Before She Dies (16 page)
“Do you know anything about them?” Sinclair said.
“The girl put Charlotte Wellington on edge when they were talking outside the courthouse. Wellington tried to brush the girl off as a pro bono case but there was something more.”
Sinclair folded her arms over her chest. “Isn’t there always something more?”
He frowned. There was so much he did not know about Charlotte. She wasn’t a woman easily rattled, and yet Sooner had done just that. What had she said she wanted him to avoid? Tangles? “Grady’s using the headlines to make hay while he’s in town.”
“Picked a hell of a way to do it.”
“Let’s visit the carnival. Diane’s sister thought she planned a visit there. And if this Grady has somehow stoked this killer’s temper, maybe he’ll show.”
“Far-fetched?”
“What else do we got?” Rokov scanned the article. “The article says the carnival opens at five.”
“I got no plans for tonight.”
Chapter 11
Friday, October 22, 5:15 p.m.
Sooner had missed her one o’clock meeting with Charlotte. And when Charlotte, torn between annoyance and worry, had texted the girl, she’d gotten a few miserly words back.
Sorry. Can you come to carnival tonight?
Sorry. Can you come to carnival tonight?
Charlotte had glared at the text. She’d tapped the phone’s keyboard, the need to remind the girl of manners and professionalism. She should have told Sooner she had a dinner date with a paying client, but she did for the girl what she did for no one else. She capitulated.
So, just after five, she parked in the carnival lot, the sun hovering over the horizon, casting splashes of oranges, yellows, and reds across the sky. She shut off her engine. She stared out the front window at the carnival lights: the Ferris wheel, the giant slide, and the dozens of game huts. She’d forgotten just how lovely the lights could be at night, especially at sunset. The soft glow of the red, white, and green bulbs cast a magical air over the place. Lively organ music drifted out from an overhead speaker.
This place could be magical at night.
She remembered how she dreaded the mornings when she’d lived and worked there. In the hard light of the sun, all the flaws that had been magically whisked away by the night returned. All the soft dewy lines hardened, and what appeared new and delightful became weary and tattered. Even the carnival workers changed with the rising sun. The clowns scrubbed off their painted grins and white faces, and what remained were sullen men who had beer and cigarettes for breakfast. Trash littered the grounds and garbage cans overflowed. The carnies would rise by eight and wearily begin the task of preparing for the next night.
Her mother hated the mornings so much she rarely rose before noon. While her mother slept, Grace, Mariah, and some of the other carnie kids met with a tutor. The other kids had little interest in their studies, but she’d cared. Thankfully, the woman who had tutored them had cared enough to find her books that challenged.
By three her mother would have awakened, drunk several pots of black coffee, and begun to paint her face for the afternoon show. Her mother had been a beautiful woman with a long lean body, full breasts, and rich thick dark hair like Mariah’s and Sooner’s. When she’d begin to outline her eyes, pat the thick theater makeup on her face, and don the rich sparkling purple robe, she’d transform from a frightened woman who could not live her life without a man into an enchantress with all the answers. She’d relished her years as the mysterious Madame Divine. In those hours, she’d tell Grace and Mariah that she was not herself but better and more important.
Grady often said it didn’t take special powers to read people. Just toss out bits of information and see what prompted a reaction. From there the guessing was easy. It didn’t take much to fool people so bloated with hope and curiosity for the future. He’d said her mother could read anybody, but she was no psychic.
But as the years passed and life on the road took its toll, their mother began to break down, not psychically but mentally. She suffered wild shifts in moods, laughing hysterically in one moment and crying in the next. Grady had left her to her own moods until they had interfered with gate receipts.
Her last night in the mystic’s tent had been nearly tragic. She’d been having more and more trouble distinguishing the real from the unreal, and when a young man had entered the tent, she’d taken one look at him and screamed. She’d called him evil—the devil’s son. She’d lunged for him.
Grady, thankfully, had been close, and he’d caught her before she’d done the man any damage. Grady had loaded the guy up with free ride and food tickets and told him she’d never read again.
