The Ladies of the Secret Circus Page 3

  Her mother simply shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Yet Lara knew that her mother was lying. Why? “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing,” said her mother, nearly snapping at her. “Lara, I see nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Lara dramatically looked down at her dress. “Really, Mother?”

  “I don’t see him, Lara.” Audrey looked stricken. “I’m sorry.”

  That was impossible. Her mother could see everything. Each transgression Todd had ever made, Audrey smelled on him, like a dog.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Her mother’s voice was low now.

  In hearing those words—I don’t know—something in Lara shifted. The whole place began to sour. She tried to breathe, but the corset in the damned dress stopped her lungs from expanding. She grabbed at the bodice, but it wouldn’t move. Lara concentrated and began to enchant the zipper, feeling her ribs relax as the fabric released. Looking up, she spied Caren Jackson, her maid of honor, standing in the doorway in her lavender taffeta dress, her mouth agape as she watched her friend’s wedding gown appear to unzip itself with invisible hands.

  Lara’s knees buckled and she stumbled into the Baby Jesus doll in his cradle shoved against the wall. Caren pulled her back up, placing her in the regular-size teacher’s chair. Lara began to pluck the baby’s breath sprigs from Caren’s updo, first just the strand that was too close to Caren’s dark-brown eyes, but then another cluster near her ear.

  “Fuck the baby’s breath,” said Caren, who began tugging at the other sprigs, pulling them out.

  Somehow, this absurd gesture made Lara laugh. This situation was ridiculous, really it was. She needed to get herself together. She put her head down almost between her knees to avoid fainting. “What should I do?”

  Caren had been her best friend since their morning kindergarten class. They’d sat together in the tiny chairs in this room as children. Caren crouched down and met her eyes. “I honestly don’t know, but we’ll figure this out.”

  “How could he—?”

  Caren simply shook her head.

  A few minutes later, Fred crept upstairs and whispered to her mother, just loud enough for her to hear. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

  “We need to get her out of here.” Audrey grabbed her hand. “Now.”

  Lara and her mother managed the stairs down to the foyer one step at a time, her father two steps behind them. For the first time in her life, Lara used the handrail. The church door opened. Her heart leapt, hoping it was Todd. Instead, Chet Ludlow, Todd’s best man, muscled through the doors, his face red. The first thing Lara thought was that he’d gotten a terrible haircut for this ceremony and that the pictures would look terrible. And then she remembered, and her stomach lurched. The wedding pictures. There would be many more moments like this in her future, cruel reminders of what didn’t happen today. Her world was about to change to “before” and “after.”

  He seemed surprised to find a clump of people standing in the foyer. He turned to Lara. “I’ve been out looking for him for the last half hour. I swear I have.”

  “And?” It was Caren, her voice firm.

  Chet furiously shook his head. “I can’t find him anywhere.”

  Satisfied he was telling the truth, Lara nodded and pushed through the Gothic wooden double doors with a strength she didn’t know she had. As she stepped outside, through a cruel twist, the sun was now peeking around a soft cloud.

  Hearing steps on the pavement below, Lara looked down to see Ben Archer, Kerrigan Falls’ chief of police. He was out of breath, his uniform rising and falling as if he’d been out for a hard run.

  In this humiliating and intimate moment, she’d hoped to avoid seeing anyone, let alone a perfect stranger, but their eyes met and she could see that he, too, had nothing to report.

  There would be no wedding today.

  Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

  October 10, 2004

  With his phone on vibrate, it took Ben Archer a minute to comprehend the sound he was hearing until it traveled off the nightstand and onto the wood floor, clacking like a child’s windup toy. That woke him up.

  Sweeping his hand under the bed, he retrieved it just as it went to voicemail. Damn. It was Doyle Huggins, his deputy. He hated these new mobile phones. The idea that he was now tethered round-the-clock to Doyle was nearly unbearable. He hit the redial. “It’s six A.M., Doyle.” His voice was low even though he was alone.

  “I know. I thought you’d want to know right away. They’d found a car about an hour ago—Todd Sutton’s car.”

