Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2)

by Doug Lamoreux

  “You're not surprised the bearded lady was a man?”

  “Yes. I'm not surprised. All these carnivals and circuses are scams, aren't they? Fat men with high voices are probably easier to come by than real bearded ladies. Especially on a budget. That would be my guess. So I'm not surprised. I wouldn't be at all surprised if their strongman was a ninety-pound weakling in a muscle suit.”

  “Did you know Gerald Lapinski?”

  “Never heard the name. Who's he?”

  “Sybil!” It was clear the poor sheriff had had all of me he could take. I can't say I blamed him. He was fed up. I was worn down. And Sybil, the Bearded Lady, her act over for good, as famous as she was ever going to get, was plain old Gerald Lapinski again.

  Cobb wasn't buying my lies. I smiled to show I sincerely thought he should. He didn't smile back. He merely changed the subject and kept on grilling. “What do you do in Chicago.”

  “I already said. I'm a private investigator.”

  “And you're up here on a case?”

  “No. I am not working a case.”

  “What case?”

  “Are you deaf?”

  “No. Neither am I stupid. Why are you snooping in Wisconsin? What brought you up here? And how did it get Sybil killed?”

  “I understand,” I said, with genuine compassion. “You're a cop. You're naturally nosy but you're also a cynic. I used to be a cop; I got the same chronic conditions. But your questions are out of bounds. I have no case. Even if I did, it would have nothing to do with the crime you're investigating. So it wouldn't concern you and no answer would be forthcoming.” I adjusted the ice bag. God, my head hurt. “I came up to see the circus museum. I'm a Toby Tyler fan ever since my days as a Mouseketeer. I've always loved the circus.”

  “A spur-of-the-moment road trip to the circus? What kind of jerk do you think I am?”

  “You never wanted to join the circus when you were a kid?”

  “Your story stinks, Blake. No, I'm not any fun. I'm missing all the comedy in this murder. But I'm willing to try. So let's examine the whole hilarious situation in which you now find yourself. You are most definitely a material witness to a vicious homicide. For that alone, I can stick you in the slammer and leave you until long after all the funny wears off. You are absolutely a suspect in that murder. You have no reasonable excuse for being here in Wisconsin, let alone the scene of the crime, and your story is a pack of lies. You might stop with the jokes and build a defense. You're going to need one.”

  “You have diddly-squat,” I informed him. “I went to the circus museum like a thousand other tourists today. While wandering past the Sideshow, I heard a scream. I entered the train car to see if I could help. I saw a bloody murder scene and, before I could back out, got hit over the head and knocked unconscious. End story. I did not see who hit me. I did not know Sybil. I recognize your authority to arrest me as a material witness. But I'm a witness to nothing and it would be a waste of your time and my life. There's nothing else to tell you. If arrested, I will sit quietly in your cell, watching the rats scratch their fleas, until my mouthpiece arrives with a writ of habeas corpus. What's the point?”

  “Why is your wallet crammed full of ID's, all in different names?”

  “Come on, Cobb. We both know the game. If I was Joe Citizen, you'd have me flummoxed. I'm not. I used to be a cop. All you're doing is wearing out your chairs and both of our butts. Do we really have to keep going back to square one every half hour?”

  “The ID's?” the sheriff repeated, tapping the table.

  “I'm a private investigator. I can't get a warrant; the courts don't grant me information. I have to be a lot of different people to a lot of different people to get them to tell me things. There's no law against having aliases. Now would you please move on?” I regretted the shouting. My head felt as if it was coming apart. Whoever hit me, and whatever with, they'd done it with care.

  “Who was the midget?”

  “What?” I'd been too busy with my pity party to hear the sheriff's question. “What did you say?”

  “The black midget,” he repeated. “When you got to the museum, you bought a ticket for yourself and you bought a ticket for a little person. Who was he?”