Her mother had wailed in her trailer that night until Grady had brought her a drink laced with something that knocked her out. Two days later her mother had died of a stroke and Grady had told a grieving Grace and Mariah and that it was time they became Madame Divine. Grace had been thirteen and Mariah had been fourteen.
And so on alternating nights, they’d each donned the eyeliner, the thick face paint and the purple robe, and taken a seat in the tent. And like their mother before them, they learned to read body language.
Grace, more than Mariah, had become adept at determining when someone sought a bit of fun and when they needed answers to find meaning and hope in their lives. She’d fended off drunken men and boys thinking to score with a carnie girl. She’d stopped thieves who wanted to steal from her till. A woman who’d resented her advice had even punched her in the face and knocked her off her chair onto the dirt floor.
“God, but I hate this place,” she muttered as she stared at the lights.
She didn’t want any part of this old life. Grace Wells was dead and buried. And yet, as she stared at the main entrance, it felt as if the last eighteen years had never happened.
The place had not changed a whole lot in that time. She could see that Grady had upgraded a couple of the rides and he’d created new games: the rifle shot was classic, but the petting zoo was new.
Straightening, she moved toward the ticket booth and pulled out her wallet. “How much to enter but not ride the rides?”
“All tickets are twenty-five dollars.” The boy in the booth looked about seventeen. He had a dark crop of hair, a red carnival T-shirt, and his left ear had been pierced six or seven times with brightly colored studs. A few modest tattoos dotted his arms, but she imagined by the time he was twenty or twenty-five, they’d be covered.
“It’s twenty-five dollars even if I don’t want to ride the rides?”
“Don’t matter. It’s a flat rate.” He glared at her as if he’d dealt with a million people haggling down the price. And no doubt this kid had seen more than his share of the public. If she knew Grady, he’d put him to work by the time he was twelve.
She pulled a twenty and a five from her wallet and handed them to the kid.
He raised a rubber stamp and rubbed it into a pad of red ink. “I need your right hand.”
Reluctantly, she extended her hand and watched as he marked her white, slightly freckled skin with the red circular mark. She withdrew her hand, already anxious to remove the mark.
“Show that at each ride. That’ll prove you’ve paid and they’ll let you on.”
She could have explained again that she had no intention of riding any rides but didn’t bother. He didn’t care. He had his money.
As she stepped into the carnival, she was assailed by so many familiar smells. Cotton candy. Popcorn. The funnel cake. Crisp fall air carrying the hint of grease paint.
She tucked her patent leather purse under her arm and walked over a dirt path deeper into the carnival. Lively organ music mingled with the peel of laughter from the children who’d boarded one of the evening’s first Ferris wheel runs. Automatically, she glanced beyond the bright lights and lines of people to the man who operated the equipment, wondering if she recognized him.
For a moment his face was turned from hers as he held one hand on the machine’s lever as another fished in his jeans pocket for a cigarette and lighter. He popped the smoke in his mouth and lit it. In the dim light she studied the lined profile and rawboned features. She thought she knew him but wasn’t so sure. The man she’d remembered had been lean and wore his thick hair loose around his shoulders. He’d had broad shoulders and a swagger when he walked. This guy just looked haggard, world-weary, and old.
She turned from the Ferris wheel and moved toward the brightly colored tents that housed the games. Ring toss. Basketball throw. Duck hunt. She’d played them all a million times and had gotten good enough to toss the rings just off center enough to compensate for the bottle’s slightly tilted position. She knew which ducks had the winning number on the underside. She could even throw the basketball well enough to win an overstuffed bear, which come daylight would show signs of having been hauled from city to city.
She spotted the gold and red tent of Madame Divine and for a moment just stared. It hadn’t changed at all and she half expected her mother to walk out and smile at her.
Costumed figures wandered the carnival. Ghosts, goblins, and vampires. According to both articles, Grady’s carnival featured a Halloween theme in October. Clowns transformed into ghouls, the Ferris wheel became haunted, and the cotton candy turned pumpkin orange.
