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

face fell a little, but she tried to cover it up. “It’s a little soon after Todd, don’t you think?”

Ben contemplated her question and the suggestion made him furious. “It’s been nearly a year, Kim.”

“Has it?” she said, gazing off into space like she was adding up the months. “And here I was hoping you’d save me from another boring Sunday night with my cats.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shrugged. “Are you sure I can’t change your mind?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Lara Barnes is a lucky girl.” Her tone had changed abruptly, and she picked up her purse. “I think you’ve got this, right?”

“Yeah,” he said with a weak smile. “I’ve got this.”

Kim Landau was out of the booth in one swift motion; only her perfume lingered.

Ben pondered what she’d said about Lara. In his mind, Lara Barnes was far from a lucky girl. What had happened to her had been cruel and devastating.

“I think I’m the lucky one,” he said to the empty booth.

When she’d called last night, Lara had sounded shaken. Immediately, he regretted not having gone with her… not that she’d invited him. When he heard she’d been chased through the Père Lachaise, he had the urge to get a ticket and fly to Paris, but she’d assured him that Gaston Boucher and this Barrow gentleman were taking no chances. Still, he found that Lara often thought she could handle things and sometimes got in over her head without realizing it. He thought of her house and how she’d just leapt at the chance to buy it with no idea how to fix it up, as well as the radio station that she’d plunked down a fortune for. Lara was impulsive. And if she was thinking she saw Todd Sutton, then she was certainly stressed. Had he pushed her toward seeing things by moving too soon and asking her to the gala as his date?

When he got back to the office, he pulled out the Peter Beaumont case files again. There were four thick files that appeared to be in chronological order. Ben sat down with a hot cup of coffee and began slowly scanning each piece of paper, looking for a note or scrap of paper that referred to another case. Looking at his father’s handwriting after all these years, he felt a pang of nostalgia.

There was more background in his father’s files on Peter. Attached was a photo of Peter Beaumont—the bad 1970s film exposure gave his features a yellow wash, but you could tell he’d been tan. It was a summer picture. Peter was laughing, his sun-bleached long hair contrasting with darker-blond sideburns. Ben studied the photo—something about the man looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

In another pen from another time, a phone number had been quickly jotted down. Looking it up in the file, Ben saw that the number belonged to Fiona Beaumont; his dad had added Kinsey to the name, along with got remarried. Ben checked “Fiona Kinsey” in the old Kerrigan Falls phone book, finding an F. Kinsey listed at 777 Noles Street. He called the number, trying to do the calculation on Fiona Kinsey’s current age. She had to be seventy-four, seventy-five years old now. It was a long shot that she was still alive, though according to the 1997 phone book, she was.

On the sixth ring, Ben was just about to hang up when a woman answered. “Hello.”

“Is this Fiona Kinsey?” Ben was sorting through the small pile of photos of Peter Beaumont. He spied a snap of Peter’s high school graduation ceremony. It showed a woman with long blond hair and an ultra-mini skirt that was the fashion of the day. The woman was older than Peter, but she looked more like an older sister than a mother. A cigarette dangled from her right hand as she mimed moving the tassel on Peter’s cap with the left. Flipping it over, he saw FEE AND PETER written on it.

“Yes,” said the woman. Her voice was nasal and suspicious.

“My name is Ben Archer,” he said. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” said the woman flatly. “I knew your father.”

“Yes,” he said, caught off-guard by her bluntness. He could hear what sounded like a grandfather clock ticking in the background. “I was wondering if I could come and talk to you about your son?”

There was a long pause. “I’d prefer that you not.”

Ben cleared his throat, trying to buy time to figure out what to say next. “May I ask why?”

“Mr. Archer,” she said, like it was too painful to expend the energy to speak. “Do you know the number of people who have stood on my doorstep asking to talk to me about my son? And do you know what all the talking has gotten me? Nothing. I’m an old woman. I’m blind and I have liver cancer. Terminal. Peter is dead and I will see him soon enough. At this point, there is nothing that you can tell me or that I can tell you. Peter’s gone. Where or why doesn’t matter anymore, at least not to me, so please do me the courtesy of staying away. I liked your father. He did what he could, but he failed my son. We all did. Some things, Mr. Archer, are just too late.”

The weight of her words fell heavy on him. Ben tapped on the photo with his forefinger. From his father’s notes, he could see that he’d tried every angle on the case, but she was correct. His father—and the police department—had failed.

Until now, Peter Beaumont had simply been a name to him—a bookend to Todd Sutton, but this woman’s pain was contagious. It came through the phone lines and wrapped around him like a kudzu vine.

“Can you at least tell me what was he like? I didn’t know him.”

The woman sighed. He could hear the groan of an old chair being pulled across the floor—what he imagined to be a kitchen floor—then the heavy sound of someone settling into