by Jenna Coburn
She nodded, full of resolve, but it was more a show than a feeling. As Westley had said previously, there was very little evidence, and a lack of witnesses. It was early in the investigation, but it still looked grim. Horne didn’t exactly get murdered in a busy street, either. The only hope was that there had been a late visitor to his house who might have stood out.
“I’ll do my best, Virgil. Too bad visiting you has been so useless.” She smiled apologetically and got up. “When you go to sleep, you should go to your proper bed.”
Virgil grumbled. “That’s how they repay you,” he seemed to address an imaginary companion. He sighed, stood up with her, and put his hand on her shoulder before she left the trailer. “I want some good news for everyone, you know? We can only move out from here once we have that much, so it won’t feel like we’re just leaving Abel behind and acting like nothing is wrong.”
“I understand, Virgil. You know I won’t chicken out until I’ve seen the end of this. I mean…all that valerian, the cats? Are we the victim of an Egyptian conspiracy? It’s just too weird to not be curious.” She smiled. “I’m a bit on edge, maybe. Sorry for that. Good night.”
“Good night,” he called after her. She was already out the door and on to her next destination, wondering if she could actually have a talk with America before Holden came by to have a look at that soap.
When Alethea went by the trailer, no one was inside. The circus was almost completely taken down, so there weren’t that many places to be at this hour. She considered walking back to the clown house, but scrapped that when she remembered someone that America actually liked to visit. After a short walk across their tiny trailer town, she found another door to knock on—that of perhaps the smallest trailer in the lot.
After several knocks, the door was finally opened. “Hello?” It was Cliff, and this was his trailer. He stood in the entrance, barred it with his massive figure. Cliff Bruce—two first names, as Tony would say. He was their strongman, an overall large and heavy man with meaty arms, meaty legs, meaty fists, a meaty face, and oftentimes, pieces of meat in his beard.
Perhaps because it helped the martial image, and to contrast with his massive beard, Cliff’s head was shaved clean and polished. And perhaps to contrast with his own immense proportions, he lived in the smallest of their trailers, which he had inherited from his mother. He kept it as others kept some piece of clothing from their childhood they had long outgrown—only he still squeezed himself into it.
“Alethea! Looking for old Madame Lécuyer, I bet. Come right in,” he invited her. He withdrew backwards like a hermit crab into its shell, and then farther to the only table in the sitting corner that would also double as his bed. Somehow he had mastered the art of forcing himself between the cushion and the edge of the low table. Perhaps one should consider him a contortionist, too. With him sat America, sipping from a small teacup, smiling at the new guest to their small tea party.
“How wonderful that you could join us,” she welcomed Alethea. “It’s good that at least someone picked up on our invitation.”
Cliff scratched his beard. “Actually, I forgot to invite anyone, ma’am.” America playfully—or was it playfully?—slapped his arm and shook her head. “You had one job,” she said. His head sank.
“Good evening to the both of you.” Alethea sat down and promptly had a full cup of tea in front of her. It didn’t smell like valerian. “I wanted to ask you something, America.” It was better to get straight to business. After all, the police dog might show up any minute, together with a Holden Westley. “Does the name Lionel Horne tell you anything?”
Before America could answer the question—she had only gotten her mouth half-open—Cliff suddenly answered the question first. “Lionel Horne—that’s the guy who stalked me!” Both women, completely dumbfounded, looked at the strongman. He paused for a few awkward moments, perhaps in surprise of his own outburst, before he continued. “Yeah, well…he…had a thing for me or something. But then he kept on, you know, bothering me. It was terrible. This guy!”
Alethea reacted first. She hadn’t yet managed to close her mouth, so saying something came easy. “Are you serious?” Cliff just nodded, his sour expression making clear that he was, indeed, serious. “This…so…the man was murdered, and because he had all these pictures and cutout newspaper articles about the circus draped over the room he was found in, they asked me what I thought and if I could ask around about him.”
“He was killed?” Cliff slowly shook his head. “But it can’t have anything to do with the circus. I don’t think he had any other interest than, well…me. It started years ago, you know?”
