Clowns and Cowboys (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

“You want us to find her, don’t you?” Miranda snapped at him.

“Sure, sure. I just thought…never mind.”

Once more Parker slipped gloves out of his pocket. Miranda put hers on and handed a pair to Sam. “Here. And be careful not to move anything.”

“Okay,” Sam grumbled, pulling them on.

She was tempted to give Sam a quick lecture on crime scene contamination, but it would probably be wasted.

Instead she turned and followed Parker inside.

###

Layla’s trailer had a faint musty smell mixed with the scent of girlish perfume. Like Tupper’s place last night, all the windows were shut. The A/C was on but not set very low. The place was sweltering.

Miranda switched on an overhead light. “Electricity’s still on.” Not that that meant much.

“It’s supplied by UBT,” Sam told her.

Okay, it meant the circus didn’t consider her missing. Yet.

She strolled through the place hunting for any sign of what had happened to its occupant.

This RV was smaller and had light-colored fake wood cabinetry. On the opposite side a foldout couch had been left open under a shaded window, the sheets and blankets rumpled on the mattress.

Miranda searched a tiny closet in a cramped corner while Parker went through the storage space under the bed. Sam stood in a corner using his camouflage cowboy hat for a fan. She was glad he was keeping out of the way.

She found several skimpy, glittery costumes, leotards in an assortment of colors. White, blazing reds, flaming pastels in a tie-dyed pattern. Ballet slippers, stilettos, a boa. A couple of dresses, but no jeans or Ts or every-day clothes of any sort. Nothing like she’d seen in the casual photos in Tupper’s place.

No suitcase.

“Blankets and towels in here.” Parker closed the under-the-bed drawer and straightened.

“Did you see a duffle bag in there?” she asked him.

“None whatsoever.”

A narrow chest stood on the other end of the bed. Miranda picked her way over to it and opened the drawers one by one. Stage makeup, a big handheld mirror, more fancy, glittery hosiery that seemed to go with the costumes in the closet.

No underwear.

She shut the last drawer and looked around.

Sam ogled her as if he were outraged she was violating Layla’s privacy. She ignored him.

On the other end of the space stood a small laminate computer desk. She and Parker took that next. No sign of any equipment. No cell phone left behind. Stray papers and receipts stuffed in the drawers along with a paperback romance novel. No pictures of Layla and Tupper like they’d found in the clown’s place. Maybe they’d kept them all in the album. Maybe she took them with her.

Miranda left Parker to sort out the sales slips while she examined the kitchen.

Small stove and sink next to the desk. No dishes in it. Nothing on the counter but a dry dishtowel neatly folded. She opened a cupboard overhead. Whole wheat cereal, organic oatmeal, a bag of tortilla chips. Pretty normal fare.

Miranda picked it up and checked the date. Not that old. She went to the fridge. Water bottles, a jar of sweet pickles, sandwich fixing. A Styrofoam container of leftovers from a Mexican restaurant. She opened it and gave it a sniff.

Also not that old. Other than her job, it looked like the woman led an ordinary life.

“You satisfied?” Sam said as if he’d won some kind of victory. “She’s gone like I said.”

Parker gave the computer desk another gaze. “Did Layla have a laptop?”

“No,” Sam told him. “She barely had more than the clothes on her back when she came to UBT six months ago. Bought most of her stuff at the local Walmart.”

“As these receipts confirm,” Parker said. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary here.”

“Looks like she packed a bag with essentials and took off.”

Parker put the papers back in the desk drawer. “It seems we can rule out abduction.”

“Yeah.”

Sam’s face took on a look of alarm. “Abduction? You think Layla might have been kidnapped?”

“No,” Parker said with strained patience. “I just said we could rule that out. Kidnappers generally don’t allow their victims to back a bag first.”

“But she still could be in danger, right?”

Ignoring him, Miranda wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

Maybe Layla had been on the run when she joined up with UBT. A traveling circus was a good place to hide, but then she got to be the headliner. She was known to the public. Time to vamoose.