  He felt a lump in his throat. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Doyle. “It’s his car all right.”

  “What about Sutton?” Yesterday Ben had been out looking for the runaway groom for hours.

  “No sign of him yet, but I’m looking.”

  “Where are you?”

  “That’s the fucked-up part.” Doyle seemed hesitant to speak. “I’m standing in the middle of Wickelow Bend.”

  Ben inhaled sharply. “I’ll be right there.”

  He slid out of the warm bed and got dressed quickly. Grabbing coffee at the 7-Eleven, Ben drove across the Shumholdt Bridge with its dramatic view of Kerrigan Falls’ hundred-foot drop.

  Seventy minutes southwest of Washington, DC, Kerrigan Falls was named for the wild and winding Kerrigan River that flowed south another sixty miles. Famous for its large rocks and fallen trees that crossed the small gorge like Pixy Stix, the Kerrigan River ran parallel to the Blue Ridge Mountains that loomed above the town’s tiny skyline.

  At the entrance of both wine and horse country, Kerrigan Falls was surrounded by the lush and humid rolling hills of the Virginia countryside with their old horse farms and new vineyards. In the past ten years, tourists had begun to flock to the area for its quaint downtown, buying up old farms, opening antiques shops and vintage bookstores. In its heyday after the war, the town had been the home of the Zoltan’s Spicy Brown Mustard plant and before that, of the famous (or infamous, depending upon the story) circus, Le Cirque Margot. In the past year, a noticeable shift had happened here. A famous DC chef had opened up a restaurant that had earned a Michelin star. People who once worked shifts at the old mustard plant were now running bed-and-breakfasts in sprawling Victorians, complete with picket fences and porch swings.

  The downtown itself was laid out like a movie set from the 1940s—awnings, sandblasted brick buildings, a state theater, big stone churches at the corners, and Victorian homes all restored with a meticulous devotion. The Orpheum Theatre still showed It’s a Wonderful Life the Saturday before Christmas to a packed house. There was a strange, unnatural perfection to Kerrigan Falls.

  Ben had his own Victorian that he still owned, although he didn’t live in it. According to their divorce agreement, Marla was supposed to buy his half out, yet she’d shown little interest in selling. So he’d taken to stopping at houses with FOR SALE signs in front of them and determining whether the photos of the selling agents looked hungry enough. Any agent they hired would need to navigate between his eagerness and Marla’s reluctance to sell. He glanced down at the passenger’s seat where he’d listed a bunch of real estate agent numbers along with a little cartoon drawing of his own house, shading in the ornate trellis and crepe myrtle tree that adorned the front.

  Honestly, the town was too perfect. Nothing—not a shooting or a robbery or even a petty theft—had happened here. Ben Archer was almost the laughingstock of every police gathering or convention in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Washington Post had written an article about the “Kerrigan Falls Phenomenon” last year in the Style Section. (The Style Section?) If you searched back in the archives—as Ben had many times—the last murder within city limits had been in 1935. The surrounding counties had their share of murders, murder-suicides, and pileups on the highway, but those accidents never crossed the county line, almost so as not to offend Kerrigan County. But there
had been that one case.

  That one case was very much on Ben Archer’s mind this morning,

  Just past the bridge, his car approached the sharp turn in the road that was Wickelow Bend. Beyond the bend began the tree line leading to a strange patch of land aptly named Wickelow Forest. At night, especially in the summer, Ben knew it was hard to see the moon, so thick was the canopy of tall trees. Even now the bright-yellow and red leaves were still lush.

  He pulled in behind Doyle’s patrol car. As he stepped out of the car, his foot sank deep into a chocolate-colored mud puddle. “Shit!”

  Doyle Huggins pointed at the ground. “I should have told you not to park there.” His deputy was leaning against his cruiser. Six-foot-two and rangy with bulging eyes, Doyle Huggins was a man no one would have ever called handsome. He motioned to the car. “The gas company crew found it this morning.”

