Send in the Clowns (The Country Club Murders Book 4) Read online

  “What you saw was probably part of the act. The goal is to frighten you.”

  Goal achieved. “Clowns are scary enough without knives and blood. Besides, if they wanted to scare me, why knife each other? Shouldn’t they threaten me?” Dead eyes had—sort of—but that wasn’t information I felt compelled to share.

  I crossed the dark room to the popcorn machine, bent and touched the floor. It was sticky with drying blood. “There’s blood on the floor.”

  “Props, ma’am.”

  “And on my sweater? My jacket?”

  A frown disturbed his too-calm demeanor. “The actors aren’t supposed to touch you.”

  “Well, one of the clowns collapsed on me.”

  The guard crossed his arms and pursed his lips.

  Had I convinced him?

  “What was he wearing? We’ll have to write him up.”

  “He won’t care. He’s dead.”

  “Then where’s the body?

  “Maybe the other clown hid it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Why anyone would don a clown suit, much less commit a murder and hide the body, was a mystery to me.

  It was the police’s job to figure that out—well, at least the murder part. “I feel faint.” I didn’t, but now, because I’d lied, my nose itched. “I think I’d better sit down.”

  Now the guard looked concerned. His brow actually furrowed.

  “Is there someplace where I might rest?”

  He held out his arm as if I might not be able to walk without his support. “This way.”

  I took his arm. I even leaned on it. There was no need to let him know I didn’t feel faint, didn’t need a chair, I needed a telephone. And once I got that phone…the security guard might not believe me, but Anarchy would.

  The guard led me to an office near the exit. A board with condemned painted across it covered the door. The guard pulled it open.

  We walked into a modern office. Two desks. File cabinets. Phones. Coffee mugs filled with pens. Actual light that seemed extra bright after the darkness of the haunted house.

  One of the desks was occupied. A woman wearing a turtleneck, a delectable tweed jacket and pearl earrings looked up from a ledger. “Yes?”

  “This lady’s daughter is missing and she says one of our clowns has been murdered. She doesn’t feel well.” What he didn’t say—here’s another lunatic—was louder than his actual words.

  The woman peered over the top of her readers. Her brows drew together. “We only have one clown.”

  They had two. Well, now they had one. One of them was dead and his body was missing. The other one killed him. Not that the security guard believed me. Arguing would get me nowhere. I fluttered my hands near my throat. “May I sit?”

  The woman nodded toward a chair. “Of course. People get scared and imagine things. Is there someone we can call for you?”

  I sat and reached toward the phone. “May I?”

  She pushed the phone across the desk.

  “Thank you.” I inserted my finger in the rotary dial and turned. I’m not sure what it says about me that I have a homicide detective’s home number memorized…

  He answered on the third ring. “Hello.”

  “Anarchy, this is Ellison calling.”

  Seconds ticked away. “Don’t tell me you found a body.”

  “Um…”

  “Unbelievable.” A few more uncomfortable seconds ticked by. He sighed, a so-much-for-Johnny-Carson-haul-yourself-out-of-the-easy-chair sigh. “Where are you?”

  “The Gates of Hell.”

  “Very funny.”

  “No. That’s where I am. It’s a haunted house in the West Bottoms.”

  “I’ll be there in ten. Do not disturb the crime scene.”

  Even as we spoke, teenagers were tromping through his crime scene. And then there was the matter of the missing body...“About that—”

  “Yes?”

  I chickened out. “Never mind. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “Someone’s coming? You’ll feel better when you get home and put your feet up.”

  “She says the clown touched her,” said the guard.

  The woman’s forehead furrowed. “We don’t allow the actors to touch our guests. That’s against the rules.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  I looked down at my navy blue sweater. It was too dark to show the clown’s blood. So was my coat, a Gucci leather trench (I’d watched the thermometer for weeks waiting to wear it until the weather turned cool) that did no better revealing the clown’s bloody handprints. Too bad I wasn’t wearing the khaki Burberry I’d bought in London, then maybe she’d believe me. “I don’t think you can blame the clown. He was dying at the time.”

  She shook her head. “We don’t script dead clowns.” She jotted a note on a legal pad. “Although it’s not a bad idea.”

  “I found it terrifying.”

  The security guard snorted.

  The woman shifted her gaze to him. “You can return to your post.”

  He nodded and slipped out of the office

  “It will probably take a while for your ride to get here. Would you like coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Cream.”

  A Mr. Coffee sat on a small table in the corner. I love Mr. Coffee. He and my father are the two men in my life who’ve never let me down.

  “I go through a lot of coffee. October is nothing but late nights.” She stood, revealing a suede skirt and to-die-for boots, poured me a cup, and brought it to me.

  “Thank you. Have you worked here long?”

  “I own the place.”

  I blinked back my surprise.

  “I’m Priscilla Owens.”

  “Ellison Russell.” I extended my hand.

  We shook and she settled back into her chair. “Your daughter is missing?”

  “She is.” I bit my lower lip. “May I use your phone again?”

  “Of course.”

  She was very nice. I liked her. She wouldn’t be so nice when the police closed her down to investigate a murder.

