The Ladies of the Secret Circus Page 28

  He returned the keys to Esther. Something was bothering him. He thought he knew everything about this town, but obviously that wasn’t so. “Do you know where Duvall Road is? I’ve never heard of it.”

  She snorted. “You mean was.” Her knotted hands were busy stapling papers together with a fury that made Ben glad he was neither the paper nor the stapler.

  “Was?”

  “It was the road that ran over the old Shumholdt Bridge. It was a terrible one-lane thing. You’d have to honk your horn and listen to hear if someone else was coming over the bridge in the opposite direction, especially at the bend before they widened it. You’d pray that you wouldn’t meet another car. If you did, one of you would have to back up on a horrible narrow bridge.”

  “Wait!” Ben leaned over the desk. “You’re saying that Duvall Road was renamed?”

  “Yes, when the new bridge went up they renamed it Wickelow Bend Road. I thought everyone knew that.” As she spoke, the metal stapler vibrated like an instrument every time her hand came down. “Young people today just don’t know their history.”

  “Thank you.” Ben turned and leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, you don’t remember a man named Desmond Bennett, do you? Went missing in 1944.”

  She looked at him, and her face lit up. “The derby driver? Oh yes, I remember him. He was quite handsome. All of us girls would line up for tickets when the derby came to town. He’d come back from the war… injured I believe… then he got on the racing circuit. Famous around these parts as well as North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. A heartbreaker if I don’t say so myself. Saw him once.” She raised her eyebrows at the memory.

  “Thanks, Esther.” He turned the knob on the door.

  “Oh,” said Esther, catching Ben just before he left. “Funny thing about Dez Bennett. He was the boyfriend… well, rumored love interest, really… of Margot Cabot. You know, the blonde from all the circus posters around here. Legs like Betty Grable.”

  “No,” said Ben, suddenly frozen in the doorway. “I didn’t know that.”

  Ben stepped out of the records office and into the hallway. Not only did he have three missing men, but they all seemed connected to Lara’s family.

  When he got back to the station, Ben found Doyle playing a video game. Ben dropped a file on his desk. “Anytime when you’re finished.”

  “I’m about to lose a troll.” Doyle pushed away from the chair, defeated. “I just got killed.”

  “Do you really think you should be playing this in front of me, Doyle?”

  “Dunno.” He shrugged. “What else do we have to do?”

  “Funny you should mention it.” Ben pointed to the file he’d just placed on the desk.

  Doyle picked it up and started leafing through it. “Holy shit. How old is this thing?”

  “Nineteen forty-four. It’s on a man named Desmond Bennett. Nineteen years of age. He disappeared on October ninth, 1944. They found his car on Duvall Road the next day.”

  “That’s fucking weird.”

  “Even weirder is that, according to Esther Hurston, Duvall Road was the former name of—” Ben let the sentence hang to see if Doyle was paying attention.

  “I’ll take a guess and say Wickelow Bend?” Doyle smiled.

  “You got it.”

  “So we’ve got three men, missing on the same day, in the same manner, at the same location, every thirty years?”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to think it’s a ritual killing of some sort. Do we have any known witch communities?” One thing that Ben had been relieved about was that the appearance of another killing thirty years earlier seemed to rule out Jason Barnes as a potential suspect.

  “I don’t think so.” Doyle looked at his computer.

  “Can you find out more about Desmond Bennett? Maybe ask over at the paper?”

  “You can’t make a call to Kim Landau yourself?” Doyle chuckled.

  “I’d prefer not to.”

  “I see.” Doyle winked.

  “No, you don’t see, Doyle. You see nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Doyle shrugged, noncommittal. “You had a call by the way, some real estate agent.”

  “Shit,” said Ben aloud as he looked down at the note on his desk. Abigail Atwater had called him back and she was on her way to the house.

