Inherit the Bones

Chapter Twenty-seven

The tent was packed and we found seats toward the back, up high in the stands. Colorful flamenco music competed with the chatter of the crowd, and all around us, families shared popcorn and cotton candy and peanuts. I watched as more than one person cracked a peanut and then tossed the fibrous shell onto the ground.

In the front row, slightly to my left, I saw a familiar head of red hair: Lisey, Tessa’s roommate. She sat next to another young woman, a blonde in a white tank top. The two were speaking to each other and although I was too far away to make out any words, the conversation appeared heated. Lisey’s posture was rigid, and her hand repeatedly rose as though to dismiss her companion. Finally, with a look of disgust, Blondie stood and stormed out of the tent.

Lisey watched her go and then shook her head and turned her attention to the ring in the middle of the tent, where a tall man in a black tuxedo stood. His height was exaggerated even more by a top hat and cane that he bandied about before him.

I nudged Finn and pointed to the back of Lisey’s head and said her name. He lifted an eyebrow.

“The lesbian?” he whispered, and I rolled my eyes and nodded.

The music died and the ringmaster said, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, may I be the first to welcome you to the most impressive, the most incredible, the most amazing death-defying show on Earth.”

He had to be almost seven feet tall, all arms and legs, like an enormous alien insect. He bandied about his cane and the crowd cheered in response.

“What you are about to see might shock you… it may surprise you… but it will stun you,” he roared and the crowd roared back.

The man next to me had just tossed a handful of popcorn in his mouth and when he shouted his approval at the ringmaster, he sprayed the back of the head of the woman in front of him with a fine mist of butter-tinged spittle.

I winced and scooted closer to Finn.

“Put your hands together for the greatest group of acrobats on Earth, the Fellini Brothers’ Amazing Trapeze Troupe!” he said. With another flourish of his cane and a tip of his hat, the man bowed to the audience and stepped out of the spotlight. The music came back on with a vengeance, louder and more pulsing than before.

From the four corners of the tent, the acrobats emerged like boxers at a match, each sprinting to the center and doing a jig to pump up the crowd. They wore the black leotards we’d seen during practice, but true to Tessa’s word, they each carried a long saber with a wicked-looking tip. Red sashes held the swords to their waists, and as before, each acrobat wore a black Zorro-like mask.

The crowd went wild with cheers and applause and the performers strutted before the audience like court jesters, high-fiving the children in the first row. After a few minutes, the four met back in the middle and huddled, then broke apart in pairs and climbed the long ladders at either end of the tent.

There was something different from what we’d watched in rehearsals but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Once on the platforms, the four drew their swords and began their daring dances on the narrow planks. To the right, Tessa and Doug teased and taunted each other. Tessa danced backward, Doug’s sword at her belly, and then she lunged forward, pushing him back toward the ladder, away from the plank’s edge. The audience gasped as he feigned a slip and fell to one knee, then cheered as he regained balance and resumed his attack on Tessa.

On the opposite plank, the sisters, Onesie and Twosie, fended off imaginary assailants. They stood back to back and slashed their swords at the air, moving to and fro along the platform as one unit. The silver weapons flashed in the spotlights like strobes and I closed my eyes, feeling the beginnings of a migraine. Between the late night, my lack of sleep, the heat of the day, and now the pulsing lights and music, plus my hormonal swings, I knew I didn’t stand a chance against the vise slowly tightening around my forehead.

As the music switched from the flamenco guitar to a steady, throbbing Latin dance beat, the acrobats laid down their swords and shook hands and hugged. As in rehearsals, Tessa was first off the plank. This time, though, she did a stunning dismount that involved a backward flip that left the audience gasping. She grabbed the first bar and the audience sighed with relief and the show went into full swing. The other three acrobats joined Tessa and soon they were jumping and twisting and diving with, literally, the greatest of ease.

In front of me, a child whispered to his father, “What if they fall?” and the father whispered back, “They won’t, honey, they’re professionals,” and I realized what was different from the rehearsal we’d watched earlier.

The green safety net had been removed.

If someone did fall, it would be a forty-foot drop straight to the ground. I gulped and felt the hot dog I’d eaten turn inside me on a wave of nausea.

“What’s a pofresshunal?” the child whispered, and the father answered, “It means they are so good at their job, they won’t fall.”

With the realization the net was gone, watching the acrobats was suddenly a nerve-racking event. I held my breath through the next ten minutes, until finally they swung themselves, one by one, back to the platforms. They paused, panting, on the planks as the audience gave them a standing ovation.

As Finn and I stood and clapped, I looked down to the left. Lisey was gone. Scanning the room, I saw a flash of red at one of the side exits. “C’mon,” I said, and grabbed Finn.