  I dialed home.

  Grace answered on the second ring. “Mom? Where are you?”

  Thank God. The tightness in my chest loosened. “The Gates of Hell. How did you get home?”

  “I called a cab. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Translation—she’d hoped I’d sleep through her blowing her curfew and she’d be able to sneak in without my noticing.

  “We’ll talk about it when I get home.” Now that I knew she was safe, the urge to kill her tightened my fingers around the receiver.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Cancel your plans for the weekend, Grace.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “Mom, you can’t ground me. It’s the weekend before Halloween. There are a ton of parties.”

  “Too bad.”

  “It’s not fair.” The universal lament of teenagers.

  “Life’s not fair.” The universal answer of worn-thin mothers.

  Grace hung up the phone. Well, she slammed down the phone. I hung up the phone, settling the receiver gently into the cradle. “Thank you for letting me make that call.”

  “My pleasure. It sounds as if she made it home.”

  “She did.”

  “I bet the clown mystery is just as easily solved.”

  It was a good bet—for me. I didn’t take it. Instead, I took a sip of coffee and glanced at my watch. Anarchy would arrive soon and then a real circus would begin.

  Two

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Come in,” called Priscilla.

  A ghoul with skin the color of peat stuck his terrifying head in the office. Not just his head, his neck and shoulders appeared too. It wasn’t as if he was a real ghoul who could detach his pate. “There’th a cop here who theth he’th lookin
g for Ellithon Ruthell.”

  If I had three-inch fangs, I’d probably lisp too.

  Priscilla’s eyebrows scrunched together. “A cop?”

  Anarchy Jones pushed past the ghoul and entered the office.

  Priscilla whipped off her readers and replaced her furrowed brow with the stunned expression most women wear when they first encounter Anarchy. He’s that good looking. Lean face. Coffee brown eyes. An air of danger. Kansas City’s version of James Bond (if James Bond let his hair grow a tad too long and wore plaid pants).

  It was impossible to tell if he even noticed her. His gaze caught mine and held. Then he strode across the floor and crouched next to my chair. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “What are you doing down here?”

  I explained the snafu with Grace’s friends.

  “Have you found her?” He covered my hand with his and some of his warmth seeped into my skin.

  “She took a cab home.”

  “I’m glad she’s safe.” He glanced around the office. “Where’s the body?” His voice lost its soft edges. With a simple shift in tone, he sounded like a cop.

  Priscilla stirred in her chair. “There’s no body. Mrs. Russell got scared and imagined she saw a murder.”

  Anarchy looked at me, a question in his eyes.

  I answered with a tiny nod.

  “If Mrs. Russell says there’s a body, there’s a body. Where is it?”

  “Missing,” I admitted.

  “Missing?” He stood and looked down at me. A frown pulled at the edge of his lips.

  “Missing.” Then I told him about the two clowns and how one of them knew my name.

  He glanced at Priscilla. “Do you have access to personnel files?”

  It must get annoying having people assume you’re a secretary when you’re the owner. I didn’t blame Priscilla for the tightening near her eyes.

  “Priscilla Owens, this is Detective Jones. An—Detective Jones, this is Priscilla Owens. She owns the place.”

  “Detective?” Priscilla paled to the exact shade of one of the ghosts wandering her haunted house.

  “Nice to meet you.” Anarchy extended his hand, waited until she reached across the desk and slid her fingers into his grasp, then executed a quick, no-nonsense shake. “Who plays the clowns?”

  “One clown,” she corrected, her voice as sharp as the knife that had killed the one clown.

  “Who was he?”

  Priscilla stared at the door, not moving, apparently lost in thought. Her pallor did not improve. Seconds ticked by. Long seconds. Finally she stood, smoothed her skirt over her hips, crossed to the file cabinet, and withdrew a slim folder.

  She opened it, squinted, and touched the top of her head as if looking for her glasses.

  “They’re on your desk,” I said.

  “Thank you.” Priscilla snatched her glasses off the ledger, settled them on her nose, and ran her finger down a list. The actor playing the clown’s name was—” her body stiffened and her pale skin took on a near translucent hue “—Brooks Harney.”

  I gasped.

  “You know him?” demanded Anarchy.

  “A bit. I know his parents. Grace and his sister, Camille, are friends.”

  “Country club people?”

  He made belonging to a country club sound like a disease akin to leprosy.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “So what was he doing working here?”

  My friends’ grown children tend to enter medical or law school. That or they launch promising careers at banks or brokerage firms or in commercial real estate. Some work for their father’s companies. A handful tour Europe for a year before coming home and settling into their lives. Brooks had done none of those things. “I didn’t know he was in town. He went off the rails a couple of years ago.”

  “He was an exemplary employee.” Priscilla closed the file and slapped her hand against the top of the cabinet. “Is an exemplary employee. This is ridiculous. Brooks isn’t dead.”

  Brooks was dead.

  “I’d like to see the circus room,” said Anarchy.

  “Fine,” Priscilla huffed. She jammed the file back into the drawer and slammed the drawer shut. “This way.”

  We walked back to the circus room which was now entirely empty of clowns.