Alethea was confused. “Shouldn’t he have had more pictures of you, then? Or…like an altar, or whatever stalkers have?” The pictures and articles had seemed to be gathered without focus on any one person. Cliff might’ve been in there, but only as much or as little as any other person that was with the circus.
Cliff just shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t want to think about it, you know. I didn’t wish that this happened to him, but he wasn’t exactly a friend.” Alethea wanted to believe him, but it didn’t make sense yet. There was something else there, she was sure of it. While the exchange had been going on, America had just been sitting there silently, content in drinking her tea.
“This violence is quite alarming,” she finally said. “Maybe this man was obsessed not only with Cliff but with the circus, in general. Who knows? Neither reason meant he had to die. Perhaps this is just a coincidence. What do you think, Alethea?”
There it was again—the old woman’s teasing reference to this supposed hidden world of magical manipulation, like a fine-tuning of the world or a small weight in the right place. It was true; the world seemed to have grown denser, as if there was such a finite amount of things in it, a limited little pool of existence, where possibility no longer reigned supreme, and everything was instead spun into a constricting embrace.
“I have to go,” she quickly said. “I have to go to meet with Agent Westley, I’m sorry. Thanks for the tea, and good night.” She stood up, gave an apologetic half bow, turned around and left the small home with its flowered patterns and plastic furniture. The hour had grown late, and the wind had picked up.
When she arrived back at her trailer, she noticed a new message on her phone. Westley, uncharacteristically curt, simply wrote that it was too late, he had previous engagements, and that police dogs weren’t just ready to be handled by anyone at any time. He would instead come by the next day.
It was all the same to Alethea. She felt tired, like the last step forward she took had been more of a strange pirouette; she wasn’t sure anymore what she should believe in. In a way, she wanted everything to be meaningful and important. On the other hand, if everything really were, then it would have to be magic.
Was she dreaming of a magic world when she wished for things to make sense?
Alethea fell asleep quickly and deeply, and then moved through strange dreamscapes and mind-painted scenery where the categories of sense and nonsense had lost their meaning entirely.
Chapter VII
The first thing she had to think about when she woke up was cats. There still was the stray cat, the one she had almost forgotten about, that hung around the circus. Everyone had been talking about it. The evening when they originally had wanted to leave seemingly had been the first this black-and-white cat had entered the circus grounds. Alethea wasn’t sure why she thought of it, perhaps it had appeared in her dreams.
Cats and cat names, cat herbs, cat figurines, different sorts of cats but cats all the same, spooking through the city and committing crime—theft, assault, murder. In a world of magic, was it all done by cats? Or perhaps just one? That was just too crazy.
Alethea got up, showered, made breakfast and sat down with a black coffee. The hot caffeinated drink was great; it felt like exactly what she needed. Cats. There was a police dog coming. She wasn’t sure when Westley would show up, but ce
rtainly not before breakfast. A dog was the antithesis of a cat. A criminal cat. A police dog.
It was such a weird thought. She welcomed it when someone knocked on the door. “Come in!” It was Holden Westley, of course, who happily took the invitation and sat down at Alethea’s table.
“Good morning! What a beautiful place you have, Miss Thwaite,” he complimented. In fact, it was nothing special. She spent so much time outside that the inside of her trailer must have looked sparse compared to the others. Maybe that was what Westley liked about it.
“Thank you, Agent Westley. And good morning to you, too. So did you manage to get a dog and a handler?”
“Yes! And it was brilliant to see how fast they’re working. Very professional, indeed. Do you have that evidence with you?” She nodded excitedly.
They were on the same wavelength that morning, and for a moment or two, they just looked at each other in peaceful accord, feeling as if they had come home. Alethea was home, so the feeling was not that absurd. She handed the soap to Westley, who carefully smelled it.
“So it’s valerian,” he said contemplatively; he made it sound like he recognized it, but Alethea had already told him in a message. “Lionel was the victim’s name. Perhaps someone wanted to make a strange allusion to something?” She gave a hesitant nod. Things felt transitory, ready to fall apart.
