A MYSTERIOUS AROMA (Alethea, The Circus Sleuth Book 2) Read online

  A MYSTERIOUS AROMA

  Alethea, The Circus Sleuth 2

  JENNA COBURN

  Copyright © 2015

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter I

  A whistling wind beat against the neatly arrayed town within a town, with its squares and small side streets, its dark alleyways, and a colorful canvas-covered palace dominating its center. As the autumn ended and the sun, weaker every day, hid behind a grey, overcast sky, Virgil’s Spectacular Circus of Unforgettable Attractions was preparing to embark on a long journey south towards warmer Caribbean climates.

  Each night, the shivering circus members dreamt of a greater, warmer sun that would carry them through the cold months—them and their audience, who enjoyed freezing in the big top as little as they did—but it had to be that before they would find that paradise of winter sun. There would be a trial, testing them and their loyalty towards each other, yet no one had an inkling of what lay ahead—they were all packing, working, and sweating despite the cold and the wind.

  “Come on, stop,” Braden protested as his younger sister put another short iron pole segment into the stack in his outstretched arms. “I’m not your mule or something.”

  Elyse eyed him suspiciously, and then looked him up and down, before putting another on his arms. He winced visibly. “Right! A mule wouldn’t complain like a baby. Look what Mom’s carrying.” She pointed towards their mom, who—grim resolve on her face—carried a round stack under each arm.

  “She’s not human,” Braden muttered under his breath. He tried to make the sign of the cross and almost lost his load.

  “You can go now.” Elyse watched him heave and groan with a smile as he tried to get to the truck as fast as he could. She turned around when she felt someone’s eyes on her; it was Alethea, who came from the direction of Virgil’s trailer.

  “Hey, lil’ sis. Tormenting Braden again?”

  Elyse nodded gravely and then looked at their brother with appraising eyes. “He has more brawn than brains. I only help him realize his true potential.” Then she suddenly threw her arms up, smiled brightly and turned around to face her older sister fully. “You want to help, Letha?”

  Alethea’s eyes narrowed slightly. There was only hopeful innocence in Elyse’s smile—it was a trick she had picked up. For the female side of the Thwaite family, it had stopped working some years ago. “How are you helping? You could carry something yourself instead of pushing Braden.”

  “Don’t act like you’ve never done it,” Elyse said. “J’accuse!” Her pointed finger suddenly was very close to Alethea’s nose.

  “Guys,” Braden suddenly said from behind them. “How about you do something useful instead of standing about feeling smug?” He grabbed a few more pieces of a tent and dragged them back to their destination.

  Both Alethea and Elyse couldn’t resist his proposal for them to do some work for a change, and so they assisted in the process. If Alethea had to estimate the state of the circus, she’d have said it was halfway gone; there were some big structures still standing, but by the end of the day, they anticipated having everything packed up. The cold was uncomfortable, but with the right clothing, it did its part—hard work was even less enjoyable in the heat, after all.

  One only had to stay moving.

  The only members of the circus who didn’t actively work were those who had a really good excuse—too young or too old or too sick, which only included the circus director, Virgil, who disliked playing the “old and decrepit” card but was probably one of the oldest men on the continent, America Baker, who liked to say that she had given up on hard labor after the birth of her last child, and finally the two clowns.

  Robby and Antony had gotten injured a day prior during a performance that neither could really explain to an outsider; nobody had witnessed it, but both of them reassured everyone that no animals had been injured and that they hadn’t done anything illegal. The persisting rumor was that they had faked it all in order to get out of work.

  Alethea had checked on them earlier, and the only thing she had confirmed was that they seemed to be out for good; one of them had an ankle the size of his head, and the other had cut his left hand bad enough to still look all pale and vulnerable, although he might be exacerbating it. America was supposed to take care of them, but in these cases, she usually preferred to make her patients wait and rethink their actions.

  Aside from that small hiccup, things seemed to be going smoothly for them. The incident with Braden and the murder of Larry Patrick were behind them—sometimes they still talked about it, and it wasn’t time to laugh about it yet, but it certainly had lost its terror and the impact it had had on everyone.

  Virgil had been very happy and proud of Alethea’s investigative work; she was his “apprentice,” after all. They had not stayed in the town of Sparta very long afterwards. Even though Braden was no longer under suspicion, they all deemed it was better to move on to greener pastures.

  Sometimes Alethea found herself thinking back to what the perpetrator, Jane Wynne, had said to her when losing her composure and tearfully confessing her crimes. Wynne had thoroughly believed that Virgil was a bad man. Nobody in the circus saw it—that is, Alethea hadn’t talked to anyone about it—but somehow it remained in the back of her head. It stuck there, persistently, like a fly sitting on her mind while she was asleep—an annoying buzzing that was enough to keep her sleep from being restorative.

  Virgil had always been good to them. The thought had to be nothing.

  “We did it,” Braden finally said after they had filled the truck with construction materials for their next stop. They closed up the back and sighed. “I feel like a beer,” he said.