  Five Victorian houses separated his house from the one where he’d grown up, each sporting some oversize American flag for the July Fourth holiday. Ben ran past them all, spying the magnetic sign for ATWATER ASSOCIATES on a black Cadillac SUV. He was too far away to see if Abigail Atwater was in the car or not.

  All the houses on Washington Street looked as though a child had gone through a Crayola box to paint them. Next to Ben’s house stood Victor Benson’s stately old two-story lemon-yellow Victorian with periwinkle-blue accents and a wraparound porch. On the weekends, Vic and his wife would sit on their porch swing and drink wine. Ben’s was a natural brick home, but Marla had painted it two years ago so that both the brick and grout were now a vibrant fire-engine-red color.

  “It’s really a showplace, isn’t it?” called Victor Benson from his own porch. “Your wife…” He paused, realizing his mistake. “… well, she really has a green thumb.”

  “I guess so,” said Ben. The house was Marla’s domain now. Every corner of the porch had a pot with flowers spilling out of it.

  Victor Benson’s gray-white hair was styled like a game-show host’s. He was perpetually tan and talked about golf courses like Torrey Pines that he played regularly, as if Ben knew what he was talking about. “Thanks to her, your property value just shot up,” said Victor. “I see Abigail Atwater just went in.” He let the comment hang. He was Kerrigan County’s Century 21 Realtor and seemed more than a little irritated to find his biggest competitor going into his neighbor’s house. Ben hadn’t thought of using Vic, thinking his neighbor was too close to them.

  “I need to have you over for an estimate,” said Ben. “I’ll call you.”

  “You know my number.” Victor waved, giving Ben a look like he didn’t believe him.

  Since he’d last been to the house, Marla had turned her attention to the garden. Last year, he had offered to hire a landscape architect, but she’d looked irritated at the suggestion. As he went to open the screen door he saw ten firebush plants and a small stack of flagstone tiles waiting on the front porch for her attention.

  He had never spent much time in the garden, but from the porch he could see that the small patch of land between their house and the Benson’s Victorian was now thick with flowers, rows and clusters of boxwood topiaries, geraniums, black-eyed Susans, blue salvias, and azalea bushes, blooms and bulbs in clumps of greens and reds and yellows and purples. The flowers were in full bloom, and he was sure that the bees would soon follow.

  As he got to the door, he saw Abigail Atwater standing in the foyer, punctuating her conversation with her pink nails. “You have my card,” she emphasized.

  “I do,” said Marla from inside the house. He could see Marla flicking it. “I’ll talk with Ben and we’ll get back to you when we’re ready to sell.”

  “This really is a stunning home,” gushed Abigail. “It’ll go in a minute.”

  He heard Marla’s laugh. It was a laugh that told him he was in big trouble.

  As Abigail opened the door she said, “Well, look who it is.”

  “Yes,” echoed Marla. “Look at him.”

  “Sorry,” said Ben. “I should have warned you.”

  Marla raised her eyebrows in silent agreement.

  “Well, I told your wife here that I’d be thrilled to get this baby on the market.” She leaned in. “I’m not surprised you’re not going with Victor Benson.” She motioned with her head in the direction of the neighbor’s house. “I hear he’s a little…” She took a fake drink with her hand.

  “Oh,” said Marla. “Is that so?” She waved her fingers in an effort to herd Abigail along.

  Like parents waiting for children to clear the room bef
ore arguing, Ben and Marla were quiet until Abigail was out of earshot.

  “How could you?” snapped Marla, her voice still low. “You’re such a coward, Benjamin Archer. Sending a real estate agent… and not even our neighbor, for God’s sake.”

  “I didn’t think she’d actually come down here,” said Ben. “I was away from my desk. I’m sorry, Marla. Victor Benson did say the value of the house has skyrocketed due to your green thumb.”

  “Did he?” Marla put her hands in the pockets of her white jeans. “It was all for the homes tour.”

  How could Ben have forgotten? There had been hundreds of people traipsing through this house for the Summer Festival that had ended nearly two weeks earlier. Thanks to Marla, their house—and now their garden—was always included on the tour. She was also the official photographer of the festival, although most of those bookings still weren’t paying. “Might be a good time to sell, then.”

