A Fear of Clowns (The Greasepaint Chronicals) Read Free Page B

right. That kid so wanted to bang her. Probably in the car she'd gotten him, as if his dad hadn't
provided the funds for it. It had been her idea, so there was probably merit
that way.
    That let him pack up his props
and start to leave, it was a bit of a press near the patio, so he walked back
through the house, managing to bump into a plant on the way past. It was a huge
thing. Very green and leafy. Real too, so he moved around it with care. He used
to have a plant like that, in his office at the university. Before he'd given
all that up for a life on skid row.
    He considered that as he got
outside and then into his car, his little black case being set in the back, on
the wide seat. He took the mask off, but not the makeup. You didn't get
greasepaint off that easily. It stuck with you, never really seeming to come
off, once it was on. The sticky leavings that being a clown forced on you.
    Jason drove carefully, holding
exactly to the speed limit, and stopping for all the signs and lights. He was
in Brickston after all, and while the local Sheriff only had three deputies for
a fairly vast area, they always managed to stop him, when they could.
    That wasn't on accident. Carl
Morse had been having an affair with Jay's ex-wife. The entire time they were
married. That hadn't come out until Lynn had gotten mad at him one day over
something stupid, and screamed at him that their daughter Alexis should be glad
that she didn't have a lazy slob like him as a father. It came back to him, as
he drove, which was a horrible habit. He tried to pay attention to what he was
doing, focusing on the road as hard as possible, and still couldn't help but
remember it all.
    It had been the garbage. He'd
been a bit late getting home, because his old department head had gotten to
chatting with him about Mediterranean wars. Again. It was his life, and the
man, Henry Boggs, had a penchant for going on about it. He was older and a bit
lonely. That meant that he wouldn't stop talking if you let him go on. So he'd
been late getting the trash out, and Lynn had been drinking, at six in the
evening.
    It was always a bad plan.
    It hadn't even been a real fight,
just her attacking him, as if he weren't a good husband and father. Like he
didn't spend all of his free time making sure they had a good life. Doing what
she wanted and watching their daughter when she went out with her friends. After
that he'd been a bit suspicious, so to reassure himself, Jay had gotten Alexis to
give him the samples that a company needed to run for a paternity test. He'd
found them online, since it was a real business. A place that did nothing but
determine who the father was.
    Three weeks later, when the
letter came back in the mail, he showed it to Lynn. That hadn't gone well at
all, but he had gotten the whole story from her. Carl Morse, the County Sheriff,
and general a-hole, had been screwing his wife the whole time. Letting Jason
pay for his kid and take care of what was essentially his mistress, while he
had his own wife and family. The man had encouraged Lynn to do it, even working
to pick him out carefully, and groom him for the job of being her personal meal
ticket.
    After that, after Lynn and he
broke up, he didn't have a lot of chance to get custody of Alex. The state was
a lot more likely than not to think the mother was the one in the right,
especially with the crooked Sheriff on her side. So Jason had told the entire
country about what the man had done. Going online, and even calling news
agencies. That meant almost nothing, to anyone. It was Nevada, and men slept
around. So did women. It didn't affect Carl's reelection, or anything like that.
Really, he'd done slightly better in the polls after all the news items about
it. People recognized the name, Jay guessed.
    Even the man's wife and kids were
still with him. The only one to care about it at all was the jerk that had been
sleeping with his wife. He didn't even send child support payments. The state
had tried to