“Don’t you want to talk to Tessa again?” he asked, and followed me as we made our way through the stands. Every second person had to turn sideways or stand back up to let us by.

“Yes, but she can wait,” I said. “I want to talk to Lisey first.”

I wondered if Lisey was the second person in Tessa’s car last night. If so, maybe she had come back to my house on her own, later, and left the message. But really, what would have been the point? I was finding it harder and harder to believe that anyone from Reed’s life had been involved in his murder, especially given the wording of leaving the past alone.

Everywhere I turned seemed to point right back to the past… to the McKenzie boys, and the Woodsman.

To this town.

Outside, I threw up an arm against the glare of the bright sunshine. I’d left my sunglasses in the car, and as I squinted and waited for my eyes to adjust, the throbbing in my head increased. I slowly turned, scanning the throngs of people that milled on the midway between the various booths and tents and food stands and Porta-Potties and rides.

All I could see for miles was kid after kid, clown after clown.

“Where did she go? Do you see her?”

“I don’t know, I don’t… wait, there? Is that her?” Finn asked. He pointed to a small open space about fifty yards away.

Lisey stood, her back to us, one hand raised to her hair, the other on her hip. She wore a tight yellow T-shirt, too small for her voluptuous frame, and men’s carpenter-style jeans that hung loose from her hips and sagged at the rear.

We pushed through the crowd. When we were a few feet behind her, I grabbed Finn’s arm and held him back.

Lisey was speaking but there was no one else there, and I realized she was on the phone.

“I told you, I’m through,” she said. There were tears and anger in her voice. “No, no more. You promised. I don’t care how much, it’s not worth it.”

Finn looked at me with raised eyebrows, as Lisey screamed, “No, screw you! I’m done. Don’t call me again!”

She threw the phone in an arc toward the woods that surrounded the fairgrounds. After a moment, she sighed and then stomped off and started searching the ground.

Finn and I walked to her.

“Lisey?” I said softly.

She jumped and turned and stared at me without any sign of recognition. Her face was tear-stained and I saw that when she wasn’t scowling, or stoned out of her mind, she was actually quite beautiful. Her skin was the color of fresh cream, her eyes an amber brown. Her cheekbones were wide and with her ample body, she could have been a model for Titian or Rembrandt.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember me? I’m Detective Gemma Monroe, I visited with Tessa at your cabin a few days ago?” I asked.

Lisey shook her head. “It’s not my cabin anymore. I moved out yesterday.”

She started to turn away, then stopped, twin roses blooming in her cheeks. “Oh, I remember. I was, uh, incapacitated when you stopped by.”

I nodded. “That’s right. Are you feeling better? I understand you were upset about Reed’s death.”

Finn bent down and picked up a pink sparkly object. “This your phone?”

“Thanks,” Lisey said. “I… dropped it a few minutes ago.”

We stood there awkwardly for a moment. I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t mean to be nosy, but why did you move out of the cabin? I thought you and Tessa were friends?”

“Tessa doesn’t have friends. She uses people like toilet paper and then flushes them out of her life,” Lisey replied, dropping down to the ground. She sat cross-legged and jabbed at the keypad on her phone. “Shit, I think it’s broken.”

“Let me take a look,” Finn said. He bent and plucked it from her hands.

Lisey started to protest but he shushed her. I watched as she eyeballed him, top to bottom, and then she closed her mouth with a pretty little pout. Finn’s blue polo shirt matched his eyes and his slacks were clean and pressed, and I tried to see him as she did, but it was no good. I knew him too well.

I squatted down beside Lisey and within a few seconds, my knees and quads were screaming, so I lowered myself all the way down to my butt. The ground was grassy and comfortable and I sighed, the weight off my feet. It was going to be a hell of a struggle getting up but for the time being, I was content.

“Lisey, I don’t follow,” I began. “I was under the impression that you and Tessa were… close.”

She smirked. “Is that what she said? The first thing you should know about Tessa is that she is supremely talented. The second is that she’s a pathological liar. You do the math.”

I asked, “So if Tessa told me that you were in love with her, that was a lie?”

Lisey fell backward to the grass with a hysterical laugh. She lay there, chuckling, and when she sat back up, her eyes were again filled with tears. A lock of auburn hair fell across her face, and she pushed it away.

“That’s hilarious. I had my first boyfriend when I was eleven. I’m about as far from that as… as…” She faltered off as she tried to think of a suitable comparison. “As Jennifer Lopez!”

Finn handed the pink phone back to her. “I think I fixed it for you.”