She thought of what Harvey Hackett had told them about Layla fighting with Tupper. Maybe she wanted to break up. Maybe Tupper wouldn’t let her alone. She might have offed him to stop his advances, but not with cyanide. Where would a young woman with little money and no Internet access get cyanide from anyway?

No, the most reasonable explanation was Sergeant Underwood’s. Poor ole Tupper killed himself. Who knew why people did such things?

Layla’s disappearance had to be either the cause of him ending his life or just a coincidence. Maybe the aerial artist had gotten tired of dangling in the air on strands of silk and wanted to try something new.

There could be a hundred reasons for a young woman to up and take off. Nobody knew that better than she did. It had been her own modus operandi before she met Parker.

“Layla might have gotten cold feet about her engagement.” Her eyes locked with Sam’s and they shared a moment, a memory of their history.

Not a good one.

She looked away. Shouldn’t have brought that up. Really shouldn’t have brought that up, she thought, when she caught Parker frowning at her.

She stepped to the doorway. “Okay, Sam. You’ve proved she’s been gone for a few days. Your next rehearsal’s tonight?”

“Yeah, at seven.”

“She’ll probably be back by then.” If she just went to visit someone.

Sam set his hat back on his head with a scowl. “You don’t know that for sure. You need to find her.”

“We need to find out the truth.”

“Yeah. The truth about who killed Tupper. What if Layla did it?”

Tired of his badgering, Miranda folded her arms. “Sam, Tupper was poisoned.”

Sam stepped back, sank into a chair. “What? Poisoned?”

“The police think it was suicide.”

He stared up at her, his green eyes growing moist. “It couldn’t have been suicide. Tupper would never have done that.”

Funny reaction for the guy who found the body. Didn’t he see there was no blood? No bullet wounds? Maybe he was too rattled to notice. Or maybe he’d assumed natural causes and called her just to see her again like Parker had surmised.

“How do you know what Tupper would have done?” she said.

“Because I know my friend.”

“What about what Harvey said? Tupper and Layla were fighting. Maybe she left because of him and that was the trigger.”

From the other side of the room, Parker cleared his throat.

Miranda glared at him. He thought she’d told Sam too much. That set her off more than Sam had. She was hot and tired and frustrated with both of them.

“I’m tired of this bullshit.” She turned on her heel and headed out the door.

Her temper fuming, she hurried down the steps and into a nice warm breeze. Even in the hundred-and-one degree heat, it felt good after that trailer.

As she might have expected, Sam came trotting after her. He grabbed at her arm. “Miranda, do you think it was suicide, too?”

She turned to him, spotted Parker at the top of the steps. He looked like he was simmering like a volcano himself, ready to burst forth any second.

Professionalism, she thought. “We don’t have an opinion yet, Sam,” she told him flatly, making sure he caught the “we” part. “That’s why we’re still investigating.”

“But Layla will…she’ll get away if somebody doesn’t go after her.”

“We’ve looked for her, Sam. It isn’t as if we have any terrific leads on where she might have gone.” And it wasn’t as if there was no one else with motive. The Vargas were definitely hiding something, and Harvey Hackett as much as admitted he was jealous of Tupper. “If we spend time going after her and she didn’t do it, the real killer will get away.”

They were short-handed here. Until they could give the police something to convince them this wasn’t suicide, they were on their own. She wasn’t about to explain all that to Sam. Parker was right. She’d already told their client too much.

She put her hands on her hips and watched Parker return Layla’s key to the compartment where he’d gotten it.

She braced herself for him to dress her down. Instead he glanced past her.

She turned and realized he was looking at a young woman in an electric blue leotard doing a cartwheel in front of the RV across the lane.

The woman came upright and gazed back at Parker with a haughty look. “I thought breaking and entering was illegal.”

Miranda shot across the street to the acrobat just as she turned and started another cartwheel, this time front to back.

“Excuse me, could we speak to you a moment?” she asked as the young woman’s feet landed.

She flipped up with her nose wrinkled, her dark brows drawn together on a delicate Asian face. “Who are you? And why were you snooping around in Layla’s trailer?”

