I said, “The property where Conrad planned to build the circus retirement home was originally bought to dock a casino ship. Denton bought it, and Conrad took it away from him.”
Pete’s eyebrows rose, and the cook in the apron hollered, “Cubans up!”
Pete jumped to his feet, hurried to the counter, and carried back plastic baskets holding Cubans and french fries, with little tubs of mustard and ketchup on the side. We busied ourselves for a minute pulling napkins from a stainless-steel holder and turning our baskets until they faced us to our satisfaction.
Floridians take their hot Cubans seriously. Fights sometimes break out over whether it’s okay to add mayonnaise or tomatoes to them. When I dipped mine in the tub of hot mustard, Pete winced.
I said, “Pete, somebody is trying to kill me, and it has to do with Conrad’s death. I can’t prove it, but I think it’s Denton Ferrelli.”
He said, “Denton’s always been twisted. When they were growing up, Conrad was a sensitive kid, maybe too sensitive, and Denton was a bully. Angelo gave Denton hell if he caught him tormenting Conrad, but Denton made the boy’s life miserable.”
He gazed over my head for a moment, looking into past memories.
“To be fair, there were people who made Denton’s life miserable too. Nearly every town we went to, some fool would say something about his birthmark, call it the mark of the devil or ask him if he was one of the circus freaks.”
He shook his head like a dog shaking off water.
“One of the clowns had a monkey act. This little spider monkey would play like he was exposing all the tricks, you know, running around and seeming like he was screwing everything up for the guy doing the gag. It was all rehearsed, of course, but the audience loved it.”
He gave me a stern glare.
“The monkey loved it too. All that propaganda those PETA people put out about how circus animals are mistreated is a bunch of crap. We probably took better care of our animals than they take care of their kids. That monkey lived in the train car with the clown, sat in his lap at the table, rode on his shoulder half the time. Anyway, Conrad made friends with the monkey, and Denton teased him about it a lot, called the monkey Conrad’s girlfriend, things like that.”
A pained expression crossed his face, and he took a long swallow of beer. When he looked at me, his eyes were suspiciously shiny.
“Denton sneaked in one day and broke the monkey’s legs. Snapped them like twigs. It broke Conrad’s heart. The kid was never the same after that. He went quiet and stayed to himself.”
My throat closed, and I laid my Cuban down. I can’t stand to hear about kids or animals being hurt, especially when it’s on purpose.
Pete said, “It wasn’t the first time Denton hurt an animal, but everybody had felt sorry for him with that mark on his face and they’d cut him a lot of slack. But when he hurt the monkey, that was it. It nearly killed Angelo. I mean, how could you live with something like that, knowing you had a kid that vicious?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could live with that. I couldn’t even breathe, thinking about it.
Pete said, “You know what the worst thing was about Denton hurting that monkey? He took it home to Angelo’s train car and laid it on the doorstep. Then he yelled to Conrad to come out. Acted real friendly, like he wanted to do something with him like a big brother. He was about ten, and Conrad was around five. Conrad fell for it and opened the door. There was the little monkey crying in pain, and Denton doubled over laughing.”
I thought of the kitten with broken legs, the last thing Conrad had seen before somebody shot him with a drug that paralyzed his lungs. Perhaps the last thing he saw before his heart stopped beating had been Denton laughing.
Watching me closely, Pete said, “I’ve thought Denton was a killer ever since his mother died. She worked with the horses, rode standing up on a white stallion, God, it was beautiful. She had a kind of psychic communication with those horses. I’ve seen her stand on one side of the ring and them on another, and I swear they read her mind. They would all move in unison, like a dance troupe.”
He took a swallow of beer and set the bottle on the table with a sharp thud.
“That’s how she died, with the horses. They were in a ring around her, standing on their hind legs, and somebody shot a dart into one of them. He stumbled and they all fell on top of her, kicking and hitting one another. She was trampled to death.”
I shuddered. “What an awful way to die.”
“Awful to watch too. The horses were screaming, the audience was screaming, little children were shrieking. The horses had to be put down. She would have hated that.”
“You think Denton—”
“He was there that night, watching, but I never saw the kid shed a tear. Conrad was hysterical, poor kid, but not Denton. I don’t think it even touched him.”
He snapped his mouth shut as if he didn’t want to let out what he was thinking and then said it anyway.
“They never did find out who shot the dart into the horse.”
I thought about what Guidry had said, about elephants being shot with dart guns from helicopters. But those darts had been filled with deadly drugs.
Pete fixed me with a keen blue stare. “Denton was there when Angelo died too. They were alone on Denton’s boat, and Angelo supposedly fell overboard and drowned. Angelo never even liked boats. That makes two deaths when Denton was present. Three, counting Conrad.”
“Denton wasn’t actually around when Conrad died.”
“You know that for a fact?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anything for a fact, Pete.”
“Well, that’s good, honey. People who know things for a fact are among the stupidest people on the face of the earth. You keep not knowing, and you’ll be a lot smarter.”
Maybe it was because the hot mustard had gone to my head, but I understood what he meant.
Pete looked at my face. “I shouldn’t have told you that. It’s enough to make anybody sick. Let’s talk about something else. Like how you probably need an older man in your life.”
My mouth was so dry I had to take a long drink of iced tea before I could speak.
I said, “Pete, did Denton ever have anything to do with snakes?”
“Snakes? Not that I know of.”
I rotated my iced tea on the tabletop.
I said, “When I was at Josephine’s this morning, Priscilla said she knew somebody who drives a truck like the one that chased me. She wouldn’t tell me who it was, but you know, don’t you?”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back in the booth. “Priscilla’s a good girl, Dixie. She was on the street for a while, bad family, abuse, the whole nine yards. But she’s trying really hard, you know? She’s not but sixteen and she’s got that baby, and she’s a good little mother. I’ve helped her all I can, gave her a room over my garage, sent her to Josephine for a job, I don’t want to rock her boat.”
“Somebody put a rattlesnake in my apartment last night. Two of them, in fact. One was under my mattress. I slept on it.”
He flinched as if I’d stuck a knife in him. “Good God.”
“I’m sorry to put you in the middle, Pete, but there’s a deputy outside tailing me because my life is in danger. There are law-enforcement people at my apartment right now, going through it inch by inch, looking for other snakes or poisonous spiders or whatever. Somebody tried to run me down with a truck, and if Priscilla knows who it is, she’d damn well better tell me or she’s going to have to talk to the sheriff’s department.”
“Did you tell Priscilla about the snakes?”
“Just the truck.”
“I’ll talk to her, Dixie. I think she probably doesn’t understand how important it is. But any information needs to come from her, not from me.”