything, or maybe if I can do anything.” She leaned forward across the table, closer to Alethea, who suddenly smelled something in the air.
“What’s that smell?” she instantly asked, as if it were a reflex.
“It wasn’t me this time,” Tony defended himself.
“Truly, ‘tis one of the deep questions that philosophers have sought to answer since prehistoric times,” Rob mused.
The person she had actually asked raised an eyebrow for a second, sniffed the air, sniffed herself, and then shrugged. “Well, ehm…maybe this herbal soap I’m using?” She smiled awkwardly. “I’m using a new herbal soap. You…don’t like it?” Alethea’s eyes narrowed. Herbal soap. That must’ve been it. Abel went into the shower. He smelled herbal soap. Someone knocked him over the head.
The stuff smelled strongly, at least to her nose. The two clowns probably didn’t notice it because they were largely living in a separate sphere of existence. “Did you just get that from your trailer earlier today? When did you buy it?” While Léa may not have understood the facial expressions, she took Alethea’s questions for genuine interest in physical hygiene and looked forward to exchanging notes.
“I bought it yesterday when I took a break from breaking up camp and went into the city. There was this small beautiful shop I think I could’ve spent all day at. They have all these organic products and remedies, and it’s really a shame that not every town has that, you know? We’re always on the road, and I felt like this was an opportunity I get only twice a year or something. That is, unless I order something online, but that’s just not the same feeling as going shopping….”
While Léa kept talking, Alethea’s eyes slowly moved to the side towards Tony, who was just then putting his middle and index fingers into his mouth, in the likeness of a gun. Just when he pulled the imaginary trigger and made his head fly back, Rob supplied the sound of the gun.
It was successful in stopping Léa’s monologue and making her look bewildered, while Alethea slapped Tony on the head. “Sorry,” she apologized to Léa. “So, I think it smells strongly. Don’t you think that it could’ve been the strange smell Abel sensed before he got hit? He said he was going into the bathroom, so your soap was pro
bably in there.”
Léa’s eyes widened a bit. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t think of that at all. Now that we’re talking about it, I kind of had the feeling someone used it when I picked it up today, by the way. I wondered if it was him, but I guess then he’d have known what he had smelled.”
“This is the problem with modern women,” Tony suddenly started. “They must always reassert their social dominance through physical violence.” He pointed his finger at Alethea. “J’accuse, Alethea Thwaite!” She swapped his finger to the side.
“This is important, Tony! People are dying!” She rethought that one. “I mean, died!”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like they’d be in much of a hurry, then.” Their eyes met for long seconds. He put on his most innocent expression. She wondered if she could put a curse on him. For that purpose, she would start believing in magic.
“Sorry. I want you to give me the soap, Léa, and I need to know what’s in it. It might be important for the case.” She wasn’t sure what the case was, yet. There were three things that had happened, and no definite line to connect them. The word case always seemed to imply more clarity—the idea that one at least knew what to look for.
Léa just nodded and went to get the soap and its packaging. Alethea had forgotten about the beer in her hand, so she drank almost half of it at once; that would certainly help her with this conversation. “So, you guys are having a good time, hm? How fortunate that you hurt yourselves.”
Rob suddenly stood up and held up his left hand, balled to a fist. “I resent that implication!” In a wide oratory gesture, he spread out his arms. “This proud nation was built on the idea that people are not guilty before proven guilty!”
Tony jumped up and joined him. “Yes! I want to be able to loiter and make obscene gestures without anyone addressing me as ‘you clown!’ Just because I’m a clown, doesn’t mean people should say that!”
Alethea pulled herself up by the table and swung her beer bottle towards the ceiling. “Amen, brothers! No more! This is America, after all! All our dubious activities and lies and fake promises shall forever be protected by our constitution!” They all nodded in unison, but just as they prepared to erupt into song, Léa stepped back into the room.
They all stared at her and instantly closed their mouths. Silence descended, and Alethea felt like hissing and scrambling for the shadows. “What’s that smell?” Léa asked. Rob coughed, Tony looked at his injured hand, and Alethea raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve got the soap,” Léa said after waiting a few awkward moments. She handed it to Alethea, who instantly took a direct sniff of the stuff. It definitely was the same aroma that she had smelled at the other locations.
“You need to rub it on your gums,” Tony suggested. She glared at him and then turned back to Léa with a smile.
“Thank you, this is really helpful. I think. I smelled this at another…crime scene. I don’t know what the connection is, but there must be one.” Alethea grasped the soap with determination in her face.
“It’s okay if you can’t tell me more. I mean, it’s…well, I’m just glad that Abel is okay. So that’s enough for me, for now, aside from making sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
Perhaps it was the beer talking, but Alethea’s outlook was extraordinarily positive, and she wanted to share that. She started patting Léa’s shoulder. “I’m going to find the guy, okay?! It’s not like people should just be able to come in and attack us! We all stick together, and we can’t just sit by when something happens! I mean, I can’t sit by! I’ll get him, and he won’t be able to strike ever again.”
It kind of sounded like she’d kill him, so Alethea let out a cough and decided it was time to leave. “Anyway! I’m going to go. This case won’t solve itself. No, I’ll solve it. Everyone else is kind of useless, you know?” She sighed. “Good night, everyone.”
