The Ladies of the Secret Circus Read online

  Cecile, who had been on the road touring, moved back and took over much of the care of Audrey, letting her manager run the circus in her absence. Le Cirque Margot continued to thrive through the 1960s when Audrey picked up trick riding like Cecile and her mother, working the shows each summer. In 1972, when Audrey made it clear that she didn’t want a life on the road, Cecile, then seventy-two years old, decided it was time to retire the show. For years, ticket sales had been lagging, since families had other forms of entertainment. The age of the circus—and Le Cirque Margot—was at an end.

  Now Le Cirque Margot lived on only in memorabilia. Posters and signs with Margot’s face could be found all over Kerrigan Falls. The historical society had an entire collection of circus memorabilia as well as original Zoltan’s mustard jars.

  A jolt of nostalgia for Cecile gripped her, and she grabbed the frame. Her mother was right. This painting should be with her. She’d get Gaston Boucher working on it as soon as possible.

  Walking the block down from her house to Main Street, she stopped off at the Feed & Supply Coffee House, needing caffeine before a three-hour evening shift. Shortly after Lara had purchased the radio station, Caren opened Kerrigan Falls’ only coffeehouse in the old hardware store next door to 99.7 K-ROCK. Feed & Supply was one of the new businesses that thrived due to the Washington, DC, transplants who’d moved out to the country and expected things like lattes, red velvet cake, and artisanal breads.

  As the bell jingled overhead, Lara noticed that things were slow for a Wednesday evening. Caren was constantly suffering local college students who ordered only a tall drip coffee and sat for four hours on a sofa just for the new Wi-Fi. From the looks of it, she had four students and a book club tonight. The book club seemed to have an assortment of cakes and drinks with whipped cream, so that was a good sign.

  The old hardware store was long and narrow with wide oak planks on the floor and a tin ceiling. Caren and Lara had removed the counter from the old pharmacy that had once stood in the space now occupied by the 99.7 K-ROCK studio and lugged it on two borrowed dollies over to the coffeehouse. It was a perfect fit along the wall, and Caren displayed scones and muffins there in covered glass domes. Then they scoured thrift shops and estate sales up and down Route 29, finding old velvet sofas and vintage leather chairs. The look was like a smoking room with deep jewel tones, brown wood, and aged leather—Lara had been pleased that such a mismatch of furniture styles could blend this well.

  As she paid for her drink, Lara spied a Ouija board on the coffee table—not a Parker Brothers board, but an antique one that she didn’t recognize.

  “Where’d you get that?” She pointed to it.

  “Isn’t it great? I’m thinking we have a séance some night after close.” Caren placed the lid on Lara’s white mocha. “A customer donated it to the shop. It doubles as a tray.”

  Lara did notice the sides of the board scooped upward. “Who was it?”

  “Dunno,” said Caren with a shrug. “Some blond woman. She looked familiar, though I’m not sure from where.” Caren raised her eyebrow. “Please tell me you’re not still freaked out by Ouija boards?”

  “No,” said Lara, not convincing anyone.

  “You’re such a baby. They’re just board games, like Clue.”

  “They are nothing like Clue!” Lara eyed the Ouija board. Lara’s magic had “come in” during a sleepover at Caren’s when Lara was six. As a prank, Caren’s older sister and her friends tried to scare the younger girls with a séance. Instead Lara had moved the board with her mind, scaring six teenage girls, sending them squealing through the house. It had been the first time Lara had made a “correction.”

  As if reading her thoughts, Caren said, “My dad said it was static electricity that moved the board. It happens all the time.”

  “It does not happen all the time, Caren.” After Caren watched her unzip her own wedding dress with magic, Lara knew that her friend was growing suspicious; she was probably connecting all the weird things she’d witnessed over the years.

  “What was the name that appeared on the board? The one that had you so freaked.” Caren looked up. “Alta…”

  “Althacazur.” Lara snatched the cup from the counter. It was a name that she had never forgotten. Lara had asked the board who was there and “Althacazur” had been the response.

