Read Online 14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse by JoAnna Carl - Free Book Online Page A

then stuffing them into bags he found in the garage. After an hour I got up enough nerve to carry his lunch outside, though I didn’t go too near him. I set up a lawn chair with a folding tray beside it under a tree. I placed the sack lunch and a ten-dollar bill on the tray. I was still being cautious, but I told the old man his lunch was ready.
    He washed his hands at the outdoor faucet, then sat in the lawn chair.
    “This is a nice lunch,” he said. “I thank you. It makes this a nice day.” Then he tapped the ten-dollar bill. “And this helps me toward my ticket.”
    I felt rather guilty at that remark; ten dollars wasn’t going to get him very far on down the road. I could have given him a bit more; my tale that we didn’t have “money in the house” had been a code meaning we had nothing to steal. I could have anted up another ten.
    “My husband is due any minute,” I said. “He might have a suggestion on where you could find work.”
    Again I was covering my fanny. Telling the guy that I wasn’t alone all the time.
    “What kind of work were you looking for?” I asked.
    “Oh, anything honest,” the old man said.
    Was I being played, just as I was playing him?
    He spoke again. “See, I’m not homicidal.”
    Why did he keep saying that? I didn’t understand exactly, but he ate, and I stood on the porch and talked uneasily about the weather—because Texas girls are taught to be friendly even to strangers. I was relieved when I heard a truck.
    I looked down the drive. “Oh, here comes my husband,” I said. “Good!”
    And when I turned back to speak again to the old man, he was gone.
    He was fading into the trees behind our house, lunch sack and all. But he had left in such a hurry that his ten-dollar bill was still on the tray.
    “Wait a minute!” He didn’t turn around. “You forgot your money!”
    He disappeared into the undergrowth.
    I was both shaking my head and laughing when Joe got out of his truck. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    I described my adventure with the homeless man. “I guess you scared him away,” I said. “All I had to say was, ‘Here comes my husband’ and he disappeared into thin air.”
    Joe smiled, but he wasn’t really amused, and I got that lecture I’d already been expecting—the one about being careful of strangers.
    I gestured toward the heap of stuffed garbage bags. “Well, he did work on the leaves,” I said. “I wouldn’t normally hire somebody like that, but there was something about that harmonica I couldn’t resist.” I leaned toward Joe. “And he assured me—at least a dozen times—that he wasn’t homicidal.”
    We put the ten-dollar bill on the little tray, weighed it down with a rock, then went in for our own lunch. That afternoon we went out to do some shopping, and when we came back the money was gone.
    The non-homicidal harmonica player never came to the door again, but once or twice I thought I saw him walking up a lane in the neighborhood, still wearing a ball cap with the bill half torn off. Whoever he was, he didn’t bother us, even if we left the garage unlocked. Eventually I almost forgot the whole episode.
    Now I reminded Joe about it. He shook his head. “I’d forgotten that. In fact, since I never saw the old guy with the harmonica, I had almost decided you imagined it. It’s so unlike you to offer food and bus fare to some homeless guy.”
    “I guess it’s my Texas great-grandmother’s genes coming out. She was known for letting strangers sleep in the barn in exchange for chopping firewood.”
    “They probably marked the gate some way to tell other tramps this was a good place to ask for help.”
    “My grandmother thought they did. But nowadays—well, there are too many crazies around. No, if somebody really seemed to need help, I’d be more likely to call the Salvation Army shelter and tell ’em we needed a pickup.”
    “I don’t think they offer that service. People have to get there on their own.” Joe