  And there it sat. Todd Sutton’s white Mustang with the navy-blue center stripes rested cocked half on and half off the road. He’d been looking for this car until two this morning, when he’d finally given up and fallen into bed. God, he dreaded having to call Lara Barnes to tell her this news. There had been whispers that Todd had fled his wedding in this car yesterday; to find it here, abandoned, seemed to change things.

  “Damned gas company nearly smashed into it. Sutton’s registration is the glove compartment.” Doyle was writing something like he was actually attempting to take notes.

  “And Sutton?” Ben angled to get a look at what Doyle was scribbling, convinced it had to be a grocery list.

  Doyle shook his head. “No sign of him.”

  “Call the hospitals,” said Ben. “See if he’s shown up there. I’ll call his parents.”

  “Someone needs to tell Lara Barnes.”

  “I’ll do that,” Ben snapped.

  “I figured.” Doyle spit on the ground. “It’s a nice car.” Doyle was wheezing slightly. His shoes squeaked as he walked over and stood beside him. “The gas company driver says it’s a 1977. He knows stuff like that.”

  “It’s a ’76, Doyle,” said Ben. “Ford Mustang Cobra Two. Same car driven by Jill Munroe on Charlie’s Angels.”

  “A fucking chick car?” Doyle inspected the body of the vehicle with a scowl.

  “It’s a classic, Doyle.” It was as though his deputy was trying to get under his skin this morning. He looked out at the white forest of Wickelow Bend. It was quiet, eerie even, like the forest was holding its breath, waiting for him to leave so it could find peace again. “Have you searched those woods for a body?”

  “A little,” said Doyle. “We need to do a more thorough search, though. We’ll probably need some volunteers.”

  “Okay. I’ll call the state police and see if we can get some sent over, but try to assemble a team to start looking now.” Ben looked up at the span of the Shumholdt Bridge unfolding behind them.

  Wickelow Bend was one of those magic places on the earth. Even standing there in the eighth-of-a-mile bend in the road, Ben could feel its tug. For this very reason, lots of people wouldn’t drive it, choosing the interstate that took them six miles out of their way to avoid this one little patch of road. During the end of World War II, Wickelow Bend had been the entrance to Le Cirque Margot’s office, but when the circus closed in the early 1970s the old road had grown over, the woods erasing all traces. From his father he knew that lots of God-fearing folks in the area had hated the circus at the time, preaching against it to their congregations.

  Now, in the fall, the forest played host to drunken dares. Kids taunted each other to see if they could spend just one night in Wickelow Forest. There were wild tales, like the man who supposedly tied two of his wayward dogs to a tree until he could retrieve his truck, only to find nothing but bones in the morning. Ben thought it probably had been hypothermia, then hungry animals that finished the dogs off, but wondered what ass would tie his dogs to a tree in the woods in the first place. With each passing year, the stories and the stupid dares around the place only grew.

  Ben walked around to the car. “Why don’t you try to pull some fingerprints from the car and see if there is any blood or hair? You do have your kit with you, don’t you? If not, I’ve got some stuff in the back of the car.”

  “Won’t the Staties be pissed? I mean, I’ve never pulled a fingerprint before. We don’t pull fingerprints, Ben. We never need to.” He reached into his back pocket and retrieved a tin of Copenhagen. Ben thought it took him forever to unscrew the lid.

  “Just follow the directions on the kit.” Ben didn’t need him screwing it up. “Never mind. Just go get it and I’ll get the damned prints myself. We need to mark off a circle from about here to that tree and over to that tree and search inch by inch. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

  Ben took out a pair of latex gloves from the back of his car and began searching for the car keys inside the Cobra. They were missing from the ignition. He looked under the floor mats. Nothing.

  “Did you find any keys, Doyle?”

  His deputy appeared in the passenger’s window. “No.”

  “Did you even look?” Ben muttered under his breath and inhaled as he walked around to the Cobra’s trunk to see if there was a manual release button but came up empty.

  Ben got in the backseat and was relieved when he didn’t smell anything decaying. He wasn’t in the right state of mind to find a dead body. Pulling on the backseat, he got a good look inside the trunk. Shining his flashlight into the space, he found it empty.

