I made the rounds, without progress and without a return of the office staff, and was more than ready to abandon Parkerville for the circus side of the museum. But, as there were so many bodies in motion, before crossing the bridge, I thought I'd better give the Hall a second quick look.
I wandered into a vast room of old circus posters. At nearly 10,000, the world's largest collection, if the wall placard was on the level, from circuses large and small; Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey, Clyde Beatty, Gentry Bros, Circus Clemons, Kelly Miller 3 Ring, Snyder Bros, Russell Bros, Cirque Pinder, the Funfair, the Carnival, the Burlesque Circus, the Wild West Circus, the Grand Water Circus.
And, apart from those, a separate collection of posters highlighting headlining acts; trained wild animals, African lions, Bengal tigers, camels, the world's largest hippo, the world's smallest horse, and dog acts galore. All you could conjure from Poodles to Great Danes. Posters of trained exotic and trick animal acts, the Flying Pig, 'Big Bingo' the giant two-story elephant (The Biggest Brute that Breathes), 'Gargantua the Great' the Largest Gorilla Ever Exhibited. Banners of people billed as animals, Ferry – the Human Frog, Dezano – the Man Serpent! Over there was a poster of the Dog-Faced Boy and, over there, a flier for the Dog-Faced Man (no relation). There, in all her inky glory, hung the Amazing Tattooed Lady and, there, from the other side of the world, her male counterpart, L'Homme Tatoué. Here was May Wirth, the 'Greatest Bare-Back Rider that Ever Lived', and there Mister Misten Jr., the Child Wonder of the World. Mistic Skidmore Master Magician, Ethardo the French plate spinner, Dead-eye Danny 'Greatest Trick Shot Artist of Them All' headlining the bill over The Great Rudolpho (with no hint what it was Rudolpho was Great at), and every imaginable entertainment in-between from the towering Amazing Amazon Woman ('Every Man's Worst Nightmare') to the oddly benign-looking Kilpatrick, the trick bicycle rider.
On another wall hung the posters dedicated to the artists of the air. The history of aerial acrobats in splashes of once brilliant, now faded, yellows, reds, greens, and blues. The Great Wallendas, Princess Victoria the 'Fantastic Wire Dancer', M'lle Beeson the 'Marvelous High Wire Venus', Gaspary the Equilibriste, described in a smaller font as 'The Only Aerial Gun'. (I wasn't certain what that meant but, with my attitude toward guns, I have to admit, it didn't appeal.) The posters went on. There hung Emma Jutau, a French damsel suspended from the rafters by her teeth. There The Flying Dillons. There Miss Antoinette and the Flying Concellos. And there… I caught my breath.
Taken by surprise, I moved closer to soak in the details. I was amazed to have found it and more amazed at what it was, or at least what it might have been. A poster from the Kessler Traveling Circus featuring what promised to be 'Elegance in the Air' performed by an aerial acrobat called – The Canary. The final words of Mickey the Geek, as delivered to my excited secretary, rang in my ears: “The Canary didn't die when she fell from the sky.” There she was. But could she be? Was this canary, The Canary?
I turned to consider the find. But, before I had a chance, found more to contemplate. For not far from The Canary poster, hung a black and white photograph every bit as surprising and interesting: a group picture taken at center ring, beneath a circus Big Top, of a band of smiling performers. There, in the front row, stood our drowned man, Michael Gronchi, identified in the small type beneath as 'Mickey the Geek' and, beside him, a planet-sized lady in a light-colored moo moo sporting a bushy black beard. Though she may have been any Bearded Lady among all the Bearded Ladies of time, I couldn't help but believe this was Sybil in her younger days. Mickey and Sybil together. I was so glad to have stumbled upon the image that, without thinking, I reached out and touched it.
Thor's hammer hit my head. Heat. Pain. Then the circus disappeared and I found myself in a distorted nursery rhyme. I saw Little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet eating her curds and whey. Or did I? How would I know? I had no idea what a tuffet was. The lady I saw might have been anyone in the world except a Little Miss. She was huge. Humpty Dumpty? Mrs. Humpty Dumpty? Even that was wrong. She wasn't the nursery rhyme's egg-headed headliner or his wife, but something akin. I saw her from the rear, her dress a bulging tea cozy over a gigantic body, sitting on an ottoman. She turned, grabbed up a massive bowl of porridge, scooped a tablespoon full, and stuffed it – beneath her thick mustache, above her trimmed beard – into her gaping mouth. It was Sybil from the photo, the Bearded Lady. I'd been thunderstruck and was in another vision.