  That one caught me off guard. It was the first hint they knew about Alfonso. I had to do some quick thinking – and keep a poker face at the same time. Should I reconsider emptying the bag? If they knew about Alfonso… Then again it was possible they didn't know about Alfonso at all. They might just have stumbled upon the naked fact I'd been seen with a midget. Surely they…

  “We talked to the girl in the ticket booth,” the sheriff barked, interrupting my thoughts but helpfully filling in the blank for me. “We know damn well you bought a ticket for a midget! Now who is he? And where is he?”

  Make that blanks, plural. Johnny Law had given me all the answers I needed. They didn't have Alfonso. They didn't know about him specifically. They knew I bought two tickets to the museum, one for a little person in line with me. They had no details. That left me free to lie with impunity.

  “I didn't know him,” I said with a gloriously straight face. “I don't know him. I haven't the slightest idea where he is.”

  “The ticket girl remembers you.”

  “Well she may. So what? I'm standing in line, minding my own business, waiting to buy a ticket,” I explained. “I heard a voice ask if I had the price of a second ticket. I turned and didn't see anyone. Then I looked down. I was a little confused because I thought it was a kid, but the voice was clearly that of an adult. Then, sure enough, the little guy asked again if I could go him a ticket. I thought I was being had. You know, like Candid Camera? Then, I thought, maybe it was part of the circus show. I didn't know. I started to laugh but, the midget, he said he was serious. He wanted to see the circus and didn't have ticket money. Well, who am I to stop the forward momentum of a serious little person? Or to deprive him of the joy of the circus you turned your back on? I love the circus; I already told you that. I was at the circus. I was in a circus mood. I bought a midget a ticket. Trust me, after years of scratches and dents, my karma needs all the buffing I can give it.”

  “Blake,” the sheriff said staring me down. “You are a liar.”

  “I can hardly deny that; you've seen my business card collection. But I only lie when it's necessary for business.”

  “You knew the midget. You tried to get him in on a half-priced kid's ticket!”

  “It's my sense of humor does most of the damage to my karma,” I confessed. “The midget didn't laugh either. There's no accounting for taste.”

  “Empty your pockets.”

  “We already did that.”

  “We're doing it again.”

  I stood, shakily, and did as requested. He surveyed the pile, wallet, card file, keys to the Jag, folding money, a couple of coins. Nothing seemed to shock him but, why should it, he'd seen it all before.

  “Take off your jacket.”

  That required my setting down the ice bag first. I doffed the coat and tossed it down. He felt it up, from collar to cuffs, giving special attention to the insides of the pockets and the seams of the lining. “Take off your shoes.”

  I sat, paused for the dizziness the square dance he was calling was giving me, then untied and pulled off my gum shoes. He stared into each and shook them for good measure. No rabbits fell out.

  “What in God's name,” I asked, “are you looking for?”

  He considered me for a good long while. Then he pulled a photograph from a file and slid it in front of me. It was a picture of Sybil, in the Sideshow, with a group of tourists, grinning at the camera and saying “Cheese.” I stared, trying to find the sheriff's point but, with my head spinning and the image going in and out of focus, was having a time of it.

  “Sybil's necklace,” he finally said.

  Oh, yes. The pearl necklace. There it was in the picture.

  “It was broken during the murder. We collected the scattered pearls as evide
nce. But, using this photo as a reference, and doing the math, it's obvious some are missing and all but certain the killer left with a handful.” Then, because he either recognized my impairment or thought I was stupid, he summed the situation up. “There weren't enough pearls at the scene to recreate the necklace.”

  I was trying with all my might not to react, while thanking my stars I had fought the urge to slip a pearl or two into the side of my shoe for later use. Had I done so, I'd already be cooling my heels in a cell with a murder charge hung around my neck. I was also arguing with myself; wondering whether Alfonso was, not only a murderer but, a thief? Wondering how I could even think such a thing about Alfonso? Wondering why I was being so sappy? What the hell did I know about the midget? He'd known both victims, hadn't he? Of course he had. None of it made any sense. If the lovesick little guy wanted someone dead, why would it be Mickey or Sybil? Surely, if he had murder in his heart, he'd have used it up on The Major. Hell, now I had The Major on my mind, without even knowing a motive, it made more sense he was the murderer. But if not, if Alfonso was the killer… How could he have possibly reached the top of my head to hit me?

