Текст книги "Foul Play"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

THIRTY EIGHT

“Hello, Daisy,” Stella said. “So nice to see you.”

“Hi, Stella,” I said, looking from her to Jake and back to her. “What a...surprise to see you.”

And it truly was a surprise. Stella lived in Miami and had yet to visit Minnesota since Jake and Sophie had moved. When they’d made the move from Texas to Minnesota, she’d taken the opportunity to take a promotion with her company, landing in Florida. Sophie went to visit her a few times a year, and they talked regularly on the phone or via Skype, but she’d yet to make good on her promise to visit Minnesota.

Until now, apparently.

“I know,” she said, smiling. She motioned to her ex-husband with a well-manicured hand. “I was just explaining to Jake that I ended up needing to fly to Chicago for a work meeting and decided I could scoot on over here to watch the play. I thought I’d mentioned it to you both at one time that it was a possibility.”

It sounded vaguely familiar and she probably had. But she said so many different things that both Jake and I had started letting most of her words go in one ear and out the other. Stella was a nice enough person, but she was not exactly a pillar of dependability. Her work always took precedence. More than once, we’d had to reschedule a trip for Sophie because Stella’s schedule had changed. While it irked me, Jake would just shrug and roll his eyes, having become accustomed to it during their marriage.

So it was a bit disconcerting to see her in Minnesota, standing in the middle of my world.

“I hope it’s okay that I just showed up,” she said. “I think you sent me the info a few weeks ago, Daisy, and when I realized I was going to be done early in Chicago, I just decided to hop on over here.”

“Oh, of course,” I said, biting back an amused smile. No one “hopped” from Chicago to Central Minnesota – it was at least an 8-hour drive. Even the flights, when you factored in security and the drive from MSP to Moose River, took several hours. “I was just surprised, that’s all. I’m sure Sophie will be excited to see you.”

She looked at Will. “You must be Will, right?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

This was the first time he’d met his stepsister’s mother and I could tell he was curious about her. He’d seen photos, of course, and even exchanged a few words with her when he walked by during one of their Skype conversations, but this was the first real-life interaction. I could tell he was dissecting her appearance, making note of her similarities to Sophie. They both had blond hair, although Stella’s was about six inches shorter. She wore it in a blunt bob that accentuated her blue eyes and square chin, both features Sophie had also inherited.

If she noticed Will was staring at her, she didn’t let on. “Sophie has said a lot of nice things about you,” she said. She added, “About all of her new siblings.”

“New?” Will asked.

It was a valid question. Jake and I had been together long enough for the term “new” to raise an eyebrow.

Stella’s cheeks turned a light shade of pink. “I guess it has been a couple years, hasn’t it?”

Jake rolled his eyes and I could tell that he was annoyed not only with her comments but by her surprise appearance. My interactions with Stella had always been benign and pleasant, but we usually communicated from a distance. And I’d never been married to her. Jake, however, had zero patience when dealing with his ex-wife and had a hard time hiding his feelings, even at a distance.

“Are you staying through the weekend?” I asked, changing the subject.

Stella shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. I need to get back to Miami tomorrow, so it’s just a quick trip.” She nodded at Jake. “I mentioned to Jake that it would be great if I could take Sophie out after the play tonight. Just for ice cream or something. I wouldn’t keep her out too late.”

“Of course,” I said, glancing at Jake. His expression was impassive. “I’m sure that would be fine.”

I couldn’t tell by his expression whether or not that would be fine with him, but I wasn’t sure what other response was appropriate. Even dropping in at the last minute, Sophie had a right to spend time with a mother she saw very little of in the first place.

Stella’s eyes rested on me. “That’s a nice hat.”

My hands flew to my head. I’d forgotten I was wearing the beanie. I debated pulling it off, but knew my hair would be a total mess underneath.

“My mom is banned,” Will blurted out. “She thinks the hat is disguising her.”

Stella raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Banned?”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Jake said quickly. “That’s all.”

“Ah, okay,” she said, nodding, clearly not interested. Then she pointed at the theater entrance. “I’m going to head in so I can make sure I get a seat up front. I can’t believe so many people are here for a dress rehearsal.” She looked at me, then Jake. “I’ll find you after?”

We both nodded and she smiled again and joined the crowd of parents walking into the theater. She looked foreign, out of place in her tailored black suit and designer heels, and several moms wearing yoga pants and Moose River sweatshirts stared at her as she passed them.

