Chapter 24
Lottie
I’m in hot pursuit of Poppy Wingate, so I boot-scoot my way into the big top like a woman on a mission, which, in fairness, I actually am for once.
The tent runs cooler than the air outside, the late-afternoon sun filtering through the canvas and washing everything in a warm amber glow.
It smells like sawdust and popcorn with an undertone of chalk dust and sweat, the perfume every performer wears after rehearsing for six straight hours and forgetting deodorant exists.
I spot Noah immediately. He’s parked near the center ring, practicing some sort of juggling routine with Bear, three bowling pins arcing through the air in a loop he’s somehow keeping aloft, which is more impressive than I have any right to expect from a man who can’t find the milk when it’s in the front of the fridge.
Bear coaches him with big sweeping hand gestures, and I file the entire scene away to tease Noah about later, possibly for years.
Keelie’s over by the trampolines working her ribbon routine.
She must have changed after her shift at the Honey Pot because she’s now dressed in a mint green yoga outfit, her blonde ponytail swinging as she leaps and twirls and makes the whole thing look graceful and effortless.
I, meanwhile, am about ninety seconds away from making a public fool of myself.
I can feel it, the way you can feel weather coming.
But I’m not here for Noah or Keelie. I’m here for Poppy.
She’s down at the far end, already getting set up for some aerial work, threading her legs and arms through one of the silk ropes that drop from the ceiling.
A small safety net waits below her, which seems optimistic.
She starts to move, and it’s elegant, fluid, almost like dancing if dancing happened twenty feet off the ground with no visible regard for gravity or mortality.
She weaves her legs in and out of the fabric, hangs upside down, and spins.
I’m equal parts mesmerized and convinced I’m about to witness a second tragedy this week.
A spray of light pink stars erupts beside me, and Peanut materializes, floating along with her tiny trunk swinging like a happy little metronome.
“Oh, hello, Lottie!” she chirps. “Fancy seeing you here. Are we interrogating suspects again? I do love a good interrogation.”
“We are,” I confirm.
“Excellent! You know, Lyla Nell and the twins are keeping Glam Glam on her toes right now. I just came from there. Lyla Nell is bossing around the other ghosts at the B&B. She informed Winslow that he’s been haunting the east wing with the wrong attitude and that real terror requires commitment.
Can you imagine? A two-year-old giving notes on technique to a ghost who’s been scaring people for over a century. ”
I can’t help but smile, because it’s entirely true.
My mother’s B&B is happily haunted by a whole family of ghosts, and I happen to know Greer Giles quite well.
I knew her when she was alive, and I also happened to solve her murder, which is the sort of bonding experience most friendships skip.
She’s married now to a wonderful man named Winslow Decker, as married as two ghosts can be, and they adopted a little ghost girl named Leah.
She’s about six, with long, greasy, stringy hair hanging clear over her face so you can never quite tell if she’s coming or going.
She wears a dirty pinafore and scuffed-up Mary Janes, and in her right hand she wheels around a machete to avenge her family, who were slaughtered on the very grounds where my mother now serves continental breakfast. Leah’s actually very sweet once you get past the vengeful ghost part of it all.
And if she doesn’t kill you. But that’s a story for another day, and probably another therapist.
I focus back on Poppy, who’s descending from the silks with so much grace it makes me feel like a sack of flour somebody dropped down the stairs.
“Wow,” I say, walking over. “Color me impressed. I wish I could bend in those ways.” Forget the twins. It’d be Everett keeping me up all night.
Poppy looks at me and laughs, her red curls bouncing. “I bet you could do some of these. If you want, I could teach you right now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’re in yoga pants and a T-shirt. I don’t see why not.”
I hesitate. “I don’t know.”
“Come on,” she says, grinning. “It’ll be fun.”
Famous last words, the both of them. Before I know it, Poppy’s strapping me into one of the silks and walking me through a couple of beginner moves, and she’s patient and encouraging and honestly sort of sweet about the entire doomed enterprise. And then I’m up in the air.
For about three glorious seconds, I feel graceful. Elegant. Like I could do this for a living and maybe make a few bucks on the side, because heaven knows I have one truly heroic credit-card bill coming due at the end of the month.
I attempt to replicate one of Poppy’s prettier maneuvers, and the unthinkable happens.
My ankle decides it’s in the market for some real estate and starts collecting fabric, cutting off circulation to the rest of my leg while binding me up six ways to Sunday.
My legs twist. My arms flail in a way that has never once helped anyone.
I spin like a top, faster and faster, and I let loose a scream that bounces off every wall of that tent.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you!” Poppy calls out, laughing as she eases me back toward earth.
I catch Noah across the way giving me the full stink eye, coiled and clearly ready to sprint over and rescue me from death by gymnastics equipment. But he knows exactly what I’m up to, which is interrogating a suspect, so he gives me the space to do it.
The space costs him, though, because the second his attention drifts off his juggling and onto me, a bowling pin clocks him square on the head. I cringe and wince in sympathy. Then a second pin sails toward him and he catches it midair without breaking stride, cool as can be. Show-off.
Once I’m safely back on solid ground, I turn to Poppy with a heartfelt smile. “Oh my goodness, that scared the living daylights out of me. Thank you so much for returning me to terra firma.”
I’m suddenly moved to drop to all fours and kiss the ground, the way Carlotta did the other day.
Suffice it to say, not everything Carlotta does is ridiculous.
About a dozen of her accidents, mishaps, and pending lawsuits flit through my mind, every last one of them starring the woman who birthed me, and I find myself quietly revising my long-held figures on the sane-to-ridiculous ratio of her existence.