  I was confusing myself, going in dizzy circles and coming back to where my racing thoughts had begun, I was again quietly congratulating myself on not having copped a pearl. To be caught with one at this juncture would have been bad. I had no sense but, at least on this, my senses had not failed me.

  The sheriff was staring a hole through me again.

  “So you think robbery might have been a motive?” I asked, trying to be helpful. “Seems odd the killer didn't scoop them all up but, maybe. Are you checking your local fences and pawn shops?”

  “Thanks,” the sheriff said with a sneer. “What would we do in the sticks without helpful tips from ex-cops visiting from the city?”

  The interrogation continued to not go well. But as they really had no evidence I'd done anything, ultimately it didn't go that badly either. I spent the whole night and the morning into the wee hours convincing the sheriff of Barrelton County it wouldn't do him or me any good to put me in the slammer; and promising on my mother's grave (fingers crossed) I'd return when summoned. Finally, amazingly, I talked myself out of an arrest and, with a “Pretty please,” even got my gun back.

  Early next morning, the door to the Interview Room of the Barrelton County Sheriff's Department opened for good and one used up big city shamus, little ole' me, passed through and out. Having squeezed the turnip for hours, and found it bloodless, Cobb and his deputy finally gave up. I'd convinced them I knew nothing. Which was an odd experience for me; with most of my acquaintances that fact was a given. I was granted leave of their county, and the State of Wisconsin, with a clearly stated warning that failure to respond to a summons to return for questioning or a trial of the murderer, if and when caught, would result in an assault on my investigator's license and my future liberty. I agreed and the deputy kindly dropped me back off at my Jaguar in the museum parking lot.

  I had to get while the getting was good. But I confess I felt bad leaving. I had no clue where Alfonso was and, despite feeling abandoned by the little squirt, was half afraid I might be abandoning him. Had my former companion left the museum? Assuming he had…

  Even that was a guess. For all I knew, by now, he may have become a murder victim himself. Was he? Had he already been hidden in a circus wagon? Or been fed to the lions? It wasn't doing my humor any good to think along those lines. So, assuming he left the museum, it was anyone's guess how he'd made his getaway. The museum grounds were in the middle of nowhere; meaning he needed to get somewhere in order to go anywhere. Assuming the escaping midget was headed home, and by that I meant his home circus, then he was headed back to Chicago. So he walked, or hitched, or caught a conveyance east to the Wisconsin Dells, from where he could take a bus to the Windy City. All guess work but I was following my nose. What I couldn't guess was whether I was chasing a frightened Alfonso in need of help or a murderous midget on the lam from justice.

  It took twenty minutes to reach the Dells and, once there, another ten to locate the Roadway Cross Country Bus Company. Add another fifteen minutes in their parking lot for typesetting in bad light, printing with the doohickey from the 'all purposes illegal' ditty bag in my trunk, and letting the ink dry on my new calling card. It was almost three a.m. when I headed inside the bus terminal with questions on the tip of my tongue.

  “I'm Agent Taft,” I told the ticket clerk, in my most serious tone. “Immigration and Naturalization Service.” I opened my leather case and flashed my card as proof. ('Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur,' don't you know.) The only lesson of value my mother had ever taught me was, 'If you're going to lie, lie big.' Or, as I'd adapted it for this particular situation, if you're going to impersonate an officer, impersonate a Fed. Despite the abuse I'd taken at the hands of Sybil's killer, my aching neck and still throbbing head, it seemed the Fates were with me. The ticket clerk melted like butter in the summer sun. And, as an upstanding American citizen and helpful Roadway employee, he hustled off to the back room to “do some checking” as fast as his legs would carry him.

