Chapter 30
Lottie
She didn’t do it.
Or at least I don’t think Lethal Lavinia had a single thing to do with the fact that Jumping Barnaby Blaze is currently toes up in the morgue.
Night has fallen, the stars are out, and the fairgrounds outside the big top have gone soft and gold and faintly magical. Twinkle lights are strung overhead, and their glow bounces off the silver stars painted across the canvas until the whole tent looks dusted in sugar.
Peanut and I take it all in for a beat, mostly to reorient ourselves after slamming face-first into a dead end in our shared investigation.
The air smells like caramel corn and fried dough, and there’s a low hum of excitement as people drift between the concession stands and the entrance.
Kids run past clutching stuffed animals, their faces shellacked in cotton candy, and somewhere off to my left a carousel grinds out its cheery little tune.
The crowd around the Cutie Pie booth starts to thin as folks filter back inside for the second half of the show. I see my opening.
I walk over to Suze, who’s restocking the cookie baskets with Lily and Effie. “Suze,” I say gently. “Can we step aside and talk in private?”
Lily and Effie immediately close ranks on either side of her, like a pair of underqualified bodyguards.
“Oh no you don’t, Lottie Lemon,” Lily says, crossing her arms. “If you’re about to confront a killer, this is one show I want front-row seats to.”
Effie nods. “I’m not going anywhere either. My uncle didn’t raise me to miss the good parts.”
Considering her uncle rules the crime syndicate on the Eastern Seaboard, I wouldn’t mess with him—or Effie.
Suze balks. “Lottie is most certainly not going to accuse me of any such thing.” She needles me with a look. “Are you, Lottie?” There’s a challenge in her voice—and maybe the promise of another homicide.
Carlotta sashays over, grinning like she’d just found a six-foot-three bachelor with broad shoulders and no wedding ring. “Oh, this is getting good. Suze the Man Slayer. Suze the Fox with Blood on Her Paws. Suzie Q the—”
“Carlotta,” I warn.
“What? I’m workshopping. You don’t rush a good nickname, Lot Lot. These things have to breathe.”
Peanut floats over to the cookie inventory and helps herself to a circus animal cookie.
Then another. Then three more in quick succession.
I wrinkle my nose at the spectacle, but it’s not as though I’m in any position to tell the ghost of an elephant to step away from the merchandise.
Besides, it makes me happy that she likes them.
Carlotta leans toward Suze, her eyes still glittering with far too much mischief for a murder investigation.
“Suze the Man Slayer. Suze the Hunk Hexer. Suze the Boyfriend Bermuda Triangle. Suze the Last Thing He Ever Saw. Suzie Q the killer. Did you do it? Did you take out the ringmaster? Because honestly, I wouldn’t blame you. He had a very punchable face.”
Suze glares at her hard enough to suggest a punch in the face is well within reach.
“For your information, Carlotta, I didn’t kill anyone.” She swings the glare my way and doubles it. “And that goes for you too, Carlotta Junior.”
She’s not wrong, technically. I sort of am Carlotta Junior.
Lottie is short for Carlotta, and Charlie’s official name is Carlotta as well.
Carlotta basically safety-pinned a note to my blanket the night she dropped me off at the fire department as an infant, requesting that whoever adopted me name me Carlotta.
My mother complied on paper and then never once called me Carlotta a day in my life.
I’ve been Lottie since the Lemons took me in.
Oh, and I may have also named Lyla Nell Carlotta, and at the time I somehow decided Lyla Nell was a perfectly reasonable nickname to wring out of it. So you can see, it more or less rains Carlottas around here. But I digress.
Lily holds up a hand. “Hold on. Lottie, if you’re going to accuse Suze of murder, you’d best go easy on her. After all, weren’t you cheated on by Bear?”
I blink. “What does that have to—”
And then it hits me.
I turn to Suze. “Did Jump cheat on you?”
Suze’s face crumples, and she lets out a grunt of pure frustration. “Okay, fine. I’ve already spilled the whole thing to these two tattletales anyway.” She fires a dirty look at Lily and Effie. “I’ll come clean.”
Carlotta claps her hands. “Oh, this is delicious. Peanut, pass me a cookie. I require snacks for this.”
A cookie seemingly floats her way and nobody bats a lash.
Suze takes a deep breath. “Jump and I had a thing. A long time ago. Before I married Wiley. We dated back in Hollyhock, and he was charming and sweet, and I thought he was the one.” She pauses. “But then I met Wiley, and I chose Wiley. Jump vanished. I didn’t see him again for years.”
“And then?” I prompt.
“And then Wiley and I blew up,” Suze says, her voice going tight. “I was a mess. Broken. Humiliated. And Jump turned up again. Out of nowhere. As though he’d been parked somewhere nearby, just waiting for me to fall apart.”
Peanut stops mid-chew. “Oh no.”
“We started dating again,” Suze continues.
“And I let myself believe it was a second chance. That maybe it was finally meant to be. But he stole from me. Fifty thousand dollars. My entire life savings. The money I’d squirreled away to leave Wiley, except Wiley left first, and then I had nothing.
Jump took it all and disappeared. I was too embarrassed to file charges.
Too humiliated to breathe a word of it to anyone. ”
Lily and Effie trade a knowing look.
