Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) Read Free

carefully toward me, eyeing Lope in the hope that the bigger man would get up and join him.
    “If this happens at every town along the line, I swear I’m quitting the circus,” I said, backing toward the door.
    The fat woman at the end of the bar let out a howl of laughter and pounded the bar, sending a whiskey glass tumbling to the floor.
    “Let the man alone, Carlos,” she said, her voice jumping all over the place. “He’s a funny man.”
    “Lope?” Carlos said, pointing his bottle at his downed drinking companion and drenching himself in alcohol.
    “Lope asked for what he got,” she said, getting off her stool and looking at me. Carlos looked at the sleeping drunk and the bartender for support, but there was none. He wasn’t going to face me without an appreciative audience. He drained the last few drops of the bottle and backed against the bar.
    “Mister,” said the woman, “I’m what passes for the town whore, and if I wasn’t drunk I wouldn’t say it.”
    “Right,” I said a few feet from the door. “Thanks.”
    “Lope ain’t a bad guy,” she said. “He works hard, got a big family, five kids. He deserves a drunk. Got no education.”
    “I should have kept my mouth shut,” I admitted.
    “You tiene razón man,” she laughed. “You got time for a drink?”
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m expected at the circus.”
    “Back to the highway,” she said with a nod of her head. “Turn right. Look for Carroll Road. Turn right again and go about a mile. You’ll see it.”
    She stepped forward where it was lighter, and she looked less fat than plump. Her teeth were white and even, and her face was smooth and smiling.
    “Maybe there’s time for one drink more,” I smiled.
    Lope groaned on the floor and tried to sit up.
    “I don’t think so now,” said the woman. “Lope ain’t gonna be happy when he gets up. His brother is deputy sheriff.”
    “Alex?” I said.
    “You know Alex?” she shot back. Even the barkeeper perked up. Alex was a name to reckon with in Hijo’s.
    “We met once,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back for that drink, Miss …”
    “Alvero, Jean Alvero,” she said. “And maybe you better not come back. I think it might even be better if you just go on up ahead and not get together with your circus in Mirador.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” I answered and backed out of the door as Carlos bent to help a groggy, one-eyed Lope to his feet.
    There is something about me that brings out the worst in dogs, cats, and humans. Something in me is a challenge. I used to think I was cursed. A woman who said she was a witch once put a curse on me. The woman was my own aunt, but her daughter, my cousin, who claimed she was a more powerful witch, supposedly took the curse off, which gives you some indication of my family tree. Curses aside, I think it is simply my face coupled with an uncontrollable urge to bring people to life by prodding them a little. My father wanted me to be a doctor. I’ve got the curiosity, but not the ambition.
    I got into my car and backed out with the lights out. I scraped the police car parked next to me with a sickening scraaatch, turned on my lights, and headed back toward the highway.
    Had I but known that three days later I’d be in a cage with a gorilla, I probably would have remained and taken my chances with Lope and Alex; but half the fun of being alive is not knowing what tomorrow will bring. The other half comes by pretending that you don’t care.
    I found the circus in Aldreich Field without much trouble. It was a huge, dark series of tents, the largest one a central big top with a flag, a bunch of trucks, and mobile wagons. The dark outline of a train with a few dozen cars formed a rear wall behind the scene.
    I followed the road to the closest tent, turned off into the mud, and got out to find the man who had hired me. The circus looked like a bunch of black paper cutouts, the kind of thing you’d pick up at the drugstore for a