  “I already looked in there,” said Doyle. “There’s nothing here, boss.”

  “You could have told me that, Doyle.”

  “You didn’t ask,” said the man with a shrug.

  On the passenger’s side of the front seat, GNR and AC/DC tapes littered the floor, and a Burger King wrapper was wadded on the seat. Ben checked the date on the receipt: October 9, 2004 11:41 A.M. The morning of the wedding.

  Ben shut the door and circled the spot, searching for something he was missing about the location. “Why here of all places?”

  “This ain’t no simple stretch of road and you know it, boss.”

  Doyle was right. The other famous case—Peter Beaumont—was a musician who went missing in 1974. Even if people didn’t recall his name or weren’t alive when it happened, Peter Beaumont had been the genesis of the lore connected to Wickelow Bend. He’d gone missing from this very spot, his Nova found running with a quarter tank of gas, 99.7 K-ROCK blaring on the radio, and the driver’s door open for him.

  But there was something even more disconcerting that Doyle didn’t know because it had been left out of the papers. Ben Archer recalled the day Peter’s tan Chevy had appeared here. For the fall, it had been an unusually warm morning. Ben had tagged along with his father, the chief of police, and he could still visualize the car. Todd Sutton’s Cobra II wasn’t just parked in the same general spot, it had been parked at this exact same angle as though it were staged.

  Until he got back to the office and pulled Beaumont’s file, Doyle also wouldn’t connect another common detail between the two. The other car—Peter Beaumont’s car—had been found abandoned here on October 10, 1974.

  Exactly thirty years ago to the day.

  Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

  June 20, 1981

  They were peering down at her.

  “I think I’ve got grass stains?” The man lifted his knee. “Imagine that?”

  “You’ve never had them before?” The woman studied the fabric.

  “Where would I have ever gotten grass stains?” The man’s voice was terse, like he was speaking to an idiot.

  “Well, how would I know?” The woman held a parasol over her head. Then she crouched down, touching Lara’s face. She could see her own reflection in the woman’s mirrored sunglasses. “Do you think she’s fainted?”

  “Elle n’est pas morte,” said the man.

  He didn’t know that Lara spoke perfect French. “I can understand you, you know. I’m defini
tely not dead.”

  “Well, a smart one too.” He flashed a smile.

  Before the pair’s arrival, Lara had been standing out in the field, feeding a carrot to her favorite horse, which her mother had allowed her to name Gomez Addams. She changed the horses’ names quite frequently. Whatever his moniker that day, the horse chomped loudly, exposing his teeth, causing Lara to laugh. It was then she spied them—an odd duo, walking toward her in the middle of the field.

  They were completely out of place in the country. At first, Lara thought they were old performers from Le Cirque Margot. In the summer, performers often got nostalgic for the old days and visited her great- grandmother. She scrutinized the two in front of her. Usually, the old circus folk didn’t arrive in their costumes, but you never knew; they were a strange lot. As the couple got closer to inspect her, Lara could see that they were too young to have performed in Le Cirque Margot.

  He was a tall, slight man, handsome, wearing a white flowing shirt and light-brown pants. Beside him, a blond woman carried a parasol. Lara could hear a slight Southern drawl, and the woman wore a pink sequined costume. She had long legs, like a Las Vegas showgirl. Lara had just seen a Starsky & Hutch rerun on TV where they were in Las Vegas, and this woman definitely looked like those women. Her costume was the most beautiful thing Lara had ever seen. They appeared to be squabbling, because Lara could hear the woman’s voice rise.

  The next logical thought Lara had was that they must be some musician friends of her father’s. Drummers were always coming and going. The man’s hair fell in waves to the top of his shoulders like the men on the album covers in her father’s record collection, but he walked toward her with purpose. And why not use the road? When they got closer, Lara couldn’t see their eyes behind their matching round mirrored sunglasses. The man stopped walking and leaned toward the grade in the hill. He seemed winded.