“What was in that beer?” Léa whispered towards Rob and Tony, but Alethea was already gone. The door swung shut behind her, and she went on her way to her next stop—Virgil’s. She’d have to share this new piece of evidence with him. On the way there, she took out her cell phone and wrote a quick message to Agent Westley that she had acquired a piece of evidence—a bar of soap smelling similar to the faint aroma in Horne’s study.
Looking at the package in her hand, she noticed it wasn’t jade tiger brand soap. Instead, the packaging boasted of the great organic ingredients and herbs that made your skin glow and lit your hair on fire, or something to that effect. The names of the ingredients themselves were all in Latin, so Alethea had no way of quickly checking them without the help of the Internet.
She found Virgil in his trailer, taking a nap in his chair. If Léa had found him like this, she’d have come out screaming that he was dead. He certainly looked as peaceful. Alethea sat down opposite of him, put the soap down, and began typing ingredients into her cell in hopes of finding something significant. Like tiger lily.
There was something else in it. In a way, it was blatantly obvious, so she could have thought of it much earlier. It was similar to tiger lily, but just a tiny bit less silly. One of the things that gave the herbal soap its calming power and gentle aroma was valerian, the smell of which also had a famous effect on cats. Perhaps even on jade tigers?
“Hey, Virgil. Wake up,” Alethea said gently. When it didn’t work, she resorted to saying his name a bit louder, and then finally to shaking his shoulder a bit until it was finally enough to wake him up.
“I’m there, I’m there,” the old man mumbled even before opening his eyes. He looked around and then focused on her, needing a remarkably small amount of time to fully wake up. She almost made a joke but was impressed enough to let it go…and visiting Rob and Tony had felt like enough fun for one evening.
“Good evening.” She smiled. “You’ll be happy to hear that I found the first piece of evidence in the jade tiger case.” Alethea pointed to the bar of soap, and then slowly slid it over towards Virgil. He looked at the evidence with some doubt in his eyes.
“Is this supposed to be a not-so-subtle indication that I haven’t been paying much attention to personal hygiene?” He cleared his throat. “If so, I apologize!” Alethea couldn’t really believe her ears. She looked Virgil up and down incredulously. Was this some sort of impostor?
“It’s okay. I mean…that’s not it!” She hit the table with the flat of her palm. “Did you really wake up just now, or are you like, half in dreamland?” Alethea had to adjust her imaginary tie before she continued. “Anyway, the soap is evidence! Not some sort of practical joke. It smells like your jade tiger. I mean, I think? Agent Westley—oh, he’s in town, did you meet him?—he wanted to get a police dog to investigate this…well…smelly crime.”
“When you say smelly crime, it sounds like someone did their business where they shouldn’t have,” Virgil mused. He had a distant look, like a man who knew what he was talking about—someone whose nose curled with the odor of a distant memory. “Be that as it may. Holden Westley, yes, he came by in the morning and said hello and asked me some questions. But he can’t know about the jade tiger.” His eyes showed absolute determination regarding that fact.
“Virgiliu, let me ask you a question.” Alethea took a deep breath. “Did you originally steal the jade tiger from someone else?”
“I resent that implication!” he immediately rebuffed her. His bushy eyebrows seemed to puff themselves up even farther. For a moment, she wondered if he would jump up and start talking about America, but then again, he was missing a beer in his hand to underscore the gravity of his words. “This is only about the fact that I don’t want to make all of this some public spectacle. You know I always kept it a secret that I even have the jade tiger.”
“Had,” she corrected him. He didn’t smile. “Anyway, this soap smells like valerian. The herb? That’s an ingredient. It’s supposed to be calming. Unless you’re a cat. So…either someone is making a practical joke
, or this has some deeper implication. The smell was present here, in the Faucheux’ trailer, and where a man named Lionel Horne was killed.”
Virgil nodded. “Yes, I read that in the evening news.” He took the soap and carefully smelled it. “Not that I regularly took a sniff of the jade tiger, but I never associated it with this smell at all.”
“Hm,” Alethea replied. She looked at him with a contemplative expression for a few seconds before she continued. “So the name Lionel Horne doesn’t tell you anything? Because he’s got a connection other than having a, ehm, catlike name. His study was full of pictures and newspaper articles about the circus. I mean, our circus. Specifically. And it reached back years and years, like he was obsessed.”
“Obsessed?” Virgil repeated the word as if he had just learned of its existence. He furrowed his brow. “Lionel Horne, Lionel Horne. I don’t think I know the man personally. Do you think he might have been the one to steal the jade tiger? The architect of this situation? And then…the plan went awry and he had the wrong allies?” His left hand balled to a fist. “And now they’re on the run with my irreplaceable artwork!”
Alethea considered the idea, but she couldn’t really believe it. “I don’t know, Virgil…I mean, how would he have found out? Would he really have had a study full of stuff linking him here if he had planned a crime? That would be stupid, if you ask me. I want to try asking around and see if someone else knows him.” She pointed at the soap. “And I will give this to Holden Westley, to see what the dog can find.”
“We called them pigs when I was younger,” Virgil related nostalgically. “If you want to ask someone about Horne, then you should try America. What I do not remember, she remembers, and vice versa.” He smiled for a moment. “I have the greatest confidence in you, Alethea. I think you will do excellently. Bring the jade tiger home and the criminals to justice.”