“Yeah?” she said, and pushed a few buttons. “Hey, thanks! It’s working.”

Finn gave her a wink and sat down next to us. “So, Lisey, no girl-on-girl action? Why would Tessa tell us you had a thing for her?”

“Like I said, she’s a liar. And she’s really good at it; it’s second nature to her. Sometimes she lies even when there is nothing to lie about. Like, I’ll ask her if we need milk and she’ll say yes and I’ll check and there’s a full carton. Stupid shit like that.”

I asked, “Did Reed know about the lying?”

Lisey snorted. “Of course he did, the idiot. But he was such a nice guy, and he was in love with her, like straight up Romeo and Juliet love. He worshipped her. He thought she would change.”

“Tessa told us she found a torn-up photograph of herself and Reed under your bed. Did you do that?”

Lisey looked startled. “What? Why would I do that? I liked Reed; he was a good guy. He was kind of freaky, with the piercings and tats, but hey, he was a gentleman. Tessa didn’t deserve him, that’s for sure. And if I did tear up some photo, why would I keep it under my bed for Crazy Pants to find?”

She had a point. If Lisey was telling the truth, then I couldn’t believe a word Tessa had said. But if Tessa was telling the truth, then Lisey was a jealous woman with a good reason to hurt Reed. Maybe even kill him.

The one thing I believed was that they both couldn’t be telling the truth.

But that didn’t mean they both weren’t lying.

Finn leaned back on his arms and stretched his long legs out in front of him, so his left shoe was touching Lisey’s right foot. He gave her a little kick and she looked at him.

“What do you do, anyway, Lisey? I mean, here,” he said. “At the circus.”

She smiled, displaying a mouth full of crooked teeth that somehow made her look even more beautiful. “I’m a costume designer. I make all the costumes, for the performers, the clowns, even the animals, like the elephants’ headpieces and the vests for the monkeys.”

“All of them?”

She nodded. “I have a couple of assistants, day laborers we pick up in the cities, but I design the outfits and do most of the sewing and beadwork. The pay is shit but I love the work. And it’s sort of fun, you know? Getting to see the world, one crappy town at a time.”

“Where are you from originally?” Finn asked. He’d withdrawn his foot and crossed his legs but his eyes hadn’t left Lisey’s face.

“Salem, Massachusetts. I got my degree there, in fashion design, and then had what you might call a falling-out with my dad. I left Salem and stayed with some friends in Chicago for a few months, working for a shop out there. The owners knew Papa Joe-Mr. Fatone-and well, one thing sort of led to another,” she said. She plucked at a few pieces of grass and began threading them together in her hands. “Tessa was the first friend I made.”

“So you’re what, twenty-three? And this is what you want to do for the rest of your life?” Finn asked. “What about a family? Career?”

“I’m twenty-five. And yes, this is what I want. These guys, the performers, the workers, they are my family. My dad wants me to come home and work for him at his construction company, but I hate that stuff,” Lisey said. “Accounting, taxes. Death by office work.”

She looked down at the phone in her lap and then up at me.

“I was just talking to him. He said he would pay me fifty thousand a year to run the front office, plus health benefits. But a desk job would just kill me. I tried it last summer, when the circus was having some financial trouble and there was talk of layoffs. I cried every night. Talk about soul-numbing.”

High above us, a jet engine roared. We watched the plane pass over us, heading southeast, no doubt to the big Air Force base in Colorado Springs. The jet left a trail in the sky like someone had brushed a streak of white paint across a cornflower-blue canvas.

I took another gamble. “We couldn’t help overhearing you, Lisey. So that was your dad? You sounded pretty angry.”

“Oh, that’s just how we talk to each other. I mean, I love him and I know he loves me.”

I thought of asking her about the Ramones T-shirt, the one Tessa said had vanished, but decided against pressing my luck. I also decided it was unlikely Lisey had been the other person in Tessa’s car last night.

We’d gotten a lot out of her. I just wasn’t sure what it all meant yet.

She stood and brushed at her backside. “I got to get back, see if there’s any repairs I need to do before tonight’s show.”

I awkwardly rolled to one side and half pushed, half lunged my way to a standing position. In another few weeks, I was going to need assistance getting up. The thought of asking Finn to pull me was horrifying and I hoped to God we’d solved this case by then.

“We’ll be in touch, Lisey,” I said.

Finn pulled out a business card so fast I almost got whiplash watching him, and he presented it to Lisey as though it were a flower.

“Don’t hesitate to call. If you need anything, that’s my cell number on the bottom.”

He shook her hand and I noticed her give him another one of those top-to-bottom glances. She walked away, Finn watching her all the while.

