Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

I hung Conrad’s coat on a metal clothes rack and helped myself to a stick of chewing gum from a selection in a hat box on a table.

I said, “It’s been several weeks, hasn’t it?”

“You been busy with your cats and dogs, I guess.”

“I really am, Jo. About all I do is get up and walk dogs and clean kitty litter, and then it’s time to go back and do it all over again.”

“Well, we love you anyway, even if we never hardly see you.”

I chomped down on the gum and tasted its sweet juices flowing over my tongue. I hadn’t chewed gum since high school, and I wondered why I’d ever stopped. The baby gave me a toothless grin, and I went over and fluffed the blond floss on the top of her head.

I said, “Have you heard about Conrad Ferrelli?”

“About a million times. His brother sending his coat back?”

The baby squealed and bounced her bottom up and down, looking up at me with wide trusting eyes.

I said, “His wife sent the coat back. But she said to be sure and tell you how much Conrad loved it.”

“Then why’s she sending it back?”

Resisting the urge to pick the baby up, I said, “So somebody else can wear it.”

“I was hoping she’d bury him in it.”

I couldn’t tell if she meant she was glad Conrad was dead, or if she meant she’d like him to spend eternity wearing the coat she’d made for him. The baby lost her balance and plunked down hard on the playpen’s padded floor. She began to cry, and Priscilla jumped up and came to calm her. Feeling slightly guilty for overstimulating the baby, I moved out of the way and stood beside the cloth dummy. My chewing gum seemed to be getting stringy and sticking to my back teeth. All the sweet juiciness in it was gone too.

I said, “Why did you think his brother would send the coat back?”

Josephine cast an evaluative eye toward Priscilla and the baby, then picked up the garment she was steaming and shook it out.

“Denton Ferrelli hates the circus and everybody connected to it. He didn’t want Conrad to give all that money to build a home for circus people. If he has his way, it won’t happen now.”

The baby stopped crying and Priscilla went back to her sewing machine. Josephine looked up with an approving glint in her eye. Josephine was not one to pay somebody for time spent placating a crying baby.

I said, “I thought the circus retirement home was a done deal.”

“Done except for being done. Denton Ferrelli did everything he could to put a stop to the clown school Conrad built, but that wasn’t anything compared to the retirement home. Now that Conrad’s gone, we think the home probably won’t happen.”

By we , I assumed she meant the circus community.

The baby had found a pacifier and curled up with it in her mouth. Priscilla looked relieved and bent over her work. She looked young enough to be doing junior high homework, but anybody that careful with a baby gets high marks from me.

I said, “I didn’t even know there was a clown school.”

“You think people just get born clowns? People train, they train damn hard. You see some clowns onstage doing a skit that takes maybe five minutes, you better know they’ve probably spent fifteen hours planning every move. It’s choreographed, just like a dance.”

I wallowed the gum around in my mouth and wished I hadn’t started chewing it. I felt like a cow chewing her cud. Whatever a cud is.

“Do you know anybody except his brother who had a problem with Conrad?”

“You think it was a circus person that killed him?”

From her sewing center, Priscilla stopped stitching and raised her head and looked at me. The baby’s eyes were at half mast, and she was making little humming sounds to herself. I tucked the gum into the back corner of my gums and started working my way toward the door.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, it wasn’t, I can tell you that. Every clown in this town loved Conrad Ferrelli, and so did all the other circus people. He was one of us, you know.”

I’d never looked at Conrad that way, but now that I thought about it, I supposed the way he dressed was a way of being a clown. The baby’s eyes closed all the way, and I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to wave bye-bye to her. It’s enough to make Superman puke, what a pushover I am for babies.

In the Bronco, I wadded a tissue around the used gum and tossed it in the trash bag before I headed for the diner. I waved to Judy when I came in the door, then made a quick detour into the ladies’ room. Tanisha had left the kitchen and was with another woman at the sinks, both of them wide as Volkswagens. When I was little, I always hoped I’d wake up one morning with satiny chocolate skin like theirs. It was a major disappointment when my grandmother broke the news that I would always be plain vanilla.

Tanisha and my brother are the best cooks in Florida. When it comes to pastries, Tanisha’s got Michael beat hands down because he doesn’t bake at all. Tanisha would probably have a slightly smaller butt if she didn’t, but then she wouldn’t be Tanisha.

She gave me a dimpled smile when I came in and pulled a brown paper towel from the dispenser. She said, “This here’s my sister Diva.”

“Hi, Diva, I’m Dixie.”

Diva turned off her faucet and shook water from her fingertips. She and I grinned at each other, but we didn’t shake hands. Women don’t shake hands in the restroom. I’ll bet men don’t either. I can’t imagine them turning from a urinal to shake somebody’s hand. Ick.

Diva had on a khaki skirt made of enough material to cover a truckload of oranges. She also wore a waffle-knit black shirt with a collar and front pocket. Her shirt wasn’t tucked in but hung loose over her enormous hips. I knew that shirt. It was a twin to the one Paco wore every night when he left on his current undercover job.

Tanisha handed her sister a paper towel and said, “Me and Diva was just talking about how she ought to kick her husband’s sorry ass out.”

Diva giggled. “It’s the truth. He don’t do nothing but get my butt wet, and I can do that myself in the tub.”

I didn’t even want to think about how he got her butt wet. I was more interested in what she was wearing.

I said, “Where do you work, Diva?”

She wadded her damp paper towel and tossed it in the bin on the wall. “Well, that’s the thing. That no-call thing has really cut down on work, you know? I used to could pull in maybe twelve-thirteen dollars an hour, what with them giving a dollar for every sale on top of the seven dollars an hour. I mean, that’s good money, you know, and they paid the dollar bonuses in cash. But now they got that no-call list, and we can’t hardly call nobody, so I’m back to seven dollars an hour, period. I can’t live on that. I got bills to pay.”

Tanisha walked to the door and pulled it open. “Your old man don’t work! He don’t help pay them bills. What’s that got to do with it?”

Diva headed for the door, heaving a sigh that made her bosom expand alarmingly. “Yeah, I know, but what if I get laid off? Where else am I gonna make even seven dollars an hour?”

At the door, she looked back and smiled at me. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks, you too.”

The door shut behind them, and I headed for a stall. Now I knew Paco was working as a telemarketer. Half of me wished I didn’t know that much about his undercover work, and the other half wished I knew a lot more. He was going every night to a job where people made unwelcome telephone solicitations to people’s homes. He was wearing a wire. What the heck was he hoping to pick up? It didn’t make any sense.

I scarfed down my usual eggs and home fries and biscuit. I drank my usual three cups of coffee. I thought my usual thoughts. Except now my usual thoughts were crowded with some unusual ones that had to do with Paco’s undercover job and the person who’d been driving Conrad Ferelli’s car. Josephine had said Conrad Ferrelli’s brother hadn’t wanted him to give money to support a retirement home for circus professionals. Maybe he had killed Conrad to stop him from putting millions into that foundation. Maybe Denton Ferrelli wanted the money for himself.