The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

“Yes, he retired in 1993,” said Ben. “He died two years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Talking with her was damned awkward and unnerving. She allowed pauses between sentences and made no attempt to fill up the silences with words.

“Yes, well…” Ben motioned for her to sit. He was already uneasy. He wiped his palms on his pant legs. From the details in his father’s files on Peter Beaumont, the older police officer had taken the disappearance seriously. Whoever had placed Todd’s car in the exact same location either had seen this file or had firsthand knowledge of Peter Beaumont’s case. Given the thick layer of dust that had covered the locked file cabinet, Ben didn’t think that anyone but him had looked through it in years.

“What is your current theory of the case?” Her voice had no inflection. Ben thought she was a real no-bullshit type of reporter, quiet but deadly.

Seasoned cops, real cops, didn’t dish out details. They held back clues and “refused to discuss the case.” Ben inhaled sharply, not wanting to appear a fool in the pages of the Washington Post. “Well.” He tried to think what Steve McQueen would do if he were playing Ben in this scene. Steve McQueen would look pensive and in control. Shifting in his seat, he leaned back and folded his hands on his lap, like they did in Bullitt. “It’s possible that the same person committed both crimes. The other thought was that Todd Sutton knew about Peter Beaumont’s disappearance and staged the entire thing to look like it. I don’t think that the latter is likely, but it can’t be ruled out.”

“Was Sutton having money problems?” The reporter thumbed through her notes. Her nails were bitten to the quick.

“Not that we’ve found.”

“He disappeared on his wedding day. Perhaps cold feet?”

“Possibly, but then why leave his car behind?”

She seemed to consider his explanation but gave nothing away. “The site, Wickelow Bend.” She straightened herself in her chair. “People are calling it the Devil’s Bend.”

“Sadly, yes. The Ghostly Happenings show has made it a tourist attraction.” In the nine months since Todd Sutton’s disappearance, Ben knew what everyone was saying about Wickelow Bend, but he wasn’t about to believe in something otherworldly, not yet. Something evil may have befallen both Todd Sutton and Peter Beaumont, but Ben had to think that it was more likely some mortal person, not some Witch of the Wickelow Woods. Unfortunately, reporters, ghost hunters, and tourists were still crowding the Shumholdt Bridge, causing something that Kerrigan Falls had never had before: traffic.

“But you don’t think there is anything… odd about it?”

“You mean supernatural?”

She shrugged but jotted something down. “Your word.”

“No,” he said, letting the simple answer hang between them for a moment. Her eyebrow rose as if she wanted him to elaborate. “I think someone out there knows what happened to these men. Stories like yours are helpful to bring new leads to light.”

“Y’all are a legend around here with no crime. That means you also don’t have a lot of experience with missing persons cases, Chief Archer. No offense.” At this, she smiled.

“None taken.” He smiled back coolly, channeling Steve McQueen once again. He’d expected a bit of a dance, but he hadn’t anticipated that she would be trying to paint them as Mayberry. This was a very different feeling than he’d had with the Kerrigan Falls Express reporters, especially Kim Landau. “Your paper wrote about our phenomenon a few years back. It ran in your Style Section.”

“Oh yes, I read that one. It was cute,” she said. “Yet the cases you have involve two men who’ve gone missing on the same exact date.”

Her tone was sweet, curious even, yet her questions were precise… sharp. He knew what she was hinting at. “We are certainly exploring some ritual aspect to the case.”

“By we, you mean you and your one deputy?” She did this thing where she looked at her notes before she fired a shot across the desk.

Yes, he thought, they were a small police force. Just the two of them. “And help from the Virginia State Police.” He played with a frayed hem on his uniform so his hands had something to do. Inside, he was steaming. They were a small force, but they weren’t inept. He could see the outline of her article forming. “Would you like some coffee, Ms. Hixson?”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “Yes, the Virginia State Police.” She was thumbing through her notes. “Yes, here it is. Todd Sutton’s car—the 1976 Ford Mustang. According to them, it was wiped by a professional. You don’t think that’s strange?” She looked up at him.

He leaned forward, smiling again and hating himself for smiling. “May I ask where you got that information?” Behind his calm exterior, Ben was seething. There had been no prints of any kind found in or on the car. It had been wiped clean. Not just wiped; the state police admitted that the lab hadn’t seen anything like it. No fiber, hair, or DNA of any kind. That information was supposed to be confidential. How did this woman find it?

“You may.” She smiled. “I have my sources.”

Of course. “Then you also know that the state police thought it was a professional job.” At this point, since she knew what was found in the car, it didn’t matter. “By professional, they meant it could have been some type of hit, but they couldn’t rule out that Sutton himself just wiped the car clean and fled. After all, he did restore cars for a living. In the end, the state police’s report was inconclusive, but like I said, you know this already.”

“You don’t agree?”

He ignored her question. “The conclusion from them is that people sometimes simply disappear. Often there are underlying issues that you didn’t know about.”

“Drugs?” So, she had read the notes from the state police.

“Yes. If he had gotten in bad with the wrong people—owed them money, perhaps—then they’d send