My first impression, the nursery rhyme thing, had been in error. I was still at the museum, or a circus at least, as I could hear calliope music distantly playing. I was in a dressing room; I could see bare light bulbs encircling a mirror over a makeup table. Sybil sat, eating, gesturing between bites, frantically telling a story (with her mouth full) to someone I couldn't see. Then she squawked in pain and tossed her porridge into the air. Suddenly a knife was buried in her back. It had been thrown so quickly I missed seeing its flight. But Sybil felt it. She leaped up and immediately went down.
Flashes went off behind my eyes and my perspective changed. I was in the same room but, now, on my knees on the floor. My right hand was hot and wet (and probably delicious). It had landed in the spilled porridge. That wasn't a problem, merely an annoyance. The problem was behind me. Through the magic of my psychic (or psychotic) head, I had taken Sybil's place and the thrown knife was now buried in my back. I could feel every cold inch of the keen blade. That was only the beginning of my new nightmare. From there, I was off to see the wizard.
Someone took me by the throat from behind. Strong hands, choking me. I fell on my face on tacky linoleum which, in itself, was hard to comprehend. I'd been standing on concrete in the circus museum gallery. I hadn't taken a step. But then… I was no longer me.
I fell, gasping for breath, sucking up dirt from the floor. My back burned with pain, my throat was on fire, and it was all I could do to take in air. Something rolled past my face. One, two, three… four little pearls glinting in the amber light as they raced across the floor. My body jerked and I yelled as the knife blade was yanked from my back. I felt myself being rolled.
I saw something odd beneath Sybil's bed. I couldn't make it out and had no time to try. My murderer was moving again. A lamp with a butt ugly shade, on a table above me, had turned him into a shadow. A film noir killer who hated Sybil's guts. He came with the knife again, stabbing my chest. I felt the blade glance hard off my sternum and sink home. Incredible pain. My breathing went to hell as my lung was pierced. The knife was pulled free but the attack continued.
Now… even more targeted. The blade sank into my crotch. Yes, stare wide-eyed, sisters. Cringe, brothers. I swear I (and by that I mean Sybil) was being stabbed in the groin. Right in the package. But Sybil shouldn't have had a package. Yet I'll say it again; viciously stabbed in the meat and two veg over and over again.… More loose pearls, soaked now in blood, rolled past me. Tears filled my eyes and blinded me.
I came to on the cold concrete floor of the museum poster gallery. Alfonso stood over me, tugging on my arm, trying to rouse me, in a panic. “Blake! Blake! Wake up! Come out of it, fer Chris-sake!”
“I'm awake.”
“Blake, get up. Get up, boy!”
“I'm awake. Stop jerking my arm. It isn't a pump handle.”
“We got to go. We got to get the hell out of here!”
Apparently seeing my gyrations had scared the living crap out of Alfonso. He was as ghost white as I imagined a man of color could become. Still. “We're not going anywhere,” I told him. “We've got to find Sybil. Something bad has happened to Sybil.”
“You aren't just shitting.”
“What? Why?” Maybe my flopping around like a landed fish hadn't been what scared him. The midget was terrified, but he'd arrived that way. “What's happened? What do you know?”
“I don't know anything. We have to go.”
“Where's Sybil? Alfonso, where's Sybil? I'm afraid she's been hurt.”
“Hurt hell!” Alfonso
realized he was shouting and stopped. He looked around, scanning the gallery like a lookout expecting the enemy. He whispered, “She's dead.” He helped me to my feet and started for the main entrance. I grabbed him and spun him around.
“Sybil?”
“Dead,” Alfonso insisted. “I was talkin' to her. Then she had no more to say. Let's get out of here!”
I refused, of course, insisting on Sybil's whereabouts. We'll skip the swearing and arguing that followed. What mattered was I forced it from him. The Bearded Lady was across the river, on the circus side of the museum. Under further duress I forced him to lead me to her.
We crossed the bridge and veered left, west, past the animal rides. We passed the Sideshow tents and their promised wonders, the 'Fantastic Feats and Live Physical Oddities' of the Armless Wonder, The Rubber Girl, Dynamo Dan the Electric Man, The Wolf Boy, The Fire Breather, The Strong Man and, you betcha', the Bearded Lady. Alfonso hurried on by and I followed.
