Death of A Clown Page 9

  Ioana has a lot on her mind. She might not notice she left them open, but I can’t take the chance. I creep over and glance out under the heavy fabric to make sure I won’t be seen when I reopen them. I spot Constantin walking by, head down. Ioana isn’t with him.

  In a panic, I rip the curtains open, turn and run to the compartment door. About to yank it open, I hear the giggling idiots in the hallway again. They stay outside the door for what feels like forever. Their giggles lessen, only to be replaced by the increased sound of thudding boots coming down the hallway.

  If that’s Constantin – and I’m sure it is -- my only hope is he’ll go directly into his compartment and not have any reason to come into this one. The sound of a fiddling key in

  the next door’s lock allows me to lean against the door in relief. When I hear him inside his room, I open Ioana’s door to flee. Just then the adjoining compartment doorknob begins to move back and forth, noisily. Before Constantin realizes it’s locked from my side, and comes in from the corridor as I did, I need to be gone.

  It’s now or never. I run out, hoping I won’t bump into the gigglers, and race down the hall, exiting at the far end of the train. Hesitating on the platform, I opt to get off the side of the car facing the field rather than the circus. I leap from the top step to the graveled ground below, crouch down and hug the metal side of the car, listening for any sound. After a moment’s silence, I assume a normal stance, jump over the hitch that connects one car to the other and run right into the gigglers. They stare at me, wide-eyed.

  “Where did you come from?” the man asks. I recognize him as half of a married juggling team.

  “I dropped a flashlight the other day when I was looking for wildflowers in the field over there.” I point to the other side of the train. “Still can’t find it,” I say, walking away.

  “Gee, if we come across it, I’ll save it for you, Jeri,” the girl says in a breathy, high pitched voice. She is one of the First of May’s and not his wife.

  “Thanks.” I look over my shoulder to wave at them. That’s when I catch Constantin standing on the train steps, staring at us. I can feel his curious eyes following me, as I jog alongside the line of railcars back toward the Virgin Car.

  Small groups of people are cooking their dinner over campfires or taking in clothes from makeshift lines strung up between bushes. Two jugglers practice throws to one another in the pathway and I wait for them to finish, all the while thinking.

  Maybe Constantin only saw me outside with the gigglers. He didn’t have an accusatory look on his face, only one of puzzlement. But I may be kidding myself. He must

  have seen or heard something in the hall, something that brought him out from the compartment to the steps. Maybe it was an unrecognizable blur running down the hall, but it was something.

  I move on to my behavior with the gigglers. Dropping a flashlight while I was searching for wildflowers is a pretty lame excuse, even if they bought it.

  In the past, I had a level of spirited brazenness that enabled me to face potential danger without letting my fears get in the way. I have to remember how I did that. I’ll have to remember a lot of what I did. Two years with the circus has dulled my detective skills. That isn’t good. I’m dealing with a murderer.

  Inside my berth with the ends of the curtains tucked under the mattress, I switch on the light and remove Catalena’s diary from my purse. I think I might have trouble with the lock but it opens easily. That’s the last part of easy.

  I leaf through the pages in dismay. It’s written in a cramped, repressed hand and in Romanian, no less. Stunned, I realize that even though she speaks English well after only a year in this country, she’s still spent her formative years in Romania. This gives me a problem I didn’t anticipate but should have. My limited Italian isn’t going to be much help. I shake the book to see if anything might be hidden inside. A bus ticket falls out from the back, a bus ticket to Salt Lake City.

  Bingo. She planned on running away with Eddie.

  Finding the ticket spurs me on. I decide to try reading the diary, word by word. Deciphering the most recent events of the diary seems like a good idea, so I flip to the back page. Good luck to me.

  After about fifteen minutes of straining to figure out a badly scribbled word here and there, I feel a headache coming

  on. I close my eyes for what seems like a moment, only waking when Margie shakes my foot, telling me to get ready for the night’s show.

  Stuffing the book under my mattress, I climb down from the berth. On the way to the dressing rooms, I get an earful about my involvement in investigating Eddie’s death from Doris and Margie.