“Why would that be fine?” Jake said, lowering his voice. “Why would it be fine that she just shows up and can take her out for ice cream or chicken nuggets or coffee or whatever?”

“Uh, because Sophie doesn’t get to see her that often?”

He jabbed a finger in the direction of the theater. “Because that’s her choice. Let’s remember, when I broached the subject of moving up here, her response was ‘Oh, that wouldn’t be a problem at all.’ Do you recall that?”

I did because it had shocked me so much. Even though Jake had full custody of Sophie, he hadn’t felt right about just picking up and moving their daughter without her mother’s consent. And I’d agreed. The last thing any kid needed was to get caught in a war between their divorced parents, and Jake and I had gone to great lengths to avoid those wars, as had our former spouses. So I hadn’t gotten my hopes up when he told me he was going to bring it up with Stella.

To my surprise, she hadn’t objected in any way. When we’d found out shortly after that she’d accepted a job in Miami, Jake surmised that she’d already been considering the move and that he’d essentially cleared the way for her to do it without looking like she was bailing. I hadn’t cared what the reason was. I was ecstatic, because it meant there were no obstacles to Jake and Sophie moving to Minnesota.

“Yes, I recall that,” I said to him. “But right now, I think we should focus on the fact that she made the effort to get here.”

“First time since we moved here,” Jake muttered.

“But she made the effort,” I pointed out. “Even if it’s just for tonight. That’s good. For Sophie.”

He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment.

“Look, you have other things you need to focus on,” I reminded him. I smiled. “Like keeping me hidden so Eleanor doesn’t follow through on the ban. Jake?”

He grunted and looked at me, a frown permanently etched on his face.

“Knock it off,” I said to him. “Sophie will appreciate that her mom is here. It’s one night. Now tell me how ridiculous I look in this hat.”

He shifted his gaze to the top of my head. “You look completely ridiculous. Like that kid on Fat Albert who wore that pink thing pulled down over his face.”

“Perfect. So no one knows it’s me?”

“Except for the fact that you’re standing with your husband and your son,” he said. “And Eleanor’s staring right at you.”

I leaned into him and tried to make myself smaller. My eyes scanned the hall. “Where? Where?”

“Kidding,” he said and Will snickered. “Just wanted to see what you’d do.”

I elbowed him in the gut.

“I told you,” he said. “Everything will be fine. Nothing’s going to happen.”

And he was right. Nothing did happen.

Until intermission.

THIRTY NINE

The first half of the dress rehearsal went off without a hitch.

The kids remembered their lines, hit their marks, and the songs sounded good. For a dress rehearsal, it was very polished and Eleanor had to do very little from her perch near the front of the stage. Both Sophie and Grace were excellent as dwarfs. Sophie sneezed on cue and Grace’s facial expressions were spot-on for mute Dopey.

There was only one thing that wasn’t actually polished.

One person.

Madison Bandersand.

She stumbled with her lines. Her black wig was on crooked. She tripped over her dress, and she mumbled through one of the songs, either because she didn’t know the words or because she wasn’t confident in her voice. Either way, it was painstakingly obvious when her voice went missing from the number.

The spotlight seemed too much for her.

To her credit, Eleanor hadn’t blown her stack. I could see her perched on a stool on the right side of the stage. Her expression was stern, her arms folded across her ample bosom, but she’d kept her mouth shut and hadn’t leaped on stage to berate her daughter. When the lights went up for intermission, Eleanor hustled backstage, presumably to have a word with her daughter.

“That was pretty good,” Jake said. “The girls were good and you didn’t get kicked out. I’d say that’s—”

Then he froze.

“What?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Clown,” he whispered. “There’s a clown. In the theater.”

Clowns were to Jake were like what corn mazes were to Johnny Witt. His fear was amusing. It was also real. At some point in his childhood, he’d encountered a clown and it had scarred him for life. I’d seen him cross streets to avoid clowns. I’d seen him turn the channel if one popped up on the TV. And I’d seen him freeze in fear one year at the county fair when one got within two feet of him, offering him a balloon animal. Sweat had broken out on his forehead and he couldn’t speak. I’d had to politely accept the balloon animal and step between him and the clown. It took him about five more minutes before he was able to breathe normally again.

“Why is there a clown here?” he said, his breathing rate already doubled. “There’s no clown in the play. Why is it here?”

I twisted around in my seat to get a better look at Jake’s biggest nightmare.

At the back of the theater, a short, squat clown with a giant blue and red afro and full face paint was standing in one of the sets of entrance doors. He was wearing a red and white striped body suit. The clown was looking in all directions, somewhat confused. It made its way down the aisles, his giant floppy shoes slapping against the ground. When he and I made eye contact, I realized I knew that clown.