“I found someone who knew him. Our strongman, Cliff Bruce.” She sat forward a bit and took her cup in both hands. “He says that Lionel Horne was obsessed with him, that he stalked him some years ago. It sounded strange to me, because Horne seemed to have such an unfocused obsession with the circus, with no one featured prominently.”
Holden nodded, but then slightly shrugged. “I am not a professional regarding such obsessions. Maybe a person who is predisposed to these kinds of behaviors might shift their obsession if targets prove themselves to be…resistant.” He leaned on the table and put his hands together. “We have called on witnesses in the Horne case, and I hope someone comes forward soon. He had an ex-wife that we contacted. No children. He was not exactly a man who will be missed by many.”
For a moment, he looked apologetic, as if he weren’t sure why he had said as much as he had. “I remain uncertain how these cases are connected. Two men, both of them vastly different, are attacked in a similar manner. To what end? Of the three connections we can make—the attack, the smell, and the circus—which ones are the important ones?” He smiled for a moment. “Forgive me. It helps me think.”
“I understand.” She smiled back. “I think I do the same thing. It’s good to share thoughts. Who knows where the breakthrough could come from? I wondered about cats, you know, with the valerian, and there was a stray cat around the grounds before the thing with Abel happened—one that nobody had seen before.”
“Cats…I do not believe Lionel Horne had a cat. And I doubt a cat could commit these crimes.” He chuckled slightly, and she joined in with a polite laugh. “The lack of evidence and the…well, connecting theme, leaves another conclusion—a serial killer. In that case, he failed to kill Abel Faucheux, a fact he luckily did not realize.”
It wasn’t a serial killer. There still was the jade tiger, and she doubted a psychopath would care much for jade figurines. That is, unless he really was obsessed with cats and the valerian…some sort of cat aphrodisiac who, perhaps, wanted to punish Abel and Lionel for their sexual deviance. It was almost a sound theory.
“But Léa bought the herbal soap,” Alethea objected. “I doubt she’s the killer.” What happened to Abel seemed like a distraction maneuver—that part she couldn’t say out loud, because of her oath of silence regarding the damn jade tiger. She still didn’t fully understand it.
“She could not have killed Lionel, at least. She has the alibi of being at the hospital. Not that I would otherwise suspect her. Such a pleasant young lady…very thoughtful and caring, keeping close to her brother. It is visible they share a deep sibling connection.” Westley suddenly got up from his chair. “It is a nice day outside. I assume you haven’t been out yet? We should walk for a bit while waiting for the dog. I’ll take the soap.”
Alethea needed a moment to adjust to the sudden change of pace, but she was outside with him in under a minute. Following the instinct to thoroughly stretch herself, she looked around the circus grounds and up to the sky, sighing pleasantly, even as the wind was a bit chilly. It was nothing new. “I’ll point out the cat if we see it,” she assured, wondering about the discipline of police dogs.
The sun was on their faces, a distant sun, but it still gave off some pleasant warmth, keeping their stroll from being uncomfortable. The weather could have been much worse, with rain and what else. “What did Horne work as? You said he only has an ex-wife as a familial connection, but even if he didn’t have friends, what about coworkers?”
“He was old enough to be retired. There are many lonely old people without families,” Holden said thoughtfully. They walked, passing the packed-up wagons and huddled trailers in a long circle towards the entrance. “We’re still taking his life apart for any clues, since we haven’t found much physical evidence.”
When they arrived at the entrance, they decided to wait there, while Alethea tried to assemble the pieces in her head. If someone were stealing the jade tiger and knocking over Abel as a distraction, this person was very good at not being seen. If Abel had been a distraction, perhaps Lionel was a distraction on a larger scale. A theft would garner less interest than a murder, and Lionel was a lonely, old man that would scarcely be missed, just as Holden had said.
