First Thrills: Volume 2 Page 5
Never, never again.
The nightmare is over; at last, I am in control.
For a long time, Maggie just looks at me.
Perhaps she, too, suffered sleepless nights. Perhaps she, too, lay awake, listening in dread for the creak of a heavy masculine step on the stairs. Perhaps she, too, fantasized about making it stop.
“My name,” she tells me in her soft brogue, “is not Maggie.”
No, it isn’t. But it’s the only thing my sister Emma and I have ever called her. It was easier that way; the maid before her had been Maggie.
I look her in the eye. “I’m sorry … Bridget.”
She nods, clearly satisfied.
No fool, Bridget Sullivan. She grasps what so many do not: that things are often exactly as they seem.
“I accept your apology, Miss Borden. Old habits die hard, I know.”
At long last, I smile.
“Please,” I tell her, “call me Lizzie.”
* * *
The bestselling author of more than seventy novels, WENDY CORSI STAUB has penned multiple New York Times bestselling adult thrillers under her own name and more than two dozen young adult titles, including the current paranormal suspense series Lily Dale, which has been optioned for television. Her latest thriller, Live to Tell, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and launches a suspense trilogy that will include sequels Scared to Death and Hell to Pay. Under the pseudonym Wendy Markham, she’s a USA Today bestselling author of chick lit and romance.
Industry awards include a Romance Writers of America Rita, three Westchester Library Association Washington Irving Awards for Fiction, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple for Lifetime Achievement and the 2008 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Suspense. Readers can join her online at www.WendyCorsiStaubcommunity.com.
Children’s Day
KELLI STANLEY
Golden Gate International Exposition Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, 1939
Shorty was complaining about the grift around Midget Village when Miranda saw the clown. Sad eyes. No smile. The Gayway wasn’t always gay, even for a clown and the little blonde girl with him, waiting in line for cotton candy.
Too many kids, too many clowns. Monday, April 3, Children’s Day, and Miranda wondered why the fuck she’d come back to the fair on her one day off. Maybe because she had nowhere else to go.
“You take it up with the bulls?” she asked Shorty.
The little man shook his head, the red light of the cigarette dancing at the end of his mouth.
“You know how it is. Don’t take us serious. Come in for a belly laugh and drift over to Sally Rand’s or Artists and Models for a tweak of some tit. Christ Almighty, I can’t blame ’em for that, but we need protection, not a goddamn babysitter.”
Miranda nodded, looking over his head. The clown was crouched at the side of the refreshment booth, talking to the kid, pink sweat dripping on his dirty white collar. Puffs of spun candy hid her face. A stout woman in a green plaid coat smiled at them through her peanuts.
Miranda dropped her Chesterfield and rubbed it out in the dirt next to a wadded-up napkin from Threlkeld’s Scones. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t have much pull with the cops—”
“You got pull where it counts, sister. You got in the papers, you got your shamus license, you caught your boss’s killer. That’s enough for Leland Cutler, and it’s enough for Shorty Glick.”
She bent down to shake the midget’s hand. “I’ll do what I can. Be seeing you, Shorty.”
He nodded, put the ten-gallon hat back on, hoisted up the chaps and kid’s gun belt with dignity, and waddled into the compound. Singer’s Midgets, carted around from sawdust heap to sawdust heap, stared at, laughed at, gee whiz, they’re tiny, Bob, just like kids. Fuck you, too, lady. How’s that for kid talk?
She walked down the fairway, leaned against the wall of Ripley’s Odditorium and lit another Chesterfield, staring down at the line waiting for Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch. Sally’s girls needed protection as much as the midgets, and the only kind they’d get from the cops came with a price. Miranda just charged money.
Women were clutching their hats against the cold Bay wind, and some Spanish flamenco dancers from the Alta California exhibit huddled, laughing, in front of the fortune teller. Miranda pressed herself against the stucco wall, closing her eyes. No fortunes left, not for Spain. Not for Miranda. Fortunes meant future, and she didn’t think about the future anymore, not since ’37. Johnny wasn’t in it.