“You saved my life,” I tell Poppy, and she chortles at the thought. “Speaking of life, you and your friends have been dealing with a lot these last few days.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” she says, pulling up a chair and stretching her right leg across it.
“So. Did you know Jump well?” I offer a mournful smile and dive on in.
Poppy rolls her eyes. “Oh, honey, we all knew him. I’m not sure anyone knew him well. Maybe not even Jump himself.”
“I knew him well,” Peanut announces, raising her trunk toward the ceiling. “He liked snacks. We had that in common.”
Then I guess I have something in common with him too.
I sigh in Poppy’s direction. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Why?” Poppy says, looking genuinely perplexed. “I’m certainly not.”
I blink. “Really?”
“That’s right.”
Peanut floats closer. “Ooh. She’s not sad. Interesting. Makes me wonder how she feels about snacks. I never trust people who don’t like snacks.”
That makes two of us.
I press on. “I hope you don’t think this is prying,” I pause, and Poppy nods for me to keep going, “but the day of the opening show, I saw you and Lavinia having what looked like a rather intense conversation.”
Poppy’s lips press tight, and her eyes flick toward the red tent that leads backstage, where the rest of the performers are, and where I’m assuming Lethal Lavinia is lurking as well. Poppy lets out a heavy sigh.
“That was pretty tense,” she admits. “Lavinia accused me of having an affair with Jump.”
And there it is.
“At least she admits it,” Peanut says, before spotting a few stray broken cookies on the ground and ferrying them up to her mouth by way of her trunk.
“And were you?” I ask carefully.
“Was I what?”
“Having an affair with Jump.”
Poppy busies herself unwinding a length of silk that doesn’t need unwinding. “I don’t know that I’d call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“Complicated.” She loops the fabric, unloops it, loops it again. “Lavinia sees what she wants to see. She always has.”
That’s not a no, and we both know it. I wait, because waiting is the only interrogation technique I’ve ever been any good at, and Peanut floats in a slow, patient circle that suggests she’s prepared to wait until the next ice age.
Poppy cracks first. “Fine. We were a thing. Sort of.” She winces.
“Honestly, I didn’t realize Lavinia and Jump were all that exclusive, because every single night I saw Jump with a different woman.
Everybody did. I don’t understand how she didn’t see it, since she’s certainly not blind.
Although I’ll admit, even I thought Lavinia and Jump were a couple until I saw otherwise. ”
Peanut nods sagely. “Jump was very busy. Very, very busy with the ladies. I thought maybe they were feeding him snacks.”
Snacks? I guess that’s one way to put it.
I tilt my head and study Poppy. “So why would you want to be with a man like Jump? You seem like a very nice girl, and you’re certainly beautiful. You could have your pick of any man in the circus, or outside of it.”
Poppy laughs, but it comes out a little bitter.
“Well, let’s just say the circus is a small family.
A small town, too. We don’t mingle much with outsiders, and pretty much everyone here has dated everyone at some point.
To be honest, I’m perfectly fine being single.
But Jump singled me out, if you know what I mean. Pardon the pun.”
She glances around, and Peanut leans my way. “She looks sad. Like something’s weighing on her.”
I agree.
“Hey,” I say gently. “What’s the matter?”
Poppy nibbles her lip. “No, no, it’s nothing.
It’s just that—” She stops and shakes her head.
“Never mind about me. Something dark happened here, and obviously there’s a detective on the grounds.
” She nods toward Noah, who is now working very hard to pretend he isn’t watching us and failing at it.
“I bet everybody’s wondering what really went down.
I sure hope he doesn’t think I’m responsible for this. ”
“Who do you think did it?” I ask.
Poppy shrugs. “Obviously Lavinia. But if it wasn’t her, it could’ve been anyone. Let’s just say Jump wasn’t in the business of making friends. Once he got hold of somebody’s secret, he’d ride that person until they broke.”
“That’s dark,” I say.
“That’s circus life,” Poppy says. “Also, the circus is bleeding money. Has been for a while. I don’t know all the details, but things are tight. And people are nervous.”
Peanut perks up. “Money problems? That’s always a motive!”
I file that away with the rest.
“You said Jump wasn’t really your type. But you were involved with him anyway?”
Poppy’s face softens. “Yeah. Even though he wasn’t my type, I was actually starting to believe he cared about me. He could really make you feel things, you know? He was a master manipulator. The perfect ringmaster.”
“You said he could find out people’s secrets and use them,” I say carefully. “He had a secret about you, didn’t he?”
Poppy’s face turns bright pink, which tells me everything I need to know and then some.
“It’s true,” she says quietly. “He knew something about me. And he’s been using it against me ever since.”
“Would you like to tell me what it is?” I ask gently. “I’m a great listener. It might help to get it off your chest.”
Poppy looks around nervously, then glances at Noah. “You know, I just might take you up on that. But not right now. Not until after the show Saturday night.” She pauses. “I just can’t take the risk.”
“Poppy—”
“Excuse me,” she says quickly. “I think I need to go grab something cold to drink. It’s important to stay hydrated. Especially when you’re dangling twenty feet off the ground.”
She darts off before I can get another word in or so much as agree with her about the hydration, which was genuinely solid advice.
Peanut floats up beside me. “Well. That confirms it. Jump had dirt on just about everybody. You know, I overheard Poppy tell Celeste that Jump was ruining her life. Those were her exact words. Ruining my life.”
I’m thinking about a circus bleeding money. About Jump and his collection of other people’s secrets. About how very many people had a reason to want that man horizontal and quiet.
Because in a circus packed wall to wall with performers, everyone is hiding something under the big top.
And one of them is hiding a murder.