“I never saw him again,” Suze says. “Until the night of the circus.”
I lean in. “What happened that night?”
“I wanted to kill him,” Suze admits. “Not literally. But I wanted to hand him a piece of my mind he wouldn’t forget.
So I tracked him down to his office. Except I got turned around.
Those backstage corridors are an absolute maze.
I had to stop and ask someone for directions.
It was dim, and I was furious. When I finally found him, I let him have it. Both barrels.”
Carlotta grins. “And then you stabbed him?”
“No!” Suze snaps. “And when he didn’t answer me, I went at him twice as hard.
I yelled. I screamed. I told him he was a coward and a thief and the single worst mistake I’d ever made.
And that’s when I saw it. The knife. Sticking straight out of his chest.” She looks at me.
“And that’s right about when you walked in, Lottie. ”
Effie whistles. “Well, that was a letdown. I was promised a confession. I feel cheated.”
Lily nods. “I was sort of hoping for more blood.”
Carlotta leans back. “So you didn’t kill him.
You just stood there screaming at a fresh corpse like it owed you money—because it did.
” She nods slowly, deeply impressed. “Suze, that is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.
I once chewed out an ex at his own funeral, but he was at least properly embalmed.
You went freestyle. No casket, no closure, just rage and a warm body.
You deserve a cold one, and I’m buying—with Lot Lot’s credit card, of course.
I might even be able to drum up one of those funny cigarettes for the occasion, too.
I’m talking nothing but the best devil’s lettuce for you, Suzie Q. ”
Suze huffs my way. “If you really want to know who killed the dirty rat, I’d follow the money. And when you find it, give back my fifty grand!”
The booth surges again with families rushing the counter for last-minute treats before the second half starts. Suze, Lily, and Effie scramble to keep up, and I drift off to the side with my mind going a mile a minute and promptly walk straight into a body.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, right up until I recognize the familiar redhead. “Poppy! Hello.”
“Hello, Lottie.” She gives a little laugh. She’s still in her sparkling pink leotard, and in this low light, I’d swear she looks nervous. “I guess you want to know what dirt Jump had on me.”
I give a furtive nod. “If you’re willing to tell me.”
Right about now I’d settle for almost anyone admitting to be guilty, because the circus pulls up stakes tomorrow, the whole operation will be gone with the wind, and so, presumably, will my killer.
“Okay. Here it is.” Poppy sighs and throws a quick glance over her shoulder.
“Some people might think it’s silly. I don’t.
I had an entire mountain of unpaid parking tickets.
Jump threatened to turn me in. He swore I could do serious prison time over them.
” Her green eyes glitter in the night. “Lottie, I can’t go to prison.
I’m too young. I’m too pretty. And I’m fairly certain I’m allergic to the color orange. ”
“Is that why you shanked him?” Carlotta wastes no time mincing words as she pops up next to me.
“What?” Poppy inches back looking genuinely flummoxed. “No way. I once cried for twenty minutes when I accidentally stepped on a snail. There’s no way I’d survive murdering a person.”
Peanut floats up beside me. “She’s not the killer, is she?”
I shake my head. No. She isn’t. Or at least I have no reason to believe it.
“I’m sorry he had you so rattled,” I say to Poppy. “It was a rotten thing, taking advantage of you like that.”
She sniffs back a tear. “Jump had a talent for digging out your darkest secret and then squeezing it until you halfway wished him dead. Which, now that I say it out loud, explains a great deal about where we’ve all ended up.”
“Indeed,” I say.
Off to the side, I hear a customer ask Lily, “Is this the bakery that uses boxed cake mixes?”
I gasp. “We would never!” I squawk so loud, half the midway turns my way.
The customer raises both hands. “Relax, lady. It’s just a rumor going around.”
They wander off, and Poppy shrugs. “I’ll see you inside, Lottie. You won’t want to miss the grand finale. We always save the best for last.” And with that she heads for the tent.
I turn to Carlotta. “Can I see your phone again?”
She hands it over, and I pull up the footage from the murder scene. I rewind, zoom in, and lock onto the sparkles. Silver sparkles. On Jump’s lapel. On his lap. On the desk. Silver sparkles absolutely everywhere.
I look over at the tent, my heart starting to pound. Then I walk back to Suze.
“The night you went to have words with Jump. You said you got lost and had to ask for directions. Who did you ask?”
Suze thinks for a moment. “That pretty brunette in the silver gown. I remember thinking she shimmered like a lightning bolt, which fit, because she was moving about as fast as one. She nearly plowed straight through me.”
I nod slowly, the pieces sliding into place.
Suze’s words circle back around. If you really want to know who killed the dirty rat, I’d follow the money.
I pull out my phone and scan the financial records again and again, until a pattern finally surfaces.
Three Rings Equipment and Rigging is all over this ledger with great big charges.
There’s also Golden Ring Supply Company, much smaller amounts, but steady.
Both turn up again and again. My fingers fly across the screen as I look up the first one, then the other.
Golden Ring Supply Company has a website, a phone number, a tidy little company address.
Three Rings Equipment and Rigging can’t be found anywhere at all. It simply doesn’t exist.
I glance at the pink and white tent, then over at Peanut.
“I have a feeling I know exactly who killed Jump. And why.”