  “Don’t do something you’re gonna forget,” Elyse teased him. After the danger of it had actually ceased, she drew enjoyment without end from the fact that drinking had led her brother to get mixed up in a murder case, and that he had blacked out, apparently through no fault of his own since he had been drugged.

  “Don’t stand around,” Caryn Thwaite, their mother, suddenly disrupted their idling. “Everyone does their part, and we’ll be ready to move on tomorrow morning as soon as the sun kisses the sky.” She smiled and patted her eldest daughter’s shoulder. Alethea sighed. It was not as if she didn’t like the organizing role that had been thrust upon her. Rather, managing her two siblings was like herding cats.

  Just as she thought that, she saw an actual cat walking between trailers and then disappearing under one. It was fluffy and round, with black-and-white fur. She hadn’t seen it before, so she assumed that it had walked in from around the neighborhood, although it could always be a stray cat. It could probably look after itself.

  “Okay, guys,” she said and clapped her hands. “You heard Mom. Let’s get to work.”

  Elyse looked at Alethea for a second, then her eyes started darting around. “Get her!” Alethea immediately yelled. Braden, who was well-trained, pounced. He managed to grab Elyse’s arm before she could get away.

  “Dammit,”
she said and let her head hang dejectedly.

  “You’re always trying to run, Liz,” Alethea condemned her.

  “And I would’ve gotten through with it—”

  “I said don’t stand around!” Caryn yelled at them from some distance. They collectively grinned, yelling back assurances. Then they finally scrambled. It wasn’t as if they truly needed someone to tell them what to do or play the overseer, just that it was more satisfying to work together and have a little fun on the side. Each of them had gone through packing and unpacking countless times.

  Still, sometimes one of them liked to look around them to take it all in—they worked fast, and they worked well, whether it was breaking up their tents or setting them down. From the amount of material and the work required, any spectator might’ve thought it half a miracle that they were well-organized enough to get everything packed up within one day.

  Virgil liked to micromanage this process in order to optimize it. For him, little was more important than ensuring their mobility. Perhaps because he had lived all his life on the road (and railway), he loathed the idea of being stuck and reassured himself with the thought that they could just pick everything up and be on their way within just twenty-four hours. He was the one in charge, too. It brought responsibility, but it also brought freedom.

  Crossing over into the half-disassembled big top, Alethea ran into two of the acrobats—the French twins, Abel and Léa Faucheux. Even when in their “normal” clothes and doing some grunt work, they both looked perfectly balanced and graceful to Alethea’s eyes; although arguably, there was a small difference. Abel was more of the muscle of the two. One couldn’t have seen that they were twins—some even considered it part of the act.

  Abel was much taller than Léa, and his hair was dirty blond while hers was dark, almost black. He had wild locks, while her hair was always neat and pliable. Still, they were one body and one soul—the opposite of Alethea and Braden, who looked alike but whose outlooks differed. At least both of them believed their outlooks differed.

  “Letha, good you’re here. Take that end,” Léa said to her with gratitude. They were loading in the remnants of the audience’s seating.

  “Thanks for your help,” Abel grunted and greeted Alethea with a nod. He didn’t need anyone else to take ends, at least not if there weren’t anyone there. He heaved the wooden part onto a pile and turned back around to them. “A cat has been running around here. Watch your steps.”

  Alethea took a gasping breath. “I’ve seen that cat, too. You think it’s a stray?” They unloaded the next piece.

  The twins both shrugged their shoulders simultaneously, and then they opened their mouths, only to stop themselves again when they noticed. “You go ahead,” Léa said. “No, you go,” Abel insisted.

  Alethea chuckled. “I don’t know how you guys keep doing it, and I don’t know why it keeps being funny.” They both shook their heads.

  “Maybe it’s Virgil’s cat,” Abel mused. Both women raised an eyebrow at that. “What? He’s the only one here who keeps animals.” It was true, even if he had given away the Indian cobra he had owned after the murderous incident. Alethea wasn’t sure if the police had forced him to do so, or even if he had been punished for his carelessness in supplying the venom for a murder at all. Either way, the snake was gone.

  It hadn’t been the only animal he kept. He had a small array of curious animals, as he called them, which he rarely—if ever—let anyone else in on. Sometimes they became a part of his show, playing a supporting role. Most of the circus folk weren’t too keen on involving animals at all, but apparently there was some traditionalist streak in Virgil that the old man just couldn’t shake off entirely.

  “A cat would probably be too mundane for Monsieur Ardelean, Seeker of Unspoken Secrets,” Alethea theorized. “Also, why would he have gotten a cat just today? Unless I’m wrong, cats aren’t exactly made for the road.” She didn’t really know much about cats.

  Of course, on some level they weren’t supposed to be mundane. Witches had cats. Maybe it was America’s cat.