  “Betsy was going to name her cat Althacazur, but you were so freaked out that you cried. Those were fun times.” Caren looked at the painting leaning next to the sofa. “How did you get that thing?”

  “My mother,” said Lara. “She’s cleaning and thinks it would look perfect in my dining room.”

  “Or here,” said Caren. “Would look great next to the leather Chesterfield over there.” Caren pointed toward the book clubbers, who had thick copies of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell on their laps.

  “It’s an heirloom,” Lara said with a sigh. “I’ll put it up for a little while then gift it to you. Gaston Boucher is going to make the frame a little less… well, just a little less…”

  “Yeah, a little less would be nice.” Caren nodded gravely.

  Lara headed past the Ouija board a little too quickly on her way to the door. She could hear Caren giggle behind her.

  “You’re so mean,” said Lara as the door shut behind her.

  She crossed the street and opened the door to Gaston Boucher’s frame shop. Another bell rang overhead. Why did everyone in Kerrigan Falls need to announce their door was opening? It wasn’t like crime ever happened here. Despite the old-fashioned touch of a bronze bell, the inside of the gallery was sleek. White framed prints in all sizes were arranged in neat stacks that leaned against the wall, with sleek laminate counters and up-lighting. Two chrome Wassily Chairs with brown leather were gathered around a small glass table with hulking art books in the center.

  Dressed casually in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves pushed up above his elbows, Gaston Boucher was leaning over his work desk studying a piece of paper rather intently. A slight man, he had blond wavy hair that fell below his chin while he worked and round tortoiseshell glasses perched on his nose. His face was stern, like he was a philosophy professor grading a poor paper.

  “I heard you were bringing me something.” Gaston didn’t look up, his French accent slight. He held up a small painting to the light and studied it intently.

  “Well, that depends. Are you going to try to talk me out of reframing it?” Lara struggled to hold up the heavy painting, which was only about two feet wide by two feet long. She could hear a promotional jingle for 99.7 K-ROCK playing and was touched that he was piping the radio station into the gallery. She’d taken Gaston for a techno or Velvet Underground fan.

  “I’ve always thought that frame overpowers what is an unusually intriguing painting.” Gaston peered over his glasses, abandoning the photo he’d been working on. “So, non.” He motioned for her to hand it to him.

  Lara had suspected something was going on between Audrey and this man. That Gaston had opinions about this painting meant he’d seen this painting at her mother’s house.

  “The thing has to be made of solid gold.” He reached over and easily lifted the painting from her hands, then turned the frame over and studied each corner.

  While he worked, Lara walked the perimeter of the gallery.

  From Audrey, Lara learned that he’d graduated from the Sorbonne, then knocked around New York City for years trying to make his mark as a punk rock guitarist. When his music career hadn’t taken off, he began working as a painter, then a photographer living in Chelsea back in the late 1970s. The photos of Gaston with famous people—Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Gary Numan, Debbie Harry, and Chris Stein—seemed to support this claim. In them Gaston’s hair was spiky and he wore a suit with a thin black tie like a member of Devo.

  He had a section of equine paintings. Also from Audrey, Lara knew that this was how he’d met her mother. Years ago, when he was still living in New York, he’d purchased a horse from Audrey. While
driving the horse out of Kerrigan Falls, he noticed that there was an old art gallery for sale. He bought the place, tossing out most of the hotel-lobby-inspired fruit bowl paintings and bad landscapes and replacing them with more modern works that he brought in regularly from New York. He also had a robust wedding and graduation framing business that Lara imagined paid the bills nicely.

  After making a full circle around the shop, she leaned over the desk, a tall, long worktable. “What do you think?”

  “It’s older than I thought.” He turned on a light and slid the frame under it. “Audrey said this was her grandmother’s painting.”

  “Yes. It’s her grandmother, my great-grandmother, Cecile Cabot. That’s her riding the horse in Paris.”

  Taking a loupe, Gaston studied the corner. “I hadn’t noticed this before. Odd.”

