Dark Carnival Murders (2 page)

"What are you doing up? I
thought you wanted to get some sleep?" Penny asked.

"Willy kept waking me," I
said with a grin.

She walked over and gave
me a kiss, then said, "Sure, blame the pup. You just couldn’t sleep
in on such a beautiful day. Angelo decided to make breakfast
burritos and he asked if he could cook on the grill for the meat,
onions and peppers."

"Good morning Mr. R. I’ll
have these ready shortly," Angelo said as he was flipping the foods
on the skillet.

"Thank you Angelo, it
smells great." I turned my attention to Penny and continued, "I
hope Lynn and Deacon are enjoying their honeymoon," I said, talking
about our friends finally getting married a week ago, it was a good
ceremony, then Penny and I sent them to Hawaii for their honeymoon.
"I checked the online weather in Hawaii and they have no monsoons
or volcanic activities."

"And as long as there are
no murders, they should be happy," Penny offered as we sat on the
picnic table watching Angelo do his magic with food.

"What are we planning on
doing today?" I asked.

"I was reading in the
Review-Journal that there was a carnival in town, I haven’t been to
one in years, shall we go there?" Penny said with a hopeful
look.

I thought back to my
hometown in Michigan and the carnival that would set up every year
behind my parent’s home. "I used to go help get the side show games
set up when the carnival came to my town years ago. It was fun to
be around and they would give me tickets to go on the rides free. I
think it’s a good idea."

"Good, because I already
invited Angelo to go with us."

"Sure of yourself, eh?
What if I said no?"

"I would have taken Angelo
and went anyway." She stuck her tongue out and stood as Angelo said
the food was ready.

We gathered our soft
shells and spooned on the ingredients, rolling them to eat.
"Angelo, you’re Italian, where did you learn to make Mexican food?"
I asked.

"When I was young, mom had
a cook on the estate that was Mexican and she taught me," he said
with a laugh.

"Your grandmother had a
restaurant and taught you to cook, now you tell me you learned to
make Mexican treats. You should open a restaurant and call it
ItaliMex. It would be something different," I said.

"Angelo, how is Francis
doing?" Penny asked.

"Mom still calls me every
couple days. I miss her but I had to get away from the family life.
Being a enforcer for the mob was not something I wanted to do all
my life. I like it here and as we talked about, I may still open a
restaurant."

"What about the bodyguard
work you’re doing for Buck?" I asked.

"I like that but I need
something more creative, food has always been a passion of mine,"
he replied.

"Thankfully for us," Penny
whispered to me.

"Yes dear, I’m very
thankful you don’t have to cook." She whacked my arm, I was getting
used to it by now.

We finished our breakfast
and went in to finish getting ready for the day. My cell phone
buzzed and Penny gave me an evil eye.

"If that’s a murder case,
forget it," she said.

"The caller ID says it’s
Earl," I told Penny and answered it.

"What’s up chief?" I said
and put it on speakerphone.

"Just wanted to see what
you guys are up to, we haven’t gotten together very much since
Paula and I have been out here," he said.

I looked to Penny and she
said to me, "Ask them if they want to go to the
carnival?"

Earl heard her and said,
"Carnival? I love carnivals. Where is it?"

"Out south of the strip in
the area where they are doing all the new construction. The
property is still open desert land and the thing is being sponsored
by some community group to give a good family spin on Vegas.
Interested?" Penny said.

"Sure, shall we come meet
you at your place?

I spoke, "No, go to the
office, it’s just up the road from where they are set up, we can
meet there."

"Sounds good, how
soon?"

"We’re getting ready to go
now, see you shortly," I said and hung up.

We gathered everything we
would need to start our journey; Angelo met us in front by the
van.

"Gee, Mrs. R. I haven’t
been to a carnival in years. Last time, we had to run out because
the Feds were after my late father."

Penny was trying not to
laugh, and got in the van and buckled up. We were all seated and I
drove to the office on Industrial Road. It was about three miles
from the desert area that would soon be a luxury complex of condos
for the rich, now inhabited by the carnival.

I pulled into the parking
lot of the office and saw Earl talking to a man and woman. I pulled
in and parked. Earl waited until Penny, Angelo and I got up close,
and then introduced the people.

"Jim, this is Mr. and Mrs.
Walker, they just pulled in before you and they told me they have a
problem."

The man came forward and
held out his hand to shake, I took it. "Mr. Richards, we need your
help. The police can’t help us right now. Our boys are missing,
they were supposed to be camping in our backyard, but early this
morning we found they were gone. We don’t know where they could
have went to, but we found this in the tent." He handed me a folded
yellow sheet of paper.

I opened the folded sheet
and read the announcement about the carnival coming to town. I had
a feeling this was going to be interesting.

*

Chapter 2

I hadn’t planned on
opening the office, but invited everyone in. I had them all sit in
the waiting area, mainly because the couches were more comfortable
than the chairs in my office and because there were too many
people.

I said hi to Paula, I
hadn’t seen her in since Lynn and Deacon’s wedding and then asked
everyone to sit.

"Mr. Walker, you said the
police can’t help?" I asked.

"They told us it was too
early to have them classified as missing; they could have just
wandered off. But our sons would never just wander off. We are
concerned, this is not something they would do."

I thought back to all the
crazy things I did without telling my parents. "I can understand
your concern, do you think they might have gone off to this
carnival?"

"We were hoping it was
just that, but we went by the carnival and didn’t see them
anywhere. We showed pictures of our sons to a couple of the
carnival people, but they said they hadn’t seen them. We went to
the police then, but where told to wait till later to see if they
return."

