3 Coming Unraveled (9 page)

Chapter Twenty-
Six

Haney Bros. Circus returned to Caruthers Corners, once more pitching its tents on the Bentley farm. It was a glorious end-of-summer afternoon, the sun glinting off the tin roof of Ben’s big red barn. Happy the elephant seemed, well, happy to be “home,” spraying water in the air with her trunk in celebration.

Maddy drove out with Freddie and Agnes. Aggie’s curfew had been lifted, since she was being hailed as a hero among family and close friends for retrieving the
treasure quilt from Maud Purdue’s attic.

But with Bobbie Ray gone, there was a question of who might get all that money. Maud Purdue told a newspaper reporter it was hers to keep. However, her son N.L. had filed a claim as Bobby Ray
’s next of kin. Brothers trumped mothers in the genetic sweepstakes.

“Thanks for coming out,” Big Bill
Haney greeted the Madisons. “I’m sorry Sprinkles is no longer with the Big Top. I know you liked him.”

“I like clowns,” Aggie smiled. “But I like elephants too.”

“Happy will be pleased to see you. She will remember you. Elephants never forget, y’know.”

“Will you be getting another clown?” asked Freddie. He liked being here at the circus. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to his deformities.

“Are you applying for the job?” smiled the ringmaster.

“No, I can’t travel. I have a wife … and maybe a new daughter.”

“Too bad. The Big Top’s loss.”

“Do you think I’d make a good clown?”

Big Bill studied him for a moment. “Yes, I do. All clown’s are slightly sad.”

Swami
Bombay brought Happy the Elephant over to see the visitors. “She saw you from out in the field and insisted on coming to greet you,” said the dark-skinned man.

“Look,” said Aggie, hold
ing out her hand. “I brought you peanuts, Happy.”

The elephant trumpeted, then buried her snout in the girl’s hand, scarfing up the peanuts.

“Happy likes them,” nodded Bombay. “I knew she would. I saw it in a vision.” Reminding them that he did a mind reading act.

“Thank you for helping clear up the mystery of the Lost Boys,” Maddy said to
Big Bill Haney.

“Lost Boys,” he snorted. “They weren’t lost
because they had a home with us. Willamina and I loved those kids, even Tom and Harry. But I have to tell you we mourn the loss of Bobby Ray. Truth be told, he was our favorite. A good kid, a fine young man.”

“I’m sorry how this turned out for you,” Maddy said, extending a hand politely. “But it’s over now. The Lost
Boys have been accounted for.

Swami Bombay closed his eyes and touched his temples with his fingertips, as if receiving a psychic message. “Ahh, my friends, I hate to tell you this,
” he wheezed, “but the story is not over.”

Chapter Twenty-
Seven

“Excuse me,” said the slender man at the office door. “Are you Mayor Madison?”

Beau looked up from his paperwork, plans for a new gazebo in the town square. He was slightly irritated to be interrupted. How had this guy got
ten past his secretary? Where was Martha? Probably taking another coffee break. She liked to hang out in the coffee room with that girl who worked for the city planner down the hall.

“Yes, may I help you?’

“Well, maybe. I am Bobby Ray Purdue.”

The coffee cup in Beau hand dropped to the desk with a
crash!
spilling the brownish liquid onto the architectural drawings of the gazebo. “B-but you can’t be,” he stammered. “You’re … I mean Bobby Ray … is dead.”

“
Not any longer,” smiled the blue-eyed visitor.

≈≈≈

“I’ve convinced Judge Cramer to let me resign from representing Harry Periwinkle and Thomas Appleby,” announced Mark the Shark. “After all, the court appointed me to represent Bobby Ray Purdue. Now that we’ve established who he really is, it would be a conflict for me to represent those pretenders.”

“So this guy
– the former Sprinkles the Clown – really is the third Lost Boy?” said the Police Chief, just to get it on the record. He’d called together the Town Council as well as the Quilters Club and assorted friends to help him unravel this ball of twine.

