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

said. “Toby Peters.”
    A hand came down and took mine. “Kelly,” he said. “Emmett Kelly.”
    He helped me up out of the night and into the warm light of his room.

 
    Someone had electrocuted an elephant. There was no doubt about that. The wrinkled gray bulk lay on its side, feet out, trunk curled down, eyes closed. A single night-light cast shadows on his feet, and the maybe of a breeze made the sparse wiry hairs of his body bend and shiver. I have seen humans lying dead. Even when the death was bloody or crazy, it always seemed part of something natural that made me angry, not sad. And here was this smelly mass of an animal filling me with sorrow.
    “Something really sad about it,” said Kelly at my side. I looked at him and could see that he was talking about himself as well as me.
    Kelly was about my size, receding hairline, a nose like Bob Hope’s, and a mouth that moved easily into a warm grin. His shoulders were slightly stooped and his chest thin. He was about my age, maybe a year or two younger, and there was a look on his face that made it clear that he was carrying something he wanted help with.
    After I had entered his train car, Kelly had excused himself from Tiny Tyne, a plump fellow clown he had been playing rummy with, introducing me not as a private detective but as a friend of a friend looking for a job.
    “What was that all about?” I asked as he led the way across the field.
    “Sorry, Mr. Peters,” he whispered. “I don’t know if what I think is happening is happening, and I’m not putting my neck out till I know.” As we walked, stepping around shadows and footprints of mud, he told me about the circus.
    The Rose and Elder Circus was a thin idea held together by favors, hope, and a few dollars from the hardware empire of Joshua R. Rosenbaum, the Rose and the angel. His investment was on the verge of nightmare, which is somewhere between Palm Springs and Mirador. It was an after-the-season show put together from acts, crew, and equipment rented from the big shows that had ended their seasons. Rose and Elder’s biggest attractions were Kelly the clown and Gargantua the gorilla from Ringling. Kelly had gone along for the one-month run as a favor to Elder, an old friend.
    The show was a patchwork of acts on the way up and on the way down, grifters and grafters, refugees and runaways. The doctor for the show was over eighty, some of the acts couldn’t speak English, and about half of the crew had never seen a circus before.
    In spite of this, Elder, whose idea the whole thing was, had managed to put on a circus, three rings, popcorn, peanuts, elephants, and sideshows. He had a dozen trailers, seven trucks, and fifteen railroad cars.
    “In here,” Kelly said, pointing the way with his lantern, and in I went.
    The elephant lay in a corner, and we simply looked at him in silence for a few minutes.
    “What makes you think someone killed him?” I said.
    “Her; this bull’s a female,” he said.
    “Bull?”
    “All elephants are called bulls in the circus,” he explained. “She was a good one. Two years ago, ten Ringling elephants died of arsenic poisoning in Atlanta. Police said it was an accident. Last year, there was a fire in the elephant tent when we were in Kansas. Lost another dozen.”
    “But …” I tried.
    “Look,” he said and walked behind the dead animal where he lifted a piece of canvas. I followed him and found myself looking into a gray dead eye of the elephant. It was hard to force my eyes away to the sight under the canvas.
    “What’s that?” I said.
    “Wires, rigging for tent lights. All attached to that pole where this bull was tied with a metal chain. Someone just touched the two wires together, and she went down. I was in here when it happened, and I saw a little spark. So I went over when they called the doc. Someone had gotten to the pole and pulled the wire off. Must have seen me coming and backed off before they could hide it. I couldn’t prove