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

in Wickelow Forest. There were wild tales, like the man who supposedly tied two of his wayward dogs to a tree until he could retrieve his truck, only to find nothing but bones in the morning. Ben thought it probably had been hypothermia, then hungry animals that finished the dogs off, but wondered what ass would tie his dogs to a tree in the woods in the first place. With each passing year, the stories and the stupid dares around the place only grew.

Ben walked around to the car. “Why don’t you try to pull some fingerprints from the car and see if there is any blood or hair? You do have your kit with you, don’t you? If not, I’ve got some stuff in the back of the car.”

“Won’t the Staties be pissed? I mean, I’ve never pulled a fingerprint before. We don’t pull fingerprints, Ben. We never need to.” He reached into his back pocket and retrieved a tin of Copenhagen. Ben thought it took him forever to unscrew the lid.

“Just follow the directions on the kit.” Ben didn’t need him screwing it up. “Never mind. Just go get it and I’ll get the damned prints myself. We need to mark off a circle from about here to that tree and over to that tree and search inch by inch. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

Ben took out a pair of latex gloves from the back of his car and began searching for the car keys inside the Cobra. They were missing from the ignition. He looked under the floor mats. Nothing.

“Did you find any keys, Doyle?”

His deputy appeared in the passenger’s window. “No.”

“Did you even look?” Ben muttered under his breath and inhaled as he walked around to the Cobra’s trunk to see if there was a manual release button but came up empty.

Ben got in the backseat and was relieved when he didn’t smell anything decaying. He wasn’t in the right state of mind to find a dead body. Pulling on the backseat, he got a good look inside the trunk. Shining his flashlight into the space, he found it empty.

“I already looked in there,” said Doyle. “There’s nothing here, boss.”

“You could have told me that, Doyle.”

“You didn’t ask,” said the man with a shrug.

On the passenger’s side of the front seat, GNR and AC/DC tapes littered the floor, and a Burger King wrapper was wadded on the seat. Ben checked the date on the receipt: October 9, 2004 11:41 A.M. The morning of the wedding.

Ben shut the door and circled the spot, searching for something he was missing about the location. “Why here of all places?”

“This ain’t no simple stretch of road and you know it, boss.”

Doyle was right. The other famous case—Peter Beaumont—was a musician who went missing in 1974. Even if people didn’t recall his name or weren’t alive when it happened, Peter Beaumont had been the genesis of the lore connected to Wickelow Bend. He’d gone missing from this very spot, his Nova found running with a quarter tank of gas, 99.7 K-ROCK blaring on the radio, and the driver’s door open for him.

But there was something even more disconcerting that Doyle didn’t know because it had been left out of the papers. Ben Archer recalled the day Peter’s tan Chevy had appeared here. For the fall, it had been an unusually warm morning. Ben had tagged along with his father, the chief of police, and he could still visualize the car. Todd Sutton’s Cobra II wasn’t just parked in the same general spot, it had been parked at this exact same angle as though it were staged.

Until he got back to the office and pulled Beaumont’s file, Doyle also wouldn’t connect another common detail between the two. The other car—Peter Beaumont’s car—had been found abandoned here on October 10, 1974.

Exactly thirty years ago to the day.

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

June 20, 1981

They were peering down at her.

“I think I’ve got grass stains?” The man lifted his knee. “Imagine that?”

“You’ve never had them before?” The woman studied the fabric.

“Where would I have ever gotten grass stains?” The man’s voice was terse, like he was speaking to an idiot.

“Well, how would I know?” The woman held a parasol over her head. Then she crouched down, touching Lara’s face. She could see her own reflection in the woman’s mirrored sunglasses. “Do you think she’s fainted?”

“Elle n’est pas morte,” said the man.

He didn’t know that Lara spoke perfect French. “I can understand you, you know. I’m definitely not dead.”

“Well, a smart one too.” He flashed a smile.

Before the pair’s arrival, Lara had been standing out in the field, feeding a carrot to her favorite horse, which her mother had allowed her to name Gomez Addams. She changed the horses’ names quite frequently. Whatever his moniker that day, the horse chomped loudly, exposing his teeth, causing Lara to laugh. It was then she spied them—an odd duo, walking toward her in the middle of the field.

They were completely out of place in the country. At first, Lara thought they were old performers from Le Cirque Margot. In the summer, performers often got nostalgic for the old days and visited her great- grandmother. She scrutinized the two in front of her. Usually, the old circus folk didn’t arrive in their costumes, but you never knew; they were a strange lot. As the couple got closer to inspect her, Lara could see that they were too young to have performed in Le Cirque Margot.

He was a tall, slight man, handsome, wearing a white flowing shirt and light-brown pants. Beside him, a blond woman carried a parasol. Lara could hear a slight Southern drawl, and the woman wore a pink sequined costume. She had long legs, like a Las Vegas showgirl. Lara had just seen a Starsky & Hutch rerun on TV where they were in Las Vegas, and this woman definitely looked like those women. Her costume was the most beautiful thing Lara had