“That’s correct
,” nodded Mark. “We just got the new DNA test back from Burpyville Memorial. And it conclusively proves that this gentleman before you is Bobby Ray Purdue.”

“How do we know it’s accurate? May I remind you, we’ve been through this once before,”
challenged Chief Purdue.

“You can bet the farm on this one,” Edgar Ridenour spoke up. “I insisted that Virgil Hoffstedder, chief of Burpyville Memorial’s
lab division, conduct the analysis himself.”

This informal gathering in the co
nference room at the town hall had no official status but Bobby Ray Purdue had agreed to meet with them and help straighten out this case of mistaken identities. As Man of the Hour, he sat quietly at the head of the table, listening to them talk about him like he wasn’t even there.

“
Ahem
,” he interrupted the wrangling over his identity. “I
am
Bobby Ray Purdue and everybody may as well get used to it. I’m back to stay.”

“Okay, let’s say you are,” conceded Jim Purdue. “But you’ve got lots of explaining to do.”

“That’s why I’m sitting here.”

“So tell us the story from the beginning,”
said Maddy Madison. “I’d like to know how much we got right.”

The slender man shifted uncomfortably in the wooden chair, feeling like he was on the witness stand,
unofficial proceeding or not. “Well, I guess it goes back to when we ran away from home – me, Jud Watson, and Harry Periwinkle.”

“Why did you boys do that?” asked Bootsie.

Bobby Ray seemed to think about that for a moment before responding.
“We all had our reasons,” he said slowly. “Harry hated his father, a man who belittled him and called him a bastard. You see, he wasn’t really Harry’s dad. Harry’s mother had been a hippie, marched in Vietnam War protests, lived in a commune. She never knew who knocked her up. Willard Periwinkle married her, but he never did accept her son Harry.”

He stopped to take a sip of water from the pitcher in the middle of the conference table, as if his throat w
ere dry. But it may have been a delaying tactic, not eager to relive these memories.

“Go on,” said Chief Purdue.

“Jud had to get away from home before his mother killed him. She used to whip him with a belt till his back was raw. He used to come to school with blood seeping through the cloth of his shirt. She was mean as a snake. Blamed him for her husband abandoning them. Left when Jud was still a baby, saying he didn’t want no part of being a family.”

“And you?” asked Maddy.

The man poured himself another cup of water, drank it slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each gulp. “Do I have to say?” he asked.

“No, you don’t,” his new attorney interjected. “This
conversation is entirely voluntary.”

“But it would help us better understand,”
encouraged Maddy, at her motherly best.

“Well, okay. In for a dime, in for a dollar. It was because of my brother
Newcomb.”

“N.L.?” blurted Beau. As owner of the E Z Seat factory,
Newcomb Lamont Purdue was the richest man in Caruthers Corners. And a big contributor to the mayor’s political campaigns.

“That’s right,
my big brother. He used to beat the holy hell outta me when we were boys. He wasn’t none too happy when mom had me. I think he resented not being the only child. Every time she turned her back he’d pinch me or kick me or smack the bejeebers outta me. I just couldn’t take it any longer.”

Beau was glad they hadn’t invited the families of the Lost Boys to this meeting. It was like watching someone rip the scab off a painful sore. “So tell us about
your running away,” he shifted the conversation.

“We decided to join the circus. There was an announcement in the paper about one playing up at the Gruesome Gorge Campground. But that was a long hike, unless you cut through Never Ending Swamp. Errol Baumgartner claimed he knew a safe trail, so we talked him into taking us across the swamp. Gave him a Barlow knife I bought off
Shorty Yosterman.”

“So you boys really did join the circus?” said Cookie, mesmerized by the story.

“Yessum, we did. That is, Big Bill and his wife took us in. They trained us to do circus acts. Made us a part of their family.”

“Circus acts?” uttered Lizzie, hoping he’d get to the juicy parts.