“Earth to Finn. I got four words for you: twenty-five and murder suspect.”

He laughed. “Oh, c’mon, you don’t really think she killed Reed. If you did, you’d have brought her in for questioning. In fact, I think you kind of like her.”

He was right. I did sort of like her. She was plucky and independent.

We headed back to my car. The fairgrounds were calmer; the late afternoon heat seemed to have sucked the energy out of every living thing. Even the pine trees in the woods at the edge of the circus looked tired, their boughs sagging low to the ground. A few teenagers roamed through the booths, halfheartedly playing the games, but most of the families with children had left for the day.

Thinking about Finn’s words, I shook my head and wagged a finger at him, feeling an awful lot like Chief Chavez. And sounding an awful lot like Chief Chavez, with my next words.

“First truth of being a cop: be a cop. It doesn’t matter who we like or dislike. Instinct is everything, but fact is king.”

“What’d you do, memorize Chavez’s little black book? Jesus, Gemma. If you were any farther up the chief’s ass, you could start charging as a proctologist,” Finn said. “Be a cop… fact is king… Jesus.”

I stopped. “Is that really what you think? That I’m some kind of kiss-ass?”

Finn kept walking, and after a moment I hurried to catch up with him. “Well? Is it?”

“Let’s say the chief seems to favor you quite a bit, Gemma. Like he’s grooming you,” he said with a shrug. “Just be careful. You can make a lot of enemies on the way to the top. Some of the others don’t exactly appreciate getting passed over for plum cases like this one.”

I grabbed Finn’s shoulder and spun him around. “Are you kidding me? Chavez didn’t give me this case. I was in the fucking room when the call came in. It’s that simple. It always has been. You get the call, you get the case. Who’s got the problem with me? Moriarty? Armstrong?”

He sighed and thought a moment. “Look, I’m only telling you this because we’re partners, now, right? All for one, and one for all? I know you’ve been holding that home invasion case against me, but the truth is, I got nothing against you, except when you don’t shut up and listen when you should. No one was going to answer for that little girl who got killed, and the DA and I did what we needed to do to make sure those assholes didn’t hurt another kid. Am I proud of what we did? No. Would I do it again? You bet! You can quote Chavez’s little rule book all you want, Gemma, but when push comes to shove, it’s our job to put the bad guys away, no matter what it takes.”

“Even when that means crossing the line yourself?”

Finn nodded. “It’s always been about the lesser of two evils, Gemma. Always.”

I understood his rationale. I just wasn’t sure I could ever live it.

“Who’s pissed at me?”

“Yesterday I heard Moriarty bitching to someone on the phone that maybe Chavez put you on the Bellington case as the department’s fall guy,” Finn said. He shrugged. “That was all I heard.”

I was stunned. First, that Moriarty would say that. I’ve never had a problem with Moriarty. And second, that there was even the slightest possibility that the chief would do that to me… give me a case, thinking that I’d fail him.

Fail the department. Be the fall guy-for the family, the press, and the town. The guy the shit rains down on when the case goes unsolved.

“Who the hell was on the other end of the line?”

“It doesn’t matter. When Moriarty saw me, he got off the phone real quick.”

As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already. Well, Moriarty could just sit tight and watch me solve this case. And just maybe solve the Woodsman murders, too, with a little help from Nicky Bellington.

We got into my car and I tried to shrug off Finn’s words. I relived our conversation with Lisey.

“Do you think Lisey was telling the truth? About that being her dad on the phone?” I asked.

Finn didn’t answer, and I looked at him as I started the ignition. He lifted his right index finger to his lips and dialed a number on his cell with his left hand.

“Ah, yes, sir, this is Mr. Smith with the U.S. Census department. We’ve had a bit of a sticky situation with our records, and I’m just calling folks in town, confirming current residents,” Finn said with a perfect Boston accent. He listened for a moment and then held the phone away from his ear.

“All right then, sorry to trouble you, sir. You have a great day.”

Finn clicked off the phone and smirked at me. “Well, she’s a good little liar, I’ll give her that much.”

“How on Earth-” I began and the image of Finn holding Lisey’s phone flashed across my mind. “You sneaky son of a bitch.”

“The sneakiest,” he said, and leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “Dude was pissed. Said he didn’t have to talk to no fucking census department because he didn’t fucking live there and was only a fucking renter because the fucking government couldn’t get him a fucking job and fuck you, motherfucker, for ruining my beautiful fucking day.”

“Wow, that’s some real pretty language. Get a name?”

Finn shook his head, his eyes still closed. “Nah. But we can trace the number when we get back. I don’t think the dude’s going anywhere.”