  “What?” Again, the before implying he’d studied this painting at length.

  “The painting is signed EG.” He pulled away and handed her the loupe. “See.”

  “And?” Lara looked at the signature. It was, indeed, signed EG.

  “Well.” Gaston took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt. “It’s unlikely, but this signature does resemble Émile Giroux’s. This painting is from the 1920s, non?”

  “Yes, that’s about right.”

  “This would be the correct time frame as well as the correct location for Giroux. It’s just that…” He stopped and turned his head, looking at the painting at an angle. “Again, I highly doubt it. This painting was probably some street artist, but there were rumored circus paintings by Giroux. Lost paintings—three of them—Les Dames du Cirque Secret. It’s an odd coincidence.”

  “You’re saying this painting might be famous?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I’m going to contact Edward Binghampton Barrow to see if the paintings are all accounted for. The lost thing is always a bit of an exaggeration. Usually they’re just in some private collection. This is probably just a cheap copy.”

  “Edward Binghampton?” Lara laughed out loud struggling to recall the third name.

  “Barrow,” said Gaston, clarifying. “Binghampton Barrow.”

  “That’s a ridiculous name.”

  “Troisième,” he said, smiling. “Or is it quatrième—as you say it, ‘the fourth’? I can never remember. Anyway, there’s a whole mess of Edward Binghampton Barrows, but this particular one has done most of his work on French Jazz Age painters. A few years ago, he wrote the only biography that exists of the painter Émile Giroux. So if anyone will know if this painting is one of his, it would be Teddy.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “We studied at the Sorbonne together. His mother was a famous Nigerian model who used to hang with Warhol. In our youth, his mother’s cachet could get Teddy and me into some terrific parties in Paris. His father, the rather stodgy Earl of Campshire, would often have to get us out of any trouble, but it was a marvelous existence.” Gaston grinned, turning the painting over and bending over it, again studying the frame carefully. It was gold-carved with inlaid flowers that looked to have once been red but were now faded brown. “While I’m not a fan of this frame for this picture, I think it might be quite valuable—an original even.”

  “Let me know what you find,” said Lara. “I think I’d like it more if it was framed in something like this.” She pointed to a simple gold frame.

  He nodded. “I’ll call you when I hear something from Teddy or have something to show you.”

  Hearing the bell’s off-key clang, Lara turned to see a petite chestnut-haired woman making a beeline toward Gaston. Recognizing her as Marla Archer—the recent ex-wife of police chief Ben Archer—Lara stepped out of the way as the woman approached Gaston and gave him a kiss on each cheek. Marla Archer quickly shifted her gaze to Lara as though she were a potted plant that was in the way.

  “Hello,” she said brightly. “So sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

  “This is Lara Barnes,” said Gaston.

  “Oh,” said Marla in that tone. Her eyes softened. It was the look of pity that Lara was used to by now.

  “Well,” said Lara, giving a final nod to Gaston. “Call me when you find out something, Gaston.”

  “That’s quite a painting,” said Marla, pushing her shoulder-length hair out of the way to get a closer look at it.

  “It needs a new frame,” said Gaston. “But we’re taking care of that.”

  As Lara turned the knob, she heard Marla exclaim, “That’s gorgeous.” Lara turned to see that Gaston was holding up a frame with one of her recent photographs, the painting now forgotten. Marla was one of only two photographers in Kerrigan Falls. That Marla had taken her high school graduation portrait and still didn’t recall her until Gaston’s prompting didn’t exactly make Lara feel memorable. Over the years, she’d been introduced to Marla several times, but it seemed the woman didn’t recall her until the connection with Todd was made. It was tough when the only thing you were known for was not getting married. But her mother was right. Lara came from a long line of strong women. She would weather this. Thinking about the painting, Lara realized she really would like to see it hanging in her dining room.

  As she shut the door behind her, she wondered what she would do if she found out the painting was valuable.