  “I told you.” Priscilla crossed her arms over her chest. “Imagination run wild.”

  Anarchy reached into his jacket and withdrew a slender flashlight.

  “Where were you, Ellison?”

  “I backed into that thing.” I pointed at the popcorn machine with the decapitated head grinning at us from its nest of popped kernels.

  Anarchy shone the flashlight on the floor. The shaft of light revealed a pool of liquid.

  He crouched, touched the edge and brought his fingers to his nose. “It’s blood.”

  I bit my lips, keeping the words I told you so locked behind my teeth.

  Poor Priscilla looked ill. Very ill. She leaned against the wall.

  “I’ll need to call this in.” Anarchy stood. “How many people have been through here tonight?”

  “Thousands.” Priscilla’s tone was flat.

  “The crime scene techs won’t like that. We’ll need to interview your employees.”

  Priscilla answered with the smallest of nods.

  “You’ll have to close.”

  She nodded. “It’s almost closing time anyway.”

  “I don’t when know you’ll re-open.

  She tapped her wrist and her watch glowed red. “Tomorrow night. We re-open tomorrow night.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “Listen here, Detective Jones. We make thirty percent of our gross the week of Halloween. If you close me down, you put me out of business.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Anarchy really did look sorry. He lowered his chin and his brow puckered.

  “You don’t even know if Brooks is dead.” She cast a glance worthy of the evil clown my way.

  Poor woman. She was in denial. I offered an apologetic shake of my head. “No pulse.”

  “If ever there was a woman to recognize a dead body, it’s Mrs. Russell.”

  That wasn’t exactly a compliment.

  “There is no body,” Priscilla insisted. “Dead bodies don’t just disappear. I bet he got up and went for help.”

  Anarchy shined his light on the pool of blood on the floor—the lake of blood. “I doubt that. I’ll call the station house, see about getting Mrs. Russell home, and then talk to your employees.” His hand closed on my elbow. “Where’s your car?”

  “The lot.”

  He led me toward the executioner’s room. “I’ll see you again in a few minutes, Mrs. Owens.”

  “Thank you for the coffee,” I said. “And for allowing me to use your phone.”

  She didn’t say you’re welcome. I didn’t blame her. Until I’d shown up in her office she had a viable business. Now she had a warehouse filled with scary props, no customers, and a large payroll (minus one clown).

  The executioner was apparently off grinding his axe, or practicing his menacing grunt, or getting a drink—whatever it was that actors at a haunted house did after the doors closed.

  Anarchy’s steps slowed. “Tell me about Harney.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How did he end up here?”

  I glanced at a wall where fake heads hung on pikes. Anarchy posed a good question.

  “Drugs.” We passed through a torture chamber complete with a rack.

  “A user?”

  “His parents spent a fortune on rehab. It didn’t work. Then they tried tough love.” I could only imagine what tough love from Genevieve Harney felt like.

  “That didn’t work either?”

  We emerged onto the sidewalk and I drew a deep breath of air not tainted by grease paint or fear into my lungs. “Brooks disappeared.”

  The story at the bridge table was that Brooks stole Genevieve’s gran
dmother’s pearls and hocked them. When the Harneys discovered the theft, they gave him a choice—another try at rehab or jail. Brooks selected a third option and left home.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No idea.” When Brooks sank below the surface of the drug culture, his mother rededicated herself to worthy causes and his father worked still more hours. Who knew how Brooks’ brother Robbie—away at college—took the news. Brooks’ sister spent days crying in Grace’s bedroom.

  The rest of us—those who weren’t particular friends with Genevieve and Robert—never mentioned him. At least not to his parents. On occasion his name came up over a rubber of bridge.

  Genevieve and Robert never brought up their oldest son in conversation. Instead, they talked about Robbie—recently graduated from Yale and taking a year to work with his father before entering Harvard Law.

  As for Camille’s soaking tears, Genevieve solved that problem with boarding school.

  “How long has Brooks been away?”

  I stopped and thought. “A year, maybe two.”

  We walked toward my TR6 which sat lonely and vulnerable in the parking lot surrounded by hulking buildings with dark windows. Grit crunched beneath our shoes and a brisk October wind blew leaves and bits of paper along the cracked pavement. The same wind carried the muddy scent of the river that flowed cold only three blocks away. Anarchy tucked my arm in his. “We’ll need you to come to the station tomorrow. Noon?”

  “May I come later?”

  “Why? According to you, there’s been a murder.”

  “My father asked me to play golf with him. We tee off at noon.”

  “There’s been a murder. Can’t you play earlier?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Women aren’t allowed on the course until noon.”

  He considered that for a moment.

  I’d considered it ever since Henry died. I was the member. I paid the club bill. I wasn’t allowed on the course in the morning.

  “Cancel,” said Anarchy.

  I shook my head. “I can’t. Daddy wouldn’t ask me to play golf unless he has something important to discuss. I can be at the station by four thirty.”

  The arm that held mine stiffened, bringing my elbow against Anarchy’s torso. For an instant I imagined I could feel his heart beating.

  “I could come earlier,” I offered.