“So if you ever need a clown you should call me.” She wiggled her eyebrows and honked her nose, as if she was in full clown costume. “I’d be happy to do it. You know, to sort of make up for everything.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, nodding. “Um, thanks.”
The last thing I’d ever want to see was Olga, in my house, entertaining my kids, dressed as a clown. But, still. It was a nice gesture.
Sort of.
TWENTY
“It was like the circus,” I said to Jake.
We were sitting at the table, puzzle pieces scattered on the surface. It was after dinner and I’d pulled out a 300 piece puzzle, a Disneyland castle scene. The girls had helped us for all of five minutes before giving up and heading off to play Barbies instead. Emily was holed up in her room, chatting with Bailey on Skype and Will had disappeared to play Minecraft. For the first time that evening, we were alone and I was able to tell Jake about my conversation with Olga.
“A circus of dead people?” he asked.
I snapped together another edge piece. “Yeah, the mortuary thing is weird.”
“You don’t say,” he said, smiling. He craned his neck closer to the box, inspecting the picture. “Clowns and dead people are not my favorite things.”
“Especially when they are all looking at you,” I told him.
He raised his eyebrows and shifted his gaze to me. “There were dead people looking at you?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.”
He grinned.
“Anyway, you wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds in her apartment.”
Jake wasn’t afraid of many things. He’d shown no fear in going up in the crawl space, nor in clearing out the army of spiders that had called our house their home. He didn’t mind confronting people when they needed to be confronted. He just didn’t show much fear of anything.
But he would squirm like a small child when he saw a clown. He’d cross the street to avoid them. He hated the county fair because they’d be there. Parades were dicey. Floppy shoes and red noses caused him to break out in a cold sweat.
He hated them.
“I wouldn’t trust anyone that decorates their apartment with clowns,” he said. He fit together a piece of the sky. “Or obviously dresses up as one.”
“Well, you have issues.”
He picked up a new piece and looked at me. “Everyone should have issues with clowns. They’re horrible. I honestly think there should be a law banning them.”
“I’m aware.You’ve mentioned this before. About a thousand times.”
“At minimum, there should be a fine,” he continued. “Put on a wig and some makeup, bam. Five hundred dollar fine. Ride a unicycle and juggle with face paint? Make it seven fifty. Multiple citations mean jail time. I should run for mayor and make it happen.”
“The mayor doesn’t make the laws, honey,” I said. I hunted for another castle wall piece and snapped it in place. “But I’d support you anyway. And your anti-clown platform.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Now. Let’s talk about why exactly you went to see Olga today.”
“I told you why.”
“I mean, what your thought process was that got you to the point that you thought going to visit her and ask questions was a good idea.”
“I’m not following.”
There was a bottle of beer sitting on the table and he picked it up and took a swig. “Why did you take it upon yourself to play Jessica Fletcher?”
I frowned. “Jessica who?”
“The old lady from Murder, She Wrote,” he said, returning my frown with one of his own. “Didn’t you ever watch that show?”
“No.” I wasn’t going to admit that I’d never heard of it, either.
“Well, you should have,” he said. He handed the bottle to me and I took a sip. “We’ll remedy that another time. But let me ask this another way. You’re a wife, a mom, a teacher, a home engineer and a sex goddess. What you are not is a detective. Why were you playing one today?”
“I wasn’t playing detective,” I said. I set the beer down and looked at him. “I was just…trying to find out some more information.”
“Which is what Crocket and Tubbs used to do on Miami Vice,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“Who? On what?”
“Oh my God,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Never mind. My point is that you were doing something you didn’t need to be doing. Why?”
I sighed. “Because I feel like it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. Unless you killed him. Wait,” he said, his eyes going wide. “Did you?”
I glared at him. “Stop. Of course I didn’t. But I feel like I was the one who brought him to our home. And Em was getting some flack from kids at school and the homeschool families at the co-op clearly aren’t comfortable with it. So it feels like it’s my fault.”
“But it’s not,” Jake said. He sifted through the edge pieces, looking for another blue sky piece.
“Still. Someone put him in our coal chute for a reason. And I think that reason was me.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” he said.
I shrugged. “There really isn’t another explanation.”
And there wasn’t, because I’d run all the possibilities through my head all day long. I was the one link between Olaf and our coal chute. There weren’t any other possibilities, unless you believed in totally random coincidences. And I didn’t. I believed in karma and good luck and wishes but coincidences? No way. Everything happened for a reason.
“Even if that’s the case,” Jake said, bringing the puzzle box closer and peering at it. “That doesn’t mean it’s up to you to solve the crime. You’re a homeschool mom, not a detective.”
“Yeah but we’ve done a crime scene unit study,” I argued. “I know stuff.”
He chuckled and covered my hand with his. “I do love your enthusiasm. Doing a unit study with the kids, though, is probably a little bit different than solving an actual crime. And also it’s probably a little less, I don’t know…dangerous?”
“I talked to a lady at a mortuary,” I said, my voice filled with disdain. “I didn’t chase down a knife-wielding maniac.”
“The lady at the mortuary was also a clown,” he said. “Which is worse than a knife-wielding maniac. Everyone knows that.”
“Of course” I said. “Clowns are deadly. I forgot.”
“Daisy.” His voice commanded me to look at him.
I met his gaze. “Jake.”
“Please don’t play amateur detective anymore,” he said. “There are plenty of people around to do that. They’re called the police.”
I tried to wrench my hand out from under his, but he tightened his grip and pulled me off my chair and into his lap. Part of me hated when he did that, but more of me loved it.
“Daisy,” he said, looking at me. “I’m serious. Don’t get carried away here. Let the police do their job.”
I wiggled my arms free and wrapped them around his neck. “Maybe. But right now, I think I’d like to do one of my jobs.”
He smiled and lifted his hips off the chair just a little, pushing into me. “I really, really hope it’s sex goddess and not home engineer.”
I kissed his ear and the half-done puzzle scattered across the table suddenly lost its importance. “You hoped right.”
TWENTY ONE
“Why are we going to Jake’s work?” Will asked from the back seat.
It was the next morning and I was focusing on my mom duties rather than my amateur detective duties. I’d pulled all three of the younger kids out of bed earlier than they were used to and they were still a little sleepy-eyed as I loaded them into the car.
“We’re touring the recycling plant,” I said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Remember?”
He shrugged and looked out the window.
“I like Daddy’s work,” Sophie said, then yawning. “There’s always cool stuff there.”
“Oh yeah!” Grace said, squirming in her car seat. “Remember when he brought home that headless doll?”