And it wasn’t a he.

It was Olga Stunderson.

Olga had a thing for clowns. The one time I’d visited her home, I’d been taken aback by the sheer number of clown statues and figurines she owned. She’d also informed me that she occasionally worked as a clown for parties and celebrations, and other things that needed clowns.

So it looked to me like she was...on the job.

She waved at me and started jogging down the aisle toward us. Well, trying to jog – the clown shoes prevented her from making good progress.

“Is that clown coming toward us?” Jake asked, shrinking into his seat. “Do you know that clown? Daisy? My chest hurts.”

Will tucked his chin into his sweatshirt so Jake wouldn’t see him laughing.

“Relax,” I said. “I won’t let the clown get you.”

“You don’t know how they are,” he whispered. A fine sheet of sweat covered his forehead. “They’re sneaky. They’ll fool you. Oh God. Here it comes.”

“Daisy!” Olga said. “Thank goodness I found you!”

“Oh my God. It knows you!” Jake whispered, his voice trembling.

I dug my nails into his thigh, but focused on Olga. “What’s going on?”

Her painted mouth twisted back and forth, her eyes flitting back and forth across the theater. “I...well...have you seen Joanne? Claussen?”

It was an odd question, coming from Olga, dressed as a clown. I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”

“They told me at the door that she might have run out to get some things they needed backstage,” she said, adjusting her big red nose. “Uh, do you remember what we were talking about the other day? In the drug store?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Make it leave,” Jake whispered. “Please.”

I dug my nails in harder to his thigh.

“Well...well...oh my,” Olga said, wringing her white-gloved hands. “I’m working a kid’s birthday party. Out at her home. For her daughter. I’m sort of in charge. And I couldn’t find a blow torch.”

Things you hope never to hear in the same sentence: “kids birthday party” and “blow torch.”

“What?” I asked, completely confused.

She took a deep breath and adjusted her multi-colored jester’s hat. “I couldn’t find a lighter. For the candles on the cake. So I went looking for a blowtorch.”

A blowtorch for a cake? “Um...okay.”

“They live on a farm on the east side of Moose River,” she said, her eyes still moving through the theater, searching. “I needed something to light them. So I went out to the barn.” Her eyes found me. “And do you remember what we talked about?”

“Yes, Olga,” I said again. “I do. But you really aren’t making any sense.”

The lights in the theater dimmed twice, signaling that the play was about to start again.

Olga glanced up, panicked.

“I don’t feel good,” Jake whispered.

Will’s body shook, he was laughing so hard.

Olga finally seemed to take notice that I wasn’t sitting alone, and that lots of people were looking at her.

“Is the play over?” she asked.

“No, it’s the intermission.”

She wrung her hands some more.

Then she leaned down and whispered in my ear.

I pulled back, staring at her in disbelief.

“I’m serious,” she said, recognizing the doubt on my face.

I sat there for a moment, processing what she’d whispered to me into my ear.

“Did she say she was going to kill you?” Jake whispered.

I grabbed my coat and my purse. “I have to go.”

“What? Where? With the clown?!”

I kissed his cheek and stood. “Yes. With the clown. I’m getting her out of here so you don’t stroke out.”

“Daisy, wait. Where are you going?” he asked, bewildered. “What about the rest of the play?”

The lights were dimming.

“I’ll see it tomorrow night,” I told him. “The real performance. I’ll see you at home.”

“Where are you going?” he asked again.

I pulled on my coat and sidestepped past him to get out into the aisle. “I’m going to see if maybe I’m not a terrible investigator after all.”

FORTY

“I was just shocked,” Olga said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

We were barreling down the highway in the hearse that belonged to the mortuary where she worked. All I could think about was how Jake would argue that it wasn’t a coincidence that a clown drove a hearse; it just made it easier for him/her to hide all of the dead bodies.

“Well, I can imagine,” I said, unsure of what to make of what she’d told me.

“I just thought the easiest thing would be to confront Joanne,” she said, gripping the steer wheel. “Maybe there was something I didn’t know. Or I was misunderstanding something. I didn’t want to involve the police. I guess I just panicked.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “And I didn’t ask before. Is someone there watching the kids? I mean, since you left?”

“Arnold,” she said.

“Arnold?”

“He’s a college student,” she said. “He’s my C.I.T.”

“C.I.T.?”