  “We’ve been over this before. I’m not selling.” She put her hands over her face in exasperation and walked down the hall. While he didn’t feel he should notice such things anymore, he did think she looked great, refreshed even. He sank a little when he realized that it was probably because she was rid of him. She had on jeans with a flowing pink top. As she shuffled to the kitchen, the sound of her bare feet whooshed against the floorboards, her long, chestnut-colored ponytail bobbing behind her. “You aren’t coming in if you’re just here to talk about selling. This house belongs to me.”

  Technically the house belonged to them—both Ben and Marla—but he wasn’t going to push it. Before them, it had belonged to her mother and had been in her family for years. Marla had been working as a photographer in Los Angeles when her mother had gotten sick. She’d moved home to care for the woman until she’d died, then found herself living in a dilapidated eight-room house.

  The repairs needed on the house were bad, so Ben had refinanced the house before they’d gotten married and had fixed it up with money he’d been saving for years. They’d only dated about four months before he’d asked her to marry him, but Ben could feel the time on her running out for a place like Kerrigan Falls, so he’d made grand gestures like proposing and taking on the financial responsibility for the house, just so she’d remain there. He recalled walking into the house for the first time and thinking it was like a collection of old-fashioned mourning rooms with the curtains drawn.

  And now it was like something out of a Southern Living spread. On the light-lavender walls in the dining room were examples of her work, black-and-white photographs with intricate compositions and striking uses of light. They were thoughtfully grouped, with smaller photos on the outside and one large photograph of an old roller coaster as its centerpiece. She’d been known for taking photos of abandoned places—malls, theme parks, airports. The entire collection was framed with dramatic white mats and thin platinum frames. The white woodwork and matching fireplace mantel were lightly glossed. It was a tranquil room that she’d agonized over.

  In the ten years they’d been married, the house had become one of the most well-known houses in the Falls. They’d become a bit of a power couple, yet Ben masked the fact that Marla’s business had never done particularly well, and the historical society salary was more honorary than lucrative. He felt guilty making her stay here when she could have gone back—should have gone back—to Los Angeles and taken pictures of movie stars for magazines, like she’d dreamed of doing, so he hadn’t pushed her to sell at first.

  “Maybe you could turn it into a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “I’ve had enough of people,” she snorted.

  “How so?”

  “I took a group of twelve-year-olds white-water rafting.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Someone had to.” She just shrugged and poured herself a cup of coffee and didn’t offer him one. Instead, she leaned against the counter holding the oversize mug with both hands. Ben wasn’t even through the front door and already they were rubbing each other raw, like a rug burn. This is what they did.

  “Look, I appreciate what you did for me with this house.” She took a deep sip of coffee. “You know that.”

  “You’re welcome. Now I’d like to be free of it.”

  “It? Or me?”

  There was no way that Ben was stepping into this. She was twisting the business into something personal between them. It wasn’t. “You were the one who left me.”

  “I threw you out.” She shrugged in reluctant agreement, like it was no big deal.

  “I went of my own accord, Marla,” said Ben.

  “You blubbered.” She picked at something on her cup, avoiding his eyes.

  “I was emotional, yes.” He felt like a door had opened, yet this whole conversation felt like a trap. “Look, don’t you want to start over?”

  “With you?” She seemed horrified at the question.

  “No,” he said, a little too quickly.

  She placed the mug on the counter and folded her arms in front of her. It was a power stance. “I do want to start over in this house. Tell me. Would you really take it from me?”

  “Oh Jesus, Marla.” He perched on a counter stool and noticed that her eyebrow was raised a little, like he shouldn’t be making himself at home in a house he was still paying for.

  “Well? Would you?”

  “No, but I’d love for you to buy me out, just like our divorce agreement said you’d do.”

  “I can’t do that yet. Business isn’t that good right now. I just need a little more time.”