She passed by a funnel cake display when a guy dressed as Frankenstein stopped in her path. He growled and held up his hands.
“Thank, pal, but I’m not in the market for a fright.”
He held up his arms and growled louder.
“Find a kid or a guy trying to impress a girlfriend.”
Frankenstein’s gaze lingered on hers, and this close she could see that his green paint did not stretch all the way to his collar, leaving a white strip of human flesh exposed. He growled and held up his hands higher.
“Look, pal, buzz off.”
Frankenstein cocked his head, and then laughed.
“Mind telling me what the joke is all about?”
“You,” the monster said in a clear Southern drawl. “I never thought I’d see you here ever again.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Excuse me?”
His eyes sparked with recognition and surprise. “Grace Wells, right?”
It was bad enough having Grady utter her old name, but to have someone else speak it—someone she did not know—was more unsettling. “Who are you?”
He scratched the back of his neck, making his black wig shift a little. “Guess it’s hard to tell with the getup. It’s me, Obie Penn.”
“Obie Penn.” She scrambled through her memory and produced the image of a young man who had stood tall with broad shoulders. He’d had lean hips and auburn hair that brushed his collar. Grace had had a thing for Obie, who’d been five years her senior. Once he’d even managed to coax her behind the tent and get his hand up her shirt before Grady had caught them. Grady had been furious and had said he’d cut Obie’s nuts off if he ever touched Grace again. Obie had backed off. Grace had been horrified. They’d never gone behind the tent again. But she’d been angry, and the seeds of rebellion had been sown.
“Obie, how are you?” His long calloused palm wrapped around her outstretched manicured fingers. She looked a little closer and recognized the brown eyes that had made her forget caution long ago.
He grinned. “You look great.”
“Thanks.”
He hesitated before he released her hand. “I always figured you’d end up living the high life. Grady said you were always meant for big things, and I guess he was right.”
Grady had said that about her? All she remembered was the old man barking at her about being difficult. “You look good, too. I mean from what I can see.”
He laughed, flashing small, yellowed teeth. “I’m usually not this green around the gills. Grady’s got me working the costumes this week because the regular guy got arrested for drugs in Roanoke, Virginia.”
In the carnival, everyone had to be prepared to fill in for anyone else. She’d worked the ball toss and even run the Ferris wheel for a few days around her fifteenth birthday. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Ah, well, it wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.” He planted a hand on his hip. “So what brings you here? I think you are about the last person I’d expect to see here.”
“Just curious, I guess.”
“So what do you do now? Married to some fat cat?”
“I’m an attorney.”
“And I’m still here.”
Face makeup had already begun to dip into crow’s feet etched deep by the sun. What would she have looked like if she’d stayed? Hardened to the point of being unrecognizable. Crazy like her mother. “Wow. Do you like it?”
“Can’t complain.”
“So what do you do when you’re not scaring kids?”
The paint on his face cracked a fraction when he smiled. “Grady’s got me managing the games most nights. I’ve got six I oversee.”
“That’s great. Sounds like it keeps you busy.”
“Oh, it does.”
She glanced around at the growing crowd. “Have you seen Grady?”
“He’s probably working the rifle shot. Or maybe he’s busting on the ghouls. Most were hung over and moving slow this afternoon.”
“Never a dull moment.”
“Not here.”
An awkward silence settled between them. Whatever they’d once had in common had vanished over the last eighteen years. “It was good seeing you, Obie.”
“You, too, Grace.”
“I go by the name
Charlotte
now.”
Charlotte
now.”
He eyed her for a moment. “Fits you and your fancy new look. But I can’t say I like it.” He leaned forward a fraction. “I like the plump little Grace who wasn’t afraid to go behind the tent with me.” His breath smelled of cigarettes and pizza.
She inched back and didn’t hide the shiver of disgust too well. “She’s long gone, Obie. I’m Charlotte now. So don’t call me Grace.”
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