  Ultimately, they understand I’m going to do this whether they like it or not, which they don’t. They’re sassy but I’m sassier. We agree to disagree and move on to wondering if Eddie had family back in Salt Lake City and if they know about his death.

  I look at my watch. We have fifteen minutes to spare. At half hour, everyone has to be in their dressing rooms but I have some time and every minute counts. I get an idea, unsnap my purse and take out the photo Tony gave me, clenching it in the palm of my hand.

  “Ladies,” I say, veering off in another direction, “You go ahead. I’ve got a small errand. I’ll meet you at the dressing rooms.”

  “Wait a minute. Where you going, Jeri?” asks Doris.

  “What’s up? Why the side step?” says Margie.

  “I’m off to find Constantin and show something to him,” I answer, walking away with a wave. This is as good a time as any to see how Constantin greets me after the fiasco at the C car. “I won’t be long. See you later.”

  My two friends ignore my farewell and join me, hurriedly walking on either side.

  “I’m in,” Margie says. “You know, I’ve been helping Constantin learn English.”

  “You?” I shoot back. “What’s he learning, Boogie Baby? How to talk jive?” Both Doris and I let out a hoot of laughter.

  Margie draws herself up. “No jive, just English. You know, I was hot to be an English teacher once, just like my parents.”

  “Well, I swan,” comments Doris, tossing blonde curls in wonderment. “Professor Margie.”

  “What happened?” I ask, still not quite believing her story.

  “I got a load of their salaries,” Margie says. “After twenty years as a college professor, Dad makes thirteen-hundred a year, Mom nine-fifty teaching little kids. I make twice that in a season here.”

  I know her parents are teachers, her mother from Boston and her father a Jewish transplant from Lithuania, both now living in New York City. Considering what they do for a living, they’re very accepting of her career choice, to say the least.

  “In any event,” Margie goes on primly, “when I found out that Constantin was having trouble learning English, I offered to help.”

  “He just wants to have his way with you, honey child,” says Doris, with a dark edge.

  Margie turns on her. “No, he doesn’t. We meet once a week in the chow tent and he practices talking to me in English. A couple of times his girls have joined us.”

  “Hmmmm,” I say. “He might open up to me more with you around. But when we get there, you have to let me do the talking.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” Margie salutes.

  Doris says, “I don’t understand how you can stand to be in the same room with that man, Margie, I really don’t.”

  Margie stops and turns on our friend. “What’s your gripe? His wife was shot down in cold blood. He had to come to this country and start over, just like my father. He needs all the friends he can get.”

  Doris shakes her head, says nothing, and walks ahead, followed by a perplexed Margie and me. I have to admit, I’m thrown by Doris’ strong feelings against the man. I admire Constantin’s ability in the ring and his love for his children.

  He’s a bit of a hothead, but I chalk that up to being a temperamental artiste.

  We take a shortcut around the Menagerie Tent, which
holds various domestic and wild animals in side-by-side pens. As part of the entrance fee, the audience can walk through this mammoth tent before and after the show to see the “beasts” up close. But behind it, in makeshift cages and fences, are many of their babies, enjoying the remains of a breezy, warm afternoon.

  Margie pauses for a moment by a pen holding a baby giraffe, Sally. She is being weaned from her mother and is more resistant than most to kicking the habit. Trotting over, she nuzzles Margie’s proffered hand and finds the usual parsley leaf. The gangly quadruped loves the green herb and Margie always carries some in her pocket for the calf, now fourteen months old.

  Doris’ features soften at the sight and she and Margie smile at one another. I know the rift won’t last long and nudge us away. Sally’s eyes follow Margie until she knows it’s useless to stay near the edge of her pen. She ambles back to the shade tree and scratches her long neck on the trunk before reaching up to snag a leaf or two.

  The sight gives me a momentary burst of happiness. I love sharing my life with the animals, whether I’m performing with them or not. We all have our personal favorites. Sally is Margie’s doll baby. Doris is smitten with a smelly camel named Methuselah that tries to follow her everywhere. Old Kirby is mine. That’s a bonus of life in the circus: the odder-than-usual pet.