Had we continued down the paved midway we'd have come to the Big Top. Instead, we left the path behind the Sideshow tents and headed for another short section of rail track, supporting a row of old coachman cars. These were, I was about to discover, the Sideshow dressing rooms. The midget led me to the last of these and wasn't happy doing it. “She's in there.”
I climbed the three steps and opened the door. What I saw was both stunning and, I'm sure you'll understand, no surprise at all. Sybil, the Bearded Lady, lay like a bizarre island, one huge mountain surrounded by a sea of blood (and spilled porridge and scattered pearls). Even Lisa would have had trouble labeling the scene romantic.
Despite the fact I'd seen it, felt it, in my waking nightmare, despite the fact I saw her now, freshly stabbed and newly dead, still the idiotic question escaped my mouth. “What happened here?”
I didn't see, or know it at the time, but behind me Alfonso was shaking his head, trying to decide what to do next. Decided, he turned and beat feet, running away as fast as his small bow legs would carry him. All I knew was, when I turned to question the midget, the doorway was empty and Alfonso gone. To where I hadn't a clue.
My mind turned to other things. I considered grabbing a couple of the pearls off the floor. I had a habit of swiping little pieces of evidence (in violation of the law) for my own investigative purposes and possible comparisons later should they come up. I decided at the last instant not to bother. Pearls were pearls were pearls, weren't they? And I was too far from home to be caught with the valuable property of a murder victim on my person.
It ended up being a good decision. But I'd taken too long in making it. Because, just then, someone hit me on the back of the head. Everything went black.
Chapter Twelve
There I was again, sisters and brothers, in a bleak and barren interview room – being stared at by, not a bored city bull but, for a change of pace, a bored county sheriff's deputy – in the sleepy community of Barrelton, Wisconsin. Well, sleepy until now. The stabbing, strangulation, and bloody mutilation of Sybil had awakened it. At least that part of it that represented the law. A full bottle of aspirin stood in the middle of the otherwise empty table – untouched. I would have loved to imbibe but, being allergic to most pain killers, couldn't. I sat holding a bag of ice on my splitting (and nearly split) head waiting to die, hoping to go to heaven, while a humorless sheriff somewhere in the building prepared for his return and another round of questioning designed to drag me through hell.
No more had I thought the thought when the door came open and Clayton Cobb rejoined us. If you're picturing a sheriff from an old western, cheeks stuffed with chewing tobacco, cowboy hat tipped back on his head, one pant leg riding inside a boot, forget it. If you're thinking of a good ole' boy, a hick from the sticks, with a gut like chewed bubble gum hanging over an outsized belt buckle, forget that too. Clayton Cobb looked like nothing so much as an investment banker or perhaps a high school principal. In his mid-fifties, with a full head of neatly coiffed white hair, a wide mouth that, you imagined, could smile pleasantly but didn't, and a pair of pale blue eyes that caught you off guard with their ability to go from Mother Teresa to junkyard dog without blinking. Instead of the traditional accoutrement, he wore an inexpensively cut medium brown suit. The only thing about his dress that suggested he was who he claimed to be was a small gold star pinned to his left lapel.
The sheriff closed the door. He nodded at his underling. He placed a stack of file folders on his side of the table and retook his chair across from me. He started again, demanding answers to the same questions he'd already repeatedly asked about the murder of the Bearded Lady. Pausing for the waves of pain in my bruised head, the ringing in my ears, and for the occasional breath, I answered in the only way I could; the sum total amounting to… “I know nothing about Sybil's murder.”
Speaking of murder, I could have killed Alfonso. He'd left me in a pickle. There was no way I was telling this Wisconsin law man about our investigation into Mickey's murder, or any part of it. The truth would automatically link our murdered geek with his murdered bearded lady. There was a link, a huge one, but he wouldn't learn it from me. To empty the bag, would have complicated the matter beyond all reason. I would not be believed and I'd be in the stew over my aching ears a long way from home. Refusing to talk was also out. To do so would have immediately got me chucked into the dungeon as a hostile material witness. Neither appealed. No, I needed to be co-operative without doing any silly co-operating. I needed a simple solid lie. Mickey's murder was off the table, I didn't know Sybil from Adam, her murder couldn't have been more shocking.