  Alethea still remembered the weird episode she’d had with America regarding magic. Since then, America had said nothing more on the topic, but it always felt as if her smile had become that littlest bit more knowing, as if the old woman was simply waiting for something, perhaps for Alethea to come and ask to be taught the ancient art of wizardry.

  Alethea felt too old to still believe in hocus-pocus, at least outside of the short time between turning off the lights and actually falling asleep, when the last thoughts of the day haunted her and strange fantasies filled every shadow with things she didn’t want to believe in. It was in these moments when something at the back of her mind told her that coincidence was a crutch and magic was the real thing, not vice versa.

  “Letha?” Léa snapped her finger, smiling as she saw that Alethea was still with them. “You drifted off. Have a lot going on in your head, hm?” The acrobat gently patted her shoulder briefly before returning to her work.

  “Sorry,” Alethea mumbled and moved to help. “I think I’m already halfway to bed.” It was still some hours until the sun went down, but with work such as this, everyone would sleep well that night.

  When they had finally brought down the tent it must have been no more than an hour before sundown. Everyone was so tired that their usual chatter was missing. Instead, they exchanged looks that conveyed their relief at having finished a day’s worth of packing.

  As for Alethea herself, she didn’t want to go to bed before paying a visit to Virgil, who curiously hadn’t been seen all day.

  Alethea found the circus director in his own trailer, where he dwelt over some papers with heavy wrinkles in his face. He looked up only after she had walked in and greeted him. “Ah, Alethea. I figured you might come looking for me sometime.”

  She sat down and smiled with a nod. “For all I knew, you could’ve been sprawled out on the floor with your hip busted and your feeble voice not carrying,” she explained her concern. There was a purpose for being harsh with him; he wouldn’t learn any other way.

  “I’m resilient, but you better not bust your own hip.” He smiled gently, in spite of his words. Alethea sighed a little, knowing her hips were far from any danger of being busted. It was regrettable, really. “I’ve looked at the news report, and I want to change our route,” he went on. “Also, we should leave earlier.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Earlier? In the middle of the night, you mean? We’ll have to leave half our things and people.” Virgil shook his head, then thought for a second. Finally, he nodded.

  “I suppose you’re right. But there’s news of a cold snap coming, and I don’t want to get snowed in. That’s a danger to the materials…and the costs…for everyone, that is…no, Alethea, we have to move sooner rather than later.” He was determined to go through with it, and all she could do was listen. When push came to shove, the old man was stubborn in his ways.

  “So when exactly is sooner rather than later?”

  He turned to face the watch on his wall, and went through some calculations, until he finally said, “Let’s say about 6 hours.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Everyone is exhausted, Virgil. These trailers aren’t moving themselves.” Alethea wondered what had struck him; he wanted things to go even faster than usual. It made for an impressive logistical operation, and the disparate convoy they made was a sight to behold, but they always had more trailers than trucks and drivers.

  Virgil shook his head. “I want to start moving things as soon as possible. Things and people. I found our first stop just some minutes ago.” He shuffled through his papers to find a map, and then pointed to a place at least another ten or twelve hours south of them. “There’s a wonderful motel here, and I already called there,” he explained.

  There was no good chance of dissuading him from his fancies, so Alethea would have to support it simply so things wouldn’t get even more chaotic than they already were. Alethea was about to
respond when suddenly, a woman threw open the door of the trailer.

  “Abel is dead,” Léa said breathlessly. “He’s…Virgiliu, Alethea, please…” she choked out the words. Both Alethea and Virgil were instantly on their feet. In her head, she marked down that he was fast for his age.

  Léa leaned against the doorframe with one hand holding her up and the other draped around her torso, as if she could comfort herself. “I already called someone,” she added with a thin voice. There were no tears, but her eyes were wide with shock, as were those of everyone else around her.

  Abel, a young man of excellent health just a minute earlier, had been stripped of his life without warning.

  Chapter II

  It didn’t take long until the sirens could be heard. Alethea ran towards the scene where Léa had found her brother.

  Abel lay sprawled out in his trailer, a faint red halo forming around his head. Alethea was shocked to see him. With a quick turn, the young detective left the trailer. Léa was outside, talking to Virgil in a low voice. There were others there, but nobody really knew what to do, if there was anything to do.

  Alethea was reluctant to touch anything, and it served nobody if she stood there like a pillar of salt and kept on staring. Of course, Léa had moved in, moved the body and had not cared. Before she had gone for help, she already had attempted to resuscitate him. The fact that she ran to Virgil humbled him, and the feeling of powerlessness was apparent on his face.

  The medic and ambulance crew arrived just a moment before two policemen, who looked about as powerless as Virgil did, and they would be until the doctor officially declared Abel to be deceased. It was Alethea who pointed them in the right direction, for Léa could not and everyone else was still struck silent by shock.

  The medical personnel and the cops entered the trailer, and the atmosphere was taken over by silent tension. There were no tears, at least not until, a few immeasurable minutes later, Abel was carried out of the trailer, placed on a stretcher, and brought inside the ambulance.