  By the time we get to the knife thrower’s tent, the late afternoon’s heat returns. Even with the setting of the sun, I’m starting to feel perspiration on my forehead and back.

  I knock on the wooden pole in the center of the tent flap. There’s no answer but I hear rustling inside. I knock harder and call out his name.

  The flap flies open in a spirited, almost angry way, and the small, but muscular, man stands before us. At first wary of the intrusion by three women, he becomes cordial when he sees one of them is Margie. With a smile, he takes her hand in his and kisses the top of it, continental style, and gives her an effusive greeting.

  “Ah! It is my good friend, Marjorie. Good day to you or should I say, good evening?” he asks, looking up at her. His English is halting and barely understandable with deep, rolling ‘r’s.

  “‘Good evening’ will do, Connie. And call me Margie. It's a nickname,” she says in a teacher-like tone. “The way I call you Connie instead of Constantin.”

  He grins broadly and nods in agreement, but I’m not sure he fully understands.

  Margie prattles on brightly. “Do you remember my friend, Doris?” Doris nods curtly and backs away. “And this, of course, is Jeri,” Margie says, gesturing to me. She pauses and looks at me expectantly. “She has something to show you.”

  His eyes rest on me, a flicker of confusion in them. Is he wondering why he’s seeing me again in such a short span of time? More importantly, did he witness me running down the corridor of his rail car, as well as outside with the gigglers? Whatever it is, he says nothing but offers a questioning smile.

  I smile back, stretch out my hand and open it, palm up. The crumpled photo seems to come to life, unfolding itself before us. The movement catches his eye and he glances down at the photo. Puzzlement still sparks his eyes.

  “Someone found this,” I say. “I believe this is yours, so I wanted to return it.”

  He hesitates but picks up the small crumpled mass from my hand and presses it open. “From where you get this? Near the sleeping cars?”

  “No, it was found near the lion’s cage,” I answer, watching the expression on his face. “This morning,” I add.

  “Why you do this? Why you destroy?” He steps forward, almost in a challenge. I can smell garlic and spices on his breath from another culture, foreign even to me, used to my family’s ways of cooking from the old country.

  “I didn’t,” I say, standing taller, eye to eye with him. “This is how it was found in Eddie Connors’ hand right after he was murdered. Do you know how it might have gotten there?”

  Constantin takes a faltering step backwards, clutching the photo.

  “Any idea how it got there?” I repeat, when he doesn’t answer. His eyes dart around in his head, as if he’s seeing something inside his mind the rest of us can’t see.

  “I do not know,” he says. “This is strange. But they are given out at the ticket booth for the publicly…” He hesitates on the word and stops speaking.

  Margie jumps in. “Publicity.”

  “Yes, thank you. Publicity. These are everywhere, the photographs of me and my family.” He smiles and gives me a stiff, formal bow. “I thank you for returning it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He turns to Margie, who throws him one of her dazzling smiles.

  He visibly relaxes. “Forgive me. I must go now and get ready for tonight’s performance,” he says, bowing to her and then again to me. Doris, out of his line of vision, is ignored by this gentlemanly gesture.

  “Goodbye and thank you,” he says, closing the flap behind him.

  We turn on our heels almost as one and walk away.

  “So what the hell came from confronting the man like that, Jer?” Margie finally asks, kicking at the fresh straw laid down over the muddy path about an hour before.

  “I learned the photo makes him nervous.”

  “Maybe you make him nervous, kiddo,” says Margie. “When you’re out to drop kick a mule, it can get nervous.”

  “He’s one mean son-of-a-bitch,” Doris mutters. “I don’t care how he acts around you, Margie. And I don’t care that he escaped Nazi persecution. In his case, they knew what they were doing.”

  “Doris,” I say, coming to a stop. “Nothing the Nazis do is justified. How can you even say that?”

