Chapter 33
Lottie
Idash back into the tent and make a beeline for the red velvet curtain that separates the audience from the backstage mayhem.
The second I slip through, the full sensory assault of circus life behind the scenes hits me like a wall. The walkways are narrow, barely wide enough for two people to pass without turning sideways, and every spare inch is crammed with performers prepping for the grand finale.
A clown in a rainbow wig and oversized polka-dot pants barrels past me, juggling rubber chickens.
An acrobat in a shimmering gold leotard stretches against the wall with one leg hoisted somewhere up near her ear.
Glittering dresses are everywhere, sequined and beaded and fringed, and capes swirl like liquid shadows as people move with purpose and precision.
Weird hats abound. A man in a top hat with a stuffed parrot perched on the brim.
A woman wearing what appears to be a helmet built entirely of feathers.
Someone I don’t recognize is sporting a cone-shaped number that looks like it escaped a medieval fair and is hoping nobody notices.
Trust me. Everyone will notice. But I suppose that’s the point.
It’s chaos. Beautiful, glittering, overwhelming chaos.
Peanut floats beside me, her tiny trunk twitching with nerves. “Lottie, are you sure about this? Because I’m getting a very bad feeling. Worse than the time I ate too many peanuts and my stomach hurt for three days. Except I’m dead, so I don’t technically have a stomach, but you get the idea.”
“I’m sure,” I say, weaving through the crushing crowd.
“You’re always sure,” Peanut mutters. “And you’re always almost getting killed. Has anyone pointed out that pattern to you?”
I keep moving and decline to dignify that. Anyway, it isn’t true. Is it?
The energy back here is sky-high, everyone revved for the big closing number that sends the audience home happy and exhausted.
Then I spot them. The exact couple I came looking for, standing in a backstage clearing near the edge of the tent, heads bent in conversation.
There’s construction debris everywhere, metal pilings stacked at careless angles, bales of hay scattered near the animal pens, ropes coiled like snakes that haven’t been fed.
The elephants wait in the back, their massive shapes shifting in the low light, getting ready for their final march into the ring.
The man in the cape looks up. “Lottie?”
Milo the Magnificent peels off a dark smile, his handlebar mustache pulling to wicked points on either side.
He’s tall, imposing even, and his black velvet cape pools around him like he moonlights as a Victorian vampire on the weekends.
The crimson lining catches the light, and for a moment he reads less like a magician and more like the last thing several people ever saw before having the blood sucked right out of their neck.
Celeste turns her head sharply, her long dark hair catching the backstage lights. Her silver gown shimmers like somebody spilled a constellation across it, and her gray eyes thin to slits as they land on me.
“Lottie,” she says, voice smooth as buttercream. “Are you lost?”
“Actually,” I say, stepping closer, “I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
Peanut floats at my shoulder, whispering with great urgency. “Lottie, maybe we should go. I’m getting a very dark feeling. Darker than the time I watched Jump scream at the stagehands over a missing top hat. This is bad. Very, very bad.”
I tune her out and lock onto Milo. “Celeste mentioned the two of you are very much in love. Thinking of getting married, even.”
Milo fires Celeste a dirty look, then arranges his face into a smile for me. “Are you offering to bake the cake?”
“Not really,” I say. “I’d mostly like to know how you thought you were going to get away with it.”
Celeste blinks. “Get away with what?”
“Stealing from the circus,” I say. “Cooking up fake invoices. Funneling money through a company that doesn’t exist. Three Rings Equipment and Rigging. Ring any bells?”
Milo’s smile slips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Celeste handles the billing for all your equipment,” I continue.
“She places every order. And she’s been placing them with a company that’s never shipped so much as a tent peg, because it isn’t real.
It just quietly pockets thousands of dollars that never turn into anything you can juggle, ride, or hang from the ceiling. ”
Celeste goes pale. “That’s not—”
“The circus is bleeding money,” I say. “And every drop of that trail leads straight back to the pair of you.”
They both gasp. Milo turns to Celeste, his expression gone dark and furious, which more or less answers the question for me.
I nod. “Jump found out, didn’t he. He was blackmailing you over it.”
Celeste whimpers. “Yes. He knew everything.”
Milo’s hand snaps up toward her. “Be quiet, you fool.”
“Don’t you dare touch her,” I growl.
And within seconds, Milo has me in a chokehold, which is not at all how I pictured this going. His arm clamps around my neck, cutting off my air, and I’m clawing and scratching and trying to pry him loose as he drags me toward the dark corner where nobody’s looking.
“You’re right,” he hisses into my ear. “I’d much rather touch you.”
I can’t breathe. My vision is starting to swim at the edges.
“Yes, we killed him,” Milo says, his voice gone cold.
“Celeste did the actual honors. She stabbed him. And technically she’s the one who stole the money, so you can see how this works.
Once I finish off one nosy little baker and dress it up as an accident, everything tidies right back up.
” He hauls me closer to the elephants. “I think I’ll arrange you beside the elephants.
No great stretch to convince people you broke your neck poking your nose where it had no business going. ”
Peanut is shrieking. “Lottie! LOTTIE! The elephants would never trample a person. Not circus elephants. We know which side our peanuts are buttered on. Wait. That isn’t quite the saying, is it?”
I bite down on Milo’s arm hard enough to taste regret, his specifically.
He howls, his grip loosening just enough for me to twist around and shove him.
We grapple, and he’s stronger but I’m significantly angrier, and then Celeste comes at me swinging a long metal pole like she’s going for the fences.
I duck.
The pole connects with Milo’s head with a sickening thunk, and he folds to the ground like a sack of flour off the delivery truck.
Celeste stares at the pole, then at Milo, then at me. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” I wheeze, hauling in a breath.
Celeste drops the pole and bolts.
“Quick, she’s getting away!” Peanut shouts.
I somehow manage to catch up enough to trip her. She goes down hard, and we tussle on the ground, her nails raking, my arms windmilling, until I get her pinned and drape myself across her back like the world’s most determined human paperweight.
“Everybody freeze!” Noah’s voice cracks across the backstage, and I look up to see him sprinting toward us, gun drawn with Everett a half step behind him.
“They did it!” I shout, breathless. “They confessed. Milo and Celeste, both of them, they admitted to killing Jump.”
Everett scoops me off Celeste like I weigh roughly nothing and folds me into his arms. Noah cuffs Celeste, then drags a groaning Milo upright, and cuffs him too, chaining the lovebirds together for what I suspect will be the least romantic evening of their courtship.
Ivy and reinforcements pour in, and all at once the backstage is thick with deputies.
Everett looks down at me, his expression caught somewhere between relief and exasperation. “Lemon, you are going to give me a heart attack.”
“But I solved the case,” I say, grinning and panting.
“You almost got yourself killed.”
“Semantics.”
He shakes his head and pulls me closer. “Next time, wait for backup.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Because catching killers is one thing. Doing it without nearly dying in the process? Apparently that’s just never been the Lottie Lemon way.