Poor, tired Spain, poor tired world, tired, so tired of war, and yet more coming, more fucking wars, more corpses, white flesh bloated and ruptured, rotting in farm house wells, mangled bodies on the streets of Madrid. No future, no fortune. No Johnny. Just the carnival. Listen to the calliope and it’ll all go away.
Step right up, folks, one thin dime, neon and fishnets, girls in G-strings, babies in incubators. Welcome to the Gayway, Leland Cutler’s Pageant of the Pacific, pride of 1939, and who gives a fuck if New York has a world’s fair, too.
She blinked, watching the cigarette ash burn closer, Laughing Sal’s mechanical cackle drifting on the wind. No treasure on Treasure Island. Just another world’s fair. Another goddamn calliope.
She walked back again toward Midget Village. The line at the refreshment stand was shorter. The clown and the kid, still in sight, headed toward Heather Row. But the clown was pulling the kid’s arm, the girl crying, upset. Fat lady in green nowhere to be seen.
Miranda gulped the cigarette, nicotine hitting her lungs. Burnett hadn’t taught her much. Wiggle when you walk, Miranda, you know how to be an escort. Fuck being a detective. Wrong again, Burnett, you bastard, rest in fucking peace.
They all needed help, midgets and Sally’s girls and sideshow freaks and monkeys in race cars. She dodged two sailors and a marine, and hurried toward the clown.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
* * *
Couple of fraternity boys pushed an elderly couple by in the fifty-cent chairs, almost running down Miranda. The clown pulled the kid toward La Plaza Avenue, rounding the corner by the Owl Drug Store and Ghirardelli Chocolate.
A sharpie in a cheap suit pried himself away from a souvenir booth, eyes on Miranda’s snug navy jacket, as if looking would make it go away. She tried to side-step him, but he jumped in front, blocking her.
“Lady, why the hurry? A looker like you—”
“Get out of my way—”
He stroked his thin mustache with one hand, and put his other one on her left shoulder, straight arm, sliding up and down, out and in.
“Sally’s that way, girlie—you could make a bund—”
Miranda shoved his hand off her breast with her right, backhanding him hard in the face with her left. He tumbled, off balance, and hit the dirt.
By the time she heard the angry “Fucking bitch!” the clown and the girl had disappeared.
* * *
Ghirardelli Building, sign of the giant parrot. It perched above the door, hawking chocolate malts and candy. Café sat one hundred, about twenty people were waiting for seats. No clowns. A lot of children.
A blonde in a hat and brown jumper was leaning over the candy belt, watching the chocolate bonbons. Miranda pushed her way through. Not her.
Eight people, understaffed, handing out samples to quiet the kids. Five-year-olds all looked alike.
Miranda’s stomach tightened, started to hurt. She headed for the Owl, checked the lunch counter, toy department, searched the aisles.
Too late.
* * *
The White Star Tuna Restaurant was quiet, almost empty. Found a table by one of the windows, stared out at the enormous sparkling walls of Vacationland until the tuna-tomato salad and coffee arrived.
It was too early for tuna, too early for the Chicken of the Sea star on top of the bright round building, too early for the “Romance of Tuna” story that hung on the walls and filled a page in the takeaway souvenir menu.
Ea
rly didn’t mean much to Miranda. Late night at Sally’s, boyfriend trouble for one of the girls. Now she’d lost the clown. Tuna romance was just the fucking ticket.
Back and forth, back and forth across the knots of people. She looked down at her cup. Kaleidoscope of black. Maybe she was wrong.
Around and around, spinning, shiny, colors too dark. Five years old, first encounter with fingers in wrong places. Hard fingers, hard laps, persistent. Little girl, bouncing on an old professor’s lap, friend of her father. Bouncing hard.
Around again to ten. Old Hatchett asleep, father away, drunk or at an academic conference or both. Escape the dungeon, get out, get out to the streets. Muddy San Francisco, horse shit on Market Street, ten years after the quake. Man in a dirty suit, sudden smile, all in the eyes. Eyes that scared her, hands that scared her, come on, little girl, I’ll give you a present. Don’t you want to play?
