Chapter 29
Lottie
Iwalk slowly toward Lethal Lavinia, giving her space, giving myself a minute to think. It’s dark outside the tent. The stars are out, and the breeze is warm.
The crowd mills around us, families lugging giant stuffed animals won on the midway, kids working through cones of cotton candy, couples drifting hand in hand toward the concession stands.
The chaos of intermission swirls around me, and I’m already mourning it a little, because the circus leaves town tomorrow.
The energy. The laughter. The sense that anything could happen under the big top.
I’ll even miss the part where I found a body under it, which probably says something about me I’d rather not examine too closely.
Peanut floats beside me, chattering away like she’s been handed every secret in town and given exactly fifteen minutes to unload them.
“You know,” Peanut says, her tiny trunk swinging, “I’ve been listening to the animals. The elephants are very chatty, by the way. They adored Jump. He always brought them peanuts and apples. Treated them better than he treated most people, if you ask me.”
“Interesting,” I murmur.
“And the performers!” Peanut continues, clearly on a roll. “They all hated him. Every single one. Lavinia threw a knife at his trailer once. Missed on purpose, naturally, but still. Very dramatic.”
I glance at Lavinia. She’s standing near the edge of the fairgrounds with her arms wrapped around herself, staring out at the glittering lights of Honey Hollow below. She’s in a red sequined leotard that catches every scrap of light, and even from here I can see her shoulders shaking. She’s crying.
A pack of teenagers barrels past me, laughing and shoving each other, clutching oversized stuffed animals.
A vendor nearby bellows, “Get your fresh popcorn here!” The noise and the motion turn the whole thing surreal, because there is something deeply strange about investigating a murder in the middle of a carnival, with funnel cake in the air and a killer possibly thirty feet away.
I approach slowly, gentling my voice. “Lavinia?”
She turns, wiping her eyes in a hurry. “Oh, hello, Lottie.” She manages a small smile. “You did wonderful out there. That vanishing act? I was genuinely impressed.”
“Thank you,” I say. “That means a lot coming from a professional.”
She nods, her smile fading. “What can I do for you?”
“I just thought maybe you look like you might want to talk to someone,” I say gently.
She laughs, but it comes out hollow. “Everyone wants to talk. No one wants to listen.”
I stop a few feet from her. “I’m listening.”
A family wanders by, the father with a toddler on his shoulders, the mother hauling a teddy bear nearly her own size. They’re laughing. Happy. Blissfully oblivious to the conversation unfolding right beside them.
Lavinia’s tears start up again. Her mascara is smudged, her eyes are red, and she looks absolutely wrecked.
“I know what a broken heart feels like,” I say gently. “I get it. It’s not easy.”
Lavinia lets out a shaky breath. “No. It’s not.”
“Jump wasn’t good to you,” I say. “He hurt you. Over and over.”
She nods, her arms tightening around herself. “He did.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry with him,” I continue. “Angry enough to kill, even.”
Lavinia laughs, a sharp, bitter sound. Then she stops, her eyes widening as they land on me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I don’t say a word.
She scoffs and takes a step back. “You really think I did this.”
“You had the motive,” I say carefully. “You certainly had the weapon.”
Lavinia shakes her head, almost amused. “Honey, if I were going to kill that man, I’d have done it in a way that never pointed back to me.
I’d have made sure it pointed at someone else, just long enough for me to be three states gone.
” She pauses, and her expression hardens into something colder.
“But more than that, I’d rather have watched him suffer while he was still breathing.
Dead people don’t feel pain. They don’t regret.
They don’t lie awake at night. And I wanted Jump awake at night for a long, long time. ”
Peanut nods sagely. “She’s got a point. She’s very smart. Far too smart to leave her own monogrammed knife sticking out of his chest.”
A whistle blows from the tent, calling the end of intermission. The crowd starts flowing back toward the entrance, chatter rising.
Lavinia glances toward the tent. “I’m helping with the animals tonight. I’d better go.” She looks back at me, stern but not unkind. “Are you ready to say goodbye to the circus?”
I give a little shrug. “I don’t think anyone is ever ready for that.”
She turns and walks off, her red sequins flickering under the string lights.
Peanut floats beside me and heaves a dramatic sigh.
“Well, that was anticlimactic. I was hoping for a confession. A chase. Something with stakes. At this rate the case won’t get solved in time, and I’ll be doomed to tour with this circus for all eternity.
Do you have any idea how dull it is being a ghost on the road?
Very dull, Lottie. Very, very dull. The animals repeat themselves, and the monkeys talk behind everyone’s back. ”
I’m about to answer when Carlotta trots by, her sequined leopard-print dress shimmering with every step.
“Carlotta!” I call out.
She stops, turns, and grins. “What’s up, Lot Lot?”
An idea lands. “Do you still have the footage you filmed of the murder scene?”
Carlotta arches an eyebrow. “Feeling nostalgic for your first circus slaughter?”
“Carlotta—”
“What, you want a souvenir of your kill?” Her grin widens. “Didn’t know you were into that. Should I be worried? Are you starting a scrapbook? I can see it now. My First Murder: A Love Story. We’ll do it in scallop borders.”
“Just show me the footage,” I say with twitchy fingers.
Here, the clock is ticking, and Carlotta is stonewalling.
She pulls out her phone and scrolls through her videos. “Here. Knock yourself out. Are you looking to give us a grand finale before the big top goes down? Are you thinking about a double or a triple homicide? I always say, go big or go home.”
I take her phone and press play. The video opens on Carlotta filming the crowd, then swings over to the murder scene.
Jump is slumped in the black leather chair with Lavinia’s knife in his chest, and his hand is still clutching the half-eaten pink elephant cookie.
The man went out the way he lived, mid-snack and surrounded by spectacle.
And then I see it.
Suze. She’s standing at the edge of the frame, staring at Jump’s body. And she isn’t crying. She isn’t shocked. She isn’t horrified.
She’s smiling. A small, dark, rather satisfied smile.
I rewind and watch it again. There’s something sparkly on Jump’s lap, glitter, maybe, though I can’t make it out in the dim light. But Suze—Suze is looking at that man with an expression I have never once seen cross her face. Satisfaction. Relief. And something dangerously close to triumph.
“Exactly what I was hoping not to see,” I murmur, handing the phone back.
I look toward the Cutie Pie booth, where Suze is working alongside Lily and Effie, hand-selling the last of the circus animal cookies. The crowd is thinning as people filter back into the tent for the second act.
Peanut floats up beside me. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t look good.”
“No,” I agree. “It really doesn’t.”
I glance back toward my booth and square my shoulders. “Let’s make haste before the killer decides to skip town.”
Here’s hoping Suze Fox isn’t the killer. Because if she is, Noah’s whole world is about to come apart at the seams, and I’m the one holding the thread.