“Harry and another kid who joined up developed a juggling act. They dressed like pirates and tossed cutlasses back and forth. Those big knives couldn’t cut butter, but it was dangerous enough to please an audience.”

“And you?”

“Me, I was supposed to be a lion tamer, but Grumpy scared the tar outta me. I just didn’t have what it takes.”

“And Jud?” asked
Bootsie. Trying to get them all straight in her mind.

“He became Sprinkles the Clown. I think he was hiding under that greasepaint in case his mother came looking for him. But she didn’t.”

“But Big Bill said
you
got killed by that lion,” prompted the police chief.

“Wasn’t me, it was Jud. He wanted to try his hand at lion taming, so I let him go in
to the cage. It turned out bad. That old lion practically tore his head off. You couldn’t even recognize him, mangled as he was.”

“That’s when you decided to switch places with Jud,” said Maddy, catching on.

“Right. I put on his clown makeup and pretended to be him. Couldn’t believe I got away with it. I’ve been Sprinkles the Clown for over four years now.”

“But why?” asked Bootsie.

“Partly cause I was afraid I’d get blamed for his death, letting him go into that lion’s cage. But mainly because I was afraid of Harry and Tom.”

“Why would you be afraid of them?” asked Lizzie. Her
thickly mascaraed eyes were as wide as silver dollars as she listened to the story.

“Well, over the years I’d told them about that quilt my great-grandmother had left to me. How one day while playing in the attic, I’d discovered that it was stuffed with money.
About a week before the lion got him, Jud overheard them talking about killing me and taking the treasure.”

“Surely that was just talk,” said Cookie, sometimes too naïve for her own good.

“Likely not,” interjected Jim Purdue. “Four years later they did follow through with a plan to get their hands on the quilt. That shows some determination.”

“Where were
Harry Periwinkle and Tom Appleby during those four years?” Cookie wanted to know. Connecting the dots.

“Beats me,” said Bobby Ray. “They robbed the circus of nearly ten thousand dollars and took off. I never heard of them again until Harry showed up here claiming to be me.”

“As it happens, Harry was doing time in Oklahoma for killing a man in a bar fight,” Mark Tidemore informed them. “So he did have a violent streak.”

“How do you know this?” demanded the police chief.
He hated being caught off-guard with someone knowing more facts than he did.

“
Harry gave a statement to the State Police this week, trying to cut a deal.”

Chief Purdue was clearly irked that the state boys hadn’t informed him of this.
“How did those two get your DNA if you weren’t in on it?” he challenged.

“Hold on, Jim. My client isn’t on trial here.”

“Sorry, but it’s a legitimate question.”

Mark held up a hand to stop the argument. “I can answer that based on Harry Periwinkle’s statement,” he said. “
Tom had been trying to go straight. He used his share of the stolen circus money to take a community college course that trained him to be a lab technician. He just happened to be working at the hospital when Harry got out of jail.”

“But Bobby Ray’s DNA
–?”

“
Harry still dreamed of getting his hands on that hidden treasure. He came up with this scheme of impersonating Bobby Ray after seeing a movie called
Sommersby
starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. It’s about a man who returns from the army, but people question his true identity.”

“I remember that film,” said Cookie. “It’s based on a French film called
The Return of Martin Guerre
. It has the same imposter theme.”

“So Harry
saw his opportunity when he heard Haney Bros. Circus was camping in Ben Bentley’s field. He enlisted Tom in his scheme and they slipped into the Haneys’ tent one night. Seems Willamina kept locks of her boys’ hair in a scrapbook. Tom was able to extract sample DNA from that.”

“So Harry pretended to be Bobby Ray to get his hands on that quilt full of money and
doing that finally flushed our Lost Boy out of hiding,” Maddy summed it up.

“Hiding in plain sight,” noted Freddie, who had decided to set in on this
august gathering.

“Now I can go back to being Bobby Ray Purdue …
and Sprinkles the Clown,” nodded the subject in question. “But first my attorney here is going to help me claim that money. I plan to buy a circus.”