Read Online Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page A

that easy to hide an elephant,” I said.
    The Tanuccis listened to what they couldn’t understand, and the young man tried to translate for them.
    “Did anyone hate your brother, have a fight with your brother before this morning?” I asked. “Was anything on his mind?”
    “Yes,” said the young man. “Marco say, said, he saw someone in the elephant tent. Saw him when circus up go do something. Then elephant go fried. Marco said maybe it not accident. Now, maybe …”
    “Maybe,” I finished, “someone killed Marco because he saw them setting up the rigging to kill the elephant. Then Rennata saw the same person fooling with your equipment and figured she had a murderer. It makes sense.”
    “The elephant,” sighed Elder.
    “Thanks,” I said to the Tanuccis, taking each of their hands. “We’ll find Rennata and bring her back.”
    “ Grazie, ” said the mother, a firm blonde with enough makeup to show she was hiding her face and feelings. Elder and I backed out of the wagon, and the trio didn’t move.
    Outside the wagon, we looked beyond the circus grounds for a two-ton elephant and saw nothing.
    “As Charlie Chan would say, ‘Two-ton elephant must leave deep tracks in mud.’”
    Elder nodded in agreement. “Right to the road down there, but two tons isn’t enough to make holes in asphalt and rock.”
    The road was the one I had come down to find the circus. It led down to the highway going one way and off into the farmlands in the other.
    “I’ll head for town,” I said. “You take some people the other way.”
    “Doesn’t make sense,” said Elder sensibly. “Nelson finds you in Mirador and you might not come out.”
    “Right, but I know the town better than you and how to stay away from him.”
    “That’s a lousy argument,” said Elder, pulling his jacket over his neck. The afternoon was cool, but not cold. The sky had clouded over and promised something damp. My back twinged, and I looked at my watch. I hadn’t any reason to know the time before this, and my watch didn’t help much. It was my one inheritance from my father, if you don’t count the debts on his Glendale grocery store. The watch stopped when it wanted to, started when it wanted to, and showed a hell of a lot more independence than my old man ever did, which may have been why I kept it. My old man’s indecision was probably a major contribution to my brother Phil’s becoming an angry cop and my seeking out violence.
    Whatever the reason, my watch said it was two o’clock.
    “What time is it?” I asked Elder. We stepped out of the mud rut to let some bears walk by, led by a man who looked almost as much like a bear as the bears. The bears, in fact, were dressed better than the man, in blue tutus. They would be cute from the audience. The audience wouldn’t have found them so cute this close up. Bears definitely do not brush their teeth.
    “Lotze,” grunted the man who looked like a bear, when one of the bears hesitated and decided to growl in my face. Elder ignored the whole thing and bit his lower lip.
    “I don’t like it,” he said.
    “I don’t either, but we have no choice,” I answered.
    “You, Peters, are a liar,” grinned Elder, a wise grin I didn’t care for. My ex-wife had a grin like that. “You do like it. You’re as happy as a seal in a fish house.”
    I shrugged. He was right. There are some people who run from trouble and call it evil, and others who exist for games and thrills. There are some people who tell you boxing matches are savage and others like me who simply like to watch two guys fight. The big dangers you don’t set yourself up for, don’t have a choice about, like war, they aren’t fun. It has something to do with making the decisions or having them made for me. I was going into Mirador. I never claimed I was smart. I’m more a bull terrier than a fox.
    “If either of us isn’t back in one hour,” I suggested, “someone from the circus should go for the state police.