  Only in the quiet of the night, when Lara worked alone at the radio station, did she feel she’d learned the rhythms and creaks of the place, the music of old boards and rusted nails giving way. It was only then that she felt it was truly hers. After the sale, and at the urging of her father, she’d stopped doing the overnight shift to focus on the business side of things—which had sorely needed her attention—but she liked to do the occasional night and overnight shifts. Now her day was a constant stream of spreadsheets and advertising numbers, so she liked to get behind the booth and remember why she loved this station. Tonight she was filling in for the seven-to-ten shift.

  As she came through the door, she was surprised to find her father still in the studio. He was sitting on the floor, a fan of albums spread around him.

  “Looking for something?”

  “I’m doing the Laurel Canyon sound tomorrow night.” There seemed to be an order to the scattered albums, and he kept swapping them out. He looked like a teenager on his bedroom floor.

  “Not enough David Crosby?”

  “Too much Crosby,” said Jason, his face stern. “Not enough Joni Mitchell.”

  Lara made a face behind his back. She wasn’t as big a Joni Mitchell fan as her father. “How about Buffalo Springfield? Maybe ‘Expecting to Fly’? Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

  From the corner of her eye, she could see him smile. He was always proud when she knew her music.

  Jason stood up, knees cracking, and plunked himself heavily in his desk chair, which faced hers.

  Housed in the old Main Street pharmacy, 99.7 K-ROCK’s focal point in the office was a giant stained-glass mortar and pestle that had once been centered over the bar. At some point, the glass at the top of the pestle had fallen out and been replaced by a wad of kelly-green tape.

  Their desks sat in what used to be the candy aisle. As a kid, Lara and her friends raced to this very spot to grab a small paper bag and fill it to the top with Swedish Fish, salty pumpkin seeds, SweeTarts, and her favorite, the now unpopular fake Winston candy cigarettes.

  Growing up, it had been nice having a somewhat famous father. His band, Dangerous Tendencies, had cut two studio albums in the late 1970s. He still had a lot of fans who wrote him, so they’d created a weekly syndicated radio show on music of the ’70s across twenty-seven radio stations in the US, Europe, and Japan. It was a lucrative contract and gave her father a new fan base. Advertising was up and between the two of them, the radio station venture was beginning to work. The station still hadn’t turned anywhere near a profit yet, so she was making payroll with the money she had left from her grandfather’s inheritance. She calculated how long she had to turn around the business—ab
out fifteen months.

  While some radio stations had cushy budgets and their on-air talent didn’t have to load reel-to-reel tapes or handle the production of their own shows, 99.7 K-ROCK was assembled on a shoestring. From the tattered purple velvet sofa in the waiting room to the records housed in the old display donated from the long-closed G. C. Murphy store where she used to go and buy Donna Summer albums with her allowance money, everything looked like it had been patched together. It made you feel that one wobbly old switch could feasibly shut off the station, sending the place into some sort of silent history. Yet there was a faded elegance to the building that Lara admired. Everything had earned its place here. Even her. It was this station that had saved her in her darkest hours.

  The day she’d closed on the business, she and Jason had come here together, sitting amid the dust, the faint smell of old antiseptic and drug compounds still clinging to the space. He took out a photo and slid it across the floor to her. It was an old photo of a band—three members. It was a funny pose, like they were preening for an album cover. Even before he’d pointed Peter Beaumont out to her, she’d known who he was. The trio was assembled down near the Kerrigan River against the rocks—but the man crouching in the middle was pulling the photographer’s eye to him. Jason and the third man were neatly assembled around the subject—orbiting him even—but it was clear they were supporting characters. Lara realized just how powerful a photo could be to sum up things that people couldn’t articulate. Her father could have spoken for hours about Peter Beaumont and wouldn’t have been able to explain this. Peter had been the focal point of the band. From the photo, she knew he was talented, too. His shoulder jutted out, just a bit, displaying a type of youthful cockiness that comes with knowing you have talent. He wasn’t as tall as Jason, who hunched a little in the picture, but they looked like they could have been brothers.