Her frame was small. She wasn’t much more than a girl. Maybe in her very earlier twenties or as young as nineteen. About five or six years older than Mackenzie. And with an attitude similar to Miranda’s daughter’s when she’d first met her.

Her long hair, dark with brassy blue and auburn streaks, was pulled back in a braid, and her pretty features glistened with sweat from her workout.

“That’s who we want to talk to you about,” Miranda told her. “Your neighbor.”

Before the girl could answer, Sam appeared at Miranda’s side.

“And what were you doing over there, Sam?” Layla’s neighbor wanted to know.

Parker reached her other side just as Sam gestured toward her with a ring master’s flourish. “This is Miranda Steele and Wade Parker. They’re the detectives I hired to find out about Tupper.”

A look of shock came over the young woman’s face. “What about Tupper?”

“You know, about what happened to him.” At least Sam was trying to be delicate this time. It was an improvement.

The girl squinted at him. “I thought the police said it was natural causes.”

“They were wrong,” Sam said.

So much for her client’s improvement. Miranda gritted her teeth and gave him a warning look.

He scowled back but didn’t say anything.

Miranda focused her attention on the neighbor. “And what’s your name?”

“Biata. Biata Ito.” She gestured to the RV she stood beside. “I live in this trailer with my older sister, Chavi.” She pointed over her shoulder to the vehicle parked behind it in the next row. “Our parents live in that one, and my brother and his wife live in the one next door. We’re the Flying Itos.” Her tone oozed with pride.

“Trapeze artists?” Parker asked.

Biata looked at him and went typically gooey-eyed for an instant before jutting out her chin. “Yes. Some of the best in the world. I’ve been flying since I was ten.”

No shortage of ego around here.

Miranda resisted the urge to clear her throat. “Ms. Ito, we’re trying to find out more about Tupper and what might have happened to him. We don’t know anything for certain right now about how he passed away.”

“Okay.” She folded her arms. “You’re detectives?”

Miranda nodded. “From the Parker Investigative Agency in Atlanta.”

“That’s a long way to come.”

She wasn’t about to get distracted with an explanation of why they were here. Instead she got straight to the chase. “Ms. Ito, did you notice anything unusual the night Tupper Magnuson was found dead in his trailer?”

Her frown grew deeper.

“That was the night before last,” Miranda prompted.

She blinked at her, looked at Sam, then at Parker. “Yes, I know when it was. We had finished the late show. We were done around nine. Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with it.”

“We’re simply doing preliminary questioning right now,” Parker said in a reassuring tone, since the young woman’s gaze lingered on him.

“Did you see or hear anything unusual that night?” Miranda repeated.

Again Biata looked at Miranda, then as if she didn’t know what else to do with herself, she bent over at the waist to stretch. “No. Nothing out of the ordinary. I had dinner with a friend, came home, took a shower, watched some TV, went to bed. Same as most nights after a show. I didn’t hear about what happened until the next morning.”

So far this interview was a big fat zero. Miranda pressed on. “How well did you know Tupper Magnuson?”

“Not very well. I don’t hang around with the clowns much. But he was always over at Layla’s.” She gestured across the path at the trailer they had just searched. Then she bent at the waist, this time the other way, arms stretched over her head.

Miranda waited for her to come up again. “How well did you know Layla?”

Her thin shoulders went up and down under her blue leotard. “Enough to say hi. We didn’t hang out or anything if that’s what you mean.”

“Had she been acting strange lately?”

Her shoulders bobbed again. “No stranger than usual. She was kind of an odd bird.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. Just different.”

Everyone around here was different. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Let me think.” She drew her foot up and raised one leg in the air with her hand. “The last show. She did her act. I passed her in the tent backstage. We were in the final dance number together. That was it.” The first leg came down, the second one went up.

“You didn’t see her at her trailer later that night?”

She frowned, shrugged. “Not that I recall.”

Miranda studied the young woman, wondering if she was telling the truth.

Sam took the opportunity of the pause to jump in. “You know Layla’s gone, don’t you, Biata?” His tone was demanding.

Miranda shot him another glare, wanting to give him a push and make him go away.

He folded his arms and shut his mouth. She hoped he’d keep it shut.