“Clown In Training,” she explained. “He’s studying business at the U, but he really wants to be a clown. He’s taking classes to appease his parents, but he works with me on the weekends. So he’s there with the kids right now. He can juggle, but really struggles with the unicycle right now. I’ll get him there.”

“Right.”

She moved the hearse over into the right lane and we took the exit off of the highway. She turned left from the off ramp and we crossed back over the highway and headed out toward the most remote, rural part of Moose River. There were acres of natural wetlands out in the area, along with a myriad of hiking trails that we’d used before in the warmer months. For the most part, it was open space that couldn’t be developed.

“Normally, I don’t take jobs this far out of town,” Olga said. “But Joanne was desperate and offered to pay me a little extra to come out. Her son really wanted clowns and she couldn’t find anyone in the area willing to come out this far.”

I pulled my phone out of my purse, thinking I might need it soon.

And there was no service. We were too far removed from civilization.

I stuffed it back in my purse. “That was nice of you. Okay, so when you went out to the barn...did you go back and tell anyone you were leaving? Before you drove to the theater?”

She shook her head, her rainbow wig bobbing in several different directions. “No. I just told Arnold I was going to run and get some candles. I was too flustered and I didn’t think he’d understand.” She snapped her gloved fingers. “And I still don’t have candles. Or a blowtorch.”

“That may end up being the least of our worries,” I said.

We passed by a barren field of what I guessed was corn in the summer months, and she turned the hearse left onto a narrow dirt road. The road was dotted with potholes and ruts and she slowed down. It snaked its way around the edge of the field and then cut through a thick grove of bare-branched trees. We crested a small hill and as we descended the other side, I could see an old, two-story country farm house about two hundred yards in front of us, with a massive barn off in the distance, another fifty yards to the right of it.

She pointed at the barn. “There. That’s where I went looking for the blowtorch.”

It was straight out of a painting. Red with white trim, big doors in the front, windows on the top floor, just beneath the pitch of the roof. The path from the house to the barn was littered with leaves.

She pulled the hearse to a stop right in front of the house. “I need to get inside and check on Arnold and the kids. He’s never worked with kids before.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to the barn.”

“I saw a shovel just inside the door,” she said. “You know, just in case you need a weapon or something.”

“Why would I need a weapon?”

She shrugged and adjusted her big red nose. “I don’t know. I don’t know what else is out there.”

“Good to know,” I said, pushing the car door open.

I watched Olga scurry into the house, her big red shoes flapping on the steps as she hopped up the porch and disappeared into the house that was apparently full of kids.

I turned to the barn and starting walking that way. The cold wind bit at my cheeks and I pulled my hat down again as low as I could, this time for protection rather than going incognito. My boots crunched against the leaves on the path. I pulled out my phone again.

Still no service.

I dropped it back in my bag and eyed the front of the barn. I could see the main door slightly ajar, but couldn’t see anything inside. I hesitated for a moment, then headed for the entrance.

I stood outside and listened.

Nothing.

I waited for a moment, but didn’t hear anything.

I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The walls were lined with bales of hay and the floor was covered with loose straw and sawdust. The faint odor of cow manure mingled with the sweet smell of hay. I could make out a few random tools near the hay bales – a pitchfork, some shovels, one of those hook thingies used to hook the bales. There was an old ride-on mower tucked in once corner, a blue drop cloth half-covering it. The hay looked fresh, but everything else seemed as if it hadn’t been touched in awhile.

I could see the back wall of the barn and it looked the same as the sidewalls. A few random tools, a few more bales of hay. I moved my gaze upward to the high-pitched roof. There was an overhanging loft three quarters of the way up and I could make out a flight of wooden stairs that led up to it. I squinted. There was something else. A door in the loft that looked as if it was on the back wall. I took a step back to get a better angle.

It was definitely a door.

With a light on behind it.

My heart thumped in my chest.

I walked over to the stairs and walked slowly up them, waiting for them to creak or crack. But they held firm and I made my way up them silently.

I stood on the edge of the loft, maybe twenty-five feet above the barn floor. The door wasn’t on the back wall of the barn. It was actually attached to what looked a room, a room that had been built out. The walls looked about fifteen feet by fifteen feet: a decent sized room.

I stood still and listened.

I heard a faint voice.

Yellow light glowed in the doorframe.

I swallowed a couple of times, then crept over to the door.

Then I grasped the knob and opened it.

Amanda Pendleton was stretched out on a bed, watching a flat screen TV attached to a wall, when she craned her neck toward me and said, “Hey.”