  “You keep saying that. How much more time?”

  She looked like she’d been slapped.

  He sighed. “We’ll talk about it later.” But it was always the same. She wanted the house. Solely. It was to be divided, but she kept stalling on repairs so it couldn’t be listed and now she was saying she was strapped, but from the look of the plants she was buying he wasn’t sure that was the case. He supposed that he could push the issue, but given the public nature of his job, he hadn’t wanted to do that. And she was banking on his silence.

  “I have to go.”

  “You just got here.” Marla’s expression was unreadable. Over the years, he’d found that he could never predict what she’d do. She was always cold, aloof, a stranger. Truth was, they’d jumped into a quick marriage and both felt compelled to make it work when it had become clear that they were different people. He was shocked that it had lasted ten years.

  “Jesus, Marla.” He lowered his voice, not sure why. “I’m ready to move on.”

  “So I see—the entire town sees.” Her voice was cool. “Lara Barnes. Interesting choice—a little young for you. But then you do love a damsel in distress.”

  He turned and waved goodbye to her, knowing that she was still leaning against the counter feeling victorious that she’d driven him out—again.

  As he walked back to the police station, he thought that there hadn’t been any one thing that had broken them up. They’d just grown apart and moved like strangers through the house with nothing to say to each other. The last time they’d had sex, he noticed she kept her eyes closed—she wasn’t there, or at least she didn’t want to be there. And he found he didn’t want to be with a shell of a wife.

  That began a slow move to the spare bedroom, starting with him sleeping on the sofa, then the spare room so as not to wake her as he researched all night. Marla seemed to have the same thought, because she asked him to leave the following month. It had been a shock to him that his stuff was leaving first in suitcases and then black trash bags. The first night in his new apartment, he didn’t even have a sofa or a mattress, and he’d ordered a free pizza from a coupon he’d gotten with his phone hookup.

  But then Todd Sutton went missing and he’d thrown himself fully into the case. To see someone like Lara aching for Todd made him realize that he could have that kind of love, too.

  Lara. Was Marla right in that he liked a damsel in distress? He dismissed the thought, but
he remembered Marla in the months after her mother died and him piecing together her life. Then he did it again with Lara.

  He’d just walked back into the office when his office line rang. Ben picked it up. “Archer here.”

  There was a pause and a crackle. “Ben?” The voice sounded far away. “This is Gaston Boucher. I’m with Lara Barnes here in Paris.”

  “Hey, Gaston.” Ben started tearing open the morning’s mail, sorting the junk from the essentials while he cocked the phone on his neck, but he stopped. Something was wrong or Gaston wouldn’t be calling. “What is it?”

  “Well…” The man stammered.

  “Well, what?” Ben felt his stomach lurch and his blood pressure drop. He almost didn’t want to hear the next thing out of Gaston’s mouth.

  “Lara’s gone missing.”

  “Gone missing?” The police chief in him knew the importance of the next question even if Gaston didn’t. “How long?”

  “Twenty-four hours now.”

  Ben booked the first flight he could get out of Dulles to Charles de Gaulle and hadn’t slept at all. The worst had been the waiting. He’d carried only a duffel bag with the few things he grabbed—an extra pair of jeans, two shirts, a polo, and underwear, but then time slowed and he waited at the gate, on the airplane, and in the taxi line. Now that he was here, he needed to be doing something. Expecting to be furious with Gaston and Barrow, he found that both men appeared not to have slept or showered in days.

  “Espresso?” Gaston suggested.

  Ben shrugged him off. “No. We need to get out and find her.”

  “You’ll never last without it.” Gaston pushed the tiny cup toward him. “And you need to last.”

  “We’ve tried to find her.” The other man, Edward Binghampton Barrow, removed his reading glasses and pushed the composition books toward him. “We think she may have been contacted by Le Cirque Secret. If that is the case, then she isn’t ‘in’ Paris anymore in the literal sense.”