"Maybe they will, but tell
you what, we were planning on going to that carnival today, so
maybe my associate and I could do some snooping and see what we can
find, how’s that for now?"

"We’d appreciate that, Mr.
Richards, I don’t have a lot of money but we could pay you for your
efforts."

"No you won’t, we’re just
happy to help. We’ll go take a look and let you know what we find.
If we could borrow the pictures of your sons, that may help also."
He pulled out a picture of the two boys together and handed it to
me. I studied the faces of the two boys, they looked halfway
intelligent. "What are their names?"

"The older one is Keiran
and the younger is Douglas," the mother said.

"Good this picture will
help. Now I think you should go back home in case they come back
and find that you aren’t there."

The father looked shocked
at the thought there was no one at their house. "Oh God, I didn’t
think of that. Thank you." He stood and took out a business card
and handed it to me. "We’ll wait to hear from you." They left as I
looked at the card.

"He’s a furniture
salesman. Maybe we can get a discount on some new office
furniture," I said with a laugh.

Penny came over to me and
said, "I hope you can find the boys; that’s so sad when children
disappear."

Earl came up and said,
"They’re probably just exploring the carnival, then they went home
and found that their parents had ran off on them."

"Either way, we need to be
on alert," I said as I made copies of the picture on the office
copier and gave one to Earl and Paula, then one to Angelo. "Keep
your eyes open."

We all went back out to
our vehicles and I led them out on Industrial Road, and then snaked
the way down to Tropicana, cutting over the freeway to Las Vegas
Boulevard. I turned south and drove past McCarran International
Airport. I had always loved watching the huge passenger planes
coming in low across the highways landing from destinations
unknown. I drove down the two-way divided highway past the famous
"Welcome to Las Vegas" sign across from the airport; which was
technically the end of the Vegas "Strip" of casinos and hotels,
just south of the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

I continued down South Las
Vegas Boulevard passing small malls and restaurants, then past the
mammoth Las Vegas Premium Outlet Center where Penny dragged me to a
couple times a month. Although I did enjoy visiting this huge mall,
there were plenty of adult toy stores for me to explore.

I drove on, Earl was
keeping up with my van and then about four miles from the end of
the strip we came up on East Silverado Ranch Boulevard and the
Cinemark Century 16 movie theatre, so I knew we were
close.

I drove a little further
south to where the land was getting more open and less populated by
businesses. I could see ahead just past W. Frias Road, where the
cars were turning on to the desert land and up to the carnival. It
was a bit crazy for parking; they had no system for lining up the
cars, so people just parked where they could. Earl and Paula pulled
up next to me and they got out. Penny, Angelo and I got out and
went to our friends.

It was hot on the dry,
dusty desert land, there was no breeze, just dry heat. Penny had a
two of those little handheld battery operated fans and gave one to
Paula.

"None for me?" I
asked.

"You can stay hot, I may
need it for later," she said with an evil smile.

"Sure, that’s all I’m good
for, keeping you warm," I said as we headed for the
midway.

We entered the edge of the
layout of rides and walked down one row watching all the people,
mostly kids, screaming as they were flying or hurtling through
space on an assortment of high-powered amusements. When I was a kid
I always enjoyed the Tilt-a-whirl, but as I got older I discovered
I would suffer from extreme motion sickness. So spinning rides were
out for me.

We arrived at the end of
the row of rides and I said, "Angelo, would you escort the ladies
around the grounds while the super-spy and I go see if we can find
the missing boys."

"It’d be my pleasure, Mr.
R.," he said with a grin.

Penny gave me a kiss and
said, "Don’t go getting yourselves kidnapped."

"I won’t, that’s your
job." Earl and I left our group and went in the direction of the
sideshow tent. We stopped outside the main entrance as I said,
"When you were a kid and went to the circus, how did you get in to
see the show?"

Earl laughed and said, "I
snuck in under the tent in the back."

"Good to see your
childhood wasn’t wasted," I said and he followed me off to the side
to see what we could find around the back.

It was deserted and dusty
behind the tent looking out to the vast flat property only to see
the freeway in the distance with cars whizzing by.

"The boys had to cross
over the freeway to get here from the subdivision on the other
side. Let’s see if we can find any footprints in the sand." We
walked away from the tent and did a sweep but there were a number
of prints in the sand, probably from the carnies working. I did see
a couple smaller prints that came in from the freeway and headed
straight for the tent, I pointed them out to Earl and we followed
them back.

We were just up to the
back of the tent when we heard a voice, "I hope you two aren’t
thinking of sneaking in?"

We looked over to see a
fairly tall man in a black topcoat, wearing a tall top hat. He
reminded me of pictures of Mephistopheles, one of the chief demons
of European literary. He was holding a flap to an opening in the
tent, where the footprints led to. "May I help you gentlemen?" he
inquired smoothly.

He took both of us by
surprise; he made no sound to warn us of his presence. I reached
back and pulled my P.I. ID wallet with the auxiliary LVMPD police
badge that Lynn gave me back when Weber had her deputize me during
the search for a dirty bomb last year, they never asked for it
back.

I held it out briefly so
he got a glimpse of it, not saying that I was police, and then
said, "We’re investigating the disappearance of two young boys." I
took the photo out of my pocket and went to him, holding the
picture up where he could see.

"Sorry, I see hundreds of
boys, after a while their faces all blend together. But I’ll
remember these faces and if I see them, I’ll call the
police."