Fourteen and she learned how to fight, how to bite a finger, how to squirm out of a grasp, learned where to look and what to look for, curious, but not enough to return to the professor’s lap, or the Santa Claus with his own bag of toys. Around and around she goes, and where she stops …
The kaleidoscope dissolved, carousel no longer turning. No farther, not today.
Miranda drained her coffee, shoved the tuna away untouched, and left half a dollar on the yellow Formica table top. Walked back to the Plaza and lit a Chesterfield, still scanning the crowds. Maybe she’d been wrong.
A uniformed cop was walking up from the Court of Pacifica, heading toward the Gayway, nodded when he saw Miranda.
“You busy, Corbie?”
She inhaled the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke behind her. “It’s my day off. Why?”
His brown eyes were somber. “Lady says her daughter’s been kidnapped. We’re looking for a clown.”
* * *
Silk dress from Magnin’s under a shoulder-length fur, head of a dead animal dangling from the back. Gloved hands. Whiff of My Sin when she sobbed.
She was a little older than Miranda, about thirty-five. Brown hair, more than a touch of henna.
Grogan looked at her, his mouth curled around a cigar, then back over at Miranda.
“You here to add the woman’s touch, Corbie, or because you got something?”
She blew a smoke ring, watched it float behind his left ear. “How about the human touch, Grogan—or is that beyond you?”
He shrugged, eyes on the victim. One of the uniforms coughed.
“Says she turned her back to buy her kid some cotton candy at the Gayway, and next thing she knew the kid was gone. The kid’s name is Susie. I thought Donlevy gave you the low-down.”
“What he knew of it.” She pulled Grogan’s chair from his desk and sat next to the woman.
“Any enemies, Mrs. Hampton? Demands for money, threats?”
The face that jerked toward Miranda was sharp, still pretty. “N-no. Not that I know—and please, don’t tell my husband. He’ll—Geoff is so impetuous, I’m afraid he’ll—don’t tell him!” She gasped, the sable quivering.
Miranda ground the Chesterfield into the arm of Grogan’s chair. Waited for Mrs. Hampton to breathe again.
“Did Susie ever run away—or get lost?”
“No. Please, please, just find her. I don’t even care if you find that—the monster who took her, just find my little girl.”
Miranda leaned forward. “Exactly what happened?”
“I—I told them already. Sergeant, why do I have to—”
“—you don’t have to do nothing, Mrs. Hampton. This here’s Miranda Corbie. She’s what they call a private eye in them fairy tales people read.”
The woman held the handkerchief up to her face.
“Are you going to help get my Susie back?”
“I need the truth, Mrs. Hampton—in your own words.”
The woman took a deep, rattling breath, closed her eyes for a moment. “Cotton candy. Susie likes it. She just turned five last week, I—I was looking for a smaller bill—the man at the counter didn’t have change for a twenty—”
Miranda looked up, exchanged glances with Grogan.
“—and by the time I sorted it all out, I turned around and she was—was gone.”
“Where does the clown come in?”
She closed her eyes again, shaking her head, hand to her heart. “He’d been following us. I’d noticed him, he’d made Susie laugh earlier, and we threw him a dollar. I thought he was just, you know, performing as those people do, but I can see now that he was following us.”
Miranda pulled out the pack of Chesterfields, offered one to Mrs. Hampton. She shook her head. Miranda’s lighter sputtered, and one of the uniforms stepped forward with a lit match, while another one sniggered. Miranda grabbed his hand for a moment, looked up, and said, “Thanks.”
She inhaled, leaning back in Grogan’s chair. Said it casually. “So you didn’t actually see him take Susie.”
Lois Hampton fixed her large brown eyes on Miranda’s, all reproach and a mother’s dignity, surrounded by the faint odor of Choward’s Violets and Sen-Sen.
“Miss Corbie—I didn’t need to see him. I know. My daughter’s in danger.” She bent forward, placing a gloved hand on Miranda’s sleeve. “Please—please help me.”
* * *
Rick wasn’t at the Press Building. Miranda hung up the payphone, watching husbands pull wives into the Ford Building. Hit the receiver, asked the operator to try the San Francisco News. Shook out another Chesterfield from the crumpled pack.