It would be a sinister world in which someone would murder a man simply to cover up for stealing something. And yet—
“There he is!” Holden said in that special voice reserved for animals, children, and, sometimes, lovers. The sound of that uncharacteristic lovey-dovey tone coming from Agent Westley’s mouth made Alethea feel awkward, as if she were intruding on some private episode. The dog, curiously handled by Officer Mullins, approached them with a friendly manner that she didn’t expect in a police dog.
“Good morning,” Mullins greeted with a smile while the dog excitedly wagged its tail. “Sorry for him, he’s…a bit young, and still learning, but it’s the only one I got on such short notice, you know. It was hard enough to convince anyone we need a dog for…this.” He was right; it wasn’t exactly as if a child were missing or someone were trying to smuggle a load of cocaine-filled bombs into the White House. Surely, even police dogs had bigger cases.
“I’m sure he’ll do fine.” Normal voice. “Won’t you do fine?” Baby voice. Alethea saw in Officer Mullins’ eyes that he thought the same as her—this was some weird stuff. Perhaps Holden had a special bond with dogs, because the dog’s and the agent’s expressions seemed to match up perfectly. “What’s his name?” Holden asked while petting him.
“Fuzz,” Mullins answered. Both Westley and Thwaite raised an eyebrow. “You know, because of…the fuzz?” Both nodded. They knew.
“Let’s start,” Holden just said after some time had passed. He gave Mullins the piece of soap, who let the dog smell it and then gave it back to Holden. The FBI agent wrapped the thing up and put it away so Fuzz wouldn’t be distracted.
“What are we even looking for here?” Officer Mullins asked as they started walking. Alethea bit her lip and glanced at Holden, who—to her great relief—answered for her. “If only we knew that, we might not require the dog. Be that as it may, we have some hope that this trail of valerian is somehow still present. At least that is how I understood Miss Thwaite.”
“Yes, well, I-I mean, I just thought that it might be good, generally, to look around here. Before we look at Horne’s home. I mean, we’re here right now, aren’t we?” That damn jade tiger. When they passed by Virgil’s trailer, which was right near the entrance, the dog indeed seemed to smell something. He pulled towards it, then under it. They heard a hissing sound, and as they kneeled, they found the black-and-white cat.
It retreated
backwards from the dog and ran away quickly. Officer Mullins narrowed his eyes when the others looked at him with some disbelief. “There must be something else there! Fuzz wouldn’t just want to run after a random cat.” A random cat. If only Alethea could still believe that. Fuzz was given some more line and so went under the trailer, where he started sniffing and then lay down—the sign that he had found something. Mullins quickly gave him a treat.
“How do you know you just gave him that treat for a reason?” Agent Westley immediately asked. Mullins shrugged. While the two law enforcement officials were standing around, Alethea climbed under the trailer to see what Fuzz had found there. Above his head was a small hole in the bottom of the trailer; it had apparently been flimsily closed up with a piece of thin wood.
She could smell the valerian coming from beyond it, which must have been the reason the cat had scratched and chewed on it. Putting her fingers through and using some force, Alethea managed to break off the wood. From beyond, a small bag of herbs fell into her hands. There was nothing else there, just a small chamber with a bag that smelled like the herbal soap. Only this time, there were actual dried-up plants. Fuzz stuck his nose in it and wagged his tail, until Mullins called him back.
“What did you find, Miss Thwaite?”
“It’s a bag of herbs, Agent Westley.” She emerged from under Virgil’s trailer, and the three of them gave the bag a closer look. It was a small jute sack with a strong smell, bound together with a bright yellow ribbon and otherwise unremarkable; it looked like some sort of natural room freshener, something that one might hang up in their outhouse. If one had an outhouse.
“Where did you get that from?” Holden glanced under the trailer for a moment; she handed the piece of wood to him, and both men looked at it curiously before they simultaneously put their heads down again to see where it had come from.
“There was a small hole in the bottom at the side there, and it was patched up with that piece of wood,” Alethea pointed out. “This bag of herbs was in the small space behind it.” Officer Mullins scratched his head, and Holden Westley gave the piece of wood back, then put his hands behind his back. They both made some indiscernible sounds of profound understanding.