  Her attitude astonishes me. Doris comes from the south but is one of the most liberal-thinking people I know. She once stood in front of a growing mob in Biloxi, Mississippi, to protect a black youth from being beaten for daring to look her way. When the rabble demanded she step aside, she threw rocks at them, shouting, defying them in any way she could, while Margie and I searched for a policeman. Even after the cop broke up the mob, Doris never backed down one iota and almost got herself arrested.

  Either the shock in my voice or the look on Margie’s face forces her to open up. She stops walking, turns and faces us, her stature tall and unyielding.

  “All right, I’ll tell you and it isn’t pretty. I saw him slap the little girl one day --”

  “Come on,” Margie interrupts with impatience. “Some cultures are different. Parents lose their cool. I’m not saying it’s right --”

  It’s Doris’ turn to interrupt. “He slapped her a couple of times, Margie, and hard. It was just short of a beating. Only because she didn’t do a trick right.”

  Margie is silent, as am I.

  “He didn’t think anybody could see him because it was behind his tent. But I did. I ran right over and told him to stop it. He turned on me. I thought he might hit me, too. I’d like to have seen him try. Little weasel. Then he said ‘Oh, I’m so

  sorry. I didn’t mean to do it,’” Doris says, doing a fair

  imitation of his accent. “But he didn’t sound sorry and the little girl was bawling her eyes out.”

  “When did this happen?” I ask.

  Doris becomes evasive. “Some time back. You had an all-day rehearsal with Zolina and Margie was with her trumpet...no, it was the sax player. The one with the goatee.” She looks at both of us and inhales a ragged breath.

  “That would have made it four or five months ago,” Margie sums up quickly, not concentrating on Doris but on something inside her memory. She turns to our friend.

  “But why keep a lid on it? Why the mum act?” Margie glances over at me for backup. I nod in agreement.

  Doris licks her red lips and looks down. Guilt runs over her features much like storm clouds racing through an open field. Her voice is so quiet I can hardly hear her.

  “I went to Tony that very day and told him. He made me promise to keep still about it to everyone, even you two. He knows how some folks feel about Constantin.
I expect he wanted to give the man an opportunity to make it right. Anyway, Tony made me promise. He did go and talk to the bastard, though. I never saw him touch the little girl again and believe me, I’ve been looking for it.” She pauses, still looking down at her shoes. Neither Margie nor I say anything.

  “I’m as sorry as I can be that I didn’t tell you,” Doris continues. “But I swore on my mama’s grave I wouldn’t. And Tony said he would make it right,” she repeats, her voice wavering.

  At this moment I fully understand what Boss Man means to Doris. This is not her usual passing fling. Tony isn’t

  just a guy buying her jewelry, furs, and expensive meals, with her having the upper hand on the romance. Whatever Tony and Doris have, it’s serious to her and not to be dealt with lightly by her friends.

  Margie looks over at me and I see the same thoughts reflected in her eyes. “Aw, forget it, kiddo,” she says slipping a graceful arm around Doris’ shoulder. “I’m just glad you came clean about it now.”

  “Me, too,” I say. “All is forgiven.”

  I come to the other side of Doris and put my arm around her waist. She wraps her arms around both our shoulders and gives us a good squeeze.

  “You two are my darlings, just my sweet darlings,” she says in a shaky voice. “I was feeling heavier than a fifty-pound sack of manure about keeping it from you. And just as smelly, too.”

  We all three laugh and I decide it’s easy to forgive her. And to understand. I haven’t told them anything about the diary or the ticket and have no intention of doing so. And probably this is just the beginning of what I’m not going to tell them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  9:25 p.m., Sunday

  The evening performance goes better, thanks to Boss Man’s speech beforehand. Tony asks performers and staff alike to band together and to cooperate with any investigation that might be taking place. He takes care not to look in my direction. After his talk, there’s a small round of applause and I can tell spirits are lifted.

  We’re well received by a larger than usual attendance. Curiosity about the murdered clown causes ticket sales to go through the roof. Other than the audience being particularly attentive to the clown act, though, it’s a normal show.