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

six-year-old whose parents you were visiting. There was even a radio sound-effects record to go with the picture, something right out of “I Love a Mystery.” Howling wind across the field, the murmur of animals, voices laughing, and someone raising someone else two bits on a poker hand behind one of the cutouts.
    I made my way around mud holes, wagon ruts, footsteps, and debris to the nearest wagon with a light on. I knocked. Voices inside were arguing. I knocked again.
    “A minute,” came a male voice with a European accent I couldn’t place.
    The door swung open. It was a few feet above me, and at first all I could see was another black cutout against sudden light. This one looked vaguely like a man.
    “Yes?” he said, looking down at me. My eyes adjusted and began to make out the man and another figure behind him. The man in the door was wearing a red velvet robe. His hands were in his pockets. His head was a mane of bright yellow hair over a smooth face; his voice suggested more years than the front showed. Behind him at a table sat a young man looking toward me, a thin, pale, yellow-haired imitation of the man at the door.
    “Yes?” he repeated.
    “I’m trying to find somebody,” I said.
    “I am somebody,” he replied, pointing to his chest. “I am Sandoval.”
    I was clearly supposed to know who Sandoval was, but my face must have made it clear that I didn’t.
    “Sandoval of the great cats,” he explained. “My picture is on the posters. My animals are the most wild. Frank Buck and Clyde Beatty are not even amateurs compared to Sandoval.”
    “Oh, that Sandoval,” I said, trying to get the conversation moving before I sank any deeper into the mud. “I’m looking for someone with the circus, someone I’m supposed to meet.”
    I told him who I was looking for, and he gave me directions on how to get there. The kid at the table behind him listened, his eyes not on me but on the back of Sandoval, whose directions to me were a little vague.
    “Good enough?” asked Sandoval, throwing his mane back.
    “Thanks,” I said. “Good night.”
    “Good night,” said Sandoval and then, over his shoulder, “Shockly, bid the man good night.”
    The boy at the table half rose and said a weak good night. Sandoval sighed enormously and threw out his hands before whispering to me in a voice that could not only be heard by the boy but by anyone within a football field’s length.
    “The war has made a ruin of all human endeavor,” he said. “We can get only apprentice boys with names like Shockly who must be taught even the minimal touches of confidence and pride.”
    Sandoval had enough confidence and pride for the kid, the U.S. Marines, and the entire USC football team, but I nodded in professional agreement as he closed the door.
    I made half a dozen wrong turns in the dark and stepped into something I didn’t want to think about before I found myself back at my car. I was tempted to curl up in the back seat, but the last time I had done that my back had been so sore in the morning that I couldn’t straighten up.
    So I returned to my search. This time I ran into two frail figures side by side. I took them for late-night lovers at first, but when I stepped in front of them I realized that their union was even more permanent than love. They were Siamese twins joined at the hip and wearing a single giant coat to keep out the night.
    They were used to seeing faces a lot more frightening than mine around a circus, and they gave me good directions on how to find my client. They also told me their names were Cora and Thelma. I thanked them and went on my way, wondering how the two of them had managed to carry on the whole conversation with both of them saying every word as if I were talking to an echo.
    Three minutes later I was at the right railroad car, knocking. Someone inside said, “Hold it,” and a few seconds later the door opened and a voice with a Missouri twang said, “Yes?”
    “Peters,” I