The lie that would have worked best went like this: Alfonso and I drove up from Chicago together to coax his co-worker Sybil back to her Navy Pier gig. They, Sybil and Alfonso, had a spat, like good friends did, and Sybil had gone away mad. I convinced Alfonso to cowboy up and apologize. So we'd headed north. But what difference did any of that make now? I needed Alfonso for that lie to work and he'd flown the coop.
Any mention of the midget now would have put the cops on him. I wanted to find him, but wasn't keen to find him that way. Bottom line was, it left me nothing to offer the sheriff but a tale of an innocent tourist (yes, me again) alone in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was a poor slob who knew nothing and saw nothing. What choice did I have?
Sadly, something about my face, my eyes, my voice bugged the sheriff. He wasn't buying my innocence in any flavor. The crack on the head that someone, probably the murderer, had given me at the scene didn't help any. “If you had nothing to do with this,” the sheriff barked. “Why were you unconscious beside the victim?”
“I've told you six times.”
“Tell me again.”
“I was passing the Sideshow. I heard a commotion in the train cars behind. I knocked, heard nothing, and entered. I saw a bloody mess. I bent down to see if the person… I thought it was a lady, then I saw the beard and thought it was a man in a dress. Then I didn't know. I bent to see if the victim was still alive. Someone hit me over the head. Here I am.”
“Who hit you?”
My head hurt. I was tired. “I told you. I didn't see,” I said with a sigh, “whoever it was.”
“How did you know Sybil?”
“I didn't know him. All I knew was…” I stopped talking because the faces of both sheriff and deputy made it clear they'd stopped listening. They'd heard something and had honed in on it.
“You didn't know him?”
“What?”
“I asked how you knew Sybil. You said you didn't know him.”
Oops.
The law men drilled holes through me with their eyes. “What do you mean,” the sheriff asked, “you didn't know 'him'?”
Great. Again I'd allowed a head injury, and weariness, to distract my thoughts and loose my big mouth. You'd think, with as many enemies as I'd made over the years, I'd take it easy on myself. But, no. Every chance I got I stepped on my own penis. And I'd done it again.
Speaking of the male member, the
master of ceremonies, the sword of love, pleasure, and pain, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems… As I'd already let the cat out of the bag to the county cops, it seems as good a place as any to make it crystal clear to you, faithful reader. Sybil, the Bearded Lady, wasn't a lady. She was a fraud. He was an anatomically correct, far from rare, good ole' bearded man. Whether or not the World Circus Museum knew, I don't know. Whether the Callicoat Circus, or The Major, or Alfonso knew, I don't know that either. But I knew. I'd learned it in a way no one should learn anything. I'd suffered the Bearded Lady's death. She, and there we make it 'he', had been stabbed in the back, garroted to the floor, stabbed in the chest, and viciously stabbed in the twig and berries by someone in a fury. I'd gone along for the ride and knew Sybil was a man!
But seeing the gleam in Sheriff Cobb's eyes, I should have kept it to myself. I wasn't supposed to know Sybil. Nobody at the circus had told me she was a man. There was too much blood at the scene to have been able to distinguish anything in the short time I claimed to have been conscious and looking. The cops hadn't mentioned it. And I wasn't supposed to be able to see dead people, or experience their murders. So I shouldn't have known and I shouldn't have called her 'him'.
I was shaking my head, even as I considered it, so I'd already decided. My only hope was to continue to lie and play innocent. Good luck to me. “Sorry,” I said with a smile. “Slip of the tongue. Obviously, I meant to say 'her'.”
“Oh, obviously,” the sheriff said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
“I misspoke.”
“Bull. You knew she was a he. Yet you claim you didn't know Sybil. How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That the bearded lady wasn't.”
“Wasn't what? Bearded?”
“No, wise guy. That she wasn't a lady; that Sybil was a man.”
“Sybil was a man?” I asked in mock surprise. “Really? I didn't know! For the third time, my slip of the tongue was just that. Sybil really was a man? I had no idea! But maybe you're right. Maybe I'm psychic? No, I don't believe it.” I looked at the sheriff in all sincerity. “That I'm psychic, I mean. I don't believe it. But, now you've told me, I have to admit I'm not surprised by the Sybil thing.”
Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2) Page 11