  Then came unexpected assistance from the peanut gallery. A nosy, but equally helpful, eavesdropper hanging out in the terminal's waiting room for a morning bus to Nevada, volunteered the information that the little 'person of interest', with whom I'd told the clerk I wanted to speak, had boarded their tour bus at the circus museum and had gotten off there, at the Dells. How the midget had managed passage wasn't known; it was a chartered tour. But he'd definitely been aboard. In fact, though the trip lasted only twenty minutes, the little guy had spent the time entertaining the passengers, pulling whistles, candy, and colored balloons from his pockets like a magician. The balloons he'd blown up, tied into animals (he took requests), and doled out to the kids. She, the nosy informer, added, “The children loved him.” Alfonso may have been a murderer but God bless Binky the Clown.

  The nosy informant's story, as interesting and gap filling as it was, was made mute a moment later with the return of the clerk. Happy to do his part to protect the homeland from sinister foreign midgets, he produced a receipt confirming Alfonso's purchase of a Roadway bus ticket. (He'd had money, the little liar.)

  As it did not feature his name, I had to ask, “You're sure of the passenger?”

  “Absolutely.” He hadn't sold the ticket himself; he'd come on at eleven. But the clerk he'd relieved had done so and had made mention of the passenger, in particular. The ticket had been sold to a balloon twisting, candy handing midget who, when he wasn't messing with the kids… “Stood right out there,” the clerk said, pointing through the glass to the bus bay sidewalk, “smoking a cigar, almost as big as he was, and pacing back and forth like an expectant father in a Labor and Delivery waiting room. In fact,” the ticket clerk went on, “the p.m. shift I replaced said it was kind of weird. The little guy was yucking it up, when the kids were around then, when he was alone out there, went all nervous and sullen and cussing to himself under his breath. Like he was two different people.”

  Wasn't that really the question I had to answer? Was Alfonso two different people? Was one of them a killer? I waved the receipt he'd handed me. “You're sure he was on this bus?”

  “Yes, sir. No doubt. The ten p.m. bus for Chicago.”

  That, as they say, was that. Alfonso had abandoned me. It made me sore. But I wasn't burning up about it either because it also made me curious. Why had he abandoned me?

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wasted no time heading back to Chicago from my mission in central Wisconsin. Make that my failed mission. Outside of verifying the identities of what were now two murder victims (which I admit was something) and another pounding headache (which, I'm here to tell you, was also something) – I brought back nothing at all.

  No, the trip wasn't a complete waste. I'd wanted to verify our body in Chicago as that of Michael Gronchi. I'd hoped Sybil could do that for me. A picture on the wall of the museum phot
o gallery had accomplished the task instead, but at least it was done. The drowned man was Mickey the Geek. But knowing that didn't bring any joy to Mudville because, in one way or another, learning it had led to Sybil's murder. Now that her (or his, if you're thinking of him as Gerald Lapinski) body had been added to the stack and Alfonso had gone missing, I wondered if this 'second sight' crap was worth anything at all. Looking at murders that already occurred is not a great way of preventing them. So, if you're keeping track, score this trip as one step forward and two steps back. Some detective I was. The take away was nothing but a basket of questions.

  Who was Mickey's stabber? Where was the knife with which he'd done the deed? An obvious suspect was Tommy Dagger. I mean the guy was a knife thrower and had proved himself to be a maniac. But I knew nothing about him or his courageous assistant Sandra. What was the real story behind Thomas and Anita Lacrosse? Did Tommy have a reason for flipping one into the old geek and then giving him a shove out to sea? If yes, what had it to do with Sybil? If not Tommy who else, knife expert or no, might have wanted Mickey dead? And why?

  Gronshi was an old man who swept the midway, followed the exotic animals with a pooper scooper, emptied the Big Top trash cans, and drank on his free time like God's own fish. He was a nobody. So who wanted him dead? Someone he'd hurt? Someone he could hurt? If that was the case, it meant he knew something. And, maybe, had tried to do something with the knowledge. Or had threatened to. Had Mickey been too big a risk to allow to roam the circus? Had he done something to make it worse? Sweepers got around; sweepers saw things. Could the old boozer have known something, or seen something, and been using it to blackmail somebody?