“Rick—Miranda. I’ve got something.”
He paused for a moment then, laughed, Irish lilt always so goddamn irritating.
“It’s not like you ever call and ask me over for a drink. What is it? Need some help with that shiny new PI license of yours?”
She struck a match on Ford’s wall.
“You were over two weeks ago.”
“Don’t worry, honey, you don’t have to ration me. What is it?”
“Little girl kidnapped by a clown.”
He whistled, and she held the phone away.
“Don’t fucking whistle. Woman’s name is Lois Hampton. Lives in the city. Five-year-old daughter, blonde. Susie. Husband is Geoff, they’ve got money. I need you to look her up.”
Silence, while Rick scribbled. “What about the clown?”
“He’s not a clown by now. I tried to tell Grogan to search the restrooms, but he’s still out looking for circus acts. Just check Lois Hampton.”
He hesitated. “Miranda—”
“Yes?”
“—should I look for—you know—”
“Molesters? Rapists? Another Albert Fish in a clown costume?” Her voice was heavy, and her hand shook when she brought the cigarette up to her mouth. “Check everything. I’ll call you back in half an hour.”
“OK.”
She hung up the phone, taking a last shuddering inhale of the Chesterfield. Squinted up at the giant National Cash Register, the two-foot numbers marking attendance. Twenty-three thousand and counting. A lot of them five-year-olds.
Children’s Day. Four hundred fucking acres of it.
* * *
She lost them at La Plaza. Nearest restroom was across the road at Vacationland. He’d sneak into the ladies room, use the girl as an excuse.
Clean-shaven, late thirties, dressed oddly. Maybe baggy pants and a souvenir shirt. Unless he’d planned it, and was hiding more than a trick hanky in his clown suit.
A guide stood outside, buttons still shiny on the uniform. College kid.
She asked: “You see any clowns this morning?”
He rolled his eyes. “Lady, I could tell you—”
“Don’t. This one kidnapped a little girl.”
Jaw dropped. “Geez, lady. I’ve seen maybe three or four. All the kids, you know. Children’s Day.”
“Any come in here?”
“Maybe. I’ve been moving around.”
She headed inside the curve of the building. Women�
��s and men’s restrooms, side by side, across from the cafeteria and barbershop.
Attendant a slow, stooped woman with a Russian accent. Da, there was a clown. Da, he come in with a child. She stroked the dollar bill like it was a pet.
The other one, younger, dark-haired, lounge help. Another dollar. Yes, miss, told him it ain’t proper. No mother, I says, and he says she’s sick in bed, and he’s off work, needs to wash up. Washed up right there in the sink. Felt sorry for him, miss. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.
Another dollar, help the guilt along.
Little girl was crying, miss. Hungry. Talked about doughnuts. What’s this all about? I ain’t done nothing wrong, miss, I can’t lose my job, gotta feed my own kids. No, don’t remember what he looked like without the face on. I ain’t done nothing wrong. He was just an average Joe, miss. Just an average Joe.
Miranda ran out of the powder room, the door banging behind her.
* * *
Doughnuts meant the Gayway, Maxwell House building, hot coffee and crullers, the Doughnut Tower’s fat red neon stripes slicing through the fog.
Couple of hundred in the restaurant, maybe forty kids. No little blonde girl. No clown, ex or otherwise. No luck. Spilled out like coffee, good to the last drop.
Miranda checked the Penny Arcade next door, then up and down the strip, past the Glass Blowers and Loop-A-Swing, the diving bell and flea circus. Her ankle twisted on a souvenir kewpie doll dirtied from sawdust and cigarette butts. She stopped, breathing hard, picked it up. Maybe from a kid in Children’s Village, the Gayway’s official nanny service, complete with on-duty nurse and riding ponies. Perfect for when the parents ogled nipples at Sally Rand’s.
She stared at the painted face. Midget Village, Chinese Village, Children’s Village. Too many goddamn villages. The clown would be in the big villages by now, San Francisco or Oakland. He’d gotten by her, gotten by them all.
Miranda walked to a phone by the Fun House